Voices In My Head (The Rick Lee James Podcast) Episode 550- Sermons Week 1

1 Chronicles 17:16. I think we're going to have it on the screen. Says, then King David went in and he sat before the Lord, and he said, who am I, oh Lord God, and what is my house that you have brought me thus far? I want you to hang on to that question today. Who am I? It's a good question. I was a little bit freaked out this morning when I went to Sunday school and Steve started reading a verse and it said, who am I? And I thought, oh my, we're on to something today. This is apparently something God might be speaking to us about today. Well, so keep that verse in your mind. It's going to kind of permeate throughout today. David sat with the Lord and he said, who am I? I want to take you back just a few years to July of 2021. All right, July of 2021, there was a lot of stuff going on, uh, in, in my own personal life, in our family life. It was a very difficult time in many ways, um, probably one of the hardest years that we've had. I'm so glad that my wife and her family are here today, um, but we lost Howard in June just before that, and we still miss him. And as, as all of you know who've lost loved ones, uh, the grieving never stops, it just changes a little bit. And The aching still remains even when the breaking isn't there. And so it's still there. So it was a hard time. And, you know, dumb guy that I am, I thought, "Oh, maybe we should just get away for a little bit." It was probably too soon to do that, but we took a trip, and I'm gonna show you this picture. We took a trip to Metropolis, Illinois. Nope, not that picture, sorry. We took it— there it is, Metropolis, Illinois, the hometown of Superman, okay? Its population, I don't know, 5? There's not very many people there. Very small town. That's one reason I thought it might be good to get away. But they have this thing called the Super Museum there, and it's got more Superman memorabilia than anywhere else in the world. Wonder why I would like that as I have my Superman watch here and everything, so. It was kind of a cool thing. So, but we went on that trip, and as you can see, Alex has grown a little bit. Maybe the whole family has a little since that time. And then we came home, and it was kind of a rushed week. And then we welcomed a couple new characters into our house. The first one is, I don't know if this will be the next picture or not. We're on an adventure today to see. But we brought first Maisie, which this week was actually, yep, this week was Maisie's Gotcha Day. That's Maisie. The one that has the crazy eye look there on top of Alex. And then there's Fred also in that picture, but we have another picture of Fred too. So some of you see our daily Fred posts online when we have Fred. So in July 2021, we welcomed these new personalities into our lives. And if you have dogs, you know, they all have personalities too. It was a lot of change, a lot of stuff that was happening all at once. And then something that was very significant for me happened and You can bring up the next one. I was welcomed into the Grammys as a member of the Recording Academy that year. So if you ever watched the Grammys, I've never won a Grammy and I've never been on the Grammys, but I was welcomed in as a part of the Recording Academy just as kind of a sign of achievement in music and things that you do like that. So every year when it comes around, I get to vote on the Grammys. Almost nobody I ever pick wins, but it doesn't matter. I'm a part of it, so. But that was kind of a cool thing. And, you know, when we have that question of like, who am I? You know, I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I'm a musician, I'm a music pastor, I'm a Christian. All these things were my identity, but I had no idea that as in that month, nothing was on my radar. Even when we brought those dogs home, I got this email that I still think was a junk email, except sometimes God uses junk emails. And it said there were jobs in the area. I wasn't looking for a job, but it said they were looking for chaplains. And I thought, "Well, I'll just delete that. I don't care. I don't have any idea what a chaplain does. I don't care to know what a chaplain does." And for whatever reason, I just couldn't let go of it. I— at night I would lay awake and the word chaplain would come to my mind and I would think, "What is this? Why do I keep thinking chaplain?" It was just a dumb email. I don't know why I got that. So I thought maybe I should look into it. I talked about it with Jen, and when I looked up chaplain jobs and just what that entailed, the first thing that came up was Loyola University for a place that trained. And I thought, well, I'm not going to do that. I don't want to go back to school and get a whole graduate degree. But I remembered Loyola. I have a friend who works there, and I called this friend and I talked to him for a while, and I told him everything that was going on with me. And he said, sounds like God's working on you about something. And I said, "I don't want to hear that. I don't want to be a chaplain. Why would I want to do that? I don't know anything about chaplaincy. I don't want to go back to grad school. I haven't been in school in— since a long time." So he said, "Well, why don't you apply, do the application process? If you get in—" because it's a little bit hard to get into Loyola, but— and my grades weren't great in college. They were okay, but they weren't, you know, what I would feel like a school like Loyola would want. And I said, okay, I'll fill it out. And he said, if you get accepted, let's take that as maybe God speaking something into your life. And if you don't, you know, we'll just go on and say, hey, it was just a whim. I said, okay, David, I can do that. So I filled out the application. It was hard. Like, even the application was hard. I didn't like it. I had to write essays and all kinds of things. I don't really enjoy writing essays. But I got accepted in. Doggone it. Didn't wanna do it, but it seemed like God was working in my life. I remember before the first class started, I was just scared to death. I was literally in tears sitting in the computer room. I didn't even have to go to class, it was on my computer. I had such anxieties, feeling so inferior to do this task. I remember sitting in the computer room with the door shut shaking and crying and, "God, I don't wanna do this. Why am I doing this? Why do I have to go back to grad school and do this thing I don't wanna do that I have no interest in whatsoever?" Well, as it turns out, God did some amazing things over these last few years as I've been working as a chaplain. I had no idea. I had no idea things were gonna change in my life for the better. It got really busy and it got really hard. Grad school is difficult, by the way, if you ever think you're gonna go back. If God asks you to, say yes, but be prepared, it's hard, okay? But I went from, I learned things, and I'm gonna share some of these things with you today. It's hard for me to tell you exactly what a chaplain does, so I'm just gonna give you a little bit of a skim of it. Some people think, "Well, a chaplain's like a pastor, you just do it in the hospital, right?" Well, not really. "Well, you just go around telling people about Jesus and try to get 'em saved." No, I could be fired if I did that, actually. Yeah, it's not that, it's an ethical thing. You mean you can't— well, no, if they ask I can, but I gotta be careful in the way I do it. Well, so what is chaplaincy? What does it do? So I found this picture, the first one you saw, and it had a frog and a toad, okay? This is the best thing I can come up with to describe the work of chaplaincy. Toad sat and did nothing. Frog sat with him. All right? This is what we call the ministry of presence, being present to God, being present to others. But the only way we can do that— what I learned in my training for chaplaincy was that I can only be present to God and others if I first am present to myself. I have to first be present to what's going on in me. What I'm gonna share this morning, this isn't everything that did it, But coming to understand this, coming to learn things about myself that I didn't know, things I was holding on to— I was having migraines something like 3 to 5 days a week. I was always in pain, always hurt. I don't have migraines anymore. I just don't have them. I mean, very rarely I'll get a headache, but I just don't have them anymore. I can remember the day something lifted in me when I made this discovery of like, oh, there's something that like even physically is being affected by this pain that I've been holding on to, this trauma. And I let it go, and I was able to release that. It was amazing. I'm not saying it always happens that way for everybody, but I understood for me what can happen when God does something very real, when we get honest about self so that God can come in and take over. The beauty of the work of chaplaincy for me is that I get to see God do things when I just show up and be present with people. I don't have to preach, I don't have to sing at them like I do here, I don't have to do much of anything, but I'd be present and I listen, I ask questions, and I help others to find those inner resources that God has given to them. And it's amazing to see the way God shows up sometimes. So I wanna talk to you just really briefly this morning. This is gonna be not nearly what we've gone into in, you know, 3+ years of grad school and all that has gone into it, but this is a little bit of it. I want us to talk about today, when we ask this question, "Who am I?" It's the same question that David sat with. We ask the question, "Who am I?" And one of the best ways I have found to do that is to do something called being present to self and knowing your STUF, okay? S-T-U-F. I think we have a slide for it that you can see. Maybe it'll be up there. But it says— it should say knowing your stuff somewhere on the screen. There it is. Knowing your stuff. You're going to think stuff is spelled wrong, but it's not in this instance, okay? It means getting to know your sensations, your thoughts, your urges, your feelings. Because so often we live our life, and I discovered for myself, I just didn't know these things. Being a chaplain, I've discovered that it's about being present with people so we can help discover where they find meaning, where they find value and connection and transcendence and purpose. And all these things are so important, and this is one way that we do that. So I want to find out for myself— this is how I do it— I'll start out with, "What senses am I having? What sensations am I having?" Because sometimes that tells me exactly where I am in the day. So I want you to try a quick exercise with me, okay? Just pretend you're my patients this morning, all right, when I go into a room. I'm gonna ask you to identify 5 things you can see. You don't have to say it out loud, but I just want you to take a look around and think of 5 things in this room you can see, okay? I'll give you about 10 seconds. It doesn't take long. All right, and now I want you to locate 4 things that you can touch or feel. Okay, these can be things outside of you, these can be things with inside of you. Do you have a pain today? Is your leg hurting? Uh, do you have a tightness in your chest? These are things we feel within us, so things you can touch or feel in that way. Okay, you have those 4 things? Uh-huh, maybe some of you aren't going to respond no matter what. Okay. 3 things you can hear. This might be a little more difficult. Okay, I hear a little one, which I love hearing. I hear the air conditioner. It gets real quiet, you can hear your own breathing, right? 2 things you can smell. This might be a little dangerous. Make sure you don't say it if it's your neighbor, all right? Unless they smell really good and you just want to say, "You smell great today." I have trouble with this one because I have trouble smelling. It's— but sometimes, sometimes I have to just go, "Oops, soap on my hand, got it," you know. And then one thing you can taste, all right? All of these are senses. These are sensations that we have. We usually take them for granted, but until we stop to think about it, we don't always think about where we are. These are things that tell us where we are in the present moment right now, because so often we're not present to the place where we are. Okay? And then we move into thoughts, the second thing up there. Your sensations, your thoughts. Your thoughts are just simply your mental processes. Your thoughts can be all over the place. Your thoughts aren't necessarily who you are, but they do drive you to action on things, don't they? Like, after church today, you may be already thinking about what you're gonna have for lunch, or where you're gonna eat, or how fast you gotta get there after church to beat all the people there so you can get a good parking space and be first in line. Your thoughts are the things that you analyze, the things that you believe, what you believe about God, what you believe about other people, the way you categorize things, the way you critique. The way you judge things, the way you observe things. Some of you are judging my sermon right now. I wish you'd get on with it. But that's part of this whole mental process thing. It helps you to be present. Sometimes thoughts just pop into your head. Sometimes you spend some time dwelling on them and your imagination starts to grow and go wild and you create things. As a songwriter, I have to use my imagination sometimes as I create things. I have to follow those thoughts, the good thoughts, where they're going. But it's important to understand you are not your thoughts, but your thoughts are a part of you. All right, you can have good thoughts and bad thoughts. You can have thoughts that tell you you are unlovable, but that's not the truth. You may believe that, but it doesn't mean it's true. A lot of us have those thoughts. And then we have these urges, so we get to the third thing, urges. If you drink a lot of water, you're gonna know what urge, I don't even have to name it, right? That's one way of an urge. An urge is a strong impulse or this strong desire. If somebody comes up to you and they say something that makes you really angry, you might wanna do a number of things. You might wanna strike 'em in the face, you know, if they said the bad enough thing, thing, or they talked about somebody you love, your impulse, your urge is to do that thing. But that urge is not you. That urge is just a part of you, right? There's an urge to argue on social media about everything. And trust me, I think some people will argue with a wall, literally. Like, they'll just— you can, you can put, look at these beautiful flowers. Those are ugly. You know, like, it's something like that. It just doesn't matter. Somebody will always argue with you. And you have this impulse sometimes to to be sarcastic and get snarky and fight back with them or whatever, but you don't have to do that. You have these urges, they are not you, but they are a part of you. And the best thing you can do is acknowledge those urges, be honest about it, and say, "Okay, I've got that urge, but I don't have to act on it. I don't have to act on this anger, although I can acknowledge I am angry. I feel upset." And that's the good thing to do. The bad thing is to hold all these things inside, or even worse, to ignore it, to know it's there and then just push it down. And the last thing is your feelings. And I'm gonna have them put one more picture up here when we talk about STUFF— sensations, thoughts, urges, and feelings. There's gonna be a wheel that they're gonna put up on the screen that I hope is gonna be able to show up for everybody. This is called the Wheel of Feelings or the Wheel of Emotions. That may be too small for you to read, but this has been something very helpful for me. And Greg knows, 'cause I took this to his office one day and we talked about it. About it together there. The wheel of emotion, the wheel of feelings, usually when somebody asks how you're feeling, I would often go to my head and what I was thinking about, but I wasn't always able to tell you what emotion I was feeling at the time. So if you look at this wheel, in the middle, there are the primary emotions that we all have: surprised, bad, fearful, angry, disgusted, sad, happy. And then there's all these other feelings and emotions that actually stem off from that one. I'll just confess mine to you this morning, 'cause I try to do this every morning, and I take a prayer walk here on the way to church, and sometimes I pull out the wheel, and this morning I did it again. And this morning I wrote down happy, peaceful, loving, thankful. But you know what else I felt? I felt fearful and insecure and inadequate. And anxious and, and just, just often I live in that place of fear, insecurity. I'm not good enough. I won't be enough for the task ahead of me. Anybody else ever feel that way? It's okay if you do or don't. Either way, that's just my thing. I can almost guarantee every morning when I go through that wheel, when I take my devotional walk and I'll look at that wheel, I almost always head to that fear category. I almost always feel insecure about myself. I almost always feel inadequate. I almost always feel anxious. But at the same time, I still feel on the happy side too. You can feel all these different things together at the same time. And one thing that helped me is this picture that I saw one time. Don't worry, I don't have a picture back there for you to put up, okay? But there was a picture I saw one time that was about this, and it's one of the most healthy things you can do. Imagine a table. There's a table down front here that we serve communion on. And imagine it's a dinner table and you have all these people sitting around the table, and all of those people represent a different emotion. If you've seen the movie Inside Out or Inside Out 2, you can kind of recognize that each feeling, each emotion is actually personified as a character. So imagine these as your personal characters sitting around a table, all talking, okay? But anxiety and fear will not shut up. All right? All the other emotions are there too, but they just keep talking. And finally, you have to say to those, "Look, I acknowledge you're here. You're a part of this table too, but you don't get to do all the talking." All right? It's one of my favorite cartoons because sometimes it really helps us just to say, "I notice I'm feeling this way today. I notice I'm feeling scared. I notice I'm feeling inadequate." I notice I'm feeling— you fill in the blank. But it's important to say to those negative emotions especially, it's okay. First of all, you acknowledge them. That's one of the best things you can do. But then all to say, you don't get to be the only one that talks, because God didn't make me to be anxious and to live in fear and anxiety and to feel inferior to everybody all the time. That's not what God made me to be. When we can start coming to grips with our stuff, our sensations, our thoughts, our urges, our feelings, the things that make us feel good, the things that make us feel bad, we actually can start to maybe for the first time become authentic and present to God. Because first you have to be present to self, because God only sees the real person that's there. You can pretend all day long you're feeling things that you're not feeling, you're thinking things you're not thinking, that you're having appetites you're not having, but the fact is God only sees the real person that is there. And until we can first become truthful about our true self, acknowledge all these things, even just to God, the good, the bad, the ugly, it's then that we can finally become authentic with God and become the person that God sees. And God can begin to tell us a different story. But we have to acknowledge those other stories first in order to get there. God comes to us. God speaks a different story. So all of these things, your stuff that I just mentioned, your sensations, your thoughts, your urges, your feelings, all these things are a part of who you are, but I— please, I want you to understand this— that is not necessarily who you really are. Are, okay? This locates where you are, it doesn't locate who you are, okay? Think of that. It locates where you are, not who you are. When David, he said that prayer earlier, who am I, oh Lord, as he sat with God. Sometimes we just have to sit with God and listen and wait. I want to share a story with you, um, It's called— it's a parable actually from the eastern part of the world. It's called The Tiger and the Fox, okay? I just want you to listen to this story about sometimes the thing that we think we are is not actually the thing that God made us to be. Sometimes we tell ourselves the wrong story, okay? That's what I want to emphasize this morning. So an old story from India tells it well. Once upon a time, there was a good man He was a hunter and good at it. He fed his family, his relations, and many poor and needy people. And sometimes he sold the leftovers in the market so that he could get other things for his family. One day he was out hunting and he saw something most unusual. He came upon a fox with only two legs. He had heard of foxes like this one and he wondered how it had managed to survive. It could barely drag itself around. How could it hunt? Was it alone? The stories told of foxes that love their freedom so dearly that if they were caught in a steel trap, they would chew off their leg to get free. He stood and watched this fox, amazed. It had chewed itself free, not just once, but twice, and was still alive. As the hunter mused over the determination of the fox, he was startled to see a tiger come out of the forest into the clearing. That'd be scary, right, if you're a two-legged fox. It was dragging a half-eaten carcass of a deer. It had obviously eaten its fill and now left the carcass for the fox to eat. The hunter had never seen anything like this before in his life. Were the animals so careful of each other that they tended to the needs of the weaker? And the lame? The fox ate its fill and it dragged himself off, leaving the rest of the carcass for the smaller animals to finish. Nothing was wasted. The man thought about this for a long time. Even when he went home, it weighed on his mind—his thoughts. He was a very religious man and he was sure God was trying to tell him something. He went back to the forest the next day and he hid. Looking for the fox and the tiger to see if it would happen once again. He learned over days and weeks that it did, but only as needed, only when the fox was hungry. He was sure now that God was teaching him great wisdom and truth. He prayed and thought and finally decided that he must learn the ways of the animals, especially of the fox, how to trust a natural enemy, how to trust that God would take care of him, how to wait, for another to give to him. No longer did he bring food home for his family and his relations, his neighbors and the poor. He became poorer along with his family and others. His wife begged him, 'Go hunting!' And he looked at her sadly, knowing that he couldn't, and thinking that he couldn't explain to her what he saw in the forest. She would never believe him. Yet he knew from his reflection and prayer that God was teaching him. Eventually his wife and children left him so that they could find something to eat, a way to live without him. Others shied away from him, wondering what had happened to him. He grew weaker and weaker without food, and he prayed earnestly to know what to do. He worked at trust and being open to what others might bring. He came close to death, And at the very end, an angel came to him. He was overjoyed and heartened to see the presence of light before him. The angel looked at him long and hard and said, "Why are you so stupid? Why aren't you hunting and taking care of others? You were given a vision of what you were doing and what you should do, that all should do." Get up and stop thinking of yourself as the fox. Remember, you are the tiger. How many of us have thought that we're the fox? That we've lived in impoverishment? When the truth of the story is that God wants us to be the tiger, the one that is able to actually help feed others. Now that doesn't mean that sometimes we're not the ones who need help. I, I would venture to say maybe sometimes in life we are that fox. Fox. Sometimes we all need help. It's not a bad thing. We're actually supposed to live that way in community. But for those that God has enabled— in this story, this man, he was made to hunt, he was made to provide, he was made to give, and he had missed his place in the story. The whole point of the story is simply that he was telling himself the wrong story in life. He was telling himself he was the fox when God says you're the tiger. So who does God say that we are? All those things, the stuff that we talked about, the sensations, the thoughts, the urges, the feelings, that's our location, that's where we find ourselves. But please don't mistake that for who God says we are and who God made us to be. I just took a few of these from the Bible of who— what God says about us human beings. It says we are created in his image. We are his beloved child. That we are a new creation. That we are chosen and holy. That we are forgiven and redeemed. God's workmanship. That we are ambassadors of Christ. That we are heirs with Christ. We are the light of the world. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. So when we ask the question about our stuff, do you know your stuff? Do you know who you say you are? Do you know who God says you are? I want to share that picture again of the frog and the toad, if you could. And I want you to hear the word that I read as we began this sermon today from 1 Chronicles. It says— and just look at the picture while I read it, okay? And King David went in and he sat before the Lord, and he said, who am I, O Lord God? What is my house that you have brought me thus far? We really don't get to know who we are until we can just spend some time sitting with God. Just stare at that picture for a minute. I know it's from a children's book, but you have to become like children to enter the kingdom of God. How long has it been? I don't even mean like, you know, Pastor would always preach about prayer Sometimes we make it too hard. This is just sitting with God. And I think the truth of that picture is that God is the frog in the story. When Toad just sat and did nothing, the frog just came and sat with him, you know. Sometimes we think we're chasing after God and it's God who arrives to be with us. It's always God who arrives to be with us. We think we have a lot of agency and a lot of control over things, and maybe God gives us a certain amount of freedom in that, but it's always God who makes that first move. It's God who comes and heals our wounds. It's God who comes. The psalmist in Psalm 139 says, "Oh Lord, you have searched me." You have known me. You know when I lie down. You know when I rise. Even if I make my bed in hell, you would still be there. That's some pretty powerful language. If I was to fly up to the highest heavens, Lord, you are there. There is nowhere I can go to escape from your presence. You are there with me. I feel like this is a beautiful picture of the kingdom of God. Because when we can be present to self, then we can be present to the presence of God. Because God has been there waiting, trying to help us see who we really are. And then when we are present to that presence, then we get to be present to other people, and we get to be like that frog that came and sat with the toad. And then we get to help others be present to the presence. It is in him that we live and move and have our being, Acts 17:28 tells us. We make it so hard, but it really is living, moving, having our being in God, being our true self. You don't have to do anything in particular to be your true self. It just is. If we simply will let it be, it will express itself with no particular effort on our part. God will just show up and show it to us. So what we're going to try to do in closing today, it's really very simple. You can do it from your seat. Some people like to come and pray at the altar and, and do it that way. That's fine too. You don't have to do it at all. It's just an invitation. I just offer it to you today. Would you be willing just to sit with the Lord and say, "Speak, Lord, your servant is listening." We've got big decisions in life. The church is in transition. Maybe my own life is in transition. We've got lots of things going on, but let's not miss the essential for the important. Let's not just miss these moments we can just let God be with us. Say, "Lord, thank you for coming and being here." Try not to have an expectation of what may arise if you're brave enough to do this and just be with God. I think God just wants to meet with us. Just experience the goodness of God, the presence of the Lord. Be patient. And try to pay attention to your stuff that we talked about. Are you feeling it in your body somewhere? Do you feel uncomfortable? Is there a tightness in your chest, in your stomach? What could God be speaking to you about that? Is there something that you need to pay attention to there? How is God speaking through those things today? Jill has already started playing, and I'm just gonna play a song of reflection that comes from Psalm 139. And all I want you to do is just be obedient to the Lord in the moment, to just let God be God. Deal with your stuff this morning, okay? Let's just take some time alone with God. Whatever posture is the most comfortable for you, take that posture. Just let God speak as I sing this morning.

Oh Lord, you have searched me. Oh Lord, you have known me. You know when I lie at down, and when I rise. Oh Lord, you're before me. Oh Lord, you're behind me. You know my hidden thoughts, my heart and my Where can I run from your presence? Where can I hide from your spirit? If I could fly up to the heavens, you are there. If I could ride the If I could swim the deepest sea, Lord, even then you are there with me.

I'm just gonna ask Jill to just keep playing this morning. Lord, help us just to become real with our stuff, with our sensations, our thoughts, our urges, and our feelings. Remind us, Lord, that those things that we are feeling and sensing, the urges we have, that those locate where we are right now in this moment. It's not where we're going to be later today. It's not where we're going to be where we are right now. And I just trust, Lord, because you are always moving and you are always speaking, that in this moment you are speaking to hearts and lives. You continue to move, you continue to call us to new and difficult things, like you called me to chaplaincy, and little did I know it was gonna transform me in ways that were so needed and so needed so necessary. And Lord, this whole new ministry opened up, augmenting the one I was already doing. Lord, would you just speak this morning? I could fill the air with so many more words, but I don't think I need to. Jesus, would you just tell each person who is willing to hear it today, and maybe even people who are not willing, Would you just tell them your good news of how much you love them? Would you speak your peace? Come, Lord, have your way. For those of you who are willing and who are able, unless you want to just keep talking to God and letting God talk, that's fine, but will you just stand up with me, all who are able this morning? And I don't want to interrupt anybody buddy, what God might be speaking. We're just going to sing a song we all know together as we close today, okay?

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found. Was blind, but now I see.

And if you will raise your hands to receive this benediction this morning. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Thank you for listening to God this morning. The Lord be with you. Stay and visit as long as you like. And we'll see you here next week on Sunday.