Looking Beneath the Surface

2nd in the series:
Putting the Pieces Together: a Journey Toward Mature Discipleship*

Last week, we began our search for the missing piece of the puzzle: emotional health. We established that God made us emotional beings and He did it on purpose. Jesus, being fully human, experienced the full range of emotions. Thus it isn’t possible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally unhealthy. We were reminded that we need to address emotional issues in order to love God and others, and that evangelism flows naturally from emotionally healthy people.

Today we’re going to start digging beneath the surface, because in emotionally healthy churches, people take a deep, hard look inside their hearts, asking, "What is going on that Jesus Christ is trying to change?"

The image I want to use today is an iceberg. When the Titanic ran into one, their big issue (besides thinking their ship was unsinkable) was neglecting the fact that when you see an iceberg, you only see the 10% that is above the surface. That corresponds to the 10% of our lives of which we are consciously aware. The other 90%, like the part that sank the Titanic, is the stuff under the surface of our lives, much of which we never even think about.

As Christians, it is our responsibility to invite God to bring to our awareness those beneath-the-surface layers that hinder us from becoming more like Jesus Christ. Why? So that He can transform them. This is the real horror: that for many, it seems much easier to remain in a comfortable, distorted illusion about our lives. Something may not be true and may be flat-out wrong, but we become so used to it that it feels right.

When I was young, I remember my friends telling me about doing things with their grandfathers, but my grandfather had died just after my first birthday, and I had no memories of him. So I made up some. And I told those stories enough that I started to believe them. I became so used to telling those stories that they felt like part of my life.

In an uglier scenario, I’ve heard too often about someone who grew up, abused by their parents. Then they ended up married to an abusive spouse. They knew it wasn’t right, that life wasn’t supposed to be like that, but they’d lived with it so long that it was all they knew and it didn’t feel "right" when they weren’t being abused.

Proverbs 4:23 tells us: Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. How are we supposed to guard our hearts when our hearts have already been damaged?

It requires unmasked, painful honesty. In John 8:31-22, Jesus told those who were following Him, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." I use the word "unmasked" because sometimes we would rather hide from the truth and protect ourselves rather than deal with it. We’re like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, hiding from God, covering ourselves with little fig leaves so God doesn’t see our nakedness.

In C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, there is a wonderful picture of what it’s like to follow God and take a deep, hard look inside. A young boy named Eustace becomes a big, ugly dragon as a consequence for his stubborn, selfish, unbelief. Now he wants to change back to being a little boy, but he can’t do it himself. Eventually the great lion Aslan, representing Jesus, appears to Eustace and leads him to a beautiful well to bathe. But since he’s a dragon, he can’t enter the well.

Aslan tells him to undress. Eustace remembers that he can cast off his skin like a snake. He takes off a layer by himself, dropping it to the ground, feeling better. Then as he moves to the pool, he realized there is yet another hard, rough, scaly layer still on him. Frustrated, in pain, and longing to get into that beautiful bath, he asks himself, "How many skins do I have to take off?"
After three layers, he gives up, realizing that he cannot do it. Aslan then says, "You will have to let me undress you." To which Eustace replies:

I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate
now. So I just lay flat down on my back and let him do it. The first tear he
made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he
began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’d ever felt… Well, he
peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the
other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass:
only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly looking than the others
had been. And there was I as smooth and soft… Then he caught hold of me… and
threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After
that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and
splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why.
I’d turned into a boy again… After a bit, the lion took me out and dressed me…
with his paws… in these new clothes I’m wearing.

C. S. Lewis puts it well: to go in this new direction, it feels as if God’s claws are going so deeply into us that they are cutting into our very hearts.

But the truth is this: God often uses pain to get us to change. It has been said that "We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing" (Henry Cloud and John Townsend Boundaries With Kids).

When I was a college freshman, I had a terrible accident on the soccer field, and I ended up with a ruptured spleen. I have never felt anything so painful in my life; my body didn’t even know how to deal with all of the pain. I spent a week in the hospital with no painkillers. Why didn’t I get painkillers? Because the doctors needed to use pain as an indicator. Without that indicator, they couldn’t know how I was progressing.

Another way to think about it is through the experience of Dr. Paul Brand, who ministered to people with leprosy (as told by Philip Yancey in "Where is God When it Hurts?"). Leprosy has been caricatured as a disease that rots off toes and fingers, but really what happens is that the person loses feeling and doesn’t experience any of the pain that the rest of us feel. When they do something that should hurt, it doesn’t. So when pain would tell most of us to stop doing something, they never get that message, and the result is horrible injury. For example, if I sprain my ankle, it hurts enough that I can’t walk. But for someone with leprosy, they don’t know that it hurts, so they continue to walk on it until they do permanent damage to it. Pain is a gift. It shows us that something isn’t right, and thus shows us when we need to change.

Many of us have to hit rock bottom before we’re really willing to change. The pain of the status quo has to become unbearable. So what does it look like to go beneath the surface?

We first have to develop an awareness of what we are feeling and doing. We remember that Jesus had deep emotions;

• he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved (John 11:33);
• he wept at Lazarus’ graveside and over the city of Jerusalem (John 11:33-36; Luke 19:41);
• he was angry with his disciples (Mark 10:14);
• he was furious at the moneychangers in the temple (John 2:13-17);
• he showed astonishment (Matt 8:10);
• he had an emotional longing to be with the 12 apostles (Luke 22:15);
• he had compassion for widows, lepers, and blind men (Matt 20:34; Mark 1:41; Luke 7:13).

And in John 13, we find Jesus preparing for Passover with his disciples. Jesus washed his disciples’ feet: even Judas, even though Judas had already planned to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God (John 13:3). He was deeply aware of who he was and what he was doing. He served his disciples, even the one he knew would betray him. He broke from the expectations of his family, friends, disciples, and the religious leaders and to follow God’s plan for his life.

In the same way, a deep awareness of what we are feeling and doing gives us courage to begin doing life differently (and hopefully more in line with God’s will) and develop new, healthier relational patterns.

Jesus not only lived that way himself, but he lived that way with others, too. In John 2:23-24, he would not entrust himself to those believing in him for his miracles because he knew what was in the icebergs of their hearts.

A simple way to begin the process of paying attention to our emotions is to listen to our body’s reaction in situations: a knot in the stomach, a tension headache, teeth grinding, hands or arms clenched, palms becoming sweaty, neck tightening, foot tapping, insomnia. Ask yourself, "What might my body be telling me right now?"

Ask the "why" or "What’s going on" questions. In John 4, Jesus met a Samaritan woman at the well. He confronted her with the "why" question. Why are you here at midday? Because you are ashamed? Why are you running from husband to husband? What void are you trying to fill? Jesus has a great knack for getting to the heart of the matter. And He can do it with you. Try this: invite the Holy Spirit to look beneath the surface of your life and answer the "why" and "what’s going on" question. Like

• Why am I always late for appointments?
• Why do I avoid certain people?
• Why do I dread certain meetings?
• Why do I want to succeed so badly?
• Why do I procrastinate?
• Why do I avoid confrontation?
• Why do I want to please people?

In his book "Celebration of Discipline", Richard Foster makes this point: when we go without food, it brings to the surface those things that have been hidden. He says:

We cover up what is inside us with food and other good things, but in fasting
these things surface… Anger, bitterness, jealously, strife, fear – if they are
within us, they will surface during fasting. At first we will rationalize that
our anger is due to our hunger; then we will realize that we are angry because
the spirit of anger is within us.

This seems devastating. When we start to look beneath the surface, the 90% of the iceberg that we find down there is downright nasty.

There is good news, however. The good news is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is our safety net. The Gospel says that each one of us is more sinful and flawed than we would ever dare believe… but because Jesus lived and died in our place, we are more accepted and loved than we ever dared hope. A great exchange takes place when we place our trust and faith in Jesus Christ. "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21).

$100 bill illustration: Which is worth more? A brand new, crisp $100 bill, or a crumpled, wadded-up $100 bill? Why are they both worth $100? Because the U.S. Treasury says they are. And we receive our worth from someone more trustworthy than the government; we receive our worth from God, who declares us "fearfully and wonderfully made." We receive our worth from Jesus Christ, who loved us enough to go to the cross for each one of us.

God’s free grace says that you don’t have to prove that you’re lovable or valuable. "You can be yourself, because there is nothing left to prove." Determining factor in our relationship with God is not our past or present record or performance. It is Jesus’ past record that has been credited to my account as a gift. Thus we can face painful truth about ourselves. As we step out onto the tightrope of discovering the unpleasant things about ourselves, we have a safety net below: the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

A critical process in becoming emotionally healthy involves looking at the story of our lives with some objectivity and how it has contributed to the person we are today. What about you is it that if anyone really knew about it, they wouldn’t accept you? What masks are you wearing? What constitutes that 90% beneath the surface? It can be extremely hard to look at ourselves with objectivity; thus we benefit from having a trusted friend do it with us.

This is one of the benefits of being in a cell group; your cell group becomes a community of trust in which we are enabled to go beneath the surface. We have to ensure for one another a few non-negotiables, however.

1. We are Christ-centered and Bible-based. We base our decisions and judgments based on scripture. We receive our morality and direction from God. Therefore we lovingly root out sin when we see it.
2. We are confidential. When someone comes to us, any of us, and shares the depth of their dysfunction, we do not share it with others, not even as a prayer request, unless we are given direct permission to do so. If we do not adhere to this, we are simply gossips.
3. Not every one of us struggles with the same things. Don’t be shocked or disgusted if someone shares with you a sin that you don’t struggle with. Chances are they don’t struggle with something you do! Instead, walk with them toward healing.
4. Recognize when something is beyond your capacity to help. Sometimes looking beneath the surface requires professional counseling help. There is no shame to going to a counselor for help.
5. Do the search Psalm 139-style. One of the famous lines from Psalm 139 is this (v. 23-24): Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. But we don’t get there until we’ve already gone through this: O LORD, you have searched me and you know me (v. 1). God already knows what’s beneath the surface. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? (v. 7) We do not have to do it alone. God is always with us.

Let that prayer from Psalm 139 guide us in our endeavor to look beneath the surface: Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

*Note: this message, along with others in this series, has been adapted from Peter Scazzero's book The Emotionally Healthy Church.