Hey everybody, good morning. How we doing?
It's good to see you. Welcome back.
I'm enjoying the snow outside. It's January.
It feels like it. We got some playoff football
going on. It's a good time to be alive.
It's a good time to be in New England, Good time to be here
together with you all. And I'm, I'm really excited
about the series that we're in currently.
If you are a nerd, I hope you are relishing it as deeply as I
am getting to play at the intersection of scripture and
theology and spiritual formation, attachment theory and
neuroscience. And, and really, this all feels
so important to me because I long for us to be a community
that is shaped by the love of Jesus and that shares that love
with our neighbors who people who don't just stop at
information, but go on to to formation, to transformation to
becoming people who love like Jesus.
And in the series, we're, we're delving into some of the
mechanics of what that actually looks like, how that occurs,
questions that I think are deeply important.
I hope that you'll walk away from this morning not only with
more understanding, but also a path to follow as we continue to
pursue our relationship with Jesus and our growth in his
likeness. Well, last week we talked about
the gap between what we know and how we live and we got super
nerdy. We delved into some brain
science. We talked about the difference
between knowing that and knowing how different brain systems that
support different ways of knowing and and explain that
sometimes we can have a great kind of explicit knowledge on
one level, a great theology, a great image of God at one level,
and yet that can fail to translate into our lives.
We looked at at Jesus great commandment and talked about how
the way of Jesus invites us not only into into right thinking,
but into right relating as we're transformed from the very center
of ourselves, mind, body and soul to love God and love our
neighbors. Well, this morning I want to
continue to build on this. I want to take things a step
further and ask so OK, if, if transformation doesn't just
happen by getting more information, then how are these
defaults, this implicit knowing this, knowing how that we talked
about last week, how is that actually formed?
How do we get these these filters, these expectations of
God and others in the first place, in our text today, we see
God's people struggling to trust God.
They have been in the passages that precede our text today in
Exodus 17, rescued dramatically from Egypt, but things have not
gotten easy for them. In fact, it's been a bit of a
like out of the frying pan into the fire situation.
Here in Exodus 17 we find that they are in the wilderness and
in verse one we read that as they camped at Refidim, there
was no water for the people to drink.
I don't know if you know this. Water is kind of important,
especially if you're in a desert.
It's pretty essential to human survival.
It is something that we need. This is not a made-up concern.
This was a real concern that the people had.
They had no water. They were thirsty.
And from this distressing situation we observe a reaction
in verse 3. We see that first they accuse
Moses and man, do they come at their leader?
They say, why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and
our children and livestock die of thirst?
Moses, why are you trying to kill us?
It's not a very generous story about the motives at play.
And then a little bit later on in the passage in verse 7, the
question beneath the question emerges.
They ask, is the Lord among us or not?
And I'd suggest to you this morning that this is a beautiful
encapsulation of really one of the most important questions
that we could be asking, one of the most important questions
that we are asking. I think some sometimes we, we
spend so much time asking about like, well, does God exist or,
or how does God's sovereignty and human agency relate?
Or how does Revelation predict the end of the world?
And nothing against any of those questions, but under them,
sometimes there's a deeper question, a more profound
question, the question that is central to the spiritual life.
When I am in distress, will you be with me?
When I'm afraid, will you show up?
When I don't have what I need, can I trust you?
God is the Lord among us or not? And this is not just a
theological question, it is an interpersonal question, a
question at the level of implicit knowing.
And Israel's answer to this question is very clearly no, we
can't trust him. We can't trust Moses.
We can't trust God. Things are out of control.
Time to panic. A couple of years ago, I was
almost hit by a car, and it was 100% my fault.
I walked like right in front of the thing.
And I was stunned because in the moment I felt like I had done
exactly what I was supposed to do.
I, I'd done the same thing that I had done crossing a street
basically my entire life. As I stepped out into the
street, I looked to my left to make sure there were no cars
coming. But there was a problem.
I was in London. And in London, the cars come
from the wrong direction, from, you know, said from my
perspective as an American, right, the car, the things were
clear from the left, but there was a car approaching rapidly
from the right. And, and in my head, at an
explicit knowledge level, I was aware that in England people
drive on the other side of the road.
These were facts that I had in my brain.
But my nervous system, my implicit system, when I went to
check to see if things were safe, I looked left because over
thousands of experiences, that was always where cars came from.
That was the place to look to see if things were safe, to take
that first step. I was in a new environment and
and so the system that I had developed over a long period of
time for evaluating what was happening around me was broken.
It didn't work for the situation that I found myself in.
And this kind of default is exactly what we're talking about
when we describe this implicit system, this this way of knowing
how that we talked about last week.
It's the the brain system that houses our reflexes, our
reactions, our assumptions, the area of our knowing that so
often in the church we we miss, we don't pay attention to, as we
talked about last week in attachment theory, these
patterns of implicit memory have a name.
They're described as an internal working model.
And these internal working models or these kind of filters
through which we see the world are formed just like my filter
was formed when I stepped out into the street looking left By
lots and lots of experience, by training of attention, by by
seeing how things show up in our life.
In attachment theory, we, we see that basically these, these
patterns of assumptions have to do with our relationships.
And will stress be alleviated? We're our distress be attuned
to, will somebody be there to help us?
When I'm in distress, can I reach out and get my needs met?
Some of you know the history, especially if you're a
psychology nerd like me. John Bolby and then Mary
Ainsworth developed this pioneering field in psychology
called attachment theory. And it was really explanation
for how it was that that individuals, initially kids and
later it moved out to encompass adults as well, would
essentially move under distress, how their relationships were
formed and then how these internal working models would
developed based on the reactions that they saw.
Mary Ainsworth, over the course of of many, many different
experiments, observing and and watching how people would
respond, came to describe a couple of patterns or or typical
ways that people would relate based on how the world occurred
to them. One of these was described as an
anxious attachment strategy. In this strategy, kids would
essentially amplify their bids for connection.
When they were in distress. They might cry or COO.
They might make faces or or try to touch the face of a
caregiver. Essentially, when they were
upset, when they weren't getting what they needed, whether they
were hungry or or needed to fart, whether they were looking
for attention or connection, they would reach out and they
would try to amplify these signals to get their caregiver
to pay attention to them, to come close, to connect.
They would pursue and press and protest.
Of course, this isn't just a kid strategy.
Many of us as adults have slightly more refined but
similar ways of reaching out. We think that when we're in
distress, when something is wrong, I need others to help me
feel better. And so we reach out in
relationships for others. We try to bring them in close.
Maybe we complain about the project that our boss just
dropped on us at the last minute to our Co workers, we're making
a bid for connection. We're saying, hey, be with me in
this experience. But there's not just an ancient
attachment system. There's also an avoidant
attachment system. And this system typically formed
and aims with observations among kids whose caregivers were
unavailable or uninterested, right?
If there was a a chronic system, a persistent experience, that
even when they escalated, even when they made these bids for
connection, if the person who was there to support them, to
care for them, didn't show up, if they didn't connect, if they
didn't respond, over time, these kids would start to turn away.
They would go silent. They would quiet down.
They would learn to manage things on their own.
Of course, in adults we see this pattern as well, right?
Many of us have have have come to learn by way of a lot of
little micro experiments in the world, or perhaps some traumatic
experiences that we've had, that when we reach for others, when
we try to get help in our distress, that other people are
not trustworthy, that their help comes with strings attached,
that we can't count on them reliably to have our back.
Maybe you attempted to reach out and, and your experience was
minimized. Maybe you attempted to reach out
and, and, and Pete, you were actually met with shame.
This is something you should have been able to sort out on
your own. And so over time, these
patterns, not from one instance or two, but just like looking
left, our patterns of behavior began to form in us, an internal
working model, assumptions about how the world works and whether
we can trust people when we're in distress.
If we do reach out, what will happen?
We begin to develop assumptions about these things in attachment
theory. Now, why do I name all of this
and go to the trouble of explaining something that
probably some of you already learned from talking to your
therapist or going to a site class in undergrad?
Well, the reason that I name this for the spiritual life, why
I think this is important for us as Christians, or at least
helpful, is that many of these implicit beliefs, these internal
working models, these are things that don't just live
independently of our life with God.
In fact, the the formal term is that they correspond to our
spiritual life. Very often we take these same
mental models of how the world works, these filters of what we
assume is going to happen next, and we project those same
filters right onto God, right. If we grew up in in a system
that was anxious, where we learned anxious strategies, we
might assume that man God is, is always just just right around
the corner. He might be disappointed with me
like I, I need to do a lot of things to intensify these bids
for connections. I need to make sure that I never
miss devotions in the morning. I need to make sure that I show
up every week and I serve and I, I do all of these things
because, because I, I need God to stay connected with me.
If I don't feel his presence in the same way, I need to double
down on my efforts. I've got to go harder and, and
make up to perform to please in order that God would stay close,
that he would stay connected. Others of us have grown up with
kind of more avoidance systems, right?
We've learned these strategies by the ways that we've related
with caregivers and others, and we bring those same assumptions
into our relationship with God as well.
We say, I can't really count on God if, if, if this is going to
happen the way I need it to happen, it's on me.
You know God helps those who help themselves, right?
We might believe that the prayer is nice, but in the real world,
the community isn't trustworthy, that God can't really help that
ultimately I've got to take things on and handle things in
myself. So often as a pastor in
community, I watch people begin to, to go through something, the
death of a family member, difficulty paying the rent,
right? A breakup or a loss and quickly
they began to step back from community.
They haven't learned how to handle those things in
relationship with other people because they have an avoidant
attachment strategy that tells them that when I'm in distress,
I'm non palatable, I'm not acceptable.
I need to to dip back and only show up in community when
everything is OK. Friends, these are not just
ideas. I can tell you that I'm a pretty
good case study in these things. Personally, I've watched this
play out in my own life with God.
As some of you know that in my 20s I went through a really
painful situation. I was rocked by the death of a
very serious romantic relationship that I'd had over
several years. In this relationship, I was
absolutely convinced that we were going to be together
forever, that we were partners and that nothing could change
that. And then she cheated and left me
and I left absolutely blindsided.
I was devastated. My whole world was turned upside
down and I honestly, I just didn't know how to make sense of
things anymore. And it didn't just mess with me
relationally, it messed with me spiritually as well.
I didn't blame God for what happened.
I, I saw things that I contributed and things that she
contributed. But I, I did stop trusting him,
like relationally, I, I began to live in and from a story that if
God could allow such a painful thing to happen to me, me
somebody who is reading my Bible and going to church and serving
in church and doing all the right things.
If God could allow such such pain and devastation to come
into my life, how can I trust him to take care of me?
I started to live from a story of suspicion and doubt where I
kind of trusted God with some things.
But but I always had to make sure that I had a plan.
I had a strategy. I was hyper vigilant looking
around me, making sure that I handled things in case I might
get blindsided again. I had a great explicit theology
in my head, but my implicit theology, my relational system,
my attachment system was wack because I hadn't healed from
this trauma that I had experienced.
And I think here in Exodus chapter 17, this is part of
what's going on. Like God's people do not respond
to their need, to their distress, which is real in a
healthy way. They move from distress to
complaint to accusation. The, the place that they're at
ends up getting renamed Merida and and Masaba.
Like basically it's, it's, it's it's complaint, it's arguing,
it's distressed. This is a place that becomes
representative of tension in the relationship.
And I'm not trying to justify that or, or say that there was
no agency involved. These people had a choice, but
they also had some filters. They had an internal working
model of the world. And in their internal working
model, people were not safe, right?
These are folks who had grown up under Egyptian slavery.
They had been in a joyful conversation with one of their
neighbors when the taskmaster came screaming with his whip.
They had gone to bed hungry and thirsty, without their basic
needs being taken care of. Their nervous systems were
rocked, and their bodies bore the Marks and the scars of the
pain that they had endured. The body kept the score.
And so they get out into this space, into this wilderness
space where once again their needs are not being met.
And their first reaction, their first instinct is distrust,
disbelief, to blame God, to blame their leadership.
They don't believe that they are held.
And this is even though God has done literally everything to
demonstrate his trustworthiness, like God has rescued them from
Egypt. He, he, he provided turn by turn
navigation with this whole pillar of fire and cloud thing.
Like he parted the Red Sea, like he's been dropping baked goods
from the heavens. Like God has been showing up for
these guys. They have a lot of reasons to
believe and to trust him, but it hasn't yet healed their implicit
working model of the world. They're still moving and showing
up in a way that that doubts, that suspects, that's hyper
vigilant, that's on guard because they still haven't
healed from these wounds. Friends, I think this is so
important for us because what I'm trying to say is that in the
church, too often we don't address this deeper level of
change. See, God wants you to have a
right understanding of things. He wants you to have the right
awareness of things. But he also, like we talked
about last week, wants you to be healed and changed in the depths
of who you are. And there's good news.
There's really good news about this.
And that is that we are not only harmed in relationships, but
we're also healed in relationships.
This is one of the things that's really encouraging.
Sometimes pop culture gets wrong about attachment theory where it
starts to be talked about as though it's like your attachment
style is like a personality type.
No, your internal working models are are strategies that you've
learned to cope with the world based on a bunch of experiences
that you have had. And honestly, those strategies
probably make sense based on the experiences that you had.
You got them from somewhere. You are showing up in the world
in trust or in distrust, in faith or in fear based on the
experiences that you've had and what and what you've learned
from others. But the good news is that just
as those patterns, those strategies were formed by
experience, so too can they be changed by new experience.
Like you can be repatterned, you can be rewired, not necessarily
by the stuff that you know, but by the relational experiences
that you have. And this is God's heart for us.
This is what we see here in this story.
If we were to go on and read beyond Exodus chapter 17 or even
here in this text today, we see that that what does God do in
response to all of their complaint, all of their protest?
He takes it very generously as a bid for connection.
He takes care of their need. He shows up with water.
He says, hey, I get that you don't trust me.
I get that you have reasons for not trusting.
I'm not like them. Let let me take care of you.
Let me provide for your needs. You know, I started to wonder as
I reflected on this text this week, if if maybe the reason
that it takes so long to get to from Egypt to the promised land
is there was like a bunch of stuff that needed to get re
patterned right? These people needed some time
following God faithfully, day after day after day after day,
experiencing His provision, experiencing His care, the manna
from heaven, the cloud that led them, the protection from
enemies, His provision over and over again.
Friends, we do have agency, we have the ability to make
choices, but our defaults, the way things show up to us, those
get formed in relationship by our experiences and friends, The
good news is, is what the Bible tells us an attachment theory
confirms is that we can be reattached to God.
Like, I don't know what happened for you in childhood.
Some of us in here have great parents that we're really close
to. Some of us parents are a
disaster and they're not in our life and all of our parents have
issues because they're people just like us, right?
None of us have like perfect magical situations where we
never experienced anything off. That's just not how the world
works. That's not how flawed and fallen
humans work, but for for all of us, whatever kind of internal
working models we developed, however we assume or or or
imagine things will be about the world, God invites us into
intimacy and independence with Him to be healed.
In attachment theory, they talk about this attachment figure,
this primary caregiver, often times a parent, but sometimes
not. Sometimes there's somebody else
you're really close to as being both a safe haven and a secure
base. And these are kind of technical
terms, but they're pretty simple to understand.
The safe haven basically means that this is a person that when
I am in distress, I can come to this person and they take care
of me. They provide safety, they
provide comfort, they provide help.
They might not be able to fix the problem, but they're at
least with me in it, right? Ava fell down yesterday and
scraped her knee. I couldn't fix the scraped knee
necessarily. But mostly Ali, honestly, mostly
Ali. But but me and Ali, like we
showed up and like, we just gave comfort, gave affirmation, gave
support, like, hey, we're here, you're OK.
Let me look at it. Let me give it a kiss.
Right? The safe haven.
But, but we're not only supposed to be connected, attached to God
in intimacy, we're also made for independence.
We're often intended to develop, to grow to to flex our
relational muscles, to do things in the world.
I love how Jesus named this with his disciples.
He, as he called his disciples, we read in in the book of Mark
that they talked about both the invitation to be with him, but
then also to be sent out to be with Jesus, but also to do what
he did. And in the healthy relationship,
this is what we see developing. Ava is a great example of this.
I'm using my daughter for a lot of examples here, but I just see
this dynamic in her all the time.
We go to the park. We live just a couple blocks
away from this big park on a hill.
There's a lot of grass. There's like fences around, so
cars aren't too big of a worry. And she'll just like take off
with her friends, you know, She'll be a hundred, 200 yards
away. I can kind of see her, but she's
over there. She's collecting acorns, she's
picking up sticks, she's chasing the rabbits and the squirrels.
She's exploring. She's flexing her muscles of
independence, but then, you know, a big kid with a bike will
go whizzing by and she'll get all panicked.
And what does she do? As soon as she gets triggered,
as soon as she is afraid, she returns.
She comes back to that safe haven.
She comes running to me or to Allie and, and she says mommy,
mommy, daddy, daddy. I got scared.
And we'll take her and, and just comfort her, just reassure her.
She'll cling to the leg for a minute, and then she works up
her courage and she's back out exploring, playing, adventuring,
chasing the world and friends. I think this is so important
because it gives us a model not only of what's important for
childhood development, but what we see in Scripture about God's
relationship with us as well. See, God is that caregiver,
regardless of how your parents showed up with you, regardless
of how that romantic partner that made such a mark on you
was. God is that caregiver in our
lives who reliably, consistently is available.
He wants to be with us in our distress.
We see this all over Scripture. Jesus describes Himself as as as
a hen that gathers her chicks under her wings.
The Psalms declare that God is our refuge, a very present help
in time of trouble. The Lord is near to the broken
hearted we read in Psalm 34 and Jesus invites all of us to come
to him. He says I will give you rest.
This is what we would call a safe haven.
Jesus is saying cast your anxieties on me.
Bring your cares and concerns to me.
When you go out and and you get your knee skin.
When you get beat up, when you get broken up with, when your
bank account doesn't work for the bills.
When you run into a situation of anxiety, when the world is on
fire, when you open up the news and the people are getting shot
and snatched off the street, when things are not OK, God is a
safe haven. And he says, come back to me
like bring what's real for you to me.
I want to meet you in it. I want to be with you in it.
And we don't just stay there forever.
Then he says, great, now go like be with me.
And then take that. And now I send you, I send you
back out as my hands and feet and friends, depending on where
our filters are at, depending on where our kind of internal
working models are at the very often one side of this is like
easy for us and the other side is terrifying, right?
Because some of us have learned to be really close, to cling on
for dear life because that's the only way we know we're safe.
Others of us are like great with being by ourselves, right?
Because people can't be trusted. So we're all about that
independence. And God says no.
I want you to develop along both axes.
I want you to move deeper into intimacy, deeper into
independence. I want you to learn how to, to
bring the pains of your life to me and allow me to restore and
to to rebuild, to encourage and to comfort you.
But I also want you then to have the courage to go out in your
life, to go out in your neighborhood, in your workplace,
in your relationships and your families, and to be my hands and
feet. It's a both and intimacy and
independence. So for some of us, the challenge
this morning might be we're good at like attaching to God, but we
just want to stay in the prayer room all the time.
Great, that's good. We need that intimacy that is
there so that you can go and do, right, Enjoy God, be with him,
be present with him, allow him to change you and shape you, and
then go and do like Jesus did for others of us.
We are really good at like doing for God.
We're out here and we want to do like this missional project and
we want to do a book study and we want to do this and we want
to do that. And our faith is all about the
intellectual. It's all about the behavioral.
It's all about how we show up and what we do.
And Jesus just says like, hey, would you share some of that
with me? You know how like how many times
I get that most people in this room do not have children at the
same age as my child. And everything in my life is
about my child right now. But again, Ava, like I cannot
tell you how many times, like every time she is doing
something fun in her life. Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy,
come, look, come, look, come, look, come, look, come, look.
This is, it's exhausting, like every, every two minutes.
Like she wants to bring me into it.
Like she wants me to experience the thing that she is
experiencing, not just for comfort, but as she flexes her
independence. She also wants me to to see what
she's doing. The sticks that she found, the
acorns that she found, the squirrel that she discovered,
the way she climbed the tree. Come look, come, look, come look
friends. Some of us need more of that in
our relationship with God too. Like we're out doing, we're
outgoing, We're we're, we're, we're performing, we're
pleasing, we're, we're doing all of these things, but we've left
kind of our relationship with God back there.
And God says, Hey, like, can I be with you in it?
Can we stay connected even as you go out and flex your
independence, intimacy and independence?
Friends, for all of us, this is an invitation.
See Israel in this story. Under distress, they protest,
right? They complain, they get panicked
and that they push into kind of avoidance.
They run from God like they attack and then they avoid.
But there is another way to do this.
It's a way pointed to us throughout Scripture, but
especially by the Psalm. Some of you know what I'm about
to say, right? The Bible paints a picture in
which we are invited to be in our reality, to feel our
emotions, to be grieved by the things in the world, and then
take that and run to God to bring it to his feet.
It's called lament, right? All over the Psalms we see this
practice, this invitation, as we are invited to, to take our
experience and bring it into our relationship with Goddess.
As David says in Psalm 142, I pour out my complaint before
him. I tell him my trouble.
I don't know about your parents. They may not have wanted to hear
what was going on for you, what was real for you.
They may not have been able to hold space for it.
They may not have shown up in the way that you need it.
But God wants to re pattern your attachment style as you develop
how to be with Him in distress, how to be in community with
distress friends. We are hurt in relationship, but
we are also healed in relationship.
So much of transformation goes beyond the information in the
explicit system and it goes on to this implicit relational
patterns, assumptions, defaults, filters.
God wants to change all of it by His love and for His love, so
that we can be people who are shaped by Him and who share His
love with the world.