Fostering Faith Through Transparency and Responsibility

Speaker 1: 0:00

For our YouTube audience and podcast. I'm Stephen Fieth, lead pastor, glad that you are joining us today. We want to extend an invitation to you to join us in person sometime soon. Last week, we started a teaching series on trust. Look at the creative graphic we came up with in the series. Name for it right Trust. We want to do this series because trust is so critical in all of our relationships, especially our spiritual relationships.

Speaker 1: 0:30

Last week, I asked you to reflect and question your own trustworthiness. How trustworthy are you? We might say something like just trust me, but like why would we assume that somebody should trust us? Have we done the work of trust? Have we built up trust? And we said, well, where do we start? Where do we start when we done the work of trust? Have we built up trust? And we said, well, where do we start? Where do we start when we want to build up trust? Because a lot of us don't know, we don't have vernacular around it, and so we were borrowing language used in Dr Henry Cloud's book Trust the same title, and in his book he defines trust this way, he says and in his book he defines trust this way, he says trust happens through understanding good motives, abilities, character and a solid track record.

Speaker 1: 1:12

So when Dr Cloud is talking about how we know if somebody's trustworthy or not, he's going to kind of bring this up. It's kind of the scorecard, if you will. If you're a scorecard person like me or you checklist, you're trying to assess if somebody's trustworthy. Dr Cloud suggests this and so throughout this series this will be the framework we are working for. Could you find somebody out there who is also in psychology who disagrees with this list? Absolutely you could. Could you find another book on trust that doesn't mention these things? Yes, you could. But for the purposes of our series we're working on this framework.

Speaker 1: 1:48

You might be wondering at this point, if you weren't here last week and you didn't get to watch the message, why focus on trust at Madison Church? I mean, you probably understand those Sundays where we do a five-week series on prayer or reading the Bible. That makes sense. Sunday morning church we're going to talk about prayer and reading the Bible. You might wonder why we're not going like verse by verse through Luke, and that makes sense. We've done both of those things in the past. We'll continue to do those things.

Speaker 1: 2:11

But trust does affect us spiritually. Last week I talked a lot about how developmentally trust affects us and how physically trust affects us, but this week I really want to focus on how trust affects us spiritually. I mean, think about this you might trust God and you might not trust God, and depending on how much you trust God or how much you mistrust God, that affects your relationship with God. Can you trust God to do what he says he's going to do? Can you trust God to answer your prayers one way or another for your good? Or maybe he says no, not this time, and you just got to trust him? If you don't trust God, it's probably going to lead to some feelings of alienation from God and spiritual dryness. So trust is really important when it comes to your relationship with God.

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Not just that, but how about spiritual leadership? Do you trust me? Do you trust the elders of our church? Do you trust the leadership that we've put in position?

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Trust is important in a church because the question is do you trust our leadership? When leaders demonstrate, when leaders in the church demonstrate integrity and consistency, we can earn your trust, which enhances our ability to help you grow spiritually. But when trust is compromised and some of you have experienced this at past church experiences. When trust is compromised, it can lead to a community-wide loss of faith, disillusionment. Perhaps you're here today or watching or listening online, and you're probably a step away from just giving up on faith altogether because of a situation I just described, where spiritual leadership blew your trust. You thought you could trust them. This is why talking about trust in church is important.

Speaker 1: 3:54

But it's not just leadership and it's not just God. You got to trust the people sitting around you. You probably checked out our website. I know many of you have come here multiple times in a row. You know that Madison Church is all about connecting people with God and each other. We are so much more than just an hour on Sunday, and for that to be true, it requires trust. It requires trust that the person you're sitting next to, that you can tell them things, and that the feedback they're giving you or the feedback that you're giving them, can be trusted. Are these people safe to share your personal struggles with, or do you got to keep those locked up? If you have a lack of confidence in us, you're not going to feel very connected with Madison Church and you're definitely not going to feel supported. Trust impacts us spiritually because it directly affects our relationship with God and each other. Trust isn't an indirect correlation. There's very much a direct correlation and that's why we're focusing in on trust last week, this week and the next two weeks. If we want to be successful in our mission you guys see that printed everywhere. It's on the banner up front on all of your individual connection cards on the website If we're going to connect people with God and each other, we're going to do that well. We've got to be good at creating a culture of trust at Madison Church, from you to your peers at Madison Church, to the leadership at Madison Church, myself included, and beyond.

Speaker 1: 5:18

Additionally, we are told in the Proverbs that we should trust God more than we trust ourselves. Trust in the Lord with all of your heart. Do not depend on your own understanding. You'll have to forgive the writer of Proverbs there. He didn't know about Dr Cloud's book yet when he talked about don't worry about understanding. Understanding's the first step, right? No, the author of Proverbs is pointing out something true, which is that we don't need evidence to trust God, and sometimes that evidence can get in the way of trusting God. We can trust God and trust is important. We see this being written about thousands of years ago. Trust is deeply spiritual. It does impact your faith.

Speaker 1: 5:56

But what do I mean when I'm talking about trust? Because we have different definitions of trust from everyone in the room. And again, going back to this idea of like, what are we talking about in this series? I really like Cambridge Dictionary's definition of trust, which puts it more in the form of a verb or an action. That says to trust is to believe in the honesty and reliability of someone or something. This action-based definition aligns with us at Madison Church with the different topics that we have.

Speaker 1: 6:23

Trust is a verb, trust is something that we do, it's something we can build and it's something that we can lose. Trust is something that we steward, not just with other people and how we manage their trust. But how do we trust other people with the information that we are giving? This and all of this said, I really do not want this series to just be more information for you. We're in a culture where everything is on Google or ChatGPT. You can get the book yourself and read it directly from the source. I don't want this just to be more information. It's got to lead to personal transformation. We have so much information in our society and so many facts and so many opinions that I think sometimes we get stuck and we don't focus on what we're doing. So let's not just talk about trust, because that'd be a waste of all of our time the next four weeks. Let's actually do something to build trust with the people around us.

Speaker 1: 7:17

And as we talk, I want to reflect on those five points we talked about last week, the five different elements of trust. And as we do, I want you to continue to ask yourself the question am I the person who doesn't trust anyone, no matter what? Because it does reflect some people here. You know that in reality, you do trust some people, but for the most part, you would say you're a person who doesn't give up. You don't give away trust very easily. You're very guarded with your trust and it's a struggle. So, as we're going through and reflecting on the stuff we talked about last week, are you that person? Because I have questions for you then. Are you the kind of person who gives everyone trust and, like, my heart goes out to you because you've probably been hurt so much because you just give your trust to everyone? And I'm telling you right now not everyone deserves your trust. Not everyone deserves your trust. Don't think that you have to give your trust to everyone. You fundamentally do not. I want you, as we're talking through these elements, to think is this person trustworthy? And here's some language for why they might not be worth your trust.

Speaker 1: 8:13

I think for a lot of us in the room, we do trust some people. We don't trust other people but we can't put our finger on it. Why do we trust them? We don't know, but we do. We have some sort of system that, as we've grown up and we've developed into adults now, some system that we've developed in discerning whether or not we can trust someone. And I want to kind of like let's talk about that because I want to give you the language to discern better.

Speaker 1: 8:35

So, if you remember, we talked about last week, understanding was very first. The very first thing when it comes to trust and developing trust whether it's a spiritual, community or family, workplace is understanding. It's pivotal because if we don't feel understood, we can't grow in trust, we can't build trust. If we aren't understood, our defenses go up, and trust and giving away trust requires our defenses to come down a little bit, understanding whether we're giving it or receiving it. It opens us up. We have to be good listeners to other people. We have to think through what they're saying, we have to talk, we have to get feedback and again I emphasized this last week being a good listener and understanding is so much more than just hearing the words. Yes, I hear the words you are saying, but are you grasping it? Like, do you understand what this person is saying? Not just the sentence, but this paragraph and the story of their day and the story of their week and the story of their lives and their relationships? Do we really understand that To foster trust, we have to develop an ability within ourselves? And so, again, the series isn't just about other people. This is very much about us. Are we the kind of person when we listen to other people? Are we just waiting our turn to speak, or are we building trust in our small group and with the people in our church and workplaces by actively listening and asking questions and receiving that feedback?

Speaker 1: 9:58

Think about this at work. You make a suggestion at work. You're like, hey, this is how an idea could be better, and I bet a lot of you have been in the situation where your boss hears that as a personal critique. You're just trying to make the idea better, but what they heard is that they're dumb or they're not smart, or that they missed this or whatever. They take it personal and instead of hearing your idea as constructive feedback to how this idea can be made better, because they hear it as an attack, they get defensive and then, in this meeting that you're having perhaps, in their defensive posture they embarrass you or humiliate you. They push you around and you feel small and insecure and all you were trying to do was help. But they didn't understand you Trust is blown in that situation and I bet you don't trust them enough to, at the next meeting, to speak up and say something, because they're going to jump you for it. And why would you do that? Alternatively, you might be an ethnic or a cultural minority where you work and your boss notices that you don't speak up during meetings and your boss, who wants to build trust with you, whether they know they do or not, asks you, brings you into the office and says I want to understand why don't you speak up at our meetings? And then you get to explain to them why you don't, and maybe there's something cultural or ethnic going on, a barrier there in which you don't feel heard, or you don't feel understood, or you feel shut down, and in that situation you're more likely to not just trust your boss but open up at future meetings. They understand what you're going through. They took time to hear from you.

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If you're someone who trusts too easily, ask yourself, when you're about to give away some information or give away something to someone that you're trusting them with, do they understand you? That's the very first thing, and if the answer is no, you probably shouldn't trust them. You shouldn't trust them with important things. However, if you're someone who doesn't trust anyone, I want you to begin to deconstruct some of those guards you've put up. When you can answer yes to this question, your heart might say no, don't trust them, don't trust them. But if your head can say no, they understand me. I need your cognitive, the thinking here to kind of take place over that, to remind yourself no, no, no, they understand me. I can step out and trust them. But now, how much can you trust them?

Speaker 1: 12:20

Well, that's where the second part comes in, which is motive, because someone can understand you but still not quite be trustworthy with all of your information and the things you're going through. Motive is pivotal Because even when we understand someone, like, their motives might be bad. Maybe you lost your job recently. This is a good example of motive. You lost your job and you're telling your friends about it. There's something going on in your life that you're really stressed out about and your friends, they all listen to you and they're empathetic with you. And then, after you guys leave and go your separate ways, one of your friends reaches out to you. Maybe in the case of a job. It's like hey, man, I'm really sorry about the job. I know that's stressful, I know you're probably afraid of the future and how you're going to pay bills and probably feel like a little bit of a failure one way or another. But you've already done the work of loving on this person. But hey, I know an opportunity that might really be great for you if you want to try it.

Speaker 1: 13:11

And then if you were to take them up on that opportunity and get the job, wouldn't your trust in that person substantially increase? What did they have to gain reaching out to you? They did that. They took the initiative on your behalf. You didn't ask them to do it. They were like I care about you enough, I'm empathetic enough to not just say, oh dear, that's so sad. And onto my fantasy golf league. They don't do that. But they say you know what? I know this opportunity for this person. Those are good motives. You get that job. Would you not trust that person even more? Not just the person who understood you oh yeah, they understood that I lost my job and that was tough but the person who went out of their way with good motives to help you, even though it didn't help them.

Speaker 1: 13:53

Alternatively, you might have a friend who invited you on a trip away, a weekend away, and it's really exciting, and you guys talk about all of the great things you're going to do and of course it's a trip away, you guys are going to split costs, but then you get to the destination and you're not doing any of the things that you want to do. You're doing all the things that they want to do and you're splitting all of their costs to do all of the things that they want to do. And you're like you know what they understood. I wanted to take a weekend away. They understood that. But maybe their motive was like how can I do all the things I want to do that I can't afford? And you realize that and I know that that sucks, but we can begin to judge someone based on what their trustworthiness, based on their motives what are their motives?

Speaker 1: 14:38

And discerning other people's motives. It can be challenging, but this is essential for trust and it does require that when we're talking with people and we're doing kind of life with them careful observation, active inquiry you can go ahead and ask them. When you see a discrepancy between what people are saying and doing, it's okay to ask hey, I see a discrepancy here, can you explain this? Because it might be your misunderstanding. It could be as simple as that. This might be an actual trustworthy person, but your misunderstanding, and they can explain it to you. It could also be a conclusion that, no, you can't. They're talking hey, I see this and this is happening and, oh man, I really shouldn't trust this person. At least you know now you can stop it now.

Speaker 1: 15:19

So reflect on a recent decision or action that you took. Maybe it was this week, the past couple of weeks, maybe it's church-related, maybe it's not, but something that you took. Maybe it was this week, the past couple of weeks. Maybe it's church-related, maybe it's not, but something that you did. Why did you do it? Like something that you did for someone else. Why did you do it? Was it for a personal benefit? Did you get something out of it? Was that your primary motivator? Or was it really like I want to do something to help someone else, that these are kind of selfless motives to help them?

Speaker 1: 15:50

And as you reflect on yourself, this is how you can become a more trustworthy person is by reflecting on your own motives. For some of us, we're like oh yeah, I have this relationship with someone. I don't really like them, but I do get something out of it, so I continue to be a friendship. Well, that might not be a great motive to continue the friendship and you might not be a trustworthy person then and I think a lot of us in the room and watching online we want to be trustworthy people and so it might be a little painful to have to cut a friendship off because your motives aren't good with that person. Now this next part I wanted to mention last week, so I just ripped it out of my notes from last week. I recognized I was running out of time at some point and skipped it. But ability, ability is so important when it comes to trust. Someone can understand you. They can have great motives and still not have the capabilities that you need.

Speaker 1: 16:39

For example, my wife, megan. She's so trustworthy. She's trustworthy in our marriage, in part because she's capable of loving me so well and better than anyone else. I believe in the world that Megan can. She can tell. And it's really annoying. Sometimes, megan, you're watching or listening online. You know it's annoying because I tell you it's annoying, it's really annoying. She can tell by the slightest change in my body language that something's wrong, just the slightest. I mean, I think I'm being cool. I'm just sitting there at the computer. I'll read a text message that I don't like, I'll read an email that I don't like, I'll get information that I don't want to get, and I'll just be sitting there and she'll tell and she'll know. And now we've been married, it'll be 15 years here coming up. She now knows that when that happens, it's just more like she just touches my shoulder as she's walking by and it's more of a signal, like if you want to talk, we can talk, but we don't have to talk because she knows that most of the time I just need to figure this out myself. You see, she has the capability of loving me. Well, now I've been giving you positive and negative examples, so let me give you a negative example. My wife, megan, is trustworthy in our marriage because she is capable of loving me well, but she would never, ever in a million years, be the person I would trust to be my heart surgeon. I trust my wife. With everything being under gas, giving her a knife, letting her cut my chest open to try to fix something that might be broken not a chance. Not a chance Not going to happen Doesn't mean I don't trust her. Doesn't mean I don't trust her. Doesn't mean I don't love her. Doesn't mean she doesn't trust me. Doesn't mean she doesn't love me. She doesn't have the capability to do open heart surgery or a root canal or whatever it might be. And in the same way some of you, you might be married to a surgeon. They could give you heart surgery, or you're married to a therapist and they could do the therapy things with you. Okay, I get that, but we have to understand that someone can be trustworthy to a point but not have the capabilities. I would not marry my dentist. He's not my type, but I would let him do my root canal. I trust him to do that.

Speaker 1: 18:38

So, when it comes to trust, does someone have the capability, does someone have the capability to do the things that you're asking them to do? As you look inward when someone asks you, this is very difficult for me. I'll just share. When someone asks me to do something, I want to do it for you. I want to step up, even if I'm not good at it, even if I know I'm not the right person for it. I want to step up and be that person for you, and part of what I've been learning through reading the book and studying trust is that that's not a good way for me to steward your trust. A great way for me to steward your trust is to tell you I can't do it. I'm not the best person for that. I want to be that person in your life, but I can't be that person in your life, and so part of that might be seeking out further training or mentorship.

Speaker 1: 19:20

You feel really passionate about something. You want people to be able to trust you with this, but you're just not there. Well, you can get better at stuff. You can become more trustworthy in terms of picking up abilities and capabilities and learning. You might just need to delegate tasks. People can come to me and they say I've got this issue and I can say I think you should go to therapy or I think you should see Lindsay with coaching. I can delegate some task that way. I am not that person in your life, but I know somebody who is and we can collaborate with other people. I'm not the only person who can or should lead Madison Church and so our leadership structure. We collaborate with different boards and different people in different positions to best lead our church, because I can't be all things to all people at Madison Church and, let's be honest, our church is better when more people have their hands in the pot anyway. By openly acknowledging your limitations, you are preserving trust, and by openly acknowledging your limitations at Madison Church, whether it's in a small group or here on Sundays or on a team, you're fostering a community of trust. We will better connect people with God and each other when we all stay in our lanes. It doesn't mean we don't get stretched, it doesn't mean we don't try new things, but when it comes to someone trusting us, it's really important that we acknowledge our capabilities or lack thereof.

Speaker 1: 20:41

Character was the fourth crucial element and again, I know a lot of this is from last week, but I want to continue to break it down because we didn't get to break it down an awful lot. Character is something that we observe over time. Over time we observe character. It's really hard to judge someone's character based on one meeting with them. Oftentimes it's wrong. One way or another.

Speaker 1: 20:59

You may really like someone and they turn out to be a dud. You may meet someone for the first time, think they're a dud and it turns out to be like your best friend. That was in the case of Judd and I meeting. It turned out to be my best friend. And so perhaps you're dating someone and they're always on time. They're always honest. You're dating this person. They always were going to make plans. They always show up for their plans. They're always early, whatever it might be. And then one time early on in the relationship they don't quite ghost you, but you're at the restaurant, they're a few minutes late and then they text you and they say sorry, I'm not going to make it tonight.

Speaker 1: 21:31

In normal situations you might be like I can't trust this person anymore. Or can I trust this person? Except their character up to this point has been to show up right. You're thinking we've been dating. They always text me back. They always show up and this is kind of weird. This is not like them. We would say it's outside of their character. So you don't freak out, you go home, you don't break up with them. You still kind of trust them. Let's see what's going on.

Speaker 1: 21:56

And the next morning you find out that, oh my gosh, my sister had a medical emergency. She lives two hours away, but I'm the closest relative and so last minute I had to drive to the hospital two hours away. I couldn't text you because I was driving and I was scared and whatever You're like, oh my gosh. See, even in missing plans, that person built trust with you the next day because you're like oh man, when they do miss, it's a really important deal. Alternatively, maybe you're dating someone and they never follow through what they're going to say. You know they started to like, the first month, the first three months, whatever they said they would do, they would do, and then eventually they stopped doing that. They stopped texting you back. The communication became poor. You would ask them, like, what you're going to do or what are you doing this weekend? And you actually found out they were lying, like, they weren't telling you the truth.

Speaker 1: 22:47

In that case, that person is not trustworthy to be in a relationship with. And I mean like and I know that that feels like very abrasive, right Like you might be in that kind of relationship and you're like are you telling me to break up with them? I'm telling you I don't think they're trustworthy, I don't think they have the character to be trustworthy. I think there are projects and I think my opinion if you're in a romantic relationship and you're dating someone, you don't want a project you can become a therapist and get paid to work on people. In that case, it's a lot more fun that way. But that person has things that they need to work on first before they're trustworthy. For you to decide that you're going to share your life with someone like that potentially things like credit scores and mortgages and emotional connections they may not be there and you need to make a difficult choice. You're like do they understand you? Yeah, are the motives good? Yeah, do they have the capabilities of loving you? Yeah, but do they have the character? And this is awful, and this is a lot of times where I think people decide they do need to break up with someone, and that's why breakups can be so painful. It's because you have gone so far down the trust trail and you get to the point where you're like man this really stinks because this person couldn't check this box for me.

Speaker 1: 23:51

At Madison Church we talk about, like I said, we go verse by verse through Luke. We talk about prayer. A lot of this is character development. I mean that's primarily what we do, I think, in a lot of ways at Madison Church. We do community, but we do spiritual disciplines and part of that is growing in the kind of character of a person who is honest, who has integrity, who is upfront, who doesn't lie, cheat, steal, manipulate. And so keep coming to Madison Church, keep being involved in our small groups, keep engaging online, whatever it will Put into practice what we are talking about.

Speaker 1: 24:23

And finally, the track record, and this is something I'll let you know. Track record has been something that has been deeply, deeply hard for me Not my own track record, but in my leadership here at Madison Church. As we have grown just a lot last year and a half or so, I have found myself breaking every policy and procedure we have at Madison Church. Now let me explain what that means. We have like three of them at Madison Church. Okay, so we don't have a lot, we're a small church, we don't need them.

Speaker 1: 24:51

But like I'm the guy who's like we'll have a meeting the elders and I you guys all know this is true We'll have a meeting and we'll all agree on something. We'll be like, yes, this is what we need to do my ideas and I'm like, yeah, let's do it. And then I'll get in front of you and I'll be like, let's just make an exception. We haven't even gotten off the ground yet. Like I mean my very next meeting. I'm like, yeah, yeah, to hell with that. Like let's do this. And that's not good, because what that communicates to you is that I don't have a track record. What that communicates is that how I treat Adam might be different than how I treat Judd when it comes to how we run our community at Madison Church. That's not fair. And yet I struggle with that because I like I want to be your guy. I want to be you know, I want to make this happen. I want to make it work.

Speaker 1: 25:38

I loved it at Starbucks when I was managing Starbucks and we would screw up, and I loved making it right for people, because I always thought, like you do what everyone expects you to do no credit. You expect us to be fast, have your coffee, it be good, and you out the door. You expect that. But what you don't expect is when we screw up, for me to remake your drink and then to give you like two free lattes the next time you come, and then people would be calling my general manager and be like, oh, he's so amazing and I love that feeling. It's very vain. I mean, like I'm acknowledging that, but like that's been a problem.

Speaker 1: 26:04

And so I'm recognizing that as we grow up at Madison Church, a pain point in my own life is to be like, yes, I would love to do that, but this is how we've been doing it and this is why we need to continue to do it. And I want you to know I hate it. I hate it. I just want to be like, oh, yeah, the exceptions. But now I'm like I recognize the need as I'm building a track record and I want you to trust my leadership and I want you to trust our church. I want you to know that we're collaborative in leadership and that we're coming up with things and different guardrails so that you can trust us, you happy, and do all the right things, and so how we fix our own track record is committing to transparency. I'm being transparent with you right now. This is going on YouTube and podcast, and so everyone's going to get to hear me talk about my own struggles. And then you're going to remember in two weeks when you're asking me a favor and I'm like, well, see, you can hold me accountable now, cause you'd be like, wait, hold on a second, steven, like what is really what Madison Church is supposed to do here? Committing to transparency, setting realistic expectations, consistently meeting them, are critical.

Speaker 1: 27:13

Now into a little bit of new content before we close. Trust requires two sides. Trust requires two people. You are part of the equation. You cannot just expect people to trust you and you don't trust anyone. That will not work. That will not work at Madison Church. I don't think it'll work anywhere. I don't think it'll work in your marriage. I don't think it'll work in your family. It won't work in your workplace.

Speaker 1: 27:38

But the one thing I have a little bit of authority over is Madison Church, and I know that if you're the kind of person you're like, you can trust me, but I'm never going to trust you. And you can tell me all your dirt, but I'm never going to tell you mine. That is not the culture of trust, and so we need this to be a two-way street. Now, however, let me acknowledge I know that some of you are really going through some deep stuff and I'm telling you you got to trust people and you're like, well, yeah, I'd like to. I know I should trust people. And you're like, well, yeah, I'd like to. I know I should trust people.

Speaker 1: 28:07

I heard all that stuff last week about immune system health and sleeping better at night. I know I should trust, but something happened to you. It was traumatic. It's hard. You've seen a counselor for it. You're still seeing a counselor for it. It's difficult, brings tears to your eyes, keeps you awake at night. I get that. I want to encourage you to take care of yourself.

Speaker 1: 28:33

It's okay to say I'm hurt. It's okay to say my trust was broken by a parent, by a trusted adult, by a spouse, by a partner. It was broken because the only way to fix it is to acknowledge that it was broken. You are not broken, but your trust muscle might be hurt, the thing in your body that says we can trust this person. That might be damaged, and a lot of us like you, wouldn't be. I don't know why we feel so embarrassed about going to therapy. I really don't get it, because if you wrecked your car, does anyone feel embarrassed taking it into the shop to get fixed? Even if it was your fault, you caused the accident. None of us are embarrassed about getting our car fixed and you are so much more important than your car. You're so much more important than your car and yet we're embarrassed to take care of ourselves.

Speaker 1: 29:25

Some of us, we have a deep fear of depending on someone because we depended on someone in the past and they let us down in a critical way. I think some of you, we have a deep fear of depending on someone because we depended on someone in the past and they let us down in a critical way. I think some of you you guys had real bums for parents. They might have been abusive, they were terrible. You had to parent them. There's all sorts of scenarios that we could talk about right now, but you have a fear of depending on someone. You might have a fear of being controlled. I think that this can happen in spiritual kind of climates like Madison Church or spiritual environments. I mean, I think that we can use theology and we can use faith to try to manipulate and to control people, and if you've been in that environment and somehow you've gotten out now, you have a fear of being controlled, and so it's not just a matter of saying like I want to trust people. You have a deep-seated fear of being controlled.

Speaker 1: 30:12

For a lot of us, we just have fears, and I don't mean just like. This is little, because I feel this personally. This is deep. You have fears around imperfection, shame, perceived badness, and so we'll trust people with all of the other stuff, but not the deep stuff, not the dirty stuff. We won't let people know when we fail. I'm really guilty of this. I love talking about my life after I've overcome something hard. I love talking about my life when I've gotten through something. I really don't like talking about it when I'm going through it, though I want to keep that because I don't want you to judge me. I'm scared of that and I recognize that.

Speaker 1: 30:51

Ironically, the most given command in the New Testament is do not be afraid, as if it was almost like God's expecting us to just be like oh yeah, why am I afraid? I don't need to be afraid. It's like when Paul says don't be anxious about anything. Pray about everything. Why haven't I tried that? Oh wait, I have.

Speaker 1: 31:10

I do love this command in Isaiah 41 though Don't be afraid, for I am with you. Don't be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand. See, god's not telling you to just flip a switch. Do you catch that? Do not be afraid, comma. Why don't you need to be afraid, for I am with you. You don't need to be afraid because God is with you. Do not be discouraged, for I am your God. I am with you so you can be brave. I am for you so you can be encouraged. I will strengthen you and hold you up when you are weak and can't get up yourself. You see, god's not telling you to flip a switch. He's telling you to go on a path and to take a journey with him. He's telling you also, it's okay to get help. He's telling you do not be afraid. And if you're in a position where you're like I just can't do that, god is saying well, what's the next step? And it might be seeing a therapist, seeing a coach, someone who can help you work with those fears and those issues going on in your life. There's absolutely no shame in that at all, because if you don't deal with it one way or another, whether you trust people too easily or you don't trust them at all, you're going to find yourself continuously being hurt.

Speaker 1: 32:39

Dr Cloud, I love this quote. It's a long one, but I wanted to just share it with you because I think it wraps up our talk today really well. He writes people have suffered abuse, abandonment, loss, multi-foster situations, molestation and other awful traumatic experiences. That might be you. A couple of those things might describe you, a couple of those things might describe you. And then there's a bunch of other stuff that he left off the list. But that's the point is that you have suffered, there's been pain and suffering in your life, and he writes on their own, these situations can stay adequately tucked away, compartmentalized in the basements of the human soul. So there's a lot of bad stuff happen to you, but you know what humans are. We're artists at hiding it. We're artists at burying it. We're really good at it.

Speaker 1: 33:29

But he continues when people who have been traumatized get into a relationship, that requires trust, trust does its job, trust does its job and it melts them away and makes them vulnerable, and that vulnerability exposes the sunburn to touch. That is too much and the trust goes away. It gets tested by acting out. The person begins to push the other away for little or no reason at all and they begin to abandon the relationship. People find all kinds of strategies designed to disrupt their enemy. Trust, trust, trust. You will keep trusting because you're wired to trust.

Speaker 1: 34:18

But if there's something deep inside of you that's causing you to have this fear of trust, what Dr Claude's saying is you're going to keep self-sabotaging. You've probably heard of that concept. Some of you are really good at that. Right, he says you're going to keep self-sabotaging. You've probably heard of that concept. Some of you are really good at that. Right, he says you're going to keep self-sabotaging. And so the way that we deal with that because you can't stop trusting the way that we deal with that is by getting the help that we need. Maybe that's through a friend or a pastor or an elder at Madison Church or someone that you can reach out to and say I need help. But chances are, in the situations that we're talking about, it is a lot deeper than that and so, again, I'm going to go back and do therapy.

Speaker 1: 35:00

Now, even with the model that we put in place all five of these elements talking about going to a therapist and dealing with those fears and those deep traumatic issues that we need to unpack so we can trust and get into really healthy and long-term relationships with people I hate to say it, but you're still going to get hurt. That's kind of the downer of this whole series is that we're going to do a ton of work and then at the end, you're still going to get hurt, and I'm going to talk about that next week. I'm going to talk about that next week. I'm going to talk about that. What happens when you get hurt Whether they meant it or not, right, because a lot of times they don't mean it and you just get hurt anyway.

Speaker 1: 35:40

Do we just abandon those relationships? In some cases, yes, in other cases, no, but one of the things I want to talk to you about next week is that we don't confuse forgiveness with trust. One of the things I want to talk to you about next week is that we don't confuse forgiveness with trust. Forgiveness is about the past and trust is about the future, and this is really important because, as we've done throughout this whole series. It's not just about someone else, it's about you. What do you do when you have broken trust with a family member, with a friend or someone at Madison Church? So I hope you'll join us next week as we continue the series.