Cascade Church Portland

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. 

Elijah:: The Sacred Now

If you were to ask me about sacred spaces I would go in a couple different directions. 

1) Holy Landmarks. 

The Jordan River. The Dead Sea. The Wailing Wall. Pancake and Steak House. These are the places where powerful and deeply spiritual things happened. We revere and protect these places because they help us remember when God was close. 

2) Holy Moments. 

Baptism. Birth of a Child. Hearing God's Voice. While these moments may have a place linked to them. it is usually an experience that we hold onto and remember. We can tell you what we felt, who was in the room, the sounds, the smells and what our insides felt like. 

These are both significant places to go with sacred spaces. They help us raise up stones of remembrance so that we don't lose the thing that was so important to us. We cling tightly to these threads in the tapestry of our life. 

But what if when you were asked about sacred spaces you thought of right where you are right now? What if sacred spaces didn't just exist in your past or a place in your future, but traveled with you in the ever-present now? That's what we're exploring this week. 

Elijah:: I Quit

I was raised in a family of board game aficionados.

During many years of family game nights, that would sometimes end in tears and tantrums, I developed two distinct personalities. 

When I'm winning at a game I'm having a ball! I'll be chatting it up, making jokes and trying to be gracious to those who aren't doing as well. There will be laughing and carrying on like I'm Captain Good Times. 

The losing version of myself is completely different. I'm sullen and withdrawn. The game won't hold my attention for very long and I'll be easily distracted. While I understand the value of being a good loser, I've spent too many years contemplating the futility of existence while being run off the Monopoly board to practice it. 

Basically, I'm saying you should never play games with me because I'm insufferable either way. 

The desire to quit when things go sideways is exactly what we'll be looking at this Sunday. Our look at the life of Elijah comes just after the amazing high when God shows up in a powerful way and justifies him in front of the nation of Israel. Elijah is at a devastating low and wants to pack it up and check out of life. 

Maybe you're feeling like you want to quit. Being a good employee. Being a parent. Being a spouse. Being responsible. 

You're not alone. When you're in a place of despair and want to quit and walk away you stand in line with a long heritage of those who went before you. I hope you'll explore what next steps could be and how God simultaneously sits with us in despair and invites us ever forward through this message. 

Elijah:: Breaking the Blame Game

Have you had something go wrong this past week? When something you thought would happen fails to happen we usually have 1 of 2 responses. 

1) Wallowing Sadness. I have been known to throw myself a pretty fierce pity parade. I get down when something goes wrong and don't want to talk, think or act on it in any way. I bemoan my own failures and the failures of others with similar gusto and live in a place that necessitates salty snack foods and Netflix. 

2) Misdirected Anger. This is when whatever has gone wrong is the fault of everyone and everything else except for me. 
Burned dinner? Oven's fault. 
Late for a meeting? Traffic's fault. 
Can't sleep? My pillow's fault. 

In this message we continue looking at the life of Elijah and how he held a mirror up for the Israelite people to see things that they didn't want to see. We'll wrestle with how we respond when things don't go our way. 

My hope is that we can all walk away contemplating who God is in the midst things going wrong and choosing something different than cycles of misdirected anger or wallowing sadness. 

Elijah:: Scarcity & Abundance

Confession time. I love sneaking candy into movie theaters. 

I've been resistant to taking out a 2nd mortgage on our home to afford a tiny box containing four Raisinets. So we invariably go to the bulk candy section of the local grocery store and stock up on the good stuff. The only limitations we face is the size of our stomachs and my wife's purse. 

Now, when the previews are running I am a man of great generosity. There is no limitations on the Runts and gummy bears I will hand out. What kind of husband and father would I be to withhold great candy from those closest to me? 

Get me closer to the bottom of the bag and I am a tightfisted scrooge. I dispense gummy bears one at a time and hoard banana Runts like they are golden doubloons from recently unearthed pirate treasure. 

Generosity and scarcity don't usually make a good duo. In this message we look at that dynamic through a story from the life of Elijah. Hopefully we will discover what the mirror holds when we see ourselves in scarcity and abundance. 

Elijah:: Holding Up Mirrors

Prophets and prophecy freak me out. I immediately get an image of an older man with a bushy beard grabbing my arm while I walk down the street, looking at me with blank eyes and telling me exactly how I'll die next month. 

We're starting a new series of messages this week looking at the life of one of the most famous prophets from the Bible, Elijah. We are going through the life of a prophet so we can investigate any misconceptions we may have. My hope is that we will learn the value of community living that is both grace-filled and honest. 

One misconception that we may have is that a prophet is functionally a sooth-sayer or a fortune teller. If you go and see a prophet they will deliver news about your future plans and destiny. 

While prophets certainly deal in the realm of the future it is actually a much more grounded look at where our paths are heading based on current trajectories. It looks a lot like a person who is an active part of a community holding up a mirror for everyone to see their reflection. 

That's where it gets scary. The community response to a prophet is rarely humility and a reversal of course after seeing an unflattering image in the mirror. More often than not the prophet is rejected so that the status quo can be maintained. 

So, how do we welcome in our prophets and prophetic voice? How do we face our fears of change and challenge our past assumptions about ourselves?