You've already started stepping out into rest and starting to do things with intention,
which was the commitment gesture.
It's extremely important.
So before you even knew what it was, some of y'all that I was even going to be talking
about other than rest, you were actually already doing, you were already taking a step that
is in the right direction.
You're already starting to implement certain actions that we have to take as sons of God
if we want to change, if we want to shift into rest.
And so in the commitment gesture, you were using your power of intention and saying,
this is what I desire, Lord, and I'm stepping into it, and this is how serious that I am.
And that is actually setting you spiritually on a particular trajectory.
And there is a bit of breakthrough that comes just because you made that step, and the amount
of money did not matter.
The reason that, and y'all know from having read this, that the money, that the actual
amount was all about what that amount meant to you.
Do you take $10 seriously or do you not?
Do you take $2,000 seriously or do you not?
It's all relative to you.
You're trying to get your soul's attention.
So when you are, but the important thing is that in moving forward with intention, we
do it all from a place of rest, and you've already started that process.
So we're going to continue that by me highly recommending to everyone, a very shocking
thing, I highly recommend from experience with myself and with my clients to not take
notes.
So you will have the recordings, so you don't have to worry.
It's all there.
The reason why is you're, we are more than our mind.
We're more than our, than what we can put through our brain.
In fact, only 5% of our decisions, our activities, how we even send intention out into the world,
only 5% of that actually scientists say, non-believing scientists say that goes through our brain.
95% of our life and our decisions is driven by our subconscious.
Our will is deeper than our mind.
And that also means so that what that means is that there are, there's more to us than
just what we can, that just what we can shovel and kind of funnel through, through our brain.
And we're wanting to allow those other aspects of ourselves to have a part in our journey.
They are all meant to function in a way that we don't consciously know how to direct them
in, but they were created by God to function in a particular way.
They know how to work.
We don't, we don't know how they need to work.
We need to let them be themselves and we need to allow our whole self, which is both, which
is all spirit, soul, and body to have a part in the transition.
So the aspect of not taking notes allows you to sit back and begin to practice receiving
and allowing your soul and your spirit subconsciously to shift you into rest.
Do you see how effortless it is?
So it's not, we're not, we are not working hard so that we can finally rest.
You can't have rest unless you rest.
You can't have rest unless you stop.
So that's what we're going to be talking about this whole weekend.
Stop.
Whatever you're doing, just stop.
It's that easy because we're already everything we wanted to be.
So I highly recommend that you don't take notes.
You can do whatever you want.
Some people can only pay attention if they're taking notes or, but I recommend you don't
think about what you're writing.
If you can just write just because you're listening to me and you're mindlessly writing,
that's great.
If you want to doodle, that's great.
Highly recommend that whatever it is you do, you're not mentally engaging with it.
That's the whole point.
It's just allow, do whatever you need to do.
Y'all are adults, free will beings, but that's what I would highly recommend.
And that's one of the ways you can start practicing receiving.
Jonathan, is this okay?
I think it keeps changing the volume.
So I'm wondering if I'm moving.
Am I moving it?
Are we good?
Just your fluctuation.
Okay, perfect.
Just wanted to make sure.
Okay, because remember, when we receive, the reason that we can receive is that there's
nothing left to do.
God's already died.
He's already had the victory.
He says that we're already one with him.
We're already one with him in spirit.
He says that we can't come to him by behavior.
There's nothing left to do.
So we just, we can receive everything.
Another thing, how to receive some of the information that I'll be talking about.
So some of it for, some of y'all have heard this before.
Others of y'all have never heard it before.
So I wanted to give y'all a recommendation of how to.
Listen to new revelations from the Lord.
I highly recommend, remember, you're not trying to be convinced by me.
I am just up here telling you what I believe.
I'm telling you how I live.
I'm telling you what I've had to own in my life and what I literally live out, and it's transformed my life.
You can choose to have part of it if you want, but you receive it from the Lord.
You don't receive it from me.
So when I'm talking, you just listen.
What is your spirit saying?
Where is your spirit coming alive?
If your spirit comes alive, it means your spirit already knew that thing.
You already knew it.
It's between you and the Father, and you can 100% receive that revelation that the Lord is giving you in your spirit into yourself,
because that will allow it to transform you.
But if there's something that maybe I say and you're not really sure about that,
I don't really know about that, I would highly recommend don't immediately reject it,
because what that does is internally and spiritually we start shutting down, and that's an actual problem.
What we want to do, this is what I recommend, is this is what I do.
I have something that I call my Area 51 Warehouse,
and when I hear something that I'm just not quite sure about,
something that sounds a little out there, but I don't want to reject it, but I don't want to receive it,
I just stick it in my Area 51 Warehouse and just tell the Lord,
okay, Lord, you can pull it forward if ever it is time to reveal that to me,
and I just am not currently ready to receive the truth.
Maybe I don't have a grid for it, or maybe I'm not supposed to receive it at all.
But right now, Lord, I can't figure it out.
So I'm not going to reject it, but I'm not going to receive it either.
So I'm just going to put it back there and just let it hang out.
There's no problem with that.
Then if God tells you something point blank in your spirit to reject, well, then that's different.
But I wanted to mention about how I would recommend hearing people, not just me,
just hearing people, coming across new ideas.
There's a third option.
We don't have to receive or reject.
We can just kind of stick something back there, and you don't have to be worried
that you could be threatened or corrupted by something that you hear here that you weren't quite sure about.
All denominations are represented in this room.
We have conservative, and then we have way out there, and we have everything in between.
But what we're talking about when we're talking about rest is it's actually extremely foundational.
It's the gospel.
It's what we have as a result of the gospel.
Therefore, it is for everyone.
It is freely and effortlessly received by everyone.
We're learning basically the building blocks from which to do everything else that we've been learning in life so far.
So think of all of the other conferences that you've been through or sometimes you're a pastor or whatever,
teachings, books that you've read.
Some of those are like, think of it kind of like at the high school level or at the university level,
the conferences that you're going to, things that you're trying to do with the Lord.
We are going all the way back to kindergarten with this,
because if you're frustrated with why you're hearing people that you highly respect,
that you highly admire for what it is that they can do and have and be and experience in the Lord,
and no matter how many years you've been in it, you can't seem to break through,
there's something with that foundation.
Go all the way back.
Because everything, everything that we do, everything that all of those people talk about has to be done from rest.
So if you're trying to implement it out of strife and get their same experiences out of strife, it won't work.
They talk about rest, but so often people don't know, yeah, but how do I move into it?
We'll be talking about how to move into it.
So rest is actually very foundational.
And once you get those building blocks in place and once you understand them, don't worry.
We're not going all the way back to ground zero, scrapping all of this and starting over.
We don't have to start over.
We still have all of that, but now because we're getting a new foundation,
now as the Lord will take us back to revisit all of these things, we will move very quickly.
So I started to learn all of this when I was around 34 or 35, and I thought, oh my word.
Once I got this new foundation, I thought, I'm going to have to learn everything all over again.
I discovered I didn't.
I was able to catch up really quickly, and then suddenly I took off.
I had gotten to a point and I couldn't get past that point no matter how many years or decades that I spent on it.
Finally, with that new foundation, I was able to come back up to that point and push past it.
So we're just relaying a new foundation.
We're learning how to read.
So you can go to university.
You can listen to a professor, talk to you about calculus.
In the spirit and all kinds of stuff, but if you don't know how to read you can only go so far
So that's what we're that's what we're going to do. It's very basic. Everything that we're talking about is our inheritance
So it is something that you not only have a right to you already have
We're just learning how to remove the layers that have kept us from understanding
How to access it
Okay, this is really important
Okay, we'll be talking more about this, but I provide I try really
My heart is to provide a very safe and supportive environment for people to be able to shift
Because the what it is that we're going to be facing when we enter rest. We're going to be connecting with God
That's where rest is rest is in God
So if we don't have rest
We haven't we haven't allowed ourselves to get close to him and it's because we're afraid of him
So we're going to be removing that fear and we're going to be we're going to be experiencing God and we're going to be coming
We're going to be entering him and then we're going to discover. Oh my word
I was I was here, but I didn't realize that I was I was here
So in order to do that, this is going to cut this is going to require some very serious choices
So the phrase that I like to use is reckless abandon and I don't mean that I don't mean that gently
It is as scary as all the power that you can think it is all the reasons why we've said no
We have made our lives very complicated
Very painful. They're full of a lot of struggle and we have created that world in all of our effort
Trying to resist and and
Trying to resist him and in all of that effort of saying no, that's how we built this up
we're gonna learn how to stop saying no and
so
Remember that phrase remember the reckless abandon because that whenever you come up and up against an obstacle whenever you're afraid whenever you're scared
You're more than welcome to let me know whenever that happens. I can walk you through it
I have done it so many times over very extreme situations
And remember in those times remember that phrase reckless abandon because that's what it requires
And the fastest way that we can become like our father
You know in in doing this in being like just recklessly abandoning ourselves to something
The fastest way that we can actually become like our father is to start acting like him
Not to learn about him
Jump in before you know and figure it out on the ground
And this is the last person in the world that I thought would ever tell you that I
built my entire life
Observing and waiting until everything was perfect before I would step in and so I got to a point where I was so desperate
I realized nope, that's not going to work and I put everything on the line
I put I literally put my life my family my relationships my
relationship with God on the line in order to jump in because nothing was working and that's when I found the Lord and
And in it did require that reckless abandon
Okay, so I'm sorry. I want to try to make sure that hair stand off of that
okay, so let me quickly go walk you through my
Testimony really quick so I was I was very legalistic
I did grow up in a charismatic home, but I was very legalistic. I took that on myself
It was how I interpreted things it was
It was some of the some of the school that I went to some of the some of the church that I was exposed to
Certain things that I would hear someone say and I just interpreted it as very legalistic
I read the Bible like that. So don't ask me how this worked, but I was a five-point Calvinist charismatic. I
Don't know how that's possible. Yes
How did what work oh
Just said that well, there you get there you go. See you caught me there
and
So the I don't know how it worked. That's the problem. That's why I'm I mean hi
I got to the point I realized why isn't this working? Well, it doesn't so I
Yes, it's very very legalistic. You understand you get things with five-point Calvinism are
Are things like limited atonement only so many people can get saved
And God God predestined them and you know, I don't know all kinds of things
So I'm not I'm not talking about about whether those are right or wrong
My point is just to mention those regardless of what it is that we believe even if you are a five-point Calvinist
It is very extreme
so
You know regardless of whether or not it's the truth. It is extreme. So I was extreme in everything
but then I was also charismatic I
Was baptized in the Holy Spirit when I was seven and so I started speaking in tongues
And so I was saved on this for baptized in the Holy Spirit when I was seven baptized in water when I was nine
and
But my life was very joyless, very joyless. It was very oppressed, and I didn't understand how I was supposed to—
I didn't feel loved by God, and I didn't understand other people who liked being Christians.
Now, I didn't tell anybody that, but that's what I was thinking. Also, I did not like Jesus.
I really, really didn't like Jesus. God the Father was the one I would always focus on because he's the Father, and he makes all the rules.
But Jesus was my perfect big brother that I was always being compared to against, and I could never match up.
And that brought a lot of resentment. So that was where I came from.
But, of course, you would never know that. I was a perfect little church girl and went to a very conservative Christian college.
And finally, backtracking just a little bit to let you know what was going on in my professional life, because that plays into it.
So I'm 36 now. At the time that the Lord brought me into this threshold, I was 34.
It was December 2018, and I was 34 years old, and I had been a turnaround business consultant with my best friend who's here, so her and her husband.
I was turning consultants with them. They hired me, trained me.
And the things that you have to go through in that industry, especially the type of people that we wanted to help, it's very extreme.
So a turnaround business consultant takes on a company that is either about to go bankrupt, and you're trying to save them the 11th hour, because that's when they find you is in the 11th hour,
or they've already settled for bankruptcy, and then they save turnaround consultants to grow them very radically so that they won't be like that again,
or you're taking a company that's local and couldn't break through the glass ceiling into national, and you help them finally break through.
Point in explaining that, it's extreme. It's beyond normal business consulting.
It was fire all day, every day. Everybody that you work with, all of your friends and colleagues, all of their lives and their families,
livelihoods are on the line for decisions that you are making like that, and I burnt out.
So I burnt out personally because of how I was living my life. I felt that I was constantly oppressed, that God at least needed something from me,
that it was about my behavior, not about who it is that I was. It's all about what it is that I did and didn't do.
So I burnt out obviously in that, spiritually as well, and then as you can tell, I burnt out professionally,
and I burnt out in all three of those areas multiple times, multiple times in my life,
because I'm one of those people that drive so hard, I literally will drive to death, physical death.
Physically, and in my professional life, I will risk whatever is necessary to do what I think is right,
not what necessarily is right, but whatever it is that I'm thinking must be right.
I will run everything into the ground, sacrifice everything, relationships.
The only thing that I would not risk was my relationship with the Lord.
So finally, that was the final thing I had to risk.
It was very, very extreme, so I was absolutely exhausted.
December 2018, I had all of these dreams that I had built up for 34 years, and I just thought,
oh, if I just endure, if I had faith, if I just keep doing the right thing, what I thought was the right thing,
then finally I would get my reward.
So December 2018, I was hit with the realization, something happened, I was triggered,
and I realized that people around me had been given all, not some, literally all of the dreams
and all of the gifts that I had ever asked God for, all of them.
All of the people around me received all the dreams, and I didn't receive one, not even one, nothing, and I had it.
And I had struggled with depression and PTSD when I was in college and then out of college for about seven years.
Anxiety, you know, would hyperventilate, have terrible, terrible demonic nightmares,
and I struggled with all of that for about seven years.
Finally, thankfully, the Lord healed me and saved me from all of that,
but I'd been healed from that for quite a while by the time I hit 34.
So when I hit 34 and I was triggered again, I went down to suicide level again,
because I'd been at suicide level back then.
I went down to suicide level in hours.
It was that fast.
to suicidal in hours because my brain you know my emotions knew that path it
was very very familiar so I had I realized I remember standing in my
bathroom yeah I think it was December 27th 2018 and it was like I saw this
open vision I had been literally crying for almost 48 hours my eyes were so
swollen that they almost couldn't open and and I I was just I was plummeting
fast and I saw it's like I saw this this vision or something it was like I could
see myself outside of myself and I was and I was spiraling down and and and I
was just feeling my soul just fall into the suicidal depression and and I and I
thought okay Ashley you've been there before you've been in that pit now yes
God is there God is that the low because I had been at what God told me was the
lowest point that a human could get he said Ashley I was I remember I was down
on my knees I was just I was just exhausted and God said Ashley when
people lose spouses or children this is where they go he said this is as low as
a human being can go and he said and he gave me a promise he said I promise you
will never be here again but you've got to get out of this and you've got to
choose me so all that I chose was that he was real I didn't even choose that he
was good I just chose he was real and so that happened like 12 years ago or
whatever so by the time that I'm now in this place where I'm watching myself
spiral down again I'm thinking okay I've been there before and I am NOT
going back because I can hear God there because God's everywhere so I know he's
in that deep dark pit but it's really hard for me to hear him down there and to
have the courage to make the choice that I need to I know that I'm going to but
good night I don't want to go through that hell right because that it does
that feels like hell right there so I what I did is I made a choice very an
intentional decision that power of intention we'll be talking about that on
Sunday and I reached out with my hand not literally with my hand but it's like
I could see in this vision that this hand went out from me and I chose to
grab myself up by the scruff of my neck and yank myself up and internally I felt
my soul rise I'm like okay all right so that was a close one so I was actually
spiritually doing that to my soul it's very very interesting I was very
interesting experience I've never interacted with a vision before but hey
you know when you're in that situation you don't question it all I knew is that
I had made a choice I'd made a very powerful choice to save myself and so I
then told the Lord okay God all I know is that everything that I have done so
far in life hasn't worked nothing has worked I believed that your that your
pleasure came through my through everyone's spiritual maturity so your
pleasure came through my spiritual maturity more spiritually mature I
became the more you were pleased with me and my spiritual maturity came through
pain I thought that that's how we got spiritual maturity the more pain you go
through the more spiritually mature you become and the more pleased God is with
you so so that meant that I saw pain the higher the pain the greater God's
pleasure very twisted idea of who it is that God is but I because I believed that
the higher the pain the more God's pleasure I embraced pain when it came to
me I didn't just I didn't just deal with it I embraced it and took it into
me I made it harder and then if enough pain didn't come my way I would seek it
out and create it because I'm trying so very hard to please my God so very hard
to get close to him so I told God this is what I've been doing so far and Lord
whenever I've made a decision I would not move forward or backward unless I
heard your voice when we forward or backward unless she told me so and then
unless somebody came to me and I absolutely had to do make a decision
right then and then the way I would make a decision is okay what is it that I
want to do then I won't do that one what is it that I not wanted that I don't
want to do this one so this is the one I'm gonna do so I always did what I
didn't want to do and would never allow myself to do what I wanted this is who I
thought God was so this is that this is who God has saved me from so like I said
in in that December I told God okay none of that worked but I don't know
what does so until you show me I'm asking that you show me what really does
work but until you show that to me I'm going to start doing the opposite of
what I've done in life so far I'm gonna start living the opposite of what it is
that I've lived so I thought okay well what would the opposite be because I'm
not gonna walk away from God because you know I've chosen him so what am I
gonna do and then I thought okay my decisions I'm not gonna do whatever I
if I'm gonna do it that's what I'm gonna do so I started making decisions and
that's when I found my God and I was so weird I still remember exactly where I
was sitting where where my spirit or soul moved or something I made a
decision God this is what I'm gonna do and then my insight my soul moved and it
could breathe my spirit could breathe and I thought there's my God
my word. I've been looking for him for 34 years. Then about six months later, I
heard the gospel for the first time in a very transformative way. Obviously, I was
saved when I was four, but I heard about it in such a way that when I interacted
with the gospel in this way, when I interacted with Christ in this way, I
finally felt that huge transformation that you hear about in other people's
testimonies, you know, where they were like drug addicts and then they have
this like moment of blinding light and whatever. And then they just
immediately left their drugs. They had this epiphany. They had
this ecstasy feeling. I thought, what must that be like? It's like everything turned
into technicolor in their lives. I thought, that must be wonderful. But I was four and I
don't feel any different. In fact, I don't like being a Christian. So what is all
that about? I discovered what that was about. So some people remember their
salvation date. My salvation date was July 11th, 2019, because that is when I
found my God. So I listened to the gospel from a man that I'll be
teaching a lot of my stuff from, Chris Blackaby. A lot of you know him. And I'd
heard his message on YouTube. Didn't know a thing about him, just clicked on it.
And he started talking about the gospel. And I told the Lord, I
remember pausing it at one point, and I told God, I could just, I don't know, it's
like my spirit could just sense him here. And so I talked to him and said, God, I'm about to
go into that. And I don't know if it's right or wrong. I don't know if you
created a relationship with you to look like that or not. All I know is that
nothing else that I've done so far has worked. And that sounds wonderful. It
sounds wonderful and absolutely perfect if a relationship with you could look
like that. So I am choosing Lord, you know, before I wouldn't move forward or
backward unless the Lord said, I didn't do that this time. I told the Lord, I'm
gonna go into it. After I go into it, if I'm wrong, you can correct me. But I told,
and I'm not recommending that you talk to God like that. But you know, we all have
said things to the Lord in very desperate moments, and he's a big
God. He can handle it. But I told him, I said, I'm going, I wasn't disrespectful, but I
was very serious. I'm gonna go into that, and then if I'm wrong, Lord, you can
correct me when I'm in it. So I jumped in with both feet. That's another thing
that we're gonna be talking a lot about this weekend. It has to be all
chipped in. That reckless abandon. None of this, oh, I'm gonna test this out. It
won't work. I promise you it will not work. But I jumped a hundred percent in,
and I was like, oh my word, this is God. I, this is the God that other people talk
about. This is the God that people die in Colosseums and facing a lion for. I
did not understand that until that time. So we'll be talking, so before we
even talk about rest, we'll be talking about the gospel. But it's in a very
different way than some of you have ever heard. Some of you have heard
Chris Backeby, and then others who teach like him, who have understood that
message from our Father. But for some of you, it might be very, very new, and it
is completely, completely transforming. So then the Lord just has just walked me
through a time where he was just teaching me what it is that, who it is
that I was, how to operate in from this new place, with this new understanding of
my identity in Christ, as to, based on this new gospel that I now had. And then
I then, I then had to take it into other areas of my life, including my business.
Okay, now I was a turnaround business consultant, but I was feeling that the
Lord wanted me to do something different. What is this thing in me that
needs to come out? So over about a year, year and a half, and the reason I'm going
into this detail is for those of you who are holding on to a frustrated dream of
like business or something else, that you feel something's inside of you, and it's
frustrating that it's taking so long. Sometimes it just takes a long time. And
my year and a half was, oh my word, that was so pressurized. It was very, very, very
fast. And anyway, so about a year, year and a half, it took me for the Lord to
finally begin to articulate, Ashley, what I have been teaching you about for years
is rest. So remember what I said, that when you go back to your foundation, how
you now see all of your life through a different paradigm. God didn't, God didn't
obliterate everything it is that I had learned, everything it is that I
experienced and accomplished, as if, oh well, that doesn't mean anything. You know,
let's start all over, because that was just trash. God's like, no, no, no. Now let's
just see it through a totally different way. And, and so he then began to show me,
Ashley, I've been teaching you about rest, but you were doing it out of strife. You
were trying to get the results that you were, that you were getting in life. You
need to stop trying, because it's who you are, and it needs, and you need to let, you
need to stop and finally let it out. So that is very, very brief testimony of my
36 years with the Lord.
But I'm very grateful to finally be in this place and to have received from the Lord the message of rest
because it's transformed my life. It is, like I said, it's the basis from which we do everything else.
So after this, you can go to all these other conferences and learn all of these different things
about how to experience God this way or how to learn more about God in this way
or how to be intimate with the Lord in this way.
But you have to do it all from a place of rest or none of it will work.
Or it can't be sustained. You might get glimpses of it, but it can't be sustained unless it's in rest.
So what actually is rest?
So rest is actually not inactivity, and it's not the absence of unpleasant circumstances.
Rest is actually abiding in God. It's actually a place. That place is God himself.
We are in him. We abide in him. So when we're in that place, we're in rest.
And so rest is actually a place in God in which we are allowing him to be
or understanding and acknowledging the fact that he is the source of everything in our life.
He is the source of how we get our protection, our provision, our identity,
the fact that we feel loved, liked, and comforted.
The reason I point all those out are, and we'll be talking about that in a second,
is actually that is where mother and father wounds stem from.
Father wounds stem from issues that we've had with the masculine in our lives
that can come from either a man or a woman.
Typically, though, obviously it'll come from a man.
Usually it'll come from a father, which is why it's called a father wound.
But it's from the masculine, and the masculine is meant to help someone else understand
that they're protected, provided for, and identified.
And if they don't have that, and then they now suffer traumas and are coping
and come up with all kinds of coping mechanisms as a result of it, it's called a father wound.
Mother wound is the other aspect of the father, other aspects that he provides.
And it is where, a mother wound is where we have a lack in our lives of understanding
that we are loved, liked, and can expect to be comforted.
So if we have that, well then we can develop what's called a mother wound.
We have all these traumas, and then that will manifest itself in particular ways,
and we end up coping and using all kinds of things.
I'll mention some very specific things in just a second that are indicative of mother wounds
and other things that are indicative of a father wound.
But the whole point of all of this is to help us understand,
to get some kind of a physical foothold of things in our lives that are going on
and understanding it's not our father and our mother.
The issue is we projected those things onto God, and that's how we interact with Him.
So we have this father wound with God, or this mother wound with God,
and that is what we need to overcome.
We need to understand that we have not been given a very, have received a very clear picture
in reality of who it is that God actually is.
So rest is understanding that He is actually allowing him, not understanding.
It's allowing him to be the source from which we receive all of those things
and being the source of everything that happens in your life.
Your clients, who you get, your business, your dreams, your heart's desires,
your relationships with other people, your finances, everything needs to come from God,
not by us working for it, thinking God has left us abandoned and alone,
and that He's going to come back one day making sure that we got it right,
that it's all on us, and that we have to carry that burden and that weight of that responsibility,
because it's not. The Lord is the one that we need to rely on to provide for all those things.
We'll be walking into that about how to literally, practically do that,
because I have to live it, so I want to explain it to y'all about how you can live it that way too.
So rest, why are we not in rest? Rest is actually our natural state.
So to not be in rest is not natural for a son of God.
So what is it that we're doing? We're actually in a constant state of resistance.
I'll be drawing some visuals later to help us understand, but we're in a constant state of resistance.
If you're not in rest, you're in resistance.
You're actively doing something. You're not passively doing something.
You are actively doing something.
Now you may not be conscious of it, but we are resisting.
be going through, you'll come up against hurdles.
And I want to walk you all through those.
So feel free to let me know when you run up
against one of those and can't seem to go through.
Because I can work with you to help identify that that is
actually resistance.
Because it feels like I'm doing everything
and I can't go any further.
You know, I'm not doing this, Ashley.
I'm trying.
I want this.
No, we're resisting.
And to help us identify deep down where that resistance is
coming from.
So if we're not in rest, we're actually in resistance.
And we're resisting God.
If rest is in God, and we're not feeling at rest,
it means we're in resistance against him.
Why would we be in resistance against God?
Because we don't feel safe with him.
And why don't we feel safe with him?
We don't feel loved.
We don't feel provided for, protected, identified, loved,
liked, or able to be comforted.
And so we're in a constant state of resistance.
We want to keep him at bay.
We want to learn about him.
And we want to get close to him.
We want to feel him.
But we don't want to move into him.
And we don't want him to move into us.
Because it's very, very vulnerable.
And we have to overcome that.
So that is the state that we're actually in.
But I want to make sure to constantly layer
in lots of encouragement in here.
Excuse me.
You are actually in a state of rest.
You're just not aware of it.
So we are trying to move our soul to the point
where it stops resisting because our spirit's already in rest.
It is already who you are.
That's why you have permission to move into it.
You're not going to be doing something or becoming
something this weekend or from this message of rest
that you're not already.
You're going to realize that you are and choose to stand in it.
That's all we're doing.
You already have it.
You're not gaining anything.
Because God's already given you everything.
You're not becoming something different.
You don't have to change.
You're everything you've ever wanted to be.
You were all of those commandments
that Jesus told us to be.
You're everything in the Ten Commandments,
everything on the Sermon on the Mount,
all of the edifications, all the encouragements,
all the whatever.
Those are actually descriptions of your character.
But we don't believe that that is.
And whatever it is that we believe
is what has power in our lives.
So we've got to shift our belief to actually believing
that whatever God says about us is true.
So when I was first learning, well,
let me go back really quick.
So the reason why we don't feel safe with God
is we don't want to receive his love.
It feels very, very dangerous, especially those of you
who are married or those of you who have been married.
You understand that love is a very, very vulnerable thing.
You have to be vulnerable in order
to give and to receive love.
So if you don't feel safe, you're
going to keep it at a distance.
And you can't.
And you're not allowing the other one
to love you if you're keeping them at a distance.
So we're in resistance.
And we're not able to receive or accept and move into God's love.
But actually, what it is that we've chosen
is, just like Brennan Manning says,
so Brennan Manning was a man that God first
introduced the extremity of his love to me through.
And he talks about the fact that Christianity
is not an ethical code.
It's not a moral ethical code.
It's actually a love affair.
What it is that we've chosen, when we chose God,
we didn't choose a religion.
We didn't choose a faith.
We did not choose something to believe in.
We didn't choose a group or an organization
to be a part of, to make us even get a sense of our world.
We actually chose a husband.
We chose a being to be united with
in the whole rest of our lives, everybody,
the people that you've married, the businesses that you have,
the decisions that you've made in life, where it is that you
go, how it is that you journey.
All of that is for the purpose of directing and guiding
the development of our relationship with God.
That is the whole point of everything,
is the development of relationship.
And so Christianity is actually a love affair.
It is our love affair with a being.
And so we have to allow that being.
He's not there giving us lists, not there
giving us 10 commandments.
He's there trying to say, I want to show you who I am.
I want you to know my favorite color.
I want you to know how to, I want you to feel me.
I want to feel you.
I want to be affected by you.
I don't just want you to be affected.
by me. I went to be affected by you. I created you so I could be affected by
you. It's very, very, very powerful. So we have a little, so, so very backwards, I
did, so very, very backwards, and it made life so hard because it's actually not
the way that it, that it is. Everything is, everything that the Lord is, is
beautiful, is good, is love, and it's freedom. All of your trials and all of
your struggles are actually thresholds that God is using as an invitation. Okay,
you know, I can, I would love and accept you unconditionally right here, but
wouldn't you like more love and freedom? That's what your trial is. The trial is
an invitation. It's not a test of, okay, you know, I've been teaching you all
these years. Let's see what you know. Let's see if you pass this test. That's
not what God's asking. God is saying, you know, I know you're going through a hard
time. I want, I want you to know you have this choice. Do you want to move into
more love and freedom? Because this will enable you to cross that threshold. Do
you want to choose that or not? If you don't choose that, that's fine, but this
is an invitation. What are you going to do? It's not a sinner in the hand of an angry
God. He's not looking at us, you know, just like, you know, like the school
master or this, you know, this, this business master. Okay, you know, here's
your test. What are you going to do about it? And holding us accountable to it, he's
saying, no, no, no, I'm inviting you. Wouldn't you like to move into more love
and freedom? Wouldn't you like to experience more of this? Okay, so let's
look at some scripture references really quick. We're not going to be looking at
it up on the screen for just a second. I'm just going to say them really fast.
So when God loves us in a variety of ways, he loves us very tenderly, which is
what we're very used to. We're used to that, the lamb and the
shepherd and the child, the parents, and it's all very nice because it's safe. But
what about the other aspects of God's love that he talks about in scripture? So
in Hosea 2.6, I want to talk about the intimacy that he talks about really
quick. In that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband. That doesn't
sound like a parent to me. It doesn't sound like a shepherd. In that day, you will
call me my husband. You will no longer call me my master. In Song of Solomon 4.9,
it says, you have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride. You have stolen my heart
with one glance of your eyes. God said that. We didn't ask him to say that. That
was him voluntarily giving something of himself to us. Then in Song of Solomon
6.5, it says, turn your eyes from me. They overwhelm me. That is how we affect God.
So he had just said, you've stolen my heart, my sister, my bride. You've stolen
my heart with one glance of your eyes. Then he says, turn your eyes from me. They
overwhelm me. You affect the Lord like that. You have permission to step into
that love because he's affected by you and he desires you. He created what he
would desire. We have power over God's heart because he gave it and what that
means is he had to put himself in a vulnerable position to do so. He made, the
God of the universe made himself vulnerable to you as an individual. So
he does have, he does have that tender love. He does have love like friends. He
has the love like parent to a child, but he also has a very wild and
compassionate love. The reason I want to bring that up is it's very forceful, it's
very strong, and that's what we're afraid of. But that is the highest form of
intimacy with God. So if all we want to be settled with is the five-year-old
Sunday school version of, you know, a shepherd and a lamb, that's all we're
going to get of God. And there's a lot of distance there. Yes, we all had to
start there. So that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. And there's still
aspects, no matter how mature that we get, where God still interacts with us as a
shepherd and a lamb. But there are other aspects that we're wanting to move
into intimacy with the Lord that can only be had between a husband and a
bride, and they can only be had with that intimacy. So if we look in Song of
Solomon, it talks about the fact that, so this is a very interesting subject for
me to have to talk about, excuse me, because most people are just like, oh
okay, okay, I got it. And then other people, it's really bothered, so I
try to be very careful with it. But hey, it's in the Bible. And that's the fact
that in Song of Solomon, we can see that actually our
The picture that God has put on earth of our interaction with him is as lovers.
The most intimate way that we can be connected with God is as lovers.
So, as a husband and a wife.
And that means that, as you can read in the Beloved and the Lover talking to each other
Talking to each other in the Song of Solomon.
So, the fact that with a husband and wife, if we're looking at the Beloved and the Lover and how they talk to each other,
you can tell that, by their language, God created us to be sexually aroused by us.
Now, bear with me for just a second.
We're not talking about earthly sexual arousal.
Sexual arousal is the type and shadow on this earth of something that we don't even have a grid for in the Spirit.
So, let's not all get caught up with,
wait a minute, so what are you saying, that God wants to, no, no.
That's an early picture that kind of gives us some ideas, because of how physical anatomy works and whatever.
What our interaction with the Lord looks like in the Spirit.
So, think of it kind of like this.
Think of the grid that a baby would have for being able to understand the consummation in a marriage between a man and a woman.
No grid.
I mean, how much logic has to develop spiritually, mentally, emotionally, logically, whatever, to be able to get to that point?
There's decades in order to get to that point.
That is how it is with us trying to compare the consummation of marriage between a man and a woman and what God actually means.
So, break the shock value off of yourself for just a second.
It's not what God doesn't mean literally, but he's using that as a type and a shadow so that we can look at these pictures,
look at the interaction and be able to understand what we can expect and what we should desire out of a type of intimacy with him.
Now, it requires a vulnerability on both sides.
Intimacy between a man and a woman requires a vulnerability on both sides.
It's very extreme.
It's not just physical vulnerability.
We're all very aware of that.
It's not just physical vulnerability.
There's obviously the taking off of garments, etc., but it's more than that.
You have to be emotionally vulnerable.
So, this goes back to the mother wound and the father wound.
This is the part in this teaching that I like to bring this up because it really helps to drive some things home.
It's easy to understand why somebody who's not married might struggle with certain addictions because we would think in the physical,
well, there's no place for them to be able to express themselves in their need or whatever.
But then when they get married, why do people still struggle with those types of addictions, still sexual addictions?
Because it's not just the physical intimacy.
It's the emotional vulnerability that's required.
So, if there's still a struggle, it means that there's a lack of emotional vulnerability to some degree.
So, the two examples that I want to give, usually an addiction like pornography will come out of a mother wound.
This belief that we're not loved, liked, or can expect to be comforted, and it's a form of self-comfort.
And the reason for that is there's distance because there's no one else involved.
Because they don't like to be emotionally vulnerable.
They don't feel safe.
And so, they can't do that with their spouse.
So, that's why you can be married and still struggle with some of these addictions because the physical isn't the problem.
So, then on the other side, a father wound is what can actually end up dealing, people who deal with father wounds can end up in homosexuality.
And that, yes, that is both gay and lesbian.
It's both.
And I've actually heard that from someone who used to be homosexual.
They said that it doesn't matter what gender.
It comes from a father wound because fathers identify us.
It is by the masculine that we come to know who it is that we are.
Protection, provision, and identity comes from the masculine, love, like, and the expectation to be able to be comforted.
The nurturing aspect comes from a mother.
So, I wanted to point out, the reason I wanted to point out those two perversions is there is a, we need to see that all of these things are types and shadows.
So many times, especially non-believers don't understand,
well, why is all of that wrong?
Because it's a type and a shadow
of what is happening in the spirit,
and that's a very serious thing.
So in not having emotion,
or not allowing ourselves to be emotionally vulnerable
with the Lord, we'll come to the Lord and say,
okay, God, I'm here.
I'm here in my quiet time, and why aren't you meeting me?
Well, if we're not allowing ourselves
to be emotionally vulnerable past a point,
he's not going to violate our free will and pass that.
So we have to learn, in some of these practice exercises,
that how to actually push past that,
how to allow ourselves, how to expose ourselves
to finally be emotionally vulnerable with the Lord.
There's also that aspect of, you know,
where I talked about, you know, father wounds,
you know, and how, in the physical,
it manifests a lot of times as struggles
with, like, your identity as in, like, homosexuality
or some other transgender, you know, issue.
And, of course, in the spirit,
if we're not allowing ourselves to be close to the Lord,
because we don't, we are not getting our identity from him,
we're getting our identity by something it is that we do,
or how it is that we behave, our career,
I don't know, just all kinds of ways
that we use to identify ourselves,
then it's a perversion,
and it's also not letting us be close to the Lord
and have the intimacy in the only way that we can have it.
So these, so I mention those things
because those, it kind of gets us,
something that we understand, okay,
we got a grip of these types of,
these types of addictions or of issues or whatever,
this is how it translates into the spiritual
so that we can understand that we are all doing that,
that version in the spirit,
and that's why we're not at rest,
and this is a big issue.
It's the lack of emotional vulnerability,
and the lack of, and then us choosing to be identified
by something outside of God.
So there, we can see the seriousness of it in the physical,
but it's, there were just pictures
of the seriousness of it in the spiritual as well.
Now, and so intimacy can only come
through complete vulnerability,
not halfway, not one toe in, not trying,
complete, and yeah, it's hard.
It is really, really, really hard.
We're gonna be walking through an exercise in a second
that I don't like to do because I have to go to Jesus,
and I love Jesus now.
I love Jesus, but so I don't have that same problem
with Jesus that I used to have.
I love Jesus now, I talk to him all the time.
I probably talk to him, I may talk to him
more than I talk to God the Father, I'm not sure,
but I have to allow him to love me,
and I have to receive it, and I don't,
and it scares me every time, and I know how wonderful it is
because it's changed my life, and it's that scary
that even after all of this time,
I still don't like doing it, but I get to a point,
now, I can move further into it than I used to.
I can allow him to love me more than I used to,
but I, even I hit a point, and I'm like, oh my word,
there you go, there's that, and I don't wanna open myself
up that much, Lord, so we'll be walking through that,
but it is very, very challenging,
but that is where everything we've ever wanted is.
We're already in that place.
We're just bringing ourselves to acknowledge
that we're already there.
Now, love is his nature.
It's his essence, it's his DNA.
It's not something he does.
It is in, it's in the fiber of his being.
It is actually what defines love out here.
It's something in here that comes out,
so it's the very essence and the very DNA
of who it is that he is, so he subjects
all of his character to love, all of it,
even his might, even his power.
Everything is subject to his love.
Everything in the universe is subject to God,
and God subjects all of his character,
all the aspects of his character to his love,
and you are the object of that love,
so now we know why Satan doesn't like us.
Now we understand we are the object of God's focus,
God's character, of his DNA, and his essence
that is coming out.
It is coming out towards us,
so it's very, very powerful.
That is, and, okay, so could we look
at Ezekiel 16 really quick, Jonathan?
This is talking about God's love of us
during our lack of it.
And, which I think is really, really fascinating.
Thank you, I think, I think maybe it starts in verse six.
We'll be reading, I don't remember, maybe through verse 14?
Perfect, okay.
So, then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your
blood, and as you lay there in your blood, sorry for the gruesome picture,
but as you lay there in your blood, I said to you, live.
I love that that's God's first word to us. Looked at us
and said, live. He speaks life over us. I made you grow like a
plant of the field. You grew and developed and entered puberty. Your breasts had
formed and your hair had grown, yet you were stark naked.
You were vulnerable. Later I passed by and when I
looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my
garment over you. When we come to God in vulnerability, He covers us.
So, vulnerability in God is a safe
place. Vulnerability isn't bad and it's not
unsafe. We don't have to feel unsafe in our vulnerability. The vulnerability was made
to be covered by God. It's the fact that Adam and Eve
moved us out from under it, you know, before Christ died,
we were just out from under it, that we suddenly realized the exposure because it was always
meant to be covered. There's nothing wrong with it. It's not being hidden.
We and our spirits, you know, being covered by God, we're not being hidden.
We're just being covered by the one that we were intended to be covered by.
And then also I thought, I love it, where it says
I saw that you were old enough for love. You were old enough for
you to be affected by God and for God to be affected by you.
I gave you my
psalm oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became
mine. He always talks throughout the Bible in terms of possession.
I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you.
I bathed you with water. You remember in Ephesians, we're going to be talking about this
tomorrow, you washed the bride with the washing of water by the word.
I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put
sandals of fine leather on you. So this is very important. I know it's a long passage,
but this part is really important. I dressed you in fine linen and covered
you with costly garments. I adorned you with jewelry. I put bracelets on your arms
and a necklace around your neck. And I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears, and a
beautiful crown on your head. So you were adorned with gold and silver. Your clothes were
of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. Your
food was honey, olive oil, and the finest flour. You became very
beautiful and rose to be a queen. And your fame spread among the nations on account of
your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect,
declares the Sovereign Lord. So the reason I wanted to
go through that passage is the reason that God is giving all of those clothes
and all of that jewelry is not to cover us or to make us into something that we're
not. Because you don't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
Putting a gold ring in a pig's nose isn't going to change
it from being a pig. It can't change us. He's not covering
us up, hiding us, like, oh my goodness, we can't look at that.
That's not pretty, so let's just make it look better. The reason that a king
is giving all of that to his bride is that the value of what he
gives her has to match her value.
Otherwise, there's going to be an imbalance.
It can actually corrupt the things, or you can be
not fully clothed
and appropriately honored if what you're given
is less than what you are. So what this is actually saying
is this is how God sees us. This is the value that He's
giving us an actual picture of the value that we can
understand the value in which He sees that we already are. He's not
giving us value, more value than He says that we have. He's saying that we
are that. So I wanted to just really
point that out. God is just declaring all of these things over us. We don't have
to be afraid when we come to Him and we want to be loved. Or we want
to receive His love. He's given us all of this. All of it.
We didn't even ask for it.
Last few things before we go into the practical exercise.
It's very important when learning to
learn to be loved by the Lord. That all sounds
great. How do I learn to be loved by God? Because I want to be loved
by God. If you're like me, I thought, well God, I love you
and I'm here. You say that you love me, but I don't feel it.
Even though I didn't want to say it out loud, I was thinking, God, this is all in you.
I'm doing everything, but I don't feel loved.
You need to do more things so that I'll feel loved. You need to have this
happen in my business. You need to have this happen in my relationships. You need to
have this happen in my finances. Then I'll know that I'm loved.
Goodness, I guess I've been talking for a while and so it's getting drier.
So in order to, I didn't know what else to do, I thought I'm doing everything that God
says to do.
God says if I love him, I'm going to follow his commandments, so I'm following his commandments,
you know.
And he says that he loves me and he's showing me all of the time, but I'm just not feeling
it and I'm just not seeing it, there must be something wrong with me or God's just not
holding up his end of the bargain.
So how did I move past that?
And this is what I recommend for y'all, again, remember Reckless Abandon.
I began to realize in the Bible that there, I had no, God gave me no obligation to love
him back, none.
So the first thing to do if you want to start not just loving the Lord, but being able to
receive his love, is to finally release yourself from being obligated to love God.
The reason we feel, you are a new man, you're not the old man.
The new man lives, the old man has died, the new man always loves his father.
God's not worried you're not going to love him back if you don't feel obligated, you're
always going to love him, because you already do, but it's the old man that we keep trying
to resurrect that our soul still thinks is alive, that it's holding onto, and we think
we have to try to love God.
You don't need to try to love him, God's not worried that you're not going to love him.
But you have to, remember what I talked about, about rest, what we're going to be saying
repeatedly, stop.
Whatever it is you're doing, stop.
Stop loving him.
Stop trying, because you already do.
And as soon as you, because the only way that we know how to love is to try, so stop.
And then you'll discover this other aspect of you that loves very, very powerfully from
the Spirit, and that is how God wants to be loved.
You already have it, you already do it, but we've been hiding it, thinking that we didn't
have it and had to try.
So stop trying.
Stop trying to love God.
Stop loving him.
I'm not saying hate him, I'm not saying that.
Stop loving him, and then you find out that you do.
So we're removing all of that trying, we're removing everything that we're actually doing
that's actually creating resistance.
So that's what it is.
When we're trying, we're resisting.
I'm trying, Lord.
I'm trying.
We don't under, we think that we're moving forward, and we're resisting.
That trying is resisting.
So release yourself from obligation.
Remember that someone, when someone loves you, you're not, and this goes for God, and
it goes for people.
When someone loves you, you're not obligated to love them back, and you're not obligated
to receive their love.
Because love has to be freely given in order for it to be love.
If it's not freely given, it's not love.
So if we're loving out of obligation, you're not even loving anyway.
So just stop.
But you already are it, so there's nothing to be afraid of.
You're going to find it there.
Again, reckless abandon.
These radical things that we're doing that we're thinking, oh my goodness, I'm going
to risk my relationship with the Lord.
You know, that's what I thought I was going to do.
But I had to take that step, and I promise you that's where you find him, is if you make
those very radical decisions.
Remember that, here's proof, that when Christ died, he died with us hating him.
He didn't die when we loved him.
So if God would die because he loved us, in order to restore back to himself someone who
is not only hating him, but actually causing the killing, then we apparently really are
not obligated to love God in order for him to love us back.
He already did it.
He went as far, greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his
friends.
He's already gone as far as he can possibly go.
So we're truly under no obligation to love the Lord back.
So that's proof that we've actually already been there in spirit, because God says that
actually we all killed Christ, and so we've already done all of that in spirit, and there's
nowhere else to go.
Your desiring him is not required for him to desire you.
And you can't lose it, and you don't have to love him back, so just let it go.
You have to let, okay, this is the crux of rest right here.
Rest is release.
Rest is letting go.
You have to let go in order to love, because everything in God has to be freely given and
freely received, so it's all about having open hands and letting go.
And then we find that everything works.
We find that we already are that thing.
So you have to let go first before you can actually receive God's love, and before you
can love him back.
you love him because of who it is that you are, not because of something that
you learn or try to do. Okay, so we're about to get into the practical
exercise just really quick. One of the few things I wanted to prepare us
for is that how do we know that we're loved is we have to observe. We have to
watch and we have to receive. We can't try. We can't try to understand. We just
have to let it come. And here's the thing, you can't just let it come at you like
because we're gonna be sitting there and looking at Jesus and we don't just let
it come at us. We have to let it come in and that's what's not gonna feel good.
Meaning like, you know, that right before, now it feels good once it goes in, but
that that moment right before all of the resistance of no I can't receive that, I
don't I don't deserve it. I don't want him to see what he what I think he might
see. I didn't know how he might respond. I didn't know what he might say. We
have to we have to push through all of that and we have to allow ourselves to
just observe what it is that he wants to give us because the gift or the love is
all about the giver. It's not about the receiver. So God's love is not about us.
It's about who it is that he is. So when you go to God, this is very important if
you remember nothing else from this whole weekend, please remember this, that
we need to come to God and allow him to be who he wants to be with us. We don't
get to dictate. We don't get to have a say-so. We need to come to God and allow
him to and just come to and say, okay God, whoever it is that you are, give me that.
Just allow him to allow him to love us because that is the greatest way to love
someone is to not do those five love languages and I'm not saying that
there's not value in them and that that's like a stepping stone. It is not
a mature way to love. Those five love languages are not a mature way to love.
They're a way to grow in love and that's fine but they're not a mature way.
A mature way is not, hey look, this is how I feel loved if you give these
things to me. So I need you to change what you're doing. I need you
to understand I feel loved when people give me gifts. I feel loved when da-da-da-da.
Well, that's not how I give love. Well, that's how I receive it. So if you
want me to feel loved, you know you need to do that. These are the
conversations that husbands and wives have had ever since that book came
out. The problem is we're demanding something of somebody else that has to
be freely given in order for it to be real. So when you love someone, the best
way to love someone is to allow them to be whoever it is that they are
and whatever it is that they want to give you to give it and you to choose
that you're receiving that person. That is what we're choosing in a marriage. Who
do we want to receive from unconditionally without rules? Allowing
them to be who it is that they are. Now we're not talking about
abuse. We're not taking this into some really weird, very extreme. I'm just
talking about healthy relationships. We need to allow
someone to be who it is that they are and to express of themselves what they
want to give us because what they want to give us is themselves. So if we are
dictating to them what it is that we're giving to them, what we want from them,
what's going to make us feel good, that's like taking a drug. It's fake. It doesn't
work. They have to give of themselves, not be dictated to about
something. Okay, I'm going to give you this grocery list. This is how I feel
loved. That is how we honor and truly love someone else is by
allowing them to be themselves. So we do the same with the Lord. It's all about
the giver. Love is all about the giver and not about the receiver. So it's
sensing what he delights in. When he's looking at you, when we go through this
in a second, he's looking at you and you're receiving all of this. Just sense
what he's delighting in in you. So in this exercise, what we're going to do
is, I didn't learn this from anybody. I just started doing it and I realized how
powerful it was and then I started telling other people about it, my
clients or whatever, and you wouldn't believe the number of people who said,
oh my word, I actually can do it. Because it sounds so simple. It's such an easy
thing, but that emotional vulnerability, they finally came head-to-head with, oh
that's my problem. I'm not doing that, am I, whenever I go to the Lord. So it
highlights what areas in which we don't feel, how we're not feeling safe with
the Lord. So what I recommend is that you can do whatever you want. You can stay
exactly where you are. If it was me and I was sitting out there, my personality is
I would like get in a corner and sit on the floor and do it. You can do whatever
you want. You can stay in your chair. You can turn your chair around and move your
chair somewhere, but just get whatever, whatever in
that you need to create for yourself, you can lay down, whatnot, whatever environment
that you need to create for yourself in order to allow yourself to focus on the Lord and
to give yourself a chance and a supportive environment for you to feel safe to move in
the Lord in a way that you haven't felt safe to do so before, in order to risk, in order
to have that courage and to risk being vulnerable and move into a place that you don't feel
safe.
So when you come up against some of this resistance, then just realize, okay, I don't feel safe
there, so I'm going to free fall into where I don't feel safe.
So there's no safety net, I'm afraid.
Now there is a safety net, I mean, it's God, but there's no safety net I can logically
walk you through to help you cope.
There's nothing.
But God says he's there.
It's this risky, it's this reckless abandon.
This is the foundation of rest.
This is why we're talking about it.
If we do not, are not able to receive God's love, we can't shift into rest because he
is rest.
That is the place we're going into.
So anyway, that's why it's important and that's why we needed to talk about it tonight.
It's the foundation to everything.
So when you're in that place, you know, when you've got your little environment set up,
I imagine Jesus coming to you.
I personally like to, my favorite place is to sit on my bed.
I just sit on the side of my bed, you know, where Jesus can come, and I position myself
where Jesus can come and also sit on my bed.
And I think I like that because it just feels relaxed.
And it feels kind of like, I don't know, like close, because I can't do anything.
I don't like doing it standing because I feel active, feel on the go, and you know, my body
wants to run and whatever.
I just, I put myself in, where do I feel is safe?
And then I invite my Jesus to come, and he just sits there, and then I let him look at
me.
So I advise, look him in the eyes, and there's two things that I recommend, do not break
eye contact.
Because what happens is when you just sit there and you allow the Lord to love you,
look at you, you know, like he loves you, you know, how you would imagine somebody who
loves you would look like, allow him to just love you.
And it's not going to increase incrementally, like one, two, three, four, five, and feeling
stronger slowly, it compounds.
And it goes one, two, four, sixteen, a hundred and thirty-two.
It goes really fast, and what you're going to want to do is you're going to want to break
eye contact because that gives you relief.
It breaks it, and you have to start all over again at one.
You get up to like sixteen, oh my word, that's too hard, okay, okay, now I'm at one again.
It creates a bit of relief.
So I highly recommend that you just, you know, try to stay in eye contact with him as long
as possible and allow yourself to be loved.
Here's the other very, very important thing, do not love him back.
In the exercise, do not love him back.
I'm not saying hate him, that's not what I'm saying.
Don't take, you're going to feel a force coming at you, don't, and you're going to want relief
from it.
He's going to love you, and you're going to feel intense, and you're going to want to
try to relieve yourself by giving it back.
Oh Lord, oh my goodness, this is so amazing, I love you too, and don't do that.
Now if you, you know, you can't help it, you know, because you're his son, and you're his
bride, so you are going to love him back, so don't worry about that, don't like try
really hard to not love him or something.
My point is be very aware of not giving into a flow, because then, because what we're trying
to do is we're trying to not receive.
We're trying to do whatever we can, including godly things of loving him back, trying to
avoid receiving, and you, and so that's what rest is.
We have to receive, so anyway, that is what the exercise is, so let him love you how he
wants to, and let him give you of himself what he wants, and so, and be vulnerable,
so when you're there, be very vulnerable, and you're going to feel the resistance, and
you're, and give, and so give in to the lack of control that you're going to feel.
Just do that kind of free fall into the, into the unsafe, where you, where you don't allow
yourself any safety net.
I mean, I can, I can already feel it, and I'm telling you, it really is very scary.
I'm kind of doing that a bit in the spirit already, and I'm like, oh wow, so give in
to not being safe, give in to what he might see in you, and then give in to what he might
know, and then give in, meaning like give in, you know, just surrender to it, give in
to what he, how he might respond.
Is he going to be disappointed?
Is he going to chastise me?
Are all of my worst fears of what god
thinks about me or what I think about myself,
am I going to discover that they're actually true
and fall into it?
And you're going to discover that they're not.
But only he can tell you that.
Going through the rest intensive and hearing teachings
isn't going to do that.
Your God is the only one who can convince you
that you're worth enough.
So anyway, that's what we're going to do.
Before we do that, though, I would like to play.
We're going to play a song and just remind ourselves
of who it is that God is called, a son of God.
Just kind of remind ourselves of the strength and power that
is embodied in who our God actually is.
So I advise you don't listen.
She's going to be talking about different things
that God does or Jesus did, like his miracles and whatever.
I highly recommend don't focus on those outside things of,
oh my goodness, my God, he's so big.
And oh my word, he can do all of these things
and all these miracles.
Because again, we're trying to move things away from us
because we don't feel safe.
So we're trying to think of who it
is that God is, who it is that I'm observing.
It's out here.
I highly recommend don't do that.
Just listen to the music and allow it to just kind of like
open yourself up spiritually and vulnerably
and receive in the power and the love of who it is that he is
and receive that into yourself.
I hope that all makes sense because I
don't mean this to sound really hokey of like receive it
into yourself.
But there's this feeling that I've
learned that I've realized, oh my word, that's resisting
because I don't want it to be part of me.
Let it become part of you and hit you.
Don't think about it.
Don't observe it.
Don't try to figure it out.
That's all out here.
And that's keeping you safe.
And that's what you've been doing your whole life.
And we're in resistance.
And so we're trying to figure, we're trying to take baby steps.
Actually, baby, we're taking a big, huge step in.
But we're starting here.
We're going to go other places from here
but throughout this weekend.
But we're trying to learn how to identify our resistance
and to start giving into it.
So just even allow the music to come in.
So yeah, if you could start that for us, thanks.
Oh, son of God, oh, son of God, you have made me,
you have made me whole.
Oh, oh, son of God.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
I was born a slave to the water,
casting nets in a sea of disbelief.
There you were saying, don't you be afraid.
Then you called me, you called me.
Oh, son of God, oh, son of God, you have made me,
you have made me whole.
Oh, son of God.
All my life, I was just a lowly beggar,
paralyzed by the shame that held me down.
But there you were saying, stand up and go home.
And you healed me, you healed me.
Oh, son of God, oh, son of God, you have made me,
you have made me whole.
Oh, son of God.
I will follow you.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
I will follow you.
♪♪♪
O Son of God, O Son of God, You have made me, You have made me whole. O Son of God.
O Son of God, O Son of God, You have made me whole. O Son of God.
Allow, don't try to fix yourself up and break down your own walls and overcome yourself and all of this in order to be able to receive God's love.
Come to God's love. Make yourself as vulnerable as possible and His love will break down the walls.
Again, if there's nothing that we can do to get into the kingdom, then there's nothing that we can do in order to receive God's love.
We don't need to try. You don't need to try to overcome yourself. You just need to stop.
You need to present yourself to your Father and allow the ways of His love or however it is that you might experience it.
And this might be a development thing. You might not experience much tonight, but you may tomorrow.
So don't worry about it. As you can tell, I'm still experiencing things.
But just allow His love to topple your walls and to break down your walls.
Your walls were not meant for you to tear down.
They were meant for them to be completely demolished when you exposed them to His love.
Allow them to fall. Don't keep holding them up when He's trying to knock them down.
Just let all of those walls of resistance be just broken down by His love.
That's it. We're just going to play a song. We're going to play it just a couple of times.
It's going to be about 10-11 minutes because I want to give people a really good time to settle into this.
But that's all it's going to be, so don't be terrified that you have to be there looking at Jesus for 10 minutes.
Because trust me, it can be a long 10 minutes.
And then after that, everyone can leave and we'll see you all tomorrow at 9 o'clock here.
And we'll be talking about the fact that God says that we are one spirit with Him.
We're one with Him. We're going to be talking about the tree of life versus the tree of the knowledge of evil.
The idea of resting versus how we've been living life, choosing to strive for everything.
And then we'll be talking about spirit, soul, and body.
How we operate in those three different realms and how to shift up into our identity, which is in our spirit.
And also some more practical exercises tomorrow.
After we're done, y'all have a really good night.
I recommend you practicing this as much as possible with your Lord while you're here.
Thank you, John.
Amen.
♪♪
You
♪
Anyway, you all have a wonderful night, and I will see y'all tomorrow morning.