Life to the Full: Breaking Free from Childhood Wounds

The thief comes only to steal, to kill, and to destroy. But I, I have come that they may have life, and life to the full. I am the Good Shepherd. This is a quote from Jesus of Nazareth, my Savior. And I'll read you another scripture. This is in 2 Corinthians 10. Listen to this word.

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. And we take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ. When I was 12 years old, I decided to give my life to the Lord. And there's a couple of you that had to endure this story, you know, a lot, you know.

So give me one more time. I, I'm a drug baby. I was drug to church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. And, and that's not a bad thing. It was good. And God used that to shape who I am. And I had two good parents.

Do you know there's only been one perfect parent? Only one. And it's not any of us that are sitting in these chairs. Okay. My parents weren't perfect, but my goodness, they were good people that love the Lord and did the best job they knew how to do, which is kind of all you can do, right? So when I was 12 years old, I decided to give my life to Jesus and be baptized. And we went to a large congregation in Abilene, Texas, and this on Easter Sunday, it happened to be on Easter Sunday, when everyone came to church, whether they had been there the rest of the year or not.

And so everybody was there. And the building would seat around 1400 people. And my, both of my granddads were elders in that congregation. My uncles were deacons. So I mean, I'm, I'm, when I say I'm a drug baby, I'm plugged in to this, to this place and to this system. And so, believe it or not, I was a painfully shy kid, painfully shy. And I thought that you had to be baptized on Sunday morning in front of everybody or it didn't count.

I didn't know you could do this on a weekday, or I would have chosen that. And so I did what I thought I was supposed to do. And so I see all those people. And I am, my, I remember my legs literally shaking in the pew. I am scared literally to death. And here's part of why. The Sunday before, the, the, the auditorium is shaped in a half circle, and the baptistry's in the front, and it projects out into the, onto the stage.

And you had to come down about 20 or so steep little steps in the, from the changing room down to the water, and then you waded out into the water. And then here's all these people, and a balcony and everything. The Sunday before, one of the teenagers decided to be baptized, and they gave him a white jumpsuit. He'd take his clothes off, put on the thing so he could not have wet clothes, and he got in the water. Well, on his way out up the steps, you could see his behind. And all, and all the kids started laughing. All the youth groups sat here, and I remember, this, these are the things I'm thinking about, not Jesus.

I'm thinking somebody's gonna see my backside today. This is horror, and I'm, I'm literally, I am, I'm shaking. And it was, it was a tough day for me in a lot of ways. So I, they finished the sermon. It's time to go. We come down front. My dad, he's gonna baptize me, and they send us to the back to get changed.

And so instead of taking my clothes off, I put the white jumpsuit over everything. I, I thought it had to be done in the white jumpsuit, or it didn't count either. No one was gonna see my backside today. And so I did that. I come out, and we're standing at the top of those steep little steps waiting for the song to finish for us to come down. And they finished the song, and I'm, I start down. My dad's behind me, and I'm just, I just need to see the only face in the crowd that can comfort me and that loved this face, my mama.

And so I'm looking, as I start down, I'm looking out the big opening trying to find my mom. Just, I just need a little comfort, because she could do that. And as I'm walking and looking, I miss the next step by about that much. And the water was warm. It didn't create a mossy effect on the stairs, but it, they were slippery. And I, I missed, I missed that step, and one foot flew out, and I tried to grab the rail, and another foot flew out, and my tiny 12-year-old backside hit the first of 20 sharp steps like a bowling ball on the way down into the water. And I splashed into the water on Easter Sunday in front of 1,400 people, and I baptized myself.

I didn't even need my dad. And I told you that I was really painfully shy. Imagine, you have fallen into the water, and 1,400 people did exactly what you just did. Have you ever had 1,400 people laugh at you?

Not collectively, yes. It's an experience in and of itself. And before I could fully think straight, in just a moment of embarrassment and frustration, I pulled myself up out of the water and slapped my hand down on the water and said, shoot. Except I was in a bad habit of cussing in that tender age of 12. And the first and last letters of that word are the same, but that's not exactly the word that came out. You can't make this stuff up. In the congregation I was in, there was a tiny microphone right in the baptistry.

And I've just dropped the S-bomb on Sunday morning from the baptistry on Easter, and it went into that tiny little mouth. Have you ever said something and you wish you could take it back? Once it left my tongue, I tried to grab it, but it was too late. And the speed of sound is an amazing thing. That word went into that tiny little microphone, and there was an array of speakers above my head. And that word echoed out to 1,400 people. Most of them stopped laughing at that point, just mainly out of shock, because everybody had heard that word, but nobody heard it on Easter Sunday from the baptistry.

I'm standing there dripping wet. Ten different—my normal color is translucent reddish. I mean, it was off the chart red that day. And most of the adults stopped laughing. However, the teenagers were sitting right here. And I just remember looking over at this. They lost their mind.

I remember seeing a kid doubled over in the pew, holding his stomach. He was laughing so hard. And I wasn't laughing either at this point. But my dad, my poor dad, made his way down the stairs, out into the water, and baptized me in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And my thing about this is if you're going to cuss in church, can you think of a better time or place? It's washed in the blood, right? If you're going to do it, do it in the baptistry.

This is my story, and that's just part of it. There's so many different things that have happened to me. I have known the Lord my whole life.

At least I've known about Him. I grew up in a church that valued knowledge of the Word, and that's a good thing. But knowledge of the Word without the Holy Spirit—knowledge of the Word when it is divorced from the Holy Spirit is a real problem, and it always leads to legalism. Always. And by the way, if you have the Holy Spirit and you have divorced the Word, the exact same result happens. They were never meant to be divorced. And so I'm thankful that I grew up with a knowledge of the Word and understanding, but that's kind of where it is.

I've struggled to know Him. And so just quickly, I started preaching at 21 years old at ACU. I decided to give my life to the Lord, and I wanted to do something for Him. And I thought, speaking comes easily. I'll be a preacher. There's some other things you can do. I just didn't know it.

And that started a journey of with churches and being a youth minister and serving for 25 or 6 years, doing those things full-time. What I want to tell you is some things that I have learned. I don't—this is my theory. This is not Bible, so take it for what it's worth. Our name—this is Bible. Our names are written in the Book of Life. And I also believe that your destiny and calling from God, I believe He's written that in your book, too.

This is my theory. I believe the enemy may have access to look in that book and know what your destiny is. And maybe that's true, maybe it's not. Regardless, the enemy has been trying to stomp me out since I was a young kid. And he almost succeeded, but God. God wouldn't let that happen.

So, sexual abuse from 10 to 12. And if you don't think that's from the enemy, it will mess you up. You haven't dealt with some people who've endured that. And by the way, the enemy is prolific at spreading that trauma to children. There were so many unhealed things, and you don't know how to deal with things until you know. You can only do what you know. And so, four years ago, my choice to sin led to me losing everything that mattered.

Divorce, losing time with my kids, one of them sitting in my car right now that won't come in, that we tried to get in here. There's a lot. I thought, prodigal church, that's a good place for me. Could be the prodigal son or the prodigal father, extravagant. And the father is extravagant with us here in his love. And most of us in here have experienced being the prodigal son, the extravagant son that had crazy wild living and made choices that caused major pain. So pain has been a source of healing.

Pain has been the motivator for me to step into those places that were unhealed, unchecked, that I tried to push down and not talk about and just hope they'd go away. When the enemy plants a seed, he intends for it to grow, and he will water it and he will fertilize it. And so, what I want to do with you this morning is I want to share with you some things that I have learned in the last few years of healing. That I believe will help you. When when Kerry asked me to do this, he said, if you had one last sermon, and immediately the Lord put this on my heart, exactly what I'm going to tell you. And I thought, well if I had one, I don't know if this would be it. But when the Lord tells you to do something, there's a reason and there's a purpose and it's for you.

And it's for me too. He blesses everybody. So I want to share with you something that you've probably never heard at church. And it's not the S-bomb. I want to share with you something that that I've learned personally and I hope that it will help you. And if it doesn't necessarily help you, you might get something here in the next few minutes that might help your kids, your grandkids, or somebody that you may know. And so what I'm about to share with you has been learned by extreme pain.

It has been, it has been, the Lord has helped me understand myself and and my my part in what what you're about to see. So I want to explain to you, and some of you have looked into this, attachment styles. Does anybody know what attachment styles is? Okay, good, good. That way whatever I say will be great. So I want to share with you, and I'm going to ask, I'm going to ask a couple of you to help us with illustration. I want to talk to you about attachment styles.

Attachment styles is an interesting thing. Attachment theory was, somebody started talking about this probably in the 60s, and it has been in pretty much mainstream psychology since. Listen, the Lord has made us, and we have patterns, we have things. Do you know that there's nothing new under the sun? There is nothing that the enemy does today that he hasn't done from the beginning. And so he has patterns as well. And when you see the patterns, just like I read to you from 2 Corinthians 10, I hope that the Lord is about to give you another weapon to demolish strongholds.

That's the purpose of what I'm about to tell you. And attachment styles is, I'm going to expose one of the patterns of the enemy that he does when we're very small young children. Okay, attachment styles are, it's a sub, I'm going to give you a subconscious set of rules you have for love and connection. A subconscious set of rules that you have that were developed when you were a kid for love and connection. Now, I need four people that are willing to help me. You'll have to stand up, not for long. Coobster, get up here.

Okay, come on. There's three. Kerry, okay, you can always volunteer him. Okay, so I'm going to get you guys to stand. Let's do, you go a little bit further over here. Yes, you're right here in the middle. I want you to imagine a football field.

This is on one end zone. This is on the other. You stay right there, Coobster. I'll tell you what to do in a minute. I want these guys to be in here because I'm going to give you a lot of information and hopefully this will help you remember some of the moving pieces and parts of it. There are four attachment styles. There are three attachment styles that are insecure.

Those are the ones we want to talk about and I think you'll probably find yourself or you might be able to look at yourself when you were 20 and think, yeah, I was this or that, but now I'm something else. Let me kind of dive into this real quick and I'm going to ask these guys to hold a sign. First of all, I want to talk about secure. Secure is in, imagine the 50-yard line. This is one end zone. This is the other. We're kind of on a pendulum.

I'm going to give, these two are extreme. This one's unique. This is secure attachment. Securely attached children had parents and homes that were not chaotic. They weren't on one day and off another. They were pretty consistent. Again, how many perfect parents have there been?

You just stay right there. There's no perfect parents. Nobody's gotten it all right and kids that have secure attachment, they just had some parents that did a couple of certain things that helped them. One of those is they had approach-oriented parenting. When this child was scared or hurt or sad or crying, they had a parent that would come up and meet them where they are and address this. Why are you crying? Tell me about it.

Well, I'm sad because this, this, this, and this. This parent would not necessarily just coddle that and let it go, but would hear the child, listen to them, address the issue of crying and hurting. This parent would probably come up and give a hug and say, you know what? You're going to be just fine. I want you to get back out there. I want you to get back. You're good.

I love you. Get back in the game. Parenting like that creates securely attached children. There aren't many securely attached people that just come out. Most secure attached adults have earned it from one of these other places. Carrie, I want you to, so I'm going to, this is the only one that's kind of, the Lord created us to be securely attached. These other three come from the enemy, and this is what I'm trying to expose to you.

One is called anxious attachment. Carrie, are you an anxious attacher? Okay. Children that learned this type of attachment style, they had parents, they had one or more parents that were emotionally unavailable, usually. They had one or more parents that gave intermittent reinforcement, and so they might give a little love and care and consistency on one minute, but then the next day they're in a bad place and they're not giving that to them the next day. So it's on and it's off. Anxious attachers feel like they have to earn love.

They feel like they're unworthy to be loved, and they pick this up from that kind of intermittent reinforcement from a parent. Now, some of you are going to sit here and I do not want you to judge your parenting as I'm talking to you. Okay, sorry. What I want you to do is I want you to see what happens, and you're going to see yourself in one of these places. Anxious attached children. Let me say this about children in general. Do you remember as a kid being in a building that maybe you went to as an adult, and as you walked into it as an adult, maybe as your classroom, maybe as a church building, and you walked in there an adult, you thought this used to be a lot bigger.

Do you remember? Now it looks so small as an adult. Here's what I need to tell you. As children, some things that might be small to you as an adult are really big emotionally, and so you could have been a fantastic parent, and your child could still walk away with some sort of responsibility, because children take everything very, they don't have the reasoning ability to go, oh, my parent is having a bad day, and they're communicating with me very ineffectively today. They're just having a bad day, and they're going to be okay. Children do not have the ability to do that. You do as an adult. Make sense?

So as a child, when you come to hug your daddy, and your dad has had stress that you have no idea about, and he says, not now, not now, might not have been a big deal to you as a dad, but as a child who just wanted to hug their dad, they walked away and said, something must be wrong with me. Okay, are you with me? This is how you get three unhealthy attachments. So the anxious attacher feels like I've got to earn love. I've got to be good enough. If I'm good enough, and if I'm quiet enough, and if I say the right things, or I do the right things, I'll get that love back, and it'll feel good, and everything will be right with the world. Anxious attachers have a push-pull relationship, and let me tell you what some of their core wounds.

I'm going to go try to speed up through this. Some of their core wounds are this. I will be abandoned. I will be excluded. I will be rejected, and so I've got to be on my game. Love has to be earned. So that's on this side of the spectrum.

Now imagine what it's like down here. You are a dismissive avoidant. Let me tell you something. You knew it. Of course the secure person knew it. So dismissive avoidant. This child had emotional neglect, whether overt or covert.

It doesn't mean that parents, it doesn't mean necessarily you were a Romanian orphan, and nobody ever touched you, and they threw food into your crib. It might not have been that. It could have been, but it could have been that just you had two parents that are emotionally unavailable, too. Maybe they're super busy. Maybe they're very focused on other things, and they just didn't have time for you. So when you cried as a child, they were like, dry it up, fix it, go to your room. And so one of the things the dismissive avoidant believes is that love equals pain.

Vulnerability, closeness equals pain. Some of their core wounds are, I'm defective. When a parent won't sit and look at you and say, what's wrong?

Why are you crying? Tell me what's, tell me about your day. Come here and give me a hug. Instead this parent is like, I need you to be self-sufficient. I need you to, and maybe they're well-intentioned parents, but I need you to figure out things on your own. I need you to self-soothe. I need you to figure this out.

I don't have time for you. It could be very overt kind of emotional neglect, and it could be more covert. But this child walks away and says, I'm defective. I'm unsafe where I'm at, at home. It's not safe. My caregivers, the people that should love me, are not safe to me. This person becomes very sensitive to criticism.

They do not like conflict. There's several things that people with say that are very, very negative about these people as adults, but they're good people. They just don't know how to give love or to receive it because of their because of their childhood. They're in a place where they can be very charming. They can be very charismatic. Their people, when push comes to shove, they'll get things done because they don't need you. They can push forward.

They've learned how to self-soothe. They've learned how to do things on their own. They've learned how to make it. They avoid their own needs and emotions. Part of their issues are, as adults, is they don't want to sit with things and deal with them. The anxious detector, this person right here, will sit and go, why am I sad? Why am I thinking the way I'm thinking?

Why is my relationship not going good? This person will think about it. This person right here, push it aside. This is unsafe to think about this. I don't have time for this. I've got things to do. They shove it down into a corner, but it never goes away.

It's always there. It usually bubbles back up.

You're wondering what Kubi is. If you can imagine this spectrum, over here we've got an anxious detector. Over here we've got a dismissive. This person has lots of feelings. They feel like they've got to earn love. They're really very kind, caring, loving people, kind of like you, Carrie. Dismissive people can be very kind and caring to a point, but their capacity for kindness and caring and emotional vulnerability and to give to you is, their capacity is less because of their wounding.

Then you got this weird one here. He's not on this side. He's not all the way over here.

He's called a fearful avoidant. The fearful avoidant, as a child, grew up in a chaotic environment. That doesn't necessarily mean that things were flying across the room and people were screaming and yelling. Chaos means there was not a settling. Things were hot and things were cold. There could be a lot of love in his house as a child and then it could be gone the next day. It was a push-pull kind of thing, similar to what the anxious detector grew up in, but more chaotic.

They have some very, very positive things. This person, they call this a disorganized attachment. I'm going to tell you why in a minute. One of their core wounds is they have an issue with trust because their parents or parents, one day was very loving and then the next day, maybe they were an alcoholic. One day, they're not drinking and everything's fine. The next day, they're drinking and all bets are off and the kid needs to stay locked into the room. It could be that extreme or it could be something much less.

It could be a parent that is going through major grief and they used to be very loving and caring and then all of a sudden, now they're dealing with grief that is unexplainable and they can't, they're not giving to the child like they used to be able to do. All of a sudden, this child takes away, what's wrong with me?

What did I do wrong? How do I get somebody, I just need a mom or dad to come and hug me. I need somebody to dry my tears. I need somebody to tell me that I'm loved and they're not getting that. They got it for a little bit and then it's pulled back. Make sense?

This fearful avoidant has some issues with trust. They don't trust their environment to be safe because as a child, love equal pain. Not always but sometimes. So they're not as far over here. Here's the thing about fearful avoidant. The fearful avoidant sometimes can lean anxious and sometimes he can be dismissive. What the dismissive person does is they dismiss their feelings, they dismiss your feelings, they push everything down and aside and they don't want to deal with it.

The anxious person is more of an ankle grabber. Their fear of abandonment, if they see someone leaving, they're the one wrapped around the ankle saying, please don't leave me. You're never going to get that from a dismissive avoidant. They'll be like, get off me, I'm out of here. Okay? Do you see the extreme? Now, thank you kind people.

Give them a hand. Such lovely assistance. Why do I tell you this? Here's what the Lord showed me. By the way, which one of these do you think I am?

I'm just curious. Okay, thanks Scooby.

Any other guesses? I was this one. Now, here's the good news about all this. The Lord doesn't want you to stay in any of the three that are unsecure. Here's what he showed me about this. The enemy comes after the most vulnerable while we are children. As good as your parents were, if we did not understand, by the way, I'm assuming that all of you understand that demons are still real.

If my assumption about that is incorrect, I grew up in a cessationist group, which meant they believed that the Holy Spirit, demons, miracle, everything stopped after the apostles died. I don't even know what else to say about that. Not true. I mean, it's not true. I know a lot of people in America that believe that demons aren't real. I'm like, maybe you should read Ephesians 6. Ephesians 6 said, our battle is not against flesh and blood, but it is against the ruler, the authorities, and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm.

I call that Satan and his gang. Satan is not like God.

He's not omnipresent. He can't be everywhere at once. He is a created being. He can be one place at one time. I think maybe he can get from place to place sort of fast, but he's not, he can only be at one place at one time. He is very organized and he is very legalistic. Every one of those things that Ephesians 6 just said is extremely legalistic.

Demons are real. Now here's the thing. The enemy comes at us when we're parents that understand the heavenly realm and know that they need to be a spiritual covering for their children. That child is exposed. I had good parents. They had no idea about what the devil could do, what he does. They had no idea about demons.

They had no idea that they should pray over us to ask the Lord to put a hedge of protection. Every father is the designated protector of your house. You are the spiritual covering. I think of it like the Iron Dome in Jerusalem. I mean, you are the Iron Dome in Israel that any grenades from the enemy absolutely can be stopped when you have a praying mother, a praying father. But when you don't know what you don't know. My parents didn't know.

So guess what? Me like thousands and thousands and thousands of others were exposed in certain ways that the enemy had legal right and access to us. These attachment styles are the root. It happens when you're a child. The enemy plants a root and says, you're not worthy.

You are unlovable. You see why your parent won't take care of your emotional needs? It's because of you. It's because you're not worthy.

He whispers things. You need to understand. There's a reason why the enemy and all of his gang are going to burn in hell. It's one thing to come after me. I know some about him and I understand some of the weapons that I have in my arsenal to fight him. But as a child, I didn't know any of this and neither did you. It's another level of evil and low when you attack a child.

Don't get me started on that. There's a reason. Don't feel sorry for him. Ask the Lord to turn the fire up because that's why there is an end that he knows is coming. So let me tell you this. Jesus said the thief comes to steal, kill, destroy.

But what came next? I have come that you might have life and life to the full, not just getting by, but that you could be secure, that you could be free from every seed the enemy has planted in your life, whether from a child or whether it was in adulthood. You can be free. Because listen, when it comes to the battlefield, there is no competition when it comes to the Lord and the enemy. They're not even on the same plane.

It's not a fight. It's not something you got to go, I don't know. I just don't know who's going to win.

They're not in the same category, right? We know who wins and we're on his side. The word says my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. I'm giving you some knowledge right now that can be a weapon. So I don't know where you find yourself in this. Let me tell you why I'm over here. I had a mom that was super affectionate.

Loved us, hugged us every time, would sit in the chair and want to hold her hand. And as a teenage boy, you're like, oh, you know, mom, mom. You know, back off a little bit. Very supportive. Almost got kicked out of a couple of basketball games because the ref, she thought the ref was being mean to me.

That kind of supportive. You understand that? My dad, not so much. My dad has told me he loved me. It's kind of under his breath. I wasn't sure if he said it, but I'm going to believe that he said it one time in my life. Now, some of you are like, that's, yeah.

Especially some of you older ones, you're like, yeah, that's, I mean, that's how all of us grew up. Yeah, maybe. My dad does not know how to show affection. I hugged him about a year ago. And you're like, took that long? We don't hug. We don't touch.

I never saw him be affectionate with my mom. He would come home. He threw the ball with me one time outside. Now, I need to tell you, my dad's a great guy. God-loving and probably one of the most grace-filled Church of Christ people you'll ever meet. He just doesn't know how to be encouraging. I longed for an encouraging word from him.

I'm getting it from my mom all day long. But when you don't get it from somebody that you want it from, you kind of don't pay attention to where you're getting it from, right? I just wanted to earn his love. And so I got in this place of anxious attachment thinking, maybe I'm not good enough. But if I act good enough, if I work hard enough, if I'm quiet when he needs me to be quiet, he'll love me. Well, the thing is, he did love me. He just didn't know how to show it.

But you don't know that as a child. You don't know how to decipher all that.

I hugged him a year ago. I was like, I'm done with this. Because we had this awkward thing. My mom would be like, bye.

Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss. And then, see you, Dad. It's just kind of a weird deal. And I really wanted to hug him. And so a year ago, I'm like, I'm done with this. He walked out, and I was like, Dad, I loved, I looked in his eyes. I said, I love you.

I've never said, I don't know that I've ever said it to him. And he's like, and I just grabbed him. And when I go in to hug you, you can't get away, right? And so I just went in, and I bear hugged him. I grabbed him. This is what he did. I kid you not.

His hands went down to his side. And he got stiff, and he didn't know what to do.

I'm freaking him out. And he said nothing to me back. Now, I want to tell you, five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago, I would have been devastated. That's why I didn't do it, because I was afraid I'd be rejected. Fear of rejection is a big deal over here. It didn't bother me. I didn't worry.

I've accepted him the way he is. And it didn't crush me. I got in the truck, and I was like, thank you, Jesus. Because one of the things I've asked him to do in these last four years, he said, we've got some healing to do. Because you don't get to where I'm at without having lots of unhealed things. And I said, if we're going to do this, rip the band off. I don't want to always be healing.

I want to be healed. What about you? Healing is not really fun, by the way. It's not pleasant always, at all. And so I said, let's just rip her off and get it done. And that's exactly, be careful what you ask. That's exactly what he's been doing.

And I'm thankful for it. And so one of the things he showed me is this. He said, listen, you can't stay over here. I didn't create you to be anxious. I didn't know that a child should be loved, even on their bad days. Because that's what the Lord does. He said, I love you, and you have done nothing to earn it.

The Old Testament says, even on your best day, your righteous acts are like filthy rags to the Lord, compared to His holiness. The Lord's tried to say, I love you from the beginning. I love you for who you are. Now I love you too much to leave you here. The enemy planted a seed and wants to destroy your life. And let me tell you something. It doesn't matter where you find yourself in this spectrum.

If you follow those three unhealthy attachment styles to their end, the end is death, physical death. So you take a child that has this little seed planted from the enemy, and all of a sudden, let's say you're over here. Let's say you're fearful of avoiding. You're thinking, hey, love equals pain. These people get into relationships with people who are also emotionally unavailable, and a lot of times abusive. Because that's what they think they're worth. And so imagine being in that the rest of your life.

It'll end in death. Follow any sin, gluttony. Just pick any sin. If you follow that sin out to its completion, the completion is death. The enemy comes to kill, steal, and to destroy. So what do you do with this? I wanted to show you this to say the good news is no matter which one of these are, the Lord can heal it.

And he wants to heal it. Here's what I've seen. Here's what I believe the Lord told me about this root. Can you imagine, have you ever been in the garden, you pull up a giant root, weed, and you could see the root hanging on? I want you to picture that in your mind. The attachment style, whatever wounding happened to you as a child, that's the root that the enemy has planted. But then you sprinkle in a little abuse.

And it's like fertilizer. And he's doing this, what I'm seeing, he's fertilizing the root that's been planted. I really don't see necessarily him doing other things. So I'm trying to expose a scheme that I've seen here.

You test it yourself. What I see is the enemy just sprinkling a little bit of fertilizer on the root of the weed that's already been planted when you were a child. So you sprinkle a little abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse. And then let's say you become an adult. You have a couple of bad relationships, and you sprinkle in some hurt and some pain, and maybe there's, you lose a parent that you weren't expecting, and all of a sudden you've got some major grief. He just sprinkles that on, and this thing starts growing into a weed that's five, six feet tall. And what we usually do as adults is we go, I've got problems, I've got some issues now.

We're going to take some scissors, and we're going to cut the top of this weed off. What happens when you do that? The only way to kill that thing is to pull it up by the root. If you know what the root is, you can pull it. If you, and I'm telling you, the Lord will take you back to all of these places if you get in a place where you want to be healed. Some of us have to be sick and tired of being sick and tired before we go back there. Listen, my motivation to heal these things has been pain, unfortunately, and pain caused by me in large part.

I'm not going to blame my parents. I have blamed the enemy for some things, but let me tell you as an adult, I have a choice, and so do you. No matter what's going on, you and I have choices, and we make them, and we have to live with the consequences of those choices. They're ours as an adult. It's not your parent. It's not the enemy. The enemy's influencing it, but we make a choice that we have to live or die by.

And so if you take responsibility for that, and you're like, listen, I want to be free, Lord. I don't want to be avoidant. I don't want to be a fearful avoidant. I don't want to be anxious. I want to be secure. I want to be secure in you. I don't want to have to feel like I earned your love.

Do you know that I've felt like I've had to earn the Lord's love? That's the system I grew up in. Be good enough, help enough old ladies across the street, go to church, do what's right, and if you do what's wrong, listen, you are pretty close to going to hell, and maybe you will. I hadn't heard you preach that yet, thankfully. So what will you do? I wanted to share this with you, first of all, because the Lord told me to share it with you. All I'm giving you really is just a groundwork.

You can look up attachment theory. You can take a little test that's free today, and you can find out where you are. Some of you know right now I used to be over here, and now I'm secure because of the Lord, because of pain, because of working through stuff. I've earned this security. Some of you know where you've been. Some of you may be in these places, and you just now have a word for it, and you're thinking, I don't really like this. I want to do something different. Romans 12.

I want to read this last scripture to you. Romans 12 says this. Verse 2. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and prove what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will. These things, the enemy works within the framework of what God created in our brain. Neuropathways create habits and things that we do repetitively.

Neuropathways can be reprogrammed. This is the beauty of renewing your mind. Romans 12 says we can have the mind of Christ. Anybody want the mind of Christ? Let me tell you, the mind of Christ is not anxious.

It's not avoidant. It's secure. Who wants the mind of Christ? Well, you step out of conforming with the world, and you step in and say, Lord, set me free. Give me the knowledge. Give me the tools to be free, to be securely free in you in every single way. I have asked him to do that, and that's what he's doing.

Has it all been fun? No, it has not. Am I better for it? I am more free today than I have been in 51 years because of him. Sometimes for me, I had to get to the bottom, look up, and say, okay, God, I'm tired. I'm tired of what I've been carrying since I was 10 years old. No kid's meant to carry these things.

God wants to set you free. Let me pray a prayer of blessing over you. Maybe this will lead you to look into this more, and it'll lead you to a piece of freedom. I also, and I'm going to pray this over you, I also hope that maybe some of you will look at your grandkids and your kids, and you'll recognize this, and you'll think, why has their life been so hard? Listen, don't take it personally. Do something about it. Look at what's going on in their life, and start speaking into that place that they need spoken in.

They just need you to hug them and say, I love you, and I'm proud of you. Let me pray for you. So, Father, thank you so much for who you are. You are a healer. You are our champion. And you are a good father. There are some people in this room that might not have had good fathers. There are some that might have been just incredibly blessed with earthly fathers that were great, but none of us had a perfect father except for you.

And so, we just thank you for who you are. Now, Lord, would you set us free? Your word never goes out and returns void. And so, your word has gone out, and Lord, produce fruit in us through this. Whoever was here that needed to hear this, thank you so much for what you've done for them. I just pray to encourage them that you've heard their cry, that you've heard their desire to be free. This is you.

I'm just trying to be obedient, so encourage them that they've heard something today. It wasn't from me. It was from you, their good father. And so, Lord, show us how good you are. If we have father wounds, heal them. Don't let that get in the way of how we see you. And so, Father, I pray for the parents and the grandparents in this room that they would be able to speak life into their kids and their grandkids and maybe their great, great grandkids, that you would create a generational blessing from the people here in this room.

We break every generational curse. We come against everything that the enemy has planted and tried to grow in us personally, and we speak against every demonic thing and seed that has been planted in our children, in our grandchildren, in our great-grandchildren. We speak against it, Lord. We speak life. We declare life over them. We declare good relationships over them. We declare security over our households.

Lord, let it be in the name of Jesus. Amen.