Rough Notes

Yesterday and Today there has been pain, growth, joy in my heart.


When it settles into you and it becomes the deepest awareness of myself is that I’m accepted by God. I’m a son or daughter in whom he delights. When that settles in on you, it falls into you and displaces all other definitions that you’ve been trying to achieve, or trying to lose. Some of us are still letting us be defined by our past.

It’s so liberating to know that I don’t have to succeed to count. I don’t have to make up for my past. It’s in the gospel.

John ch .12 23-28

When you get liberated from your obsessive need to be loved you become
Less preoccupied with yourself, and more preoccupied with God, that is the key to joy and freedom.

Remember when you’re a kid and you get a yearbook, the first thing you do is flip to the index to find your name. You take a look at your yearbook and find every page that you’re on. The whole purpose is to find your pages.

Freedom from myself.

Freedom is finding faith in something bigger than ourselves. Once you are done seeking approval from others, it is so liberating. Then you are free to focus on loving them, not using them to build you up. We can truly listen. When we stop worrying, we can stop waiting for our turn to speak.

When you find honor in God, you’re free.


When you are enslaved to other people, you are asking them to be your salvation. Save me, make me feel important, rescue me.

When you are enslaved to the fear of man, you are asking other people to be your good. Instead of seeking glory from them, you can seek glory FOR them.

When you put your faith in something bigger than this world, than you are free.

-Notes from sermon "Freedom from the fear of man"