Hi, this is Dave Olson. I'm the senior leader of
Heartland Church located in Ankeny, IA.
I hope the following message challenges, encourages, and
ultimately changes you. Thanks for joining us.
I'm thrilled to be here today. I gave Pastor Dave a hard time
that I was going to talk to him about his unexcused absence
later and so via text, he laughed at it, thankfully.
But today I want to talk to you all about the very exciting and
very deep topic of grave clothes.
Yay. Are you guys excited?
You all brought your pom poms, right?
So today we're talking about grave clothes.
We're going to start in John Chapter 11.
And many of you have heard this story.
This is a story about Lazarus and he he was very sick and he
was going to die. Mary and Martha come to Jesus
and say, hey, our brother is sick and dying and we need your
help. We need you to come now and make
sure he doesn't die. That was their request.
Make sure he doesn't die. Well, Jesus heard this and he
thought for whatever reason, OK, I'm not Jesus, but for whatever
reason, He decided to wait and he did not respond immediately
then. So that is the beginning of it.
Then Lazarus dies. OK, so we're going to pick up in
John Chapter 11 on verse 30. I'm in the NLT version if you're
reading along with me, and we're going to read some scripture
here, and then we're going to pray and see what the Lord has
for us today. All right, John Chapter 11,
verse 30, Here we go. Jesus had stayed outside the
village at the place where Martha met him.
When the people who were at the house consoling Mary saw her
leave so hastily, they assumed she was going to Lazarus's grave
to weep, so they followed her there.
When Mary arrived and saw Jesus, she fell at his feet and said,
Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.
When Jesus saw her weeping and saw the other people wailing
with her, a deep anger welled up within him.
Remember that point? And he was deeply troubled.
Where have you put him? He asked.
Then Jesus told him, Or they Excuse me, they told him, Lord,
come and see. Then Jesus wept.
Remember that point, the people who were standing nearby said.
See how much he loved him. But some said, this man healed a
blind man. Couldn't he have kept Lazarus
from dying? Jesus was still angry as he
arrived at the tomb, a cave with a stone rolled across its
entrance. Roll the stone aside, Jesus told
them. But Martha, the dead man's
sister, protested. As you can imagine as you hear
what she's going to say, Lord, he has been dead for four days.
The smell will be terrible, Jesus responded.
Didn't I tell you that you would see God's glory if you believe
so? They rolled the stone aside.
Then Jesus looked up to heaven and said, Father, thank you for
hearing me. You always hear me, but I said
it out loud for the sake of all of these people standing here so
that they will believe that you sent me.
Then Jesus shouted, Lazarus come out and the dead man came out,
his hands and his feet bound in grave clothes, his face wrapped
in a head cloth. Jesus told them unwrap him and
let him go. Let's pray.
Father, I just thank you for bringing us all here today to
hear your word as the church. Father, I thank You that you
knew who was going to be here before I was even preparing the
message. Holy Spirit, we just say have
your way in this place. Have your way through me.
And as these words are spoken, I thank you that you are meeting
each person right where they need to be met today in Jesus
name, Amen. So the beginning or the end of
this story is there's a man named Lazarus.
He died, Jesus came. This is short version.
Jesus came, told him to come out of the grave, and then Jesus
told the people around him to unwrap him and let him go.
Well, what does this all mean? Like many of us have heard the
story, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.
That's pretty amazing, right? He literally physically raised a
man from the dead, told him to come out of the grave, and
Lazarus did. Isn't that enough?
Well, I think there's more to this story that some of us,
including myself for years, didn't really grasp onto.
And so that's what I want to take a minute to kind of dive in
today, dive into today. There's a lot of meat in this
story. And many of us, like I said,
it's just, oh, Jesus raised him from the dead, which in and of
itself, I don't know how many all have done that, but I have
not done that. Even Jesus working through me, I
have not done that. That's miraculous and enough in
and of itself. Right?
Does everybody agree? OK, yeah, together we agree.
But at the end, as Jesus or as Lazarus is coming out, it says
in verse 44, the dead man came out, his hands and his feet
bound in grave clothes, his face wrapped in a head cloth.
Jesus told them unwrap him and let him go.
This is what I want to talk about today is what grave
clothes do you still have on many of us in this room.
You've accepted Jesus as the Lord of your life and which I
thought was enough. That's only the beginning.
And so today I want to share you share with you about my story of
my grave clothes and the journey, not the destination of
removing the the grave clothes, but the journey of removing the
grave clothes. Are you all with me?
OK, so just a quick recap on who I was.
I was raised in a great home. I had a mother and a father in
the home. I had an older brother, great
family. They, My parents loved me, My
physical needs were met. My parents loved me.
I was involved in soccer, they came to my soccer games, we
prayed before meals and we went to church on Sunday.
It was a great home. My brother, he was cool too, but
that's another story. So I had a great home.
I really have nothing to complain about.
But I did realize as I was growing, actually more so when I
got married, that it's weird how marriage just kind of shows you
some of your issues. I had learned that being raised
in my home that I had, I did not know how to deal with emotions.
I did not know how to deal with conflict.
I did not know how to do conflict resolution.
I did not know how to talk about any tough issues.
And by tough issues, I mean, if I burnt the dinner, like, can I
talk about that and not have be all defensive like this isn't
real tough. But that was tough for me
because I didn't know how to work through it.
And so anyway, I got I was born again.
I'm kind of jumping back and forth because a lot of it is
tied to Pastor Adam, but I was born again at 19 and filled with
the Holy Ghost two days later. So spiritually I was made new.
I was a born again believer. If I died that day, I knew I had
no question in my heart I was going to heaven.
Well, as I kept going, I had no understanding of how to work
with emotions. And then I get born again.
Well, I want you to know, when I got born again, I did not
miraculously learn how to deal with emotions.
I know some of you could fall out over that, but it's true,
OK? I was here and my spirit was new
and God was working through me and I believed in him and I had
all faith and trust that if I died, I was going to heaven and
He was my Lord and Savior. But somehow over here in this
general vicinity where something how I pictured it, my soul and
my body, they were two separate things.
Well, 33 separate things that spiritually my relationship with
is with God and it's spirit, spirit, spirit, spirit, spirit.
And then over here, your soul and your body, which involves
your emotions. Are you following so far?
OK, well in my mind I love the Lord, and I would shove my soul
and my body over here as if they had no reason for existence, so
to speak. In my eyes, it was as if they
were a ball and chain. I'll be very honest, my spirit
was alive in Christ and the soul and the body, they were
pointless and actually, in my eyes, tearing me down, like
pulling me back from everything that God actually wanted for me.
And so I just kept shoving the soul aside, kept shoving
emotions aside. I didn't miraculously learn how
to deal with any of that. And then one day this is a joke
in my marriage. So you don't have to like throw
stones at Pastor Adam by any means.
While we were dating, he gave me a book by a very well known
author called Managing Your Emotions.
I'm going to let you know that book is still on the bookshelf
and not has been. It has not been read by me
whatsoever. But I have learned a lot about
soul and emotions through multiple tracks.
So Adam and I, pastor Adam and I joke about this because he saw
that girl. You got some issues and I didn't
see it. I was defensive.
I had no idea what to do with emotions, with my soul.
I just thought my life with God is spiritual.
Like, what point is that? Well, then a couple years ago, I
don't know how many of you know, but we lived in Texas and God
called us to move to back to Iowa, to Des Moines.
And we were praying about, Lord, what do you have us to do next?
What do you have us to do next? And every part of our life we
fully believed and surrendered to the Lord.
We wanted to do everything the Lord was asking us to do.
So we moved several times. We lived in a hotel for 40 days
with our five kids because we felt like that is this open door
for us. So that's what we did.
It was just, we hear your word, we know it in our spirit, we
move. We hear your word, we know it in
our spirit, we move. Well, when we moved back to Des
Moines, we felt like God was calling us to plant a church.
And so we did. And we actually, there's several
people like Pastor Adam was saying, actually you might have
mentioned it for service. I apologize.
There's several people here at Heartland that moved to Des
Moines or came alongside us to help plant the church that God,
that we believe God asked us to plan.
And it was going great. People were getting saved,
people were getting baptized. We had Koinonia like fellowship
around food. And man, if you have fellowship
around food, I'm in. Just so you guys know, if you're
fellowshipping around food, I'm in.
OK, So anyway, I'm in for Koinonia, for fellowship with
food. Love it.
And then the Lord's like, well, well, he didn't really say it
like that, but we felt as we were praying that something just
wasn't right. And I would go to Pastor Adam
after services. I said, something's off,
something is off. Another week we would do you
know, I would lead worship. He'd preach the word or and I'd
come home, something's off. And he's like, I need a little
bit more than that, Heidi. Like what do you got?
Like, what does that mean? Like, did you not eat the right
food yesterday? Did you not get enough sleep?
Like, what do you mean? I'm like, I don't know.
Something's not right. And in this, not because of me
saying something is off, but in this phase, we just kept digging
into the Lord, like, what's going on?
What's going on? What do you have for us?
And we felt like he was asking us to take our Isaac, which was
the church. It was a promise fulfilled to us
and put it up on the altar and say, Lord, this is yours.
It's not ours to do. And he asked us to close the
church. And I'm going to be honest,
we've heard multiple comments from people.
How could that? Be.
Why would you close something that's the Lord's promise?
If it was healthy, you wouldn't close it.
We've heard a lot and we've questioned a lot.
It was a big soul searching time for all of us.
But like I said, everything we were doing, we were doing our
best to hear the voice of the Lord, process it, and then move
on, the voice of the Lord. So we closed the church.
So that was 2022, maybe I think the very end of 2022.
And we started coming here. I didn't know why we were coming
here. And I probably still don't know
a lot of the reasons we're coming here.
And I mean mean that because I think there's multiple reasons
we're here, but one of them is because the Lord needed me to
get healthy in an area that was a grave cloth for me, but I had
no understanding about it. So when we came to Heartland, we
attended a little bit before, we weren't even seeking a job.
He wasn't seeking a job here. But eventually we knew this is
where he was supposed to get hired.
And when he took the job, I told him because I was not.
I told you I was off something wasn't good.
I said, Adam, you can take the job in ministry, but I'm all I'm
doing right now is I'm coming to church and I'm leaving with the
kids like I can't do this ministry again.
This didn't get me first service, but I just I told Adam,
I said I love the Lord. I am not turning from him, but I
can't do ministry right now. Something's off.
I just didn't know what it was. And so he said, OK, let's just
do that for this season. But we still didn't know what to
do, what the reasoning was. Well, come to Heartland and I
knew I was going to cry at some point, so I stuck a handy dandy
Kleenex right in my pocket. So anyway, I still didn't know
what the problem was because I was like, I'm reading your word.
I am praying, I am teaching my kids about the Lord.
I have preached messages before. I have changed dirty diapers.
I have scrubbed toilets for you, Lord, like, what is going on?
I just don't get this. And then I happened to have the
opportunity to share in the women's ministry my testimony.
At this point in my testimony, I was in a pretty raw spot.
I wasn't at the height of who I was in my identity or anything.
I was just kind of broken and I was pretty vulnerable about
that. And during that testimony or
shortly thereafter, I heard about a class called the
Ultimate Journey. Ultimate Journey is a class
Heartland does offer. It is also offered through other
ministry centers in the area. But I took the class and when I
took the class, wouldn't you know it, that is when I figured
out some of my grave clothes. Not super comfortable.
I'm going to be honest with you. It was so not comfortable.
I had it in my head that I learned Scripture.
I preach about God's word. I'd be willing to be used by
God, however, but I kept my soul and my body, like I said over
there and then in the ultimate journey and through multiple
points at this church, I realized, wait a second, they're
all supposed to be integrated. Are you kidding me?
I was born again for like 1520 years and I didn't know that.
I didn't know. Now that's through no fault of
other people or you know, I only could take in at certain points
what I could take in. But I realized, wait a second,
God actually wants my spirit. He wants my soul and he wants my
body all in a sozo experience, all in a whole completely well
experienced, not just my spirit. And this I'm telling you, this
was earth shattering to me. Y'all are not earth shattered.
That's fine. I went through like an earth
shattering experience and I would come home from all through
the journey and I'm not really know how to talk to Pastor Adam
because he hadn't gone through it yet.
And I was like, but this is amazing.
And I've learned that my soul needs cared for and part of my
soul is my emotions. Your soul is made-up of your
mind, your will and emotions. OK, for me, I'm, we're not
really going to talk about the mind and the will today,
although they're vitally important as well.
We're going to talk about the emotions because that's how God
has worked through me and revelation that I have.
So that's what I'm going to give to you today.
OK. So I learned through this
ultimate journey that I had emotions and I didn't know what
to do with them. So for years, I shoved them down
here. OK, we're going to act like
we're in physics class here for a moment.
So for years, I shoved them down here like a pendulum, like over
here. I don't want to have anything to
do. I'm shove, shove, shove, shove,
shove down. OK, Well, when I didn't have the
choice because I didn't have the emotional maturity yet, these
shove, shove, shove down emotions would all of a sudden
go here. They.
Are. You're angry and you have no
control over it 'cause you shove, shove, shove, shove down.
We have so much pressure build up, but it's coming out now.
Can you believe that, that my anger would do that?
And I was like, oh, now you know why Pastor Adam gave me the
Managing Emotions book. And so I said, hey, have you
ever had Pastor Adam on your heart to pray for?
Just pray for him because he has to deal with me and the emotions
that God gave me. But So what I realized in
Ultimate Journey and many counterpoints intersections here
at Heartland is that God actually wants soul and body
just as whole as he wants your spirit.
They're all together. So as we start this journey, as
I started this journey, I was like, wow, I have some pretty
deep emotions about some things. Is that OK?
Because before I've heard all I've heard, which is biblical,
but I heard your you obey the voice of the Lord.
You're led by the Spirit of God. Yes, that is true.
So then I started hearing that I'm like, OK, so emotions don't
matter. I just keep shoving them down.
Even in church settings, I was shoving them down.
I was like, wait, something's not right.
Like I just feel so empty. And so when we closed the church
and then I went through ultimate journey, I realized that I had
not brought my soul and my body before the Lord.
I've worshipped with my hands up, but my soul was like to me
in my eyes, the decrepit part that didn't allow, I didn't
allow to have voice in who I was.
And so as I'm working through this, I'm realizing, OK, God
wants me whole spirit, soul and body.
There's actually scripture for that.
It's in First Thessalonians 523. We're not going to go there.
But he doesn't say. We just want you whole spirit.
He wants to hold spirit, soul and body.
So what does that mean if our spirit is made new the day that
we're born again and our soul and our body aren't necessarily
flipped and made a new that day, What do we have to do with that?
What do we do with our emotions? What do we do with that stuff so
that it can become more like Christ and serve Him as well?
I want to take a look at a couple verses.
The first one we're going to look back at is John Chapter 11,
where we just were in with Lazarus.
OK, I had mentioned my journey was dealing with emotions and
that was my grave cloth. Your journey might be different.
Your journey with grave cloth might involve addictions, it
might involve anger and bitterness towards certain
people or people groups, It might involved involve eating
too much, it might involve shopping to escape the pain.
I don't know what your grave cloth is, but emotions were one
of my biggest to this day that I know of.
Now I'm on this journey. Please know that this is not a
final destination for me. I'm willing to say OK Lord
tomorrow. What do you got for me?
Am I being bound by anything that's not of you because I'm
alive spiritually, but if I'm bound by I'm not meaning you all
are like this. I just keep walking over here.
If I'm bound by anything spiritual or emotionally or
anything that pulls me away from you, that's a grave cloth that I
want to get rid of, OK? I don't want to be alive
spiritually and then wrapped in my grave claws.
Jesus clearly said in the scripture, Lazarus can be made
physically made new and alive, but something on him does not
belong anymore. Something on him to is tying him
back to his old way of life. And Jesus is saying, when you're
made new, when you're born again in the Spirit, we have to check
those grave claws and say, what is tying me back to my old way
of life? What is keeping me in bondage
that I am not allowed to walk in the freedom that Christ actually
purchased for me. This is so much bigger than
spiritual freedom, guys. That is a valid part of it.
And that's where we are. We get to go to heaven, but
there's so much more. There's so much more freedom
that Christ died for. And if we don't look at the
grave clause that we're clinging to or that we're not aware of,
both can be true, then we're walking around in bondage either
in our soul and our body, but spiritually free.
Does that make sense? Y'all tracking.
OK, so we're going to look at John Chapter 11.
And when I started learning about emotions, I was of the I
mentioned already that I didn't feel like emotions were OK.
Like spiritually it wasn't OK, but then I started learning, no,
God has gifted you emotions. God has gifted you emotions so
you can enjoy this walk on earth and so you can understand some
things that actually have weight or meaning to you.
That's part of what grieving is. If we can swing to that for a
minute because sometimes we think, oh, I don't want to deal
with grieving. It shows you what was a value to
you when you grieve something that had value to you.
OK, so as these emotions are brought before the Lord, we get
to decide, Well, first of all, we don't want to be over here
anymore and shoving these not so nasty things down.
But we also don't want to be way over here where we are reacting.
And you know, I know none of you have done this.
I used to do this and now I'm perfect.
So I don't do it anymore. But I used to, you know, if
someone cut you off in the road. You guys have never done this.
I Why are they cutting me off? I have places to go.
I chose to leave 10 minutes late, but they are cutting me
off. So why are they getting in my
way? Because my way prevails their
way. So get out of my way.
Has anybody done that? No.
OK. Oh, I did see some hands.
Wow. OK, so that is one thing.
Coffee pot breaks before you're trying to go to work.
Are you kidding me? I need my coffee before I go to
work. We're over in the reacting
state. Do you understand what I'm
saying? We don't suppress our emotions,
but we also have to learn. Are we reacting to things?
And maybe it's the person that cut you off on the side of the
road or in the road. Maybe your coffee pot broke.
Maybe someone's name got defamed on Facebook and you're like,
yeah, I know it. They need to be torn down.
Whoa. Ouch.
This isn't just the quote negative emotions.
This is some of the like, why are you so excited about that?
So going back to what we don't want to do, we don't want to
suppress their emotions. They're a gift from the Lord.
We don't want to react to them where they have power over us.
That's not an emotionally mature, spiritually LED
Christian. Therefore, you're not a
spiritually more mature Christian.
Did you all hear that part? If you're reacting out of your
emotions, you're not a spiritually mature Christian.
It's impossible to be spiritually mature and be
emotionally immature. It does not work like that.
I don't care what Bible verses you know.
I don't care how long you've been saved.
I don't care how big your church is or what Bible studies you
lead. If you don't emotionally know
how to address your emotions and bring them before the Lord and
not react, we got work to do. And that was me, Yay.
And I think that's a few of you too.
And that's why God is asking me to bring it to the body of
Christ because there's too many times where we have used knowing
a certain scripture and whatever degree you have, whatever Bible
study you've LED as spiritual maturity.
And he's ready for his sons and daughters to say, that's not it.
That's part of it. But He actually wants us to
bring our emotions and our brokenness before Him and say,
now what do I do with this Lord? Because I'm done suppressing it
and I'm also done reacting to it.
I want to be who You have called me to be.
Amen. Even with emotions.
OK, so now we're getting back to John 11, which I've already told
we're going to. I want to take a couple looks at
Jesus in Scripture as he was operating through this earth.
Now one of the things we need to look at about with Jesus, He was
the Son of God. He was also Son of man.
You can go through Scripture, find out that he refers to
himself and others refer to himself as the Son of man.
It's three to four more times than he's referred to as the Son
of God. So there's something in that.
When God starts repeating himself in Scripture, it's time
to hold up and realize, what are you trying to say here?
And when Jesus is being identified more times as the Son
of man than as the Son of God, it doesn't mean that it's more
important, but it does mean it has weight.
And so we need to look at how does Jesus embrace his humanity
so many times. And when we were planting the
church so many times, I was like climbing the ladder of I just
need to see things how God sees them and trying to like get up
and see his perspective. And that's good.
That is part of it. But on the other hand, he wants
to meet me where I am. It's not just about climbing and
striving to see God's perspective.
That is valuable and part of what God says in His Word.
So we need to hold that in this hand.
But what about our humanity? What about our humanity when
we're weak? When we are, we're angry.
When we don't know what to do? What do we do with that?
If Jesus was human, he learned how to navigate this road as a
human in authority, in authority to God with his emotions.
So that's what we're going to look at.
I keep finding more to tell you about this before we go to John
11, but here we are, John Chapter 11 in verse 33, we're
looking at Jesus. Jesus, this was Lazarus, Mary
and Martha, and verse 33 it says Jesus saw her weeping and saw
the other people wailing with her.
A deep anger welled up within him and he was deeply troubled.
Where have you put him? He asked them.
They told him, Lord, come and see.
Then Jesus wept. Here are two to three different
examples of Jesus, the sinless man of God, who we want to
follow and get our examples from.
He's getting angry, He's welling up with anger, He's deeply
troubled, and he's weeping. To me, those are some pretty
deep and expressive emotions, are they not?
Like he just wasn't even keel all the time.
He, he had emotions in him. He was human.
God actually has emotions too, but that's not what we're
focusing on right now. Jesus had emotions welling up in
him when Lazarus died. It's OK to have emotions.
We don't need to suppress them. It's OK to have emotions, we
shouldn't react to them. But what does Jesus do with his
emotions? Because they are a gift from the
Lord. Mostly, and I want to kind of
segue there, God gave us emotions, but the enemy has come
in and twisted and perverted them.
So I just want to take that minute to segue or give that
little side note. It's just like God created the
rainbow. The enemy perverted it and has
done his tactics of darkness with it.
God gave us emotions and they can be used and a gift for us
and for others, but the enemy is trying to come in and make you
suppress them or make you react to them.
So either side of this pendulum, we're doing aerobics today here
too. Either side of this pendulum,
not where God wants us. OK, God wants us in the middle
and we're going to find out how Jesus did this with our
emotions. We're not going to turn there
today, but when you have time to go to John 5, I want to make
sure I give you the right verse. John 5/9/19 Jesus is explaining
He only does what He sees the Father doing and only says what
He hears the Father saying. For years all I thought that
meant was, OK God, you're having me pray for this person.
I can pray for that person. OK God, I'm going to be your
vessel to preach this message. I can do that.
But I think it's a little deeper and a little more expansive than
that. I think if Jesus was looking at
this as a spirit, soul and body experience, he's going to God in
events in his life and wondering, OK, God, I got anger
here. What's going on?
What do I need to be doing with it?
And then he's waiting on God to say, this is what we're doing.
This is what you're saying. Jesus never got into the point
of reacting out of emotions. It's impossible for him to do
that because he was sinless. He never sinned once, therefore
he never got out of the authority of God once.
There's a pretty big weight to that.
We are not of that nature. We have sin, but it doesn't mean
we can't loose our grave clothes and figure out God.
What do you have me doing with my emotions so I can do what
you're asking me to do and say what only you are telling me to
say? Not suppress them or react.
React to them anymore OK so Jesus is sitting there he has
anger and he's troubled then in verse 35 he weeps it is OK if
you guys cry. The strongest man alive cried.
The strongest man alive got angry in verse 38 after someone
said to Jesus, man, you've healed a blind man.
Couldn't you even keep Lazarus from dying after they started
jabbing him verbally for what he wasn't doing?
He was still angry. And 38, he didn't just supersede
it spiritually, which was my problem before I became so
robotic with verses and I don't have them all memorized.
But I knew what to say for the moment to get me spiritually on
with my way so I could preach another message, so I could care
for my kids again, so I could cook another meal.
But I didn't allow myself to address the emotion in the
moment that God was asking me to address, nor did I then say,
God, what do I do with? This.
And Jesus, look at this, he was still angry in verse 38.
And then he says part way through 41, he starts talking to
God. Jesus wasn't out on his own
doing this. He was having a relationship
with the Father in this moment to figure out, OK, God, what are
we doing? Lazarus is dead.
These people are jabbing at me with their words that I'm not
doing enough. They're defaming my identity,
basically, and Jesus is starting to well it up.
He had human emotions, and he's going to God and saying, OK, I
want you to do what we'll do, whatever we're supposed to do.
And that's when he commanded Lazarus to come forth and then
told the people around him to take the grave claws, grave
claws off. Jesus was not outside of
authority when he commanded these things.
Now I want to bring up another Scripture that many of you have
heard of that we're not going to turn to many of you have heard
of. It's been on Facebook so many
times. If Jesus can turn the tables in
the temple, I can do that too. OK, here's the problem.
You can't do it out of reaction and be following God.
You can't do it out of out of suppression and be following
God. You have to take that anger and
give it to the give it to God and say, what am I supposed to
do with this? What are we doing with this now?
He didn't not address the anger. He understood you all know the
story of the temple. He's going to the temple and he
sees tax collectors and money exchangers in the temple.
And that's not how the temple was supposed to be used.
And he knew when he saw it, that's not it.
That's not God. We can't have that here.
So anger started welling up in him.
Well, he didn't react and say get out because he only does
what he sees the Father do, and he only says what he hears the
Father say. So he had to go to the Father
and say, what are we doing about this God?
What are we doing about this Father?
And so it doesn't say it in all the Gospels, but in one of the
gospels, he goes and makes a whip before he turns the tables
in the temple. What does that mean?
God and Jesus are making a whip because of the anger.
It's not Jesus making a whip out of his own fleshly reaction, nor
is it Jesus suppressing the anger, saying they're screwing
up. This is not what the temple
supposed to be using, and I'm just going to deal with it.
He had to do something, but he had to respond out of God's
word. He had to respond out of God
what God was asking him to do, not just, well, today I'm going
to say forget about it. Tomorrow I'm going to say I get
to freak out because I'm Jesus. He didn't get that.
He had to come under authority, but he had to choose to do it
every day with his emotions every day.
And so when he was getting anger, angry, excuse me, he was
going to God. OK, what are we going to do
about this? When you start feeling emotions,
it's your chance not to suppress them or react to them, but to
invite God into the situation and say, why am I feeling this
anger towards this situation or this person?
Why am I feeling happy that their name just got defamed on
Facebook? That's a valid question to ask.
Holy Spirit. Why am I excited that they got
the ticket on the road and I didn't even know I was going 20
over the speed limit? Why?
That's a valid question. So when we start having these
emotions, it's not that they're all true and scriptural.
It's that it's an open door for us to invite God in and say, why
am I angry? Why am I happy?
Why am I sad? And that's where he meets you
and comforts you when necessary and gives you the right
direction from there after that so that we're not stuck in these
two pendulums anymore trying to figure out life on our own
because that's not God's intent. We are an integrated being.
This isn't just spiritual people.
This is involves our soul as well.
This involves our emotions. And so we get to bring those to
the Lord and say, OK Lord, I'm feeling anxious about this.
And here is why you want to do this.
You can use the Scripture, which is true.
Be anxious about nothing. If I'm starting to feel anxious
and I only use the scripture now you guys need to put your your
ears on and hear what my heart is on this.
If I'm only using the Scripture and telling myself be anxious
about nothing, be anxious about nothing, be anxious about
nothing, be anxious about
nothing, and I just quote the Scripture, which is weaponry
that we have to quote the Scripture, but I never go to the
Lord and ask Him why the heck am I anxious?
He's like, girl, do you even get it?
You had an appointment at 8:00 and then you had a dentist
appointment at 8:30. And then at 8:45 you had to call
your mom for your weekly check in.
And then 9:00 you had to rush home.
And because so and so is sick from school.
And then you had to rush home. And then at 9:30 you started
thinking about, Oh, I want to redecorate my home.
So we're going to get on Pinterest and start redecorating
home and do all these Pinterest boards and dah, dah, dah, dah.
And then at 10:00 you had another meeting.
And at 11:00, you had this, and he's like, sister, what the heck
are you doing? You're quoting scripture, but
you're weaponizing it against me.
And that's exactly what the enemy does.
He uses scripture to weaponize it against the Lord.
Scripture matters. You have to use it in context.
This is a living, breathing document.
It divides the soul and the spirit and the joint from the
marrow. That's what this does.
But if you don't invite God into your situation, he could be,
He's like, well, all you have to do is simplify your calendar.
Heidi. Meanwhile, I'm just be anxious
about nothing. Heidi, be anxious about nothing.
Be anxious about nothing. Be anxious about nothing, be
anxious about nothing, be anxious about nothing.
And I go to all my 30,000 appointments.
I come home stressed. I'm not able to give to my
husband and my kids what they deserve because I'm weaponizing
the scripture and not allowing God to meet me where I was at in
my soul. Scripture matters.
Scripture and context matters more.
Spirit matters. Spirit, soul, and body matter.
I don't want to say more, but they matter a lot.
We can no longer be segregating our spirit from our soul and
body. It's a, it's an integrative
thing that the Lord has given us on purpose.
He knew we would have this. It wasn't a it wasn't a surprise
to him. Oh, my gosh, they're angry.
I can't believe it. Jesus.
He's not sitting up in heaven saying, why are they angry?
I can't believe they even have this emotion.
That was actually a very feminine voice.
So I'm sorry, God. Yeah.
Anyway, do you understand? He's not surprised by your
emotions. We can bring them to the Lord,
but what we want to stop doing is suppressing or reacting to
them. Those are the enemies territory.
God's territory is saying, OK, I'm anxious, help me navigate
what the heck I'm doing. OK, I will use the scripture,
but if I need to cancel appointments because I am
presenting, I am causing this myself, then that's an issue.
He's giving me the way out today.
We've talked a lot about emotions, and that was part of
my story. I didn't know that they were OK.
I didn't know how to deal with him in a godly way.
I was either suppressing or reacting, and I usually didn't
have control over when I reacted because I would get triggered
off of something. And then it's like those old
things where it's like like those snakes or something shoved
in a can. Then all of a sudden they're
like everywhere and you have no control over when it comes out.
That's kind of where I was. And again, he got to deal with
it. My kids got to deal with it.
But I'm so grateful that now God is like, hold up, Heidi, you
have a soul on purpose. I didn't mistake when I made
your soul. It's not a mistake.
It's not a problem in the factory setting.
He knew you had a spirit, soul and body.
He knew the purpose of all of them.
He wants them integrated and all serving him together.
As in my case, Heidi, my soul serving him.
My soul submitted to his authority, not separate and in
the enemy's territory. That was one of my grave clothes
was emotions. You guys might have some other
grave clothes. Maybe you didn't necessarily
identify with the emotional part.
Maybe you had a great upbringing and you've known how to stay in
the middle row with your emotions from your beginning,
which I highly doubt. But I will give you the benefit
of the doubt. That's fine, you can take it to
the Lord. OK, I'm not here to tell you
what it is, but my story was emotions.
That was my grave cloth. One of them.
I know that this is a journey with God, so if He shows me
another grave cloth, you better expect me to know that I am
going to be going to God and say, how do we get rid of this
one? Because I don't want to be
living in the bondage that the enemy has meant for me this
whole time, even though I thought I was free, right?
So I'm going to ask the ministry team to come up as we close
today. Some of you have probably grave
clothes on and maybe you came in here today not knowing.
That's fine, I have no judgement towards you because none of us
have it all figured out. None of us have come been have
been completely perfected and are walking sinless like Jesus.
Not one. So my grave cloth, my biggest
one that I have found to date is not knowing how to submit my
submit my emotions to the Lord. Your grave cloth could be
watching porn, something that's keeping you in bondage outside
of God's freedom. That's what we're talking about.
Grave clothes. You could be shopping to escape
pain. I know shopping isn't
necessarily a bad thing, but if you're using it to escape pain
and not address soul stuff with the Lord, it's a problem.
You might be running to the bottle to escape pain, to not
deal with your soul with the Lord.
These are just some examples. There's so many examples that I
mean, if we interviewed everybody, they would probably
have oh, and I did this and I did this.
Let's figure out what the grave clothes are so God can show us
and loose us today through our ministry team so that we can be
walking in the freedom that God has provided us since we were
born again. We just didn't we weren't aware
about. OK, as we close today, I want to
tell you one thing. At the end of John Chapter 11,
this is a story about Lazarus. Lazarus came out of the grave.
The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound in grave clothes,
his face wrapped in a head cloth.
So he was still bound with his grave clothes.
And Jesus told the people around Lazarus to lose him, to unwrap
him. What does this tell me?
This is not just about you and Jesus.
This is about a community, a people, a body, a ministry team
that is here to help you be loosed into the freedom that
Jesus has provided for you. Thanks for listening to our
podcast. If you'd like to help more
people hear this message, you can get the word out by
subscribing and sharing it on social media.
If you'd like to support the ministries of Heartland Church,
you can do so at Heartland Church online.com/give.