Kerry Shook - From Dysfunction
Every one of us are a mix of awesome and awful. We're all part miracle and part messed up. We're all a mix of divine and dysfunction, and all families are dysfunctional to some degree, even in the best families. And have you ever noticed that it's really hard to find what we would call a really healthy family in the Bible? But it's really easy to find some really dysfunctional messed up families in the Bible. I mean, just think about it. The first family, Adam and Eve, they send in such a huge way that it caused devastating consequences for all of humanity. And then their firstborn son, Cain, murdered the second born son Abel. He committed the first murder. It's pretty messed up.
And just think about the father of faith, Abraham, his wife, Sarah, was grieving her infertility, so she makes a really foolish decision and she gives her servant Hagar to Abraham so Hagar could carry their surrogate child. And once the child is born, Sarah is consumed with jealousy and she abuses Hagar and sends her and her child away and doesn't care if they live or die. And through it all, Abraham is a passive wimp who just takes no responsibilities. "I'm not gonna get involved in this". I mean, that's pretty messed up.
Then, Isaac and Rebecca, they have twin boys. His father liked Esau better, the mother liked Jacob better and they created the greatest sibling rivalry of all time. And David, he was a man after God's own heart, yet he committed adultery and murder and then he didn't discipline his son, Absalom, he just let him do whatever he wanted to do. And what he decided he wanted to do, was lead a coup to try to take the throne from his father. And then there was Solomon. He was the wisest man in the world, but he did one of the dumbest things of all time. He married 1,000 women. Do I have to say anything else about that one? I mean, why is the Bible filled with really messed up dysfunctional families?
Well, one reason is because all families have some dysfunction because every believer has this great capacity in our hearts to be so loving and so sacrificial, but we also have a great capacity in our flesh to be so selfish and sinful. So every family has dysfunction because every one of us are dysfunctional. But I think the main reason why the Bible says so much about dysfunctional families and not so much about really healthy families is because God's purpose is to bring you into a close relationship with himself. A relationship where you have to depend on him to meet your deepest needs of love and grace and meaning and fulfillment and purpose.
Those needs that you're longing for, and you'll never really learn to depend on God unless you realize how powerless you are to overcome your sins and the problems in your life on your own. I believe that's why God allows families to get so dysfunctional, so messed up. It turns us to God. We realize we can't fix this one on our own. We can't solve this problem. This is too painful, this is too difficult. This is a mess, we're going to need a miracle, and we turn to God. It's that brokenness that pushes us to the one who can bless us with peace and purpose in the middle of our pain. And it's the people closest to us that push us closer to God, whether in good ways or bad. It's the people closest to you that push you toward God.
Sometimes it's in a good way, sometimes it's in a painful way, but either way, it all leads to being pushed to our knees to really depend on God. We have to learn that we're not the hero of our story. We have to learn that we're not the hero, God is. I'm not the savior, Christ is. So if your family is really messed up right now or you're feeling totally broken, I have encouragement for you today. God loves to turn messes into miracles. And the greatest miracle is not that everything gets completely fixed in your family. That's probably not gonna happen where everything gets fixed in your family because we live in a very broken world, but the greatest miracle is that God will heal your heart and give you fulfillment and his power to overcome your greatest struggle.
I want us to look at our key passage in John 10:10. We see that we're not the hero of our story and we need to stop trying to be. We're not the savior. We can't change our circumstances for the most part. We can't change other people because we can't even change ourself without God's power. He's the hero, but there's also a villain. So I want you to stand in honor of God's Word and we're gonna look at what Jesus said in John 10:10. "The thief's purpose is to steal, kill, and destroy. My purpose is to give life in all its fullness". You can be seated. Jesus says here, "If you stop trying to be the hero of your story and you bring your brokenness and your mess to me and let me be the hero, then you'll find fulfillment and a life of victory in your struggle, the life you are made for. I'll take you from dysfunction to destiny".
You're not the hero of your story, but Jesus points out you're also not the villain of your story, but you better realize there is one. Our enemy Satan wants to use our dysfunction to bring about destruction. We're gonna look at Joseph again this week because last week we looked at Joseph and some of the amazing choices that he made that determined his destiny, and we talked about Joseph coming from a really dysfunctional family. He's his father's favorite, and his father gives Joseph this beautiful ornate coat that he doesn't give to any of Joseph's brothers and the brothers are so jealous of Joseph that they decided to kill him.
So one day they grab him, tear off his coat, throw him into a pit while they decide how they're going to kill him. But then they come to their senses, they say, "What were we thinking? We don't want to kill our brother. He's our brother. Let's just sell him into slavery in Egypt and tell our father a wild animal ate him. Let's cover his coat with blood and give it to our father, this would be a great thing".
Now, that is dysfunction. And it wasn't Joseph's fault that his family was so dysfunctional and that that dysfunction caused so much pain and dysfunction in his life. It wasn't Joseph's fault, he wasn't the villain of the story. And really his brothers weren't the villains of the story, though they did awful and villainous things. Satan was the true villain who tried to use all the dysfunction to take Joseph to total destruction. It wasn't Joseph's fault, but he had to take responsibility for his next step. He came to the place where he admitted he also wasn't the hero and he was powerless to overcome all the problems and the hurt in his life, and he brought all the brokenness and pain to God, the real hero of the story.
And it wasn't your fault that you got a lot of baggage and dysfunction and ways of relating that are really hurtful to you and to others. Is not your fault but it is your responsibility to realize you're powerless and to turn to God's power to heal and to change. Because like Joseph, God wants to use your dysfunction to take you to your destiny. But if you don't take responsibility and turn to God, the enemy will use your dysfunction to bring about destruction in your life. And that's what he tried to do with Joseph. When Joseph became a servant to a guy named Potiphar in Egypt, he had such integrity. He did such a good job and he took so much responsibility that Potiphar raised him up to be over his whole household. Potiphar's wife tried to seduce Joseph.
In Genesis 39:10, it says, "And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her. One day he went to the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside. She caught him by the cloak and said, 'Come to bed with me.' But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house". So the enemy uses temptation to try to derail Joseph's destiny and destroy his life. And just think about it. It would've been just so easy for Joseph to think, "Because of all the dysfunction in my family, I'm now a slave and my life is ruined. My life is awful, I might as well give in. Nobody will ever know I'm in this foreign country. God hasn't come through for me".
Would've been so easy, but no, he took responsibility for his actions. He ran from temptation and he ran to God because he didn't want dysfunction to keep him from his destiny. And we need to realize that we have an enemy and he has a strategy and it's always the same strategy that he uses over and over again to take our dysfunction and turn it into destruction. I want us to look at James 1:13 because it tells us the enemy's strategy. "When tempted, no one should say, 'God is tempting me,' for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone".
So God's not the villain, he's not tempting us. It's the enemy that wants to destroy us, and here's what he uses. "But each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then after desire is conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin when it is full-grown, gives birth to death". So Satan's strategy has always been the same. He takes the dysfunction in our lives and then he uses our desire. Look what it says. "Each one is tempted when by his own evil desire".
Temptation always begins with a natural desire. Eating, drinking, sexual desire, the desire to be approved and accepted, all those legitimate desires, but the enemy takes those legitimate desires and tries to get us to fulfill them in the wrong way or at the wrong time. He uses our dysfunction that we picked up along the way to try to pervert a legitimate desire. Maybe growing up you learned to anesthetize your pain, because you learned you should never feel bad. That's not good. Or you need to hide your struggle and sins and put out a good image to be accepted because we don't talk about the gross stuff in our lives. We're all good, everything's good. Are you needed to rebel to be noticed? The enemy will take that dysfunction and try to get you to fulfill a desire for acceptance or happiness or belonging in a way that hurts you and others.
It goes from dysfunction to desire, but then deception. You see, he is a liar. The Bible says he's the father of all lies. And so he wants to use that deception and he uses it really effectively. Look what it says, "We are tempted, we were dragged away and enticed". Now, that word enticed literally means to be lured with bait. It's a fishing term. You see, Satan doesn't come to us in a red suit with horns and a pitchfork and then tell us a lie. No, because then I would go, "Wait a minute, you're that guy in a red suit and horns in a pitchfork. You're the devil. So I know everything you say is a lie right now. I'm not gonna believe you". No, he never does that.
You see the Bible says he's an angel of lie, he's a beautiful liar, and he uses temptation that looks good to us. That looks like it'll bring happiness or acceptance, but it's a lie. It doesn't satisfy and there's always a hook in it. Then you get hooked, stuck, addicted. You see, anytime I sin, I'm believing a lie from Satan. It may be the lie that this will make me feel better or the lie that this will make me happy or the big lie I'm not hurting anyone else. For you see, a lot of times we compartmentalize our life, especially the guys.
Man, you know, we have this tendency to compartmentalize our lives, put things in compartments and God gave us that ability for a good reason so we can put some pain over here and we can keep going over here and be tough and strong, but yet we can use it in a really bad way. We compartmentalize our life and we put a secret sin over in one compartment and then we move on and we think, "Oh, it's only hurting me. I'll get over that. I'll get some victory over that. I don't wanna think about that". Maybe you were taught that you don't talk about that and we begin to believe the devil's lie that not hurting anyone else. We see the secret to Joseph's integrity, says Joseph refused. Look, he told her, "My master trust me with everything in the entire household. How can I do such a wicked thing as this? It would be a great sin against God".
So Joseph didn't believe the lie that it wouldn't hurt anyone else. He affirmed the truth that this sin wouldn't just hurt himself, but it would also hurt his boss and his God. And when you and I sin, it always hurts someone else. And Satan will lie to you and say, "You can do whatever you feel like as long as it doesn't affect anyone else". The problem is that's not true. Every decision you make affects someone else. Several years ago, Chris and I took a group of our college students on a mission trip to Kenya in our ministry there. And after the mission trip, we took them on a boat ride on Lake Naivasha in Kenya. This beautiful lake that's full of hippos.
Now, I've watched all the shows like on Animal Planet and everything about hippos. Did you know hippos are the most dangerous animals in Africa? They kill more people every year than lions or any other animal. I mean, they're mean. They're not cute, chubby little hippos, they are mean nasty. They want to tear your head off. Well, we all got into these small old, broken down boats with really old motors, with very little power. And our boat drivers took off to give us a tour of the lake and Chris and I were going, this may be the dumbest thing we've ever done. But we got out into the lake, our journey had just gotten started and the driver spotted some hippos.
And Chris and I were in the boat with three college guys, then we saw the hippos, the driver slows down so we can take a look at this group of hippos and he gets fairly close, but he has a healthy respect for them to not get too close to agitate them because they're real territorial. And he turns off the engine so we can just watch for a moment. And it was amazing, and the quietness there on that lake watching these hippos. But after a few minutes, the driver tries to start up the engine and take off, but it wouldn't start. And we start drifting closer and closer to these hippos and the driver is frantically trying to get the engine started because he knows what this means.
Well, the college guys in our boat had apparently no idea how dangerous hippos are because they thought it was awesome that we were coming closer and closer to them. Then one of the guys stood up in the boat and tried to get their attention, starts yelling at them. And then he stood up and started rocking the boat to where it almost tipped over. And the hippos looked at us and started twitching their ears, which is something they do right before they attack. And at that moment, I wanted to throw that kid overboard as a sacrifice to those hippos, to calm the waters, throw him overboard. We did tell him in a godly way to sit down and shut up or we would throw him overboard.
Now, what if he had said, "Just relax, this is my space. I'm gonna do what I want in my space. You got your space in the boat, just do what you want in your space, I don't care. This is my space, it doesn't affect you. The hippos might get mad and attack me, but they won't hurt you because you're not doing anything". And we would've all said, "Don't you realize we're all in the same boat, at least for now 'cause in about two seconds, you're not gonna be in the boat anymore". And see, that's the biggest lie, that it won't hurt anybody. A teenager who uses drugs says, "I'm not hurting anyone else but myself, it's my life". Not true. You're destroying your family.
A man says, "I'm gonna hide my looking at pornography because my wife will never know. I don't want to hurt her. My kids will never know". Well, he's already hurting them by believing the lie that you have to keep your struggle hidden because when you keep it in the dark, you stay stuck in it, but when you bring it into the light and you get honest, that's how you get victory because it's in the dark that things grow that are from Satan and it's in the light where Christ can kill those things off and then you can grow. He uses the smokescreen of deception in the middle of the fire of temptation. And we can believe all sorts of lies that make no sense, but it seems true. The enemy always uses deception, but then his ultimate goal is destruction.
In James 1:15, it says, "Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin when it is full-grown, gives birth to death". That's the enemy's ultimate purpose to use your dysfunction, to take you to destruction. He wants to bring death, death to a marriage, death to a family, death to a business, death to a dream, death to a career. He wants to use temptation to take you to destruction, but God wants to use your dysfunction to take you to your destiny. He wants to use your dysfunction to take you to a new day and a new way, but I have to take responsibility to bring my brokenness and sins and struggles to him and stop trying to fix it myself.
And usually, it takes destruction to get us to dependence on God. And if you're at that place of destruction right now, it's really God and his love. It's painful, it's awful. None of us want to be there, but so many times in our lives, God will use that pain of destruction and failure to get us to turn to dependence on him where we realize we've made such a mess, we can't clean this up. We've hurt others in such a way that we can't fix it or heal them. We can't stop these hurtful destructive habits. God, you're gonna have to do it. And when we come to that place and we bring our struggles and our sins and our mess to God, the amazing thing is he's right there to love us and forgive us. And that's something that's really hard for us to get a little bit of a grip on, to understand that God keeps forgiving. Why? Well, we don't deserve it, but he does.
Look at 1 John 1:9. "But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness". So you can bring the worst mess to him and all the worst sins and struggles in my life. I bring 'em to him, and what does he do? He forgives instantly. What an amazing thing. If I stop trying to rationalize because it says confess, what does that mean? It means like in a court of law, you confess that you're guilty. You confess to it. You don't blame others. We don't blame others. We don't try to minimize it. That's usually what we do, is it's like, well, at least I'm not that bad. That guy's really messed up. Yes, kind of stuck in this, but you know, everybody struggles with this, but that guy, he's really bad and we minimize it and that is a flight from God's grace.
You see, Joseph ran from temptation and he ran into God's grace, in God's strength, in God's power. But when we just admit it and confess it, "God, I don't deserve forgiveness, but I bring my sins to you, I failed. I made a mess". Then instantly he forgives. And some of you, you're going, I can't bring the same old sin to God. I mean he's just going, "I am tired of forgiven you. When are you ever gonna get it, I'm done with you. You just keep falling to the same old sin over and over again". No, God says every time you confess, he forgives instantly. We could never earn it, we could never deserve it. Don't try to earn it, don't try to deserve it, just receive it. Just receive it.
See, I call this verse the Etch A Sketch verse. If you ever use the Etch A Sketch as a kid, you know you draw and if you made a mistake, you would just turn it over and shake it and it would erase it and wipe the slate clean. And that's what God does for us. We bring our sins and brokenness to him. We grieve over the way it hurt us and others and he wipes the slate clean and gives us a new day, a fresh start, a second chance of what an amazing thing, this thing called grace that he gives that we could never earn or deserve, but he doesn't want us to stay in that struggle, he wants to give us victory in the struggle. Because if you stay in that struggle, then enemy is gonna keep filling you with shame.
And you're not going to really live the life you're for and do what God has called you to do and make a difference that he's called you to make. You're living one day at a time in his power, in his strength. Staying in that brokenness so he can bring ness to you. In James 1:16, it says, "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective". So you confess your sins to God for forgiveness. See, you don't need to come to me and ask me to forgive your sins. You don't have to go to a pastor or a priest or anyone else to forgive your sins. You go directly to God because what Christ has done, and the Bible says, we're really priests now. We can go directly to God to receive forgiveness.
So don't come to me, "Oh Kerry, forgive me of my sins". I can't do anything about it, but you can go directly to Christ and receive his forgiveness but we also need healing. And to have healing, we gotta confess to someone else our sins, our struggles, those secrets. We gotta confess to someone else that we trust. Maybe it's a pastor, maybe it's someone on our counseling team, and maybe it's a close friend. You see, you gotta come into the light of honesty with God and honesty with others to have victory because you need some people around you, one or two around you who can walk with you through it to help you get victory where you can just be honest about your struggles, where you can go, "Hey, this week was tough".
And they can pray for you when you share it with them. They're gonna go, "Okay, I'm in it with you. I'm in it with you. I'm in it with you". Walk in the light but the problem is whatever we step into the light, it's really uncomfortable. It's really, especially if you've learned early on in life that you need to hide all the grossness, you know that you're different from everyone else. You got more gross things than everyone else, and so you try to minimize it and say, "Well, I'm better than everyone else". And you don't step into the light. It's really uncomfortable because the light exposes, you know, all of our brokenness, but once you take another step into the light, you find the warmth of God's love.