The Stories We Tell Ourselves - Andrew Mook

Maybe some of the distance you have with folks in your life didn't begin with betrayal. Maybe not everybody's actually out to get you. Maybe, some of the distance that's happened in your life with the people around you is it began with some sort of certainty about we the way they are, what they're thinking about things, how they process the world, and god's inviting you. Hear this if you hear nothing else this morning to humility. God's inviting you to curiosity, to a willingness to delay judgment long enough to discover what's true, and then even then entrust them unto the lord. [00:17:18] (44 seconds)  #ChooseCuriosity

If you feel far from God, can I just remind you that there is nowhere you can go from his presence? You may have a whole lot of, like, calluses around your heart and mind. May have a whole lot of unbelief. But we are the ones who are distant, not God. I take so much relief in that. God is at the door inviting us. Hey, when you're ready, come on through. [00:47:33] (48 seconds)  #GodIsAlwaysNear

Human beings are meaning makers by default. We don't just see facts. We what? We we interpret them. We don't just observe behavior. We explain behavior. Your brain is constantly asking questions like, why did this happen? What did this mean? What does this say about me? What does this say about them? And it does this really fast and really automatically before you're even aware that a story has formed. And the story feels true because it makes sense, not necessarily because it's true. [00:09:17] (37 seconds)  #MindMakesMeaning

We expect people to be available in ways that no human can sustain. We expect leaders to see everything, friends to intuit our needs. Churches should be like acts two all the time, which, by the way, acts two is the beginning of the story, and the rest of the New Testament exists because community got really messy and conflicts happened and all the expectations failed. People are finite. Churches are made of sinners. [00:27:57] (23 seconds)  #PeopleAreFinite

And grief here as a follower of Jesus is a gift because grief is what keeps disappointment from turning into cynicism. When you we don't grieve, we get really hard. Our heart like calluses over. You start to, like at least I start to kinda spiritualize withdrawal. We sort of justify the distance that we have from other people. We protect ourselves from being hurt again. Anyone do that? In other words, we stop moving toward love. [00:31:13] (39 seconds)  #GriefProtectsLove

Somewhere along the way, disappointment settled in because your life did not turn out the way you had expected it to. And there's this distance. I know I've already said this, but God is not threatened by your honesty. God is not offended by your grief, and healing does not come from pretending you're fine. [00:43:54] (26 seconds)  #HonestyHeals

And so when we replace reality with the story we told ourselves, we don't just damage relationships. We also edge out god. Say with me. God does not exist in imagined versions of events. Right? God exists in truth, in reality, what actually is. And when we choose our narrative over reality, we create a counterfeit world, one where God has very, very, very little room to speak. [00:16:15] (28 seconds)  #TruthMakesSpaceForGod

We don't always call them expectations, but that's what they are. Underneath them is really something simpler, which is control. There's, like, a quiet transaction that we never really named. I will follow you. I will obey. I'll trust. And in return, you will fill in the blank. You will protect me. You will keep this from getting too painful. You'll make my progress more visible. We expect God to manage suffering, [00:32:36] (36 seconds)  #ExpectationsAreControl