The God of Restoration: Bryan Anderson’s Journey

00:00 - Speaker 1 The soul is like a battleground and every wound is like giving up territory to the enemy. He'll use that in your life to take you out. He'll use that in your life to hurt other people. God's not okay with it. He wants you to deal with it. The good news is he's got all the resources of heaven at your disposal to heal it. This whole walk is a divine partnership. You know the Lord is gonna give you everything you need, but you have to cooperate partnership. You know the Lord is going to give you everything you need but you have to cooperate. 00:26 - Speaker 2 You have to cooperate. Welcome to the City Light Church podcast. Thanks for joining us today as we look into God's Word and discover the hope and truth that he has for us. If you want to connect with City Light Church, feel free to visit us at citylightnyccom. That's citylightnyccom. Citylightnyccom. That's CityLightNYCcom. Pastor Boyan Jancic and his team believe that the power of the Holy Spirit is already working in our hearts and minds. As you listen to today's teaching, remember that you are deeply loved by God, that you are surrounded by His grace and that he has a real hope and a future for you. So won't you put your hands together and welcome Brian Anderson? 01:17 - Speaker 1 Thank you, pastor Bo. That was an intro right there. Good morning church Woo, second service. You guys have had more coffee than the first church Second service. You guys have had more coffee than the first, hopefully, and I was told before starting that the clock here is just a suggestion. Now right for the second service. So that's good. That's good. I don't know, I'm probably not going to use it all, so my message today is about the restoration power of God. I don't know, I'm probably not going to use it all, so my message today is about the restoration power of God. 01:51 I'm speaking from personal experience, because we walked into this church in 2019, my now wife and I broken, not following the Lord, full of forgiveness issues, addiction issues, brokenhearted trust issues, just issues for days and we came just because we wanted a little spirituality in our lives. You know people talk about oh, I'm spiritual, I'm not a person of faith. Yeah, that was us. We're going to be a little spiritual now. So we came to dabble and dip a toe and we fell all the way in. So we came to dabble and dip a toe and we fell all the way in. And so you know, years later, it's been six years. It's been a process but the Lord, we gave our lives to the Lord in this church. We got baptized in this church, we got healed in this church. We got, you know, just ministered to by a lot of you in this church. You've seen our story. You've seen our process. We've had two more kids since coming to this church. My wife's sitting over here, wave. This is actually Benjamin's first service. He's our youngest, maybe newest, city lighter. He's in a little car seat over there weighing in at about nine pounds, right now Heavyweight. But he's two months old, so he started out as a lightweight. But Benjamin Denny Anderson we named him his middle name is after my father. It was about time we honored my father with getting his name in there somewhere. So my father's a pastor and I grew up, you know, in a pastor family. 03:24 I'm going to share a little bit about what led me, what I believe were some lessons that caused me to backslide for 13 years of my life and walk away from the Lord, despite my upbringing, and some of the things that brought me back and some of the lessons I've learned for restoration. I'm speaking specifically today to the restoration of the soul. Without a heart restoration, you can't really see restoration in other areas of your life, and Scripture bears that out. So I want to just highlight a few Scriptures and then we'll do testimony time and I'll give you some nitty-gritty details and then some lessons that I've learned. First, scripture I want to cue up with this amazing technology we have. Here is Romans 12.2. See, I've got it here, I've got like the high def version. 04:20 The Bible says that we are being transformed by the renewing of our mind. So now the Bible distinguishes between our spirit and our soul. Our spirit is that part of us that comes alive when we put our faith in Christ, and so it's a part of us that's eternal. It's a part of us that relates to the spiritual realm, and the Bible says we're a new creation. When we put our faith in Jesus, all of our sins are wiped away, and so our spirit is what we say is born again. When you say you're born again, you're talking about your spirit, not your body. That'll get changed out later too, and you'll get a new body when you go to heaven. But your spirit is eternal and your spirit is born again. Your soul is your mind, will and emotions, and that's a part of you that the Lord is renewing into the image of his son. 05:07 When the psalmist if you've ever read the Psalms he talks to his soul. Sometimes, why are you downcast? Oh my soul, put your faith in God, because your soul can get discouraged. It's your mind, your will, your emotions. It can get bruised and battered and experience pain. It can be damaged. Good news is, it can also be restored by the Lord. So Romans 12.2, we just read be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Your mind is part of the soul. 05:35 Next verse Psalm 23. We've all read this. We've skimmed right past the next verse, skimmed right past the part where it says he restores my soul. This is everyone's favorite psalm, I think. Right Leads me beside still waters. He makes me lie down in green pastures. It's not a one-time event. This is like the way our walk with the Lord goes. He restores my soul. So soul restoration is part of your walk with the Lord. So every one of us can experience hurt. We can pick up a fence, we can experience pain in our soul and we have to deal with it, and the Lord is the one who does it. He restores my soul. So we're being renewed by the renewing of our mind. Our souls can be restored. Next verse let's look at Isaiah 61.1. This is one of my favorites. 06:24 Jesus preached this in his early ministry and he almost died for preaching it. They tried to kill him after. He said this is me. But he said the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. Okay, that's the preaching of the gospel, and these are the things that come with it. We see that the brokenhearted are healed. He sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison doors to those who are bound. Now he's not just speaking about actual prison. He's speaking about setting people free from bondage, addiction, trauma from relationships, broken trust, infidelity in relationships. This was the stuff that was binding me up when the Lord set me free, and this stuff can get on Christians too. 07:16 You can be walking with the Lord. I think one of the hardest things sometimes is to be open, that you're going through a season where your soul needs to be restored. Especially when you're a mature Christian, it's hard to be vulnerable. Sometimes You're supposed to have it all together. You've been walking with the Lord a while Like it couldn't be you. You couldn't have hidden sin issues, you couldn't be the one right, because people will like lose respect for you if you mention it to them. That's a lie, by the way. We all need restoration from time to time. We all need healing. Part of our walk that Psalm 23, walk with the Lord is a continual restoring and renewal. We always have to go to him with our pain. If we don't go to him with our pain, other problems happen, and that was what led me actually away from the Lord was not dealing properly with crises in my life and having it completely shipwreck my faith. 08:09 Before we go to a little story about that, let's look a little bit more at 3 John 1-2. 3 John 1-2. This is a great prayer. I pray that you may prosper in all things, just as your soul prospers. So what it's saying is prosper in all things and be in health. I forgot the be in health part. I can't forget that one. Just as your soul prospers. So what the writer is saying is the health of your soul is connected to prosperity in every area of your life. If your soul is prospering, you'll see it in every area of your life. You'll see it in your relationships, you'll see it in your business, you'll see it in everything you do, that the prosperity and health of your soul is the baseline for that. Another scripture that says basically the same thing is Proverbs 4.23. It says keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. Another translation says of your heart impacts everything you do, your relationships, your work, everything. So it's kind of an important thing to get healed up and let the Lord do that. 09:20 Yes, okay, I'll share with you a little bit about my story and hopefully it'll help some of you avoid these pitfalls but also see some similarities and maybe some things that have happened in your life. As a college kid I actually was completely on fire for the Lord. I'd grown up in a pastor's home missionary family, spent some time in Peru as a kid and I'd been in church my entire life, had some rocky years during high school where I wasn't sure about my faith and had friends who weren't Christians. But in college I knew it was a crossroads for me and I decided you know, this is a time. I'm either going to become a party kid or I'm going to be a Christian. I decided to be a Christian. I got involved deeply with a really healthy church in my college town, at Oregon State University, which is a long way from here, and I was deeply involved and growing. I got filled with the Holy Spirit and it was a really powerful time in my life. 10:24 At the end of college I felt the Lord calling me to go to law school and so I I was heading in that direction when the church that I was a part of began to crumble and there were some scandals and issues, and you know we've all read stories of churches that have failed, ministers that have failed and some. For some of us it wouldn't have impacted them the way it impacted me. It impacted me deeply and made me lose some of my faith in the church, in part because I had seen my parents be hurt by churches before I had seen them go to a church. It didn't work out. They had differences in ministry approaches or whatever, and people are, you know, despite being in a church. In a church are still human, they're still full of flaws. We're being redeemed and renewed. But hurt people, hurt people, and so the same damage that's in people gets projected onto someone else and I'd seen my parents just kind of go through it, go through the ringer. 11:22 So I think I was already carrying somewhat of a grudge against the church, kind of expecting the church to fail me, and so I said you know what to heck with this? I don't want to have anything to do with the church. I'm going to have my faith, but I'm going to have it solo. Lone Ranger, you know I don't need, I don't need people, I'll do this on my and that was a mistake. I learned later that the Lord, his plan A on earth is the church. There's no plan B, there's no plan C. If you don't believe that, you gotta rip out the book of Ephesians. It's all about the church, the glorious church, the church. He's coming back for a restored bride. 12:17 So if we have issues with church, we have issues with God. Ultimately, there are problems in churches, there are churches that have failed, but this is a team sport. We can't do faith alone. It doesn't work. Lone Ranger, flaky Christians is a thing of something else. It's not. You know. Real faith you have to have. You know you're. Just going to conferences isn't enough. Tuning in online to your favorite YouTube preacher isn't being part of a church. 12:48 Being part of a church means you meet with people and you share your faith, you share your pains, you share your hurts, and some of the soul restoration that has to happen in our lives comes from the church. And God uses imperfect people in our life to bring healing because it keeps us humble. If we were just to go to God, we'd just be these arrogant people. Oh, I got it, me and God. We're going to go pray real quick and fix it. Instead, he uses imperfect people in our lives, and it's actually a beautiful thing because we're all in need of a savior. We're all imperfect, we're all being renewed. We're not there yet and the Lord will use mature Christians, but fallible people who don't always say the right thing the right way, who didn't return your phone call on time, and now I'm offended. Right thing the right way? Who didn't return your phone call on time, and now I'm offended. 13:36 You know, um, the petty stuff you deal with in. You know, church sometimes is just human stuff, but it's god's plan a on the earth and and it's uh and we gotta stay plugged in. Uh, the enemy wants us to have a critical spirit. I think it's one of the biggest, uh, one of the biggest things that that takes out christians and believers and even keeps people from walking in the door in the first place is just having a critical spirit about churches and church leaders. It's grieving to the Holy Spirit every time a leader falls, because it erects another reason for people to avoid the church, which is the very source of life for people to stay plugged in, to stay protected, um, and to grow, um, okay, uh. 14:21 Second thing that uh happened, and these were like kind of reflections I did with the Lord where I said, lord, how did I get so far off? Of course you know I was. I was. People look at my family and they say you have an amazing family. Some people use the word perfect, not perfect, but they're really loving people and they serve the Lord with all their hearts. And you know, no family's perfect, but my family was just about as close as perfect as you can get and yet you've got this kid who just goes off off the deep end. So what happened, you know? 14:52 So the second thing crisis that hit my life was a divorce. I'd been married at a young age in church and it was kind of my marriage was kind of really connected to my faith and that you know, we kind of grew up together in the church and the marriage started falling apart after. You know well, we had issues that we never really opened up about, but it really started falling apart after we were no longer in fellowship. So we were kind of like sitting ducks. We had issues that we needed to deal with. We weren't dealing with them, we weren't opening up to anybody and we were out of the church because we rejected fellowship as something we didn't need anymore. And so when this crisis hit, we were completely vulnerable and didn't have a community and it shook my faith in God. 15:42 It made me question the nature of God, and sometimes pain has a way of lying to you about who God is, his nature. It's one of the most dangerous things about going through a traumatic season or a painful season. Is a devil will lie to you about who God is. He'll make you question did God really say that? Is he really good? Does he really have your best interest in mind, or is he fickle? Is he flaky? Is he unreliable? Is he distant? Is he far off? And you start to kind of adopt this resentment towards the Lord and you can harbor in your heart something that actually starts to push the loving Father away from you. Now we know in Scripture and Pastor Bo alluded to it before we started here that the Father's heart is actually close to us. In fact it's as close as our breath, his healing power to save and to heal us. He's never far off. We just believe he's far off. 16:40 The father runs towards the prodigal son the prodigal son, by the way, if you know the story. He's coming back from having squandered his inheritance. He wasted all his father's money on women, booze, drugs, whatever. And he's walking up the trail just to be like a servant in the household. And the father runs to him, puts a ring on his finger, puts a robe on him, puts sandals on his feet and throws a party. That's the heart of the father towards you and towards your woundedness and to your pain. The father runs towards it. He's not afraid of it, he's not ashamed of it. He's not ashamed of it, he's not intimidated by it. There's nothing you can do that makes where your pain would be too shocking to him. He's seen it all. He died. He sent his son to die to wipe it all away, and he is interested in it and wants to take it from you and heal you. He does understand you. It's a lie when the enemy tells you. No one understands me. The father understands. The father understands. He put all of that pain on his son and he let his son die so that he could touch that pain in you and heal it. So I let self-pity set in. Nobody understands me. Nobody's been through what I've been through. I'm uniquely wounded and I identify with my pain. 18:09 You know, we're kind of in a culture today where people are obsessed with therapy but would never get better, and so everyone wants to talk about their pain but nobody's getting better. I've got friends who've been going to therapy forever. It's like this great scam for the therapist. Like they get, like you know, pharmaceutical drugs, they get high so they don't feel anxiety and stuff like that, but they just keep paying the therapist and never getting over their issue. I've got a friend who's got a forgiveness issue with his mother. I said when are you going to forgive her? I don't know. He's been going to therapy for like five years over the forgiveness issue. He doesn't know the Lord, maybe he's stuck, he can't forgive. I think without God you can get stuck like that. I was stuck like that. 18:54 Um, in fact, when, when Heidi and I came to the church, we uh, we were trying to piece back together a relationship. We had both been unfaithful in our relationship to each other, and that was that was the one uh wound I didn't think I could get over. I was like you know, anything else that's happened to me in my life I could get healed up from, but somebody cheating on me, like that's a direct affront to my ego. You know, that's like something that I'm not supposed to get over as a man, right? I'm supposed to like, kick that person to the curb, right, that's what we do in our society. We kick the person to the curb and we act like we're fine, but we're not ever fine. We're wounded and we're damaged for the next relationship. And so I didn't know why we were trying to work it out. But we were trying to work it out. It was just the Lord and his redemptive plan in our lives. But we were trying to work it out. 19:49 But I had zero faith it would work out. I thought it's doomed. Um, there's too many trust issues. There's too much, too many things. I'm never getting over this. Um, and, by the way, I'd done the same thing, but it's different when it happens to you. Um, yeah, it's different when it happens to you. 20:13 I mean, honestly, it shook me. Shook me. Why is that so funny? Yeah, it's so true, though. Yeah, yeah, it shook me to the core and and I didn't. I didn't think I would ever. I just thought I would cope with it. I never thought I could get through it. I never thought I would forgive. I just thought I would through it. I never thought I would forgive. I just thought I would. The pain would go lessen over time and I would just deal with it. 20:38 And I think sometimes we don't understand that the Lord can heal us. So we just sort of like get used to walking with the crutch and we just say you know what, it's fine, I'll be fine, you're not fine. In fact, the soul is like a battleground and every wound is like giving up territory to the enemy. He'll use that in your life to take you out. He'll use that in your life to hurt other people. It doesn't just ever affect you. It affects your calling, your destiny, your children, and it gets passed on. 21:11 Woundedness is like one of those things that's like a virus. It just it gets passed on. Woundedness is like one of those things that's like a virus. It just gets passed on generationally. A lot of people are carrying some of the woundedness that their parents had. If you think about it, some of your offensive, some things that offend you, are because your parents were offended by them. That's like adopted, that's like passed on. 21:33 Woundedness that you have to deal with is not okay. God's not okay with it. He wants you to deal with it. The good news is he's got all the resources of heaven at your disposal to heal it, but you have to cooperate with it. The whole, this whole walk, is a divine partnership. You know the Lord is is going to give you everything you need, but you have to cooperate. You have to cooperate. He's not just going to blow it down and blow it out of your system. He's going to, he's going to require that you, um in faith, walk some things out. 22:08 Um, forgiveness is one of those tough things where you may have to talk to somebody. You may have to forgive somebody. You may have to open your mouth and say something. Hidden sin is one of those things where you may have to tell somebody. The Bible says to pray for each other. Confess and pray for each other. Bringing the light into an area can break the bondage that's holding you back. The Lord may have you do some things. There's tons of examples of that in scripture Go wash here and your leprosy will be healed. Or go do this or rub mud on your eyes or whatever. There are steps that the Lord may have you do. That is your gesture of faith, lord, I believe, and I'm going to step forward and I'm going to do something. So there are some things that we have to do to see healing come into our lives. 22:58 I believe just one of the biggest things that holds people back from experiencing healing is not understanding the heart of the Father and not understanding that he comes for you again and again and again. He's the most persistent person you will ever meet. He doesn't stop coming. He doesn't stop chasing you Until your dying day. He will be chasing you and you can push him away or you can begin to cooperate with him and see restoration in your life. Okay, a couple lessons I've learned along the way. Well, I've mentioned a few, but I'll mention a few more. We have to decide to believe in God's goodness and we have to choose to resist the lies about the Father. 23:52 Let me tell you a quick story about restoration in our family. Before Heidi and I came to the Lord. Jude actually came to the Lord two years prior. We were actually visiting my parents and he had gone to a church service where my father was preaching and giving his life to the Lord, and so the Lord was already working redemptively in our family, chasing us, pursuing us. We were unaware of it. It was a sneak attack. He picked off my kid first and then came for me. It worked. 24:28 But you know, in the midst of that, you know Jude and I have a fantastic relationship and he prayed for me. Actually, before the service he was laying his hands on me, praying for me. You know, just speaking Holy Spirit, fill my dad, fill him up. You know you're with him, you've called him, you're on his life, and so we've had these, we've had this redemptive power of the Lord running through our life. But you know, jude is from a prior relationship, so I have a custody agreement with Jude and I only see him 40% of the time and so his mother gets. 60% of his entire childhood will be spent with her and not with me. And so, as a father, that's painful, especially when it came out of my drug-induced haze of 13 years and after walking into City Light, one of the things that keeps you stuck sometimes is you know how painful it will be when you sober up. 25:30 One of those pains and those regrets that was just deep, to the core was I'm going to miss 60% of my first son's childhood. Lord, what do I do with that? How do I cope with that? Because it doesn't matter how much restoration I get in the church, I don't think those facts are changing. Those are not good facts. They're not good circumstances. Lord, can you change those circumstances? Can you make it like, redo the agreement or something, make it 50-50 at least? 26:01 And the Lord spoke to my heart and he said, brian, I'm going to make it as if you never missed a day of your son's life. And he said my grace is sufficient, I'll make it as if you never missed a day. And I said, lord, how is that possible? 40%? He said, brian, already, look at your relationship with Jude. You have an incredible relationship with Jude. You have a better relationship with him than a lot of the relationships you see with a father and a son who see each other every day or are in the same house every day. And I looked and I saw it and I said, yeah, you're right, lord. Oh my goodness, he's already doing it. He's already moving redemptively in my life by his power to bring first my son to the Lord, then to restore a relationship. We have a close relationship today like you wouldn't believe, like it's one of the highlights of my life, and the Lord has done that, despite you know me not starting to walk with the Lord until he was seven years old, being an absent father for the first seven years of his life. There's no bitterness there. There's no resentment there. 27:04 We went on a father-son trip to Costa Rica when he was 10. It's sort of a tradition in my family when your kid turns 10, you go out of the country or do some sort of trip. I think you just did one with your son. Yeah, yeah, my brother's, it's a God thing, I guess it's a God thing. Yeah, my brother's, it's a God thing, I guess it's a God thing. 27:25 So we were traveling, we were in Costa Rica, and I just felt that the Lord wanted me to apologize to Jude for being an absent father. And so I remember we were at a Peruvian restaurant. I have a thing for Peruvian food, for having grown up in Peru, and I'm going to go find some water. As I keep talking, here's one. This is like oh, thank you. Wow, all right, have not, because you asked not. So we're in the middle of this Peruvian restaurant in Costa Rica and you know, sometimes, when the Lord asks you to do something, it's uncomfortable. 28:04 Actually, you know, sometimes, when the Lord asks you to do something, it's uncomfortable, um, actually, a lot of the times like, like hey, get up and preach. Um, it's not always the most comfortable, um, but you know, you got to do it, cause on the other side there's there's, there's life, um, and so then you start to like, even though you have to do it scared, you have to do it with your heart racing. You start doing it because you realize, man, every time I obey the Lord and some of these things he asks me to do, there's breakthrough, there's power, there's grace, like the time I said, hey, heidi, you know how we're Christians. Now, well, the Lord said we should stop sleeping together. So we got to stop doing that, and that was a really difficult conversation because we'd had a years long relationship, many years, and she said you're breaking up with me. I said, no, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not breaking up with you, I'm just saying we got to do it God's way because our whole lives have to line up. We can't just do it halfway, we're doing this thing all the way. And so for a year before we got married, yeah, we did that. So we were like dating being the way we felt the Lord wanted us to be, not being intimate, and God restored and healed us as we obeyed, healed and restored that part of our life which had been so damaged and destroyed by our sin. 29:31 So back to the Jude story. We're in Costa Rica and I say, and again, this is one of those moments where I'm like, okay, I feel like the Lord wants me to do it, but my heart's kind of like it's all uncomfortable, like, do I really need to apologize? I mean, I've been a pretty good father lately, you know, when you negotiate with the Lord a little bit, lord, did you really mean like, like, apologize, apologize, or just be like, how's it going? Man, you doing okay. So, yeah, he meant apologize, apologize. And so I said Lord, um, okay, I'm gonna do it. 30:08 So I, I, I opened my mouth and I said uh, son, I've gotta say you know, I just wanted to ask you for forgiveness for being a bad father. Um, I was absent, for um, you know big uh of your childhood and me ignoring it's not going to make it go away. I want you to forgive me. And he stood up and came over to me at the table and said Dad, you're forgiven. Can I just pray for you? He started praying for me. We both started weeping. The presence of God came. And we're in Costa Rica and people are looking at us and I don't care and I'm just crying. And the and we're in Costa Rica and people are looking at us and I don't care and I'm just crying. And the Lord healed part of my heart that had regret and pain over neglecting my son. He's the healer. 31:04 So the Lord is speaking to you today. If you've got a broken heart or pain in your life that's unhealed. He's saying he wants to make it as if you never walked away from him, as if you never went astray. There's abundant grace for restoration. In fact, the Bible, when it speaks of restoration, always speaks of increase or multiplication or betterment of the thing once it's restored. It talks about restoring the years the locusts have stolen. You know, the Lord can do that by increasing the current years he's got to. He has abundant grace. I call it catch-up grace, not like ketchup and mustard, but like catch-up. He wants to make your life as if you walked with him every day of your life, intimately. He can do that. He can do that because he's the restorer. He's not bound by our timelines, he's not bound by a custody agreement, he's not bound by our past, he's not bound by our sin. He's the restorer. And the only way it can be the restorer amen, yeah, you can clap for that, that's, that's the Lord. And the only way he can be the restorer is if he's outside of all our issues and can come in and touch them. And you got to let him touch those by believing he's a good father and he's here to heal you and restore you. Okay, see, it's just a suggestion, pastor Bo. It's not, it's not, we're not all right. So declare the truth of the Lord. So the first one was decide. Decide to believe that the Lord is a good father and he desires you to be whole. Number two declare the word of the Lord. 32:50 The Lord wants to put some fight in us. You know, when I look at how Israel took the promised land, you know some of it was. There was like a, there was like miraculous battles you see in, like in the Old Testament, where the Lord just did it all. He made the enemy hear something and they ran off. But most of the time it was hand-to-hand combat and the Lord had them increase gradually in the promised land because otherwise they wouldn't be strong enough to keep the land. 33:19 So the strength that it takes you to fight out of your issues is the same strength it takes to stand and not give back up that territory. So if your soul is a battleground and there's forces fighting for it, you've got to learn to fight to protect it. The Bible says to protect your heart, as we read at the beginning of Proverbs 4.23,. It said guard your heart, you gotta stand, guard over your heart, you gotta take ground and keep ground. And one of the ways that the Lord strengthens you to take ground and keep ground is to teach you how to fight. And so we're in a battle. The Bible teaches we're in a battle, we have armor, we have to fight. So you need to learn how to fight if you're gonna get whole and stay whole. If the lord could just say, okay, you're whole, he did. 34:05 He does that sometimes like some of the some of the things that broke off my life. When I came to city light in that first service, while I was just weeping, the lord uh, changed some things, like my view of the father changed. You know, I was. I was given, you know, sort of just in that moment, just a revelation of his love for me. That was such such a gift. But other things he had me fight for, like the forgiveness issue that was a huge one, just sat right on my chest and it took a couple years to get that one dealt with. At first I was just like, oh Lord, help, and I would wait and nothing would change. And then I would say, okay, that's not working, let me try something else. Like Lord, could you please give me the desire to forgive? I don't want to forgive, but if you could please give me the desire to forgive, then maybe I'll forgive. So that was kind of where I was. 34:52 And then I had a revelation about and I don't know when it came, but it was like the Lord started teaching me about what I speak affects what I think, and I would think a lot about my woundedness. And the Lord started saying if you're gonna win the battle on this issue, you're gonna have to learn to have godly thoughts and victorious thoughts. I said, okay, lord, how do I do that? And then there's a scripture about how the tongue directs your life it's like the rudder of a ship and how what you speak influences what you think. And so you know, the Lord started teaching me speak what you want to think, and it doesn't matter if you feel it. You start speaking it, it starts to shape your soul. So I started speaking forgiveness. I didn't feel it at all, but I started speaking it and saying I forgive I don't. I didn't feel it at all, but I started speaking it and saying I forgive. I don't really, though, do I? I forgive? I forgive. I forget what name the people that hurt me. I forgive this person, I forgive this person. 35:56 I woke up one day and realized I had no more forgiveness. Issues Like they went away. And I woke up one day and realized I wasn't dwelling on it anymore. I wasn't dwelling on it anymore and I was learning to think. You know, I was learning to catch myself thinking about despair and grief and ways I'd been wounded, and put my eyes on the Lord and the Lord. 36:16 The Lord isn't scared of your pain, but he doesn't want you just looking at your pain all the time. If you just spend time just wallowing in your pain, you'll be the most depressed person on earth. I mean your pain. It won't go away by looking at it. It goes away by taking it to the Lord and saying Lord, I'm going to contend with this issue until I see breakthrough, until I see freedom. I'm not going to stop because you don't stop coming for me. You persist, you persist. So he's putting his DNA in you. He's a fighter, he's a father who fights for his family and he's putting that same DNA in you so that you fight. So you fight for your issues. You don't give up. You have a persistent spirit, all right. So that's the declaration part. And the last one is deal with your pain without delay. The Lord is. 37:02 The Lord will give you some things to do. If you'd notice the two stories I told, one was about a pain or a trauma that disconnected me from the church, his people. Another one was something that disconnected me from the Lord and how I saw the Father Do the opposite of those two things. Connect to the Lord, connect to people. Godly people Stay plugged into the church. It's safety, it's protection, it's healing the Lord often will bring your healing while you're ministering to someone else for their healing. 37:31 Start praying for people about your issue. Lord, I pray that you help people in this church, just forgive. I pray that they would drop all offenses you know. Start praying for other people. Start ministering out of the thing. You start sowing the seed. You need, um and and, and ministering out of that place, uh, of of what you need. So the Lord will wants to connect you with people today. He wants to reconnect you with him. He wants you to say Lord, uh, lord, I'm sorry for seeing you as a distant father. You're, you're, you're, you're the one who runs toward me and he wants you to open up. 38:01 The biggest thing you can, one of the biggest things you can do, is you know, if you're dealing with pain in your life, talk to someone about it. Bringing that light into the issue is huge and it breaks the power of that thing in your life. I had this. I had this. Well, just, I'm getting a little too transparent, maybe, but I had this toe fungus. I'm getting a little too transparent maybe, but I had this toe fungus and it wasn't getting better by just putting the drops on it. So I had to go. This was actually yesterday. 38:30 I had to go to this podiatrist and they had to laser it. And he's like, man, that thing's gone all the way to the root. How long have you waited? Like it's been a couple years. He's like, yeah, that thing, man, that thing's gone all the way to the root. How long have you waited? Like it's been a couple years. He's like, yeah, that thing, man, that thing's really you let that thing go. And I said, yeah, well, so that's a little illustration of what happens with our woundedness. If you let that funk sit in the dark, it'll just keep growing. It'll get into the roots of your heart, it'll affect other areas of your life. Bring it into the light, get that laser on it. The Holy Spirit laser, let it kill that stuff. It kills it so fast. It took like two minutes. It didn't even hurt, it was just like zzzz, I was like that's it, that's it. 39:15 That was easy. I'll give you the doctor's recommendation if you guys need a podiatrist, it's only cash. It's like one of these Ridgewood Queens doctors, but hey, you know it works. It works. I knew a guy who went there and got it done, so like I went on the testimony of someone else you know, to get my healing. 39:48 So deal with your pain. God's gonna give you some things to do. If you're afraid to do it, do it afraid. If you're afraid to do it and your heart is racing, do it with a heart racing. There's some steps that the Lord, I believe, is gonna give some of you to do and take um to, to, to root something out of your life. That's, that's that you know is destroying your life. That's holding you back. Um, that you need healing and deliverance from. Uh. Go to someone. It's a start. Uh, it's takes a process. Keep fighting until you're free. Keep your eyes on the father and he'll, he will heal you. He's, he's healed and restart our lives in my family, completely bringing us from a place of total brokenness to a place of wholeness. 40:27 I don't feel the crippling anxiety and pain that I used to feel. I mean, it used to be hard for me to be quiet and alone just because of all the damage. It's so nice to be free, you know, so nice to know you're loved. You know I never want to go back. So if I see something coming into my life, some issue, I'm pretty ruthless with it. Now I want to have a Holy Spirit immune system that says no, I'm not picking up that offense, that criticism, that backbiting. I'm not responding in that spirit. I want to keep clean before the Lord, amen. 41:06 So yeah, if you're here today and any of this spoke to you, there's prayer. Ministry obviously is a great place to go. There are a lot of mature Christians in this church, an amazing number. It's a healthy church. You can like throw a dart and probably hit a mature Christian. Don't try it, but you could probably do that so you could talk to somebody you know is doing well in their faith or just have you have a trusting relationship with they can pray for you. Don't leave today without doing some of the steps that God's highlighted on your heart during this message. Pastor Bo Sure. 41:42 - Speaker 2 This is the City Light Church Podcast. If you've missed any part of today's message or if you would like to find out more about Pastor Boyan Jancic and City Light Church, visit us at citylightnyccom. That's citylightnyccom. Feel free to visit us online or in person anytime. We would love to connect with you. We pray that you have been encouraged today. Visit us online or in person anytime. We would love to connect with you. We pray that you have been encouraged today, that you have been reminded how much God loves you and that you are surrounded by grace. Thank you for listening. 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