39 - Your Story Redeemed, pt 1

There is a significant percentage of men who have never reflected, let alone spent time discussing, their past. I pray your past is full on good memories and no trauma. Unfortunately, that is not the case with most men. With this teaching, we will take a look at your past, bring the redemption of the cross into it and set ourselves up for what's next. 

Here is the download (Word) (PDF) for you use with the questions I ask. 

Email me at mike@menrestored.com if you'd like more information about my 90-day Exodus Freedom Journey pathway and cohort. It's built for men in ministry, just like you and also the Christ-follower still feeling enslaved by pornography. 

Together, let's reclaim your freedom! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi everyone, I'm not sure if you're a man in ministry, but I want to invite you, if you are, and this is a problem for you, pornography. I want to invite you to this cohort that I have. It's safe and it's confidential, and you need that. You need a place to go to talk about this and to get some deep learning and brotherhood to fight together with other men. That's what I want to offer to you. Stay tuned at the end of the episode to find out how to be in touch with me so that you can learn more about this cohort. I don't want you to have to ever live in isolation like I was living for so many years as a young pastor. I want you to know that you don't have to be alone in this anymore. So I'll see you on the other side. Listen in and let's get into the episode. You are a man seeking freedom from pornography. You know what's at stake if you don't break free. Your marriage, your family, and your faith. Welcome to the Exodus Freedom Journey Podcast. Here you'll discover insights and tools to help you find lasting freedom. Starting in as little as 40 days, you are worth the fight. Your marriage is worth the fight. Your family is worth the fight. Together with God's mighty hand, let's reclaim your freedom. Okay, here we are. Second to last. We have this one and the next one to go. I hope this has been helpful for you. I hope this curriculum has been something that you value and hopefully that you share. This is in the form of a podcast, and this is completely free to the public and it's shareable. Take a screenshot, share it with somebody else that you're listening to this, drop them into this one, into these last two. There's obviously some lead up to these uh these um last two here as well because you've already done some work. But uh just know that there is going to be a uh downloadable worksheet that will be included with this episode because it's in the teaching itself that you can have, uh some in-depth work you can do with your past. I just really want to reinforce this, everyone. Please know how important, how valuable you are and your story is. Your redemption has infinite value, or why would Christ have come, right? Why else would he come if your story didn't have that kind of value? You personally, as a human being, have that kind of value to him and to God. So let's go into this and realize that your story, while it may be broken, well, not maybe, it is. All of our stories are broken. While our stories are indeed broken, there's plenty in our past that uh don't feel redeemable, but believe me, they are. Hope you enjoy this episode. I'll see you on the other side. Hello and welcome to the second to last session here in Module 4. You have no idea how long I've been working on this. It's been weeks and months since I've been uh recording the last session into this session. I've been praying and God has been revealing, and I think God's got something really special for these last two sessions. So this first session is a part one, and next session is a part two of Redeeming Your Story. Remember again Revelation 12, verse 11. They overcame by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Your story has power. Your story has power to bring life to someone else. I know I've said that a number of times, and I'm gonna keep saying it, and I hope you still remember it. Your story has power to bring someone else life. Men restored is the beginning of God's new creation. And I'm gonna continue talking about that as we go through these last couple of sessions. So let's build this hero's journey where you're looking back and you're looking forward, and the man has become redeemed. So other people can experience what you've experienced. This hero's journey is this journey where you, the hero of your story, go through an amazing transformation. Why? In this particular instance, it's because you've let God do the work in you to redeem your past and then inform and bring out your future. And I'm gonna give you a hint into the last session. Your future part of your story is already redeemed as well. I think that might be kind of obvious at this point, but that's the truth. And also, incidentally, Revelation 12, 11, it does actually look back and it looks forward. So that's what we're doing with these two sessions. We're gonna look back and then we're gonna look forward. This session is about looking back in your past. I want you to look back into the story of your past, and we're going to take a look at your story through a series of questions. Series of questions that will help you get a better focus from your past so that you can invite God to be in your past as well. Revelation 12.11 says the blood of the lamb, that's a past event. That's looking back. The blood of the lamb from the cross, which is a past event, as we all know, informs the future that came out of that, including right up to this moment, from your past as well, from all of our past. Through your past, through my past, that cross event has power to redeem everybody's past if a person lets him. So, this exercise, I want you to have downloaded this worksheet. This is really important. This is the last worksheet I'll be handing out to you here. Make sure you have it in front of you as you get started. We're gonna look through this. And again, if you need any help with any of this, please let's talk. Let's have a conversation. Let's try to get through some of this together. And that's another big piece to this, is just so you know that you're not alone. So, as we get started with this, I just want to make sure and be clear and give you this little disclaimer. I'm not a therapist, I'm not a psychologist, definitely not a psychiatrist. So, this stuff is gonna bring up things from your past that you will probably need some help with. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. If you need to get some support and help because of some things from your past, well then invite someone in, and a good therapist will be non-judgmental. This person will be compassionate and as best as they can, understanding of your past, but most of all, they will also help guide you into those moments so that you can spend some time in those. But here's what I want to offer: the cross of Christ has the power to redeem all of those. There is nothing that the cross of Christ cannot reach into your past. It may seem like your past is irredeemable, and it may seem like your past needs to just be forgotten. I don't believe that. Those wounds need to be addressed. And if you do have any deep wounds, you need to spend some time with them and invite the best healer into those. Again, I'm not trying to get around the professional help that comes from a therapist or a counselor or a psychologist or psychiatrist. Okay, I'm not that person. I'm a life coach. This stuff is very interesting to me. I love studying the human mind, but I've only scratched the surface in any of my studies. So, with these questions, though, I think you're going to get a good glimpse into how your story can get redeemed. So let me read to you a first couple things at the top of this sheet here. You may need a qualified therapist, just mentioned that. You can capture your answers in a variety of ways. I would say a journal or notebook is a great way to do it. Handwriting stuff out. I cannot ever fault somebody for doing that. Another way to do it is to record it, though, just like what I'm doing right here. Stick your phone in front of you, hit record, ask the question, and then answer it to your best ability as you're recording it. Don't judge yourself, don't edit yourself or anything like that. Here's a next step though, you can do though. Find somebody you trust. Is it your bride? Maybe you do. I hope you can trust your bride. What about your parents? What about a sibling? What about a really good friend, somebody at church? What about somebody like a mentor or a coach who you can sit down with and have these questions answered? In fact, a really cool thing to think about is to give them these questions, this worksheet, and then have them ask those questions to you. And then if you want, you could even record that audio or video, doesn't matter. And please remember, this is going to take some time. This exercise might take you the longest of all the exercises I'm having you go through with this whole curriculum. These this is 17 questions, and this list is not exhaustive at all. There are so many more questions that I could have brought to this. Again, I'm not the therapist to be able to ask all these questions, but this can take some time. So I just want you to be patient with this whole process. Okay? So I'd like to go through all of these questions, and I'm actually going to be sharing answers to some of these questions for myself as I go through this with you as well. So we're not going to be an hour and a half with this session, but I would at least like to slow down a little bit and go through these questions. Okay, you ready? This is on redeeming your past. And I've got a rhyme and reason for all of this as we move through these two sessions. And by the way, these are not in any particular order. So, at what age were you first exposed to pornography? You may or may not know the exact age or time or whatever. I tell people, for me, my story is that I was exposed at around eight years old. So that's what I usually say. Something like eight years old. And I am blown away sometimes by hearing how many guys have said that same time frame, seven, eight, nine years old, that they were first exposed to pornography. And probably like me, they were exposed because of some male in their life, in my case, it was my dad, who left pornography strewn all over a floor. And that's when I was exposed to it. What was your family life like? Paint this picture of sitting at a table, a dinner table, a meal table, about this time here that I'm saying when you first were exposed or early in life. So who was there? Who was missing? And how did being at the table typically feel? Did it feel stressful? Were you relaxed? Was it a fun time? Was it a time of de-stressing from the day and everybody just sharing what was going on in their life? How was that time? Just share that. Again, trying not to be judgmental, trying not to evaluate, just share what it felt like. Describe the relationship with your dad. Also describe the relationship with your mom. And what about siblings or other family members? Try to single out people that you had any significant time with throughout your childhood and see if you can just take some time to describe those relationships as best you can. What are you most grateful for from your childhood? So you likely had some good memories, right? If your childhood was filled with bad things, there are some things that I think it's important that we remember to be grateful for. For instance, my dad wasn't always out of my life. I spent three months with him in Virginia when I was 10. And after that, it was very sporadic through 14, and then he was gone for good. But up to that time, I do have some fun memories, for instance, of us going fishing. I was I remember fishing in this little pond in southern Maine, way out in the country, and it was a good time. It was fun. I still would love to go fishing to this day. I have those good memories with my brother and my dad. What about what brings you the most pain? So for me, I think probably what gave me the most pain was when friends left out of my life for whatever reason. Maybe it was a summer camp and I made really good friends and that person was gone. I had friends that actually just were out of my life for no reason that I could even remember. That was painful. That's one of the reasons why I value friendships and loyalty in friendships to this day. Did you make friends easily or was it difficult? And explain why you're answered it that way. Did you just have friends because you found yourself in a circle of friends? If you had good mentors, how did they shape your early life? Did you have some good leaders in your life, some mentors? And I hope it was your dad. I really do. If it was your dad, what were there any others? If it wasn't your dad, who was it? I've told people in my story, and you heard it in my testimony. I had four men in my life that took the place of my live-in or should have been a live-in dad. And those men did the best they could. I had Mark who showed me how to hike and showed me hiking in the mountains. I had my uncle Lars, who showed me some things about how to work and work with my hands. My mom's live-in boyfriend, Philip, he showed me how to play baseball and sports, was an introduction with his life. And my big brother Joe. That was a more structured thing, but it wasn't that structured. You know, big brothers, big sisters. And I had that influence in my life for a while through my adolescent years as well. How did you meet Jesus? So that's not how did you go to church? Which church did you go to? It's not if you did all the youth groups or anything like that, or you were a religious person. I'm asking you, how did you meet Jesus? That's the question. Okay? Take some time to answer that question. If you haven't met Jesus yet, I hope this curriculum has brought you closer to him, especially those first five sessions where I talk about your identity in the gospel. That's so important. But I really hope you've met Jesus. What are some small decisions looking back that had a big impact on your life? I can't overemphasize this question. For me, probably the small decision that I thought was small at the time, it was not, yeah, it was a big decision, but the moment itself was actually small when I was straddling my bike there in Portland, Maine, and I was deciding on whether I was going to go to Bath Iron Works on my left or down to the Air Force recruiter station a few blocks to my right. That small moment in the sense of it didn't take me long to make that decision, but that changed everything about the rest of my life. Do you have any moments like that? Small decisions that had a big impact on your life? Recall a moment when you had to overcome a challenge in your young life. And again, it could be young, really young, or teenager. In number 10, what are some achievements from the first part of your life that you're proud of? And it's actually related to number 11. Recall a moment when you had to overcome a challenge. So those could be two different things. I'd say early on in my life, the challenge that I had was with my friend Mark, who helped me overcome the challenge of, I suppose, laziness. I had to get up early. I had to get on the trail and I had to hike and I had to push. And I made it to this summit of a lot of mountains with him. Not a ton, but a lot. Uh, one of them being Mount Washington in New Hampshire. So I conquered that mountain as a teenager. But an achievement that I'm really proud of early in life was basic training. I also talk about that in my testimony as well. Basic training for me was probably the most satisfying achievement early in life for me. Number 12, how did you meet your bride? I love this story. Whenever I've done marriage counseling, because I've asked been asked to do a number of weddings through the years, I always love asking that question. How did you to meet? Tell me that story. And you've got that story in my testimony of how I met my bride, 13. How would you describe the development of your sexual identity? So I told you about that for me as well. Was it done in the context of a loving masculine influence that was safe, or was it done among all of your peers? Or, God forbid, and it probably was the case, like for me, it was developed as you were watching and consuming pornography. So describe that. How would you describe the development of your sexual identity? Number 14, how'd you go about discovering your calling or your career? I love that story too. So maybe you did have something very clear, like my bride, my wife, she had clearly when she was a teenager that she was going to be a pediatric nurse. Guess what she is today? And she's been that for 28 years. So maybe that's you, maybe not. Maybe you had something that happened early in life, like me. I jumped into the Air Force, then I went into ministry, spent a lot of years in ministry. So maybe that story is kind of weaving a path, but maybe it was pretty clear. So tell me about that. Learn or tell yourself, this is your story, about that choosing and discovering of a career or calling. What part of your story from the past are you most afraid of exposing? I wrote that question, and there is a part of my past that is actually only once in a very safe and controlled environment. It wasn't even in therapy either. I've done my own share of therapy sessions. It wasn't even in that. It was in a setting with other men around me that I felt safe enough because that group needed to hear that vulnerability in that moment. I won't share it here. It's too personal. Um, but there is a place in your life that you have been afraid to expose out into the open. Where is that? Where is that? What is that moment? Is it scary? Is it does it make you angry? Does it give you fear? That's something that could only be between you and God, but you've never actually articulated it. You've never written it anywhere, you've never recorded it anywhere. And believe me, it can be scary to do either of those things because you always worry if someone's going to discover it. Fortunately, with today's technology, you can like encrypt your video files and all of that and make it all safe, make sure nobody can see it. So I think it's really important that you consider this. Even if you don't write it out or record it anywhere, ask God to show it to you. Let him bring out his redemption into that. That's a very important question. Here's a great one. What would you tell your 10-year-old self? Now I go up through the ages here, 13, you could add in there 15 or 18. What would you tell those ages of yourself? You're sitting down and you put an empty chair in front of you, and it's your 13-year-old self. And what are you going to tell them? What are you going to tell that 18-year-old self? Do that. That's an amazing exercise to do. Um, number 17, the last question here. Actually, not quite, but number 17. Can you find a way to look back at your story up to now without judgment? So, what do I mean by that? Can you look at your entire story and not feel all of the emotions? I know that's not easy. You're looking back, and especially, I mean, I get that grief, anger, and uh sadness, and just the frustration and confusion can all still be fresh in the mind, especially if you've never dealt with any of them. But can you look at that story, your story, without judgment? God can do that for you. Remember we talked about obstacles and we asked that God could show us this obstacle from his perspective. If there's any obstacle that man has to run through or get around or deal with, it's his past. So, what can you do to look at your past more objectively? So finally, your story that's in light of the cross. How do you bring the cross into the story, your story, and redeem it? I thought about this and I thought, how can it's not complex. And that's why I wrote a simple prayer. Now, please, this prayer, I wrote it for you. It's not the end-all-be-all. Maybe write your own prayer, say your own prayer. But here's the prayer. I'm gonna read it out loud, and maybe just pray with me here. Pray this prayer of redemption. My loving Father, I ask you to apply your Son Jesus' blood shed upon the cross to my past, into the painful parts and the parts that left deep wounds, those places that even now look so dark. Shine the light of your love into those dark corners of those dark rooms I have not visited for a long time. Redeem my story and redeem my life for your kingdom. And God, I am also grateful for the good parts that you brought into my story, and I ask you to help me carry those into my current life as well. In Jesus' name. Amen. So maybe that prayer can help you redeem your story. Maybe that prayer can help your past find redemption. Now you sell yourself short if you think that the cross can't cover your past. Your past might make you feel unlovable, unforgivable, dirty, and just filthy. I am telling you, your identity as a beloved son of God negates all of that. Your past is not beyond the reach of the cross. I believe that with all my heart. Your past can be redeemed. Take the time to answer these questions. You might even think up some of your own questions for yourself to ask that you will bring into that. Because your story is your own story. And so I couldn't cover everybody's past with some of these questions, but I'm pretty good at asking good questions. And these are some of the best questions I could think of to help you start that process of redeeming your past. Again, be patient with this process. Be patient with yourself. You don't have to rush this. You want to invite somebody in to help you through this process, please do. You don't have to be alone. Just know that. And I'll finish with this last question because it goes right into part two. How do you take the redemption of your stories past into your future? How do you take the redemption of your stories past into your future? And we'll start with that in part two. God bless. So do you believe in the power of a full redemption? And the full power of the gospel to restore and redeem your past. So next session, we're going to talk about redeeming the future. In fact, I'll give you just a small preview. Every part of us, past and future, has already been redeemed. Has already been redeemed. So your past, it is your past. I hope you learned lessons from it. Failing forward in learning how to be a better man. How to let those mistakes and failures not keep you down, but propel you forward. That's what the gospel teaches. Of course, among other things, the gospel lets us know that we have worth, that my past is not irredeemable, unforgivable, um, and has no value. Okay. So I hope that helped you. Let's uh join up on the next session, part two, the last session of our curriculum. If you want to spend time with me or other men working your way through some of this stuff, that's what I'm here for. If you like individual coaching, if you like group coaching with the curriculum, with the the uh free indeed, not free indeed, that's a completely different that's a completely different context of a thing I did in the past. The uh Exodus Freedom Journey. Uh so anyway, um please reach out to me, mike at memory store.com. Mike at memory store.com. I'll see you next time. Thank you for listening to the Exodus Freedom Journey podcast. Together with God's mighty hand, let's reclaim your freedom.