Cascade Church Portland

David Gallagher::Taking the Lid Off

Road in Between:: The Road You're On

I hope you are getting ready for Advent. If you're unfamiliar with the term, it's a description of the time leading up to the church's celebration of Christmas. It's a version of the Latin word for "coming" and while the origins are hazy, it's easily been observed since 500. 

This year our observance of Advent is centered around the idea of journey. The Christmas story features the journey of a very pregnant Mary and her husband-to-be Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem. There's a journey of the shepherds from the hillside with their flocks to see the newborn Jesus. There's a journey from a group of astronomers from the east to go and celebrate a very special child with expensive gifts.  

Every journey is different, but they all are made up of similar sections. 

1) Departure - For a journey to begin you have to leave somewhere. Sometimes this is a difficult place and there is a lot of hope tied to traveling to a better place. Sometimes you are leaving the most comfortable spot you know on earth and you're heading towards the unknown and unfamiliar. Whether you are filled with hope or anxiety in the departure, there's a movement from something that is known to something that is unknown or uncertain. This is easily one of the most courageous steps that any of us ever take. 
2) The In-Between - Here's where the journey get's real. You're not where you've been, but you're not where you're going. This is the space where our doubts and uncertainties can run wild.  Sometimes this is a very brief place, but sometimes it can it can stretch over days, weeks and even years. Some of us feel like we spend most of our lives in the in-between. 
3) Arrival - This is the conclusion of it all. This is the moment where our work, planning and travel are behind us and a whole new scope of questions and realities flood over us. It can feel like an end or it can feel like a beginning. Oftentimes it feels like both at the exact same time. 

So, where are you right now? Are you getting ready to depart on some new adventure in life? Some of our greatest departures don't necessarily involve a change in zip code, but everything we've known is ending for a new journey ahead. 

Are you in-between? Do you feel stuck between where or who you've been and who or where you're going to be? Many times we know what it means to be the person before we depart and we can picture who we'll be after arrival, but knowing how to be in-between feels impossible. 

Are you at your new destination? Do you feel like you are at a place you've been working hard to get to? Often we've placed so much emphasis on arriving that we don't realize once we get there that there's more to be done. 

I hope you'll be part of Cascade during Advent. Christ is coming. The world is playing out this reality even today. The question is how we engage the coming of Jesus all through the stages of our own journeys. 

Thankful::Gratitude to Generosity

Thankful::Seeing the Everyday Miracles

Thankful:: Gratitude with a Lot or a Little

Finding Fear:: Fear of Intimacy

This is the final message of our Finding Fear message series!

My youngest son is a real close talker. 

He has two favorite forms of communication currently. The first is "whispering" secrets in my ear. I put whispering in quotes because he is talking at a pretty high volume, just real close to my ear. The things he shares are utterly incomprehensible. I have learned the hard way not to say,"huh?" because it will only lead to greater volume even closer to my ear. Some lose their hearing to rock 'n roll, but mine will definitely be to secrets. 

His second favorite way of talking to me is while he grabs my face with both of his hands. These are easily the most intense conversations I have ever had in my life. It makes his statements about wanting a peanut butter and jelly sandwich feel like a life or death situation. Sometimes he even bites my nose, but it feels more like a product of proximity than malice. 

My son's aggressively close speaking style causes me to think about space. You may have never thought about it this way, but the area one inch away from your face is a boundary very few are ever allowed to cross. It's reserved for only the people incredible close and special to us and if anyone ever violates that boundary without invitation, it's traumatic. 

That one inch face boundary is a good representation of a one inch heart boundary most of us have. We don't let everyone close. We don't let everyone in. Often the thought of letting somebody get that close to us can cause us to feel panic or anxiety. It's the place where the most difficult wounds to recover from occur. 

We need these boundaries and we need to understand the cost of letting people close to our hearts, but sometimes fear jumps in the driver's seat and keeps everyone out.

Finding Fear:: Fear of Abandonment

My version of hell would be a single room.
No other people.
No books or magazines.
Just one of those clocks that clicks loudly and movs slowly. 

I don't like to be alone. I gain energy from being around other people and hearing their thoughts and dreams. My own thoughts and dreams are enhanced by others. I often don't know what I'm thinking about something until I share it with somebody else. 

When some of us wrestle with not wanting to be alone it can manifest itself as the Fear of Abandonment. We can become desperately afraid that the people close to us will someday leave us and we'll be all alone. This can also rear it's head when we suffer the loss of a loved. 

The Fear of Abandonment itself isn't the problem. It's something that sneaks up on the strongest and most secure of us all. The problem is when we start reacting to that fear with two opposite, but incredibly painful options. 

1) Smothering - We can try and control the person that we don't want to leave us with constant attention and monitoring of all their activities. The lie that we believe is that we can be in control of the relationship. If we know where this person is at all times and shower them with attention then they will never leave us. 

2) Detachment - We can try and hold the relationship at a distance so that their ultimate abandonment won't hurt as much. This looks like creating distance in the relationship with harsh words, insults and indifference. The lie that we believe is that everyone will ultimately walk away from us so we should only risk as much of ourselves that's absolutely necessary to maintain the relationship. When things get too intimate we rely on our emotional space making tools (anger, insults, indifference) to create the separation we need to not get too invested. 

Ugh. Typing those out breaks my heart because of all the ways that you and I have seen smothering and detachment sabotage relationships. This is especially true in how it impacts people's relationship with God. 

Finding Fear:: Fear of Success

When I'm bored I love to think about what it would be like to be in someone else's shoes. 

Imagine living in Candace Payne's shoes on Thursday May 19th, 2016. You've just made a trip to Kohls and you are delighted by a Chewbacca Star Wars mask that they have for sale. Sitting in your car you decide to live stream the unboxing and first moments of trying on your new mask.

As of today this video has been viewed 161 million times on Facebook and almost 8 million times on Youtube. 

What. The. Heck. How could something so simple capture the attention of so many people? 

Candace Payne quickly became one of the most sought after interviews and people within a matter of days. She's been interviewed on the BBC, "Good Morning America", the New York Times, and NPR. With all that she gained, she also lost something. 

She lost her anonymity. She can't go out in public any more without being noticed. She has her own hashtag, for heaven's sakes.

In this message we look at the other side of the Fear of Failure and explore the Fear of Success. What are the consequences of doing something that lots of people are interested in? What happens when we face the loss of anonymity? I hope the voice of God becomes louder than the voice of fear in your life. 

Finding Fear:: Fear of Failure

Have you ever stumbled into something that you were good at?

When I was in high school we had a kind of trivia competition called The Knowledge Bowl and one of my teachers offered extra credit to those who competed. To be good at this competition you needed to have retained a bunch of seemingly meaningless information and you needed to be blindly confident enough to quickly buzz in your answers. 

Know a little about a lot of things and be arrogant enough to think you knew it all? That was teenaged Kurt's very lengthy and descriptive middle name. 

My team started off laying waste to the competition. With each bit of trivia that won my team another round of the event I became more and more engaged. I was teeming with confidence and I can vividly remember yelling, "I'm in your head, Doug!" after answering a question about the location of Custard's last stand to a member of the other team.  

My team ended up in the final round of The Knowledge Bowl against the smartest kids in the school. I was intoxicated with victory and felt invincible. I knew this last round was a mere formality to my coronation as the champion of all knowledge. 

It started off well and I kept pulling random bits of trivia from the nether regions of my brain. On a roll our team was asked, "How many teeth do adult human beings have in their mouth."

My buzzer was already lit and I instantaneously blurted out "55!"

Fifty-five. 

Teeth. 

In one person's mouth. 

There was a stunned silence in the room as everyone struggled to envision the size and density of a jaw that could support the weight of 55 teeth. I'm sure at least one person cocked their head like a confused dog at my decision to go with an odd number. 

The invincibility flooded out of me like a fully inflated balloon set loose in an empty gymnasium. I was suddenly very, very vincible. 

I failed. Impressively and very publicly I had failed. 

And even though that happened a long, long time ago there is still a part of me that feels like I'm standing in that room today. Completely embarrassed and exposed as a the fraud I felt I was. I had a good run and had fooled a lot of people, but now everyone knew the truth about me. 

Failures much larger and much smaller have kept people from trying any number of endeavors in the future. Some of us let the fear of failure keep us from stepping up or opening our mouths. 

I hope you'll listen in and discover the ways that God might be calling you to acknowledge the fear of failure and act anyway. 

Finding Fear:: You Don't Have To Run Anymore

When I was a child I had a crippling fear of swimming in the deep end. I used to have nightmares about getting into a pool and having the bottom fall out into an endless abyss. It was terrifying and I had more than a couple of nights where I would fall asleep crying thinking about going to swimming lessons the next day. 

Our fears are powerful forces in our lives that drive all kinds of behaviors. We can believe that fears are the kinds of things that just exist in our childhood. We used to be afraid of the dark, but we're ok now. I used to be terrified of the basement, but I'm good now. 

The reality is that our fears may have changed, but we still carry them. In this series we want to look at two of the biggest fears that we can hold; Abandonment andFailure. Abandonment deals with a belief that people in our lives will ultimately leave us or strand us when we need them the most. Failure is the belief that at some point in the future I will do something that won't be successful or that I will be exposed as a failure in life, career, or relationships. 

These fears are intense and can cause us to do all kinds of things that sabotage our lives and lead us away from being the people God created us and call us to be. Take a listen as we get started with a conversation about facing our fears and finding their hold on our lives released.