00:00:02.000 Hi, everyone. My name again is Gerard, and this is my ministry partner, Allison. And we are just going to take a different track today. What we're going to really go back to was really the spiritual formation that we both experienced and kind of be a bit vulnerable with that. So you may or may not have experienced it, but just to give us, we'll give you the truth about what can happen out there. That's all.

00:00:27.000 So beginning with my formation, it's been about 11 years ago that I actually jumped into Jesus's arms, and you know from that point on, I just want to explain some of the growth and how it took place. Some people think that instantly you go from coming to the lord to being totally spiritual in a great way you know, the growth is there. It doesn't happen that way.

00:00:56.000 At least from my perspective, what happened was I was so excited to be a part of it. But then you have to find you have to find a support group, you have to find people who are in fellowship as a fellow believers. And that's sometimes difficult to find true believers. That's sometimes difficult to find. So after that happened for me, which was Labor Day, and it was 2012. And it was during a weekend.

00:01:26.000 It was just the most exciting time. I think for those of you out there who have experienced that, you know what I mean? Very exciting. Again, but the steps, there's a process of steps, just like when anything else, for example, if you're going to a degree program, certificate program or whatever else there may be, you have the steps. So for me, I want to a denominational church and that wasn't the best thing for me because people there just didn't have the understanding of what I needed or to be, you know, just to grow.

00:02:00.000 So after that, I went to school and that was great. School was very into cars, Bible college, and that was wonderful for me because it was starting to get the true word and start to renew your mind. And then the growth would again start to take place. And the renewing of your mind is very important. However, coming from the denominational background that I did, there's a lot of guilt in my life.

00:02:27.000 And that was something that was prevalent in the church denominational group that I came from because that's what they actually it's more of a teaching, really. It's just that we're not worthy. We're not good enough. And you're always doing something wrong. And you can't have a relationship with God. You have to go through an intermediary. And that hinders your growth very much so. So I had to deal with that. And I just thank God that the Holy Spirit helped me to work through it. And it's all in the process.

00:02:58.000 And so after that, I kept seeking you know. What I mean by seeking is just delving deeper into the word delving deeper into Bible studies and people who are educated in areas that I wasn't that was very helpful for me. And this all took time quite a bit of time. And finally, I'm at a point now where I just truly love the word, and I just as deep as I can with it, always taking classes and it's not so much about the education.

00:03:31.000 It's about just learning more about his heart. And that process, as I mentioned, has taken a long time. And during that phase, we have to be careful because you get to a place in fellowship with other people who may not be as like minded as you, and what happens is there is some judging, there is some spiritual abuse, and there are people who just truly believe that they're Christians, but they really aren't.

00:03:59.000 They just don't follow the way that Jesus example is. And that's what it's all about. It's right there in the Bible. You have the Old Testament and the New Testament. They're connected. And Jesus is, he was here and that's you know how we're supposed to emulate him and be in his hands and feet. So I can say all this because it has been a long journey. And I mean that in a good way, but just remember, this is a process that doesn't end when we die.

00:04:30.000 We just go to the other side. And we know all from that point, but on this side, for me, it's exciting to be with fellow believers like minded people like Allison and others that just really they're there to support you and that they're there to encourage you. I know those are things that are really important for spiritual growth. Do you have any thoughts? Well, I was just going to add a little bit about my journey to Gerard shared his and kind of how it wasn't just linear.

00:05:01.000 It's not just the perfect path. And I think it was 2006, not I think. I know it was 2006, 2007, right at the end of the year and new year when I truly met the lord and lived a life where I thought that it was a Christian, and I thought I was doing all the things that I was supposed to do, but I could never quite attain what it was that was expected of me.

00:05:29.000 And I grew up in an environment where the expectation was is that you know if you don't do it right, then you're not doing it, or if you are not perfect. And of course, we all know none of us are perfect. And I think those people were probably just misguided, but my experience of meeting Jesus for the first time was the most amazing experience. And it's not the same for everyone.

00:05:56.000 But there was just this awakening inside of me that happened that really set me forth on a path just to seek him to know him. I was like, this Jesus that did what he did for me. Out of love for me, I want to know who he is. And I want to know what he wants from me and how he wants me to live. And it came out of a place of just seeking him every day.

00:06:24.000 And I mean, it wasn't me. I will say that. It wasn't me. I do participate, but the Holy Spirit was working in me. Like, I never experienced the Holy Spirit didn't even know about the Holy Spirit prior to that. So I just want to say that you know we're all on this journey and my experience was seeking him and then going to a lot of the theology classes that were offered through our church and then going to small groups and being with like minded people and meeting different people and working with different people and at the time, I was still going through counseling.

00:07:06.000 And I'm telling you, it was providential. It just came where I started receiving some things in the mail to become a life coach. I wanted to become a life coach because I felt like I had been helped so much. I wanted to help others too. And so by going through that school and learning more about my faith and who God is and what he has for me and then just continuing to learn and read and study and be in the word.

00:07:41.000 Consistently. And it has just been an amazing journey. And it is really brought me to another side of freedom, I guess. We have freedom in Christ that we have this freedom now, and I can speak for Gerard two of this freedom in our minds just to be who we are and to be vulnerable and to be transparent and not to be.

00:08:09.000 Carrying the heavy burden of shame and guilt and all the things that came through our life as a result of experiences that we had, which are adverse childhood experiences, which I think that George is going to talk to about. So at this point now, we want to give just a bit of a recap of what we've discussed over the previous podcasts. And again, it's the adverse childhood experiences. And again, we all experience that.

00:08:36.000 And I think the three things that we have mentioned are Allison mentioned, too, was we have the shame and then this lack of attachment pain and it is powerlessness. And from my perspective, for growing up, I can realize now, based on coming to the understanding of all of what we're talking about, that it's first of all, it's okay to recognize that.

00:09:01.000 That's a big thing to understand that we are, we had experienced things, and when I mentioned many times, we had that child inner child that is a certain age that we have had to defense mechanism built up within that age bracket, and we've got through that time or whatever the trauma was, and then we bring it into the adult life. That's where the difficulties come with relationships.

00:09:33.000 And those, again, when we talk about that, the relationships are key for our success and growth and love, which is the way God designed us. So the interpersonal relationships are supposed to be healthy. And we can't have it's best to look at each other through the eyes of Christ. And that's, you know, when we're talking about spiritual formation, that's a big part of it too. It's a love of Christ that comes that is working through us as his hands and feet and we're just there with people and we have empathy and we were talking prior to the podcast.

00:10:06.000 I just want to bring up something that Allison had mentioned. She had listened to a podcast and I think it was doctor Diane was it? Diane Langmuir. Okay. And thank you. And she mentioned something that's really important that there is no time frame on us. And that's with our lives. God doesn't sit there and say, you have two days to figure this out. God is so patient and loving and kind. And he's so we are supposed to be with him. And that's the bottom line.

00:10:35.000 And while we're going through these things of the difficulties with relationships, and then we start to understand how, you know, through the love of God and through our working together and understanding, you know, knowledge is power. So what we understand how these things transpire to bring us into the formation of where we are in our adult relationships, once we know what the issues are, we can you know, if we see something, if we have anything that triggers like a site of smell or things that we had mentioned before, you can recognize as a trigger there.

00:11:12.000 And so you look at the other person, not as, okay, I'm going to be defensive. I mean, I have to be honest, it doesn't work a 100% of the time. But it's a start, and it's a place where we can understand. But once we recognize that, we can, even if this difficulties in relationship we can step back and say, okay, this is how I was taking it. Why? Because you don't want to be, you don't want to have what we've called before, speculative imagination, where you're thinking of what the other person is truly saying when there was no intention of it at all.

00:11:45.000 It's just how our defense mechanisms are built up. And that's to and fro. That's within the personal relationship. So I wanted to bring that up. And again, the triggers are key to help us to realize, once we recognize that, because we want to live wholeheartedly, that's the bottom line. And Jesus emulated that perfectly in the Bible. And he loves us so much. He doesn't want to keep us where we are. He wants us to grow with him because it's a relationship forever.

00:12:16.000 And to be on this side of that relationship and this realm, it's such a blessing to know that, first of all, there was a great quote that I loved from discovering mercy that showed it to us. And that was it's a description of what Jesus would say to us. So Jesus says, I expect more failure from you than you do of yourselves and underneath it. It said, love Jesus. And that's so true. When I meant to be perfect, I never know where in the Bible is the same.

00:12:46.000 We're supposed to be perfect. We're supposed to just accept Jesus, have the Holy Spirit love through us. And it works, you know, works out really well when we can do it. In a way that is just pleasing to God and pleasing to each other. That's the key into personal relationships. Would you like to have anything to that? No, I think you're right on target. Okay. So you just moving forward. It's one of those things that we want to talk about.

00:13:13.000 And just to kind of solidify in your minds, how to approach this and how even though it sounds and difficult, it's simple when you start putting the processes processing steps in place. And you mentioned a word before freeing. It's freeing to know that we don't have to we'll just stay in our space and whether the other person have their space and as we mentioned many times, we have to be the best meeting we can be.

00:13:45.000 And the other person has to do that too, but we can't do that for them. But we can come alongside them and try to have the empathy to sit with them and to try to help work through the relationship issues. But the relationship in general, but as a counseling aspect, we come alongside people and that's the empathy. It doesn't matter. Nothing else matters because so many people do not know the true way of God is. They only have the distorted view of God based on what was out there for spiritual views and the church or wherever they experienced that.

00:14:20.000 So I feel that I wanted to recap from that perspective to make sure that you can understand the best way to be the best year. Yeah. I just want to say, I think it's so important for us and we were talking about this earlier. There have been so many people that you know we've all experienced some form of trauma in our lives. There's complex trauma in this trauma.

00:14:49.000 One time, but it affects us. And so when we, I think, as believers are, we lean into going to the church for help with that. But there are many times where the church is not equipped to be able to address those issues in a way that's going to be healthy for you and you may end up getting hurt more than you were before.

00:15:15.000 And so that's one of the reasons why we're doing what we're doing is to be able to because we do have an understanding of it. We don't understand your specific issue, but we know ours and we have some education in it and we have the Holy Spirit leading us, but also we have the empathy for it. And we do have the heart to want to be here. And it is about the heart and the mind.

00:15:42.000 And so I just want to say that because when you think about it, whether if you've had any kind of hurt from the church, the first thing I would say is hopefully those people were well meaning people and that they were not intentionally trying to hurt anybody. They believe what they believe and they were dealing with things the way that they were dealing with them. But they weren't equipped. And so people do get hurt.

00:16:10.000 And so we just want to make sure that from our heart, to your heart, to your mind, that we can be there to help whether whoever you are. Leadership, ministry leaders, lay leaders, people walk into beside somebody as a friend. And then caregivers. Yes. Those who are taking care and families and those who have actually experienced the trauma themselves. And there's a whole host of people on there.

00:16:41.000 Everybody's affected in one way or the other. And just to piggyback off of what Alison mentioned to, the moment he pastors out there in a church, they were overwhelmed. And they have so much that I'm as far as spiritual guidance that they have to want to help their church to grow with. And so they can't do everything. Just like we can't do everything. So that's what our ministry is about to hone in and focus on what Alison just mentioned because that's going to help the body of Christ in general.

00:17:11.000 And anybody because we're also looking at people who are looking for the true God. And so to have us have God work through us to show the love of Christ, the true love of Christ, that's what draws through the Holy Spirit. That's what draws people into the kingdom. And that's the key for our ministry. We just want everybody as best that we can do. To help them. And our goal and the ministry is to counsel.

00:17:42.000 And we have small groups, and we have other things that we will be working with and to really, really, truly hope. You know, you out there, anybody who needs help and who wants to help. And we're here because we have our love within our hearts to really, truly help you because again, as Allison, as mentioned, too, is we walk through this, and we have we have an understanding that really truly we feel would hope to come alongside you with the empathy that really is needed for you to be healed home and healthy.

00:18:16.000 Right. Right? And we're doing what we think I'm truly believe that if we had had in our lives earlier, would have really made a significant difference in our lives and there are destructive paths that we walked through that perhaps we wouldn't have had to walk through if we had had those people in our lives. And so that's another reason why we're here. Just to bring that forward for you, it's very difficult to walk alone.

00:18:48.000 And when you've experienced things when you've experienced spiritual abuse when you've experienced the church rejecting you for you know you're not being what you need to be or any of that, you feel very lonely and you feel like you are alone. You never truly are, but it's a real feeling. And you do feel that way. So hopefully we can come along beside you and just by listening to our podcast or being a part of other things that we're doing to help you through those things.

00:19:21.000 Oh, that's really very good. You know, one other thing, too, regarding the church. The church is not a building. People think that that's the church. The church is the body. And as people coming alongside people, and when you're looking at people who need help, and again, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And as we have talked about a number of times, I think it's starting to Jacob Haley. Yeah, Jacob.

00:19:50.000 And so she has mentioned something that's really, really part of our ministry approach is that when you look at outside of it's not about a Christian coming saying, I'm going to make other people Christians is about us using our hands and feet to go into a place where the lord needs or wants us to go to help the people within our community or within a family or within individually. That's what it's all about. It's about doing that to bring the people to the lord.

00:20:19.000 And again, to for them to see how much the world loves them through us. It's not us. You know what that makes me think about. It makes me think about the example that we have in Jesus and how when he had the disciples surrounding him, he went and got a bowl of water and a towel at the towel off of himself. And he bent down their feet were dirty. And he washed their feet.

00:20:45.000 And it just, it makes me think about how loving he was toward them, how he helped them to get Freer from things that were you know if it was dirt on their feet, whatever it was. And I know there are other. I guess, what would you say? Meanings to that to that story, but that just made me think about that. People have done that for me.

00:21:13.000 And that's what and for Gerard and that's what we want to do. Right. And it's just such a blessing for us to experience that. And that's what we want you to experience as well. Yeah. And another thing we were going to talk about briefly was our brain. Oh, yeah. And you know just piggybacking off of what you keep saying that word, but it's just so you brought up some really good points. When you're talking about Jesus, Jesus is the creator of everything.

00:21:40.000 And so to look you know with the God himself, is to see everything that he created. Yeah, he did exactly what Alison said. And he went to the cross for us and he defeated evil. For us, because of the love of us and we belong with him. So I just wanted to mention that too. And with the point that you just mentioned, is there anything you want to be more specific about or?

00:22:06.000 Well, I think as we grow up in just all the things that we just spoke about yeah. And we get a certain way of thinking and believe that everything is the way that it is because that's the way we think it is. But it's not necessarily the truth. It may be your truth, but it's not the truth.

00:22:26.000 And so the beautiful part of that is that God has created a brain for us that has this amazing ability to reroute and to change as we work through his word and study his word and learn other methods of thinking and ways of doing things that are truth versus the past and the way it's happened.

00:22:55.000 Like he was talking earlier about speculative thinking. You know, if I see someone that has maybe an attitude toward me, I can automatically start thinking, oh, they don't like me. They don't like any you know they don't want to be around me. They think something's wrong with me. And that's all I have no idea what they're thinking. I'm no clue. And so but anyway, we can change that type of thinking and yeah. So with the neurons, we have a specific pathways, and again, that goes back to the childhood.

00:23:29.000 How our brain developed too. So one to three develops to 90%. And anything in between from zero to one, there's issues with the brain development. But having that being said, we're going forward. We're looking at three aspects of what they call the dynamic of being human. You have the prefrontal cortex, your midbrain, and the Olympic which is your emotions. And so having so putting that together, as we look at what the brain does, it's amazing.

00:23:58.000 So we can be a function doing our work or doing a ministry of doing whatever that's focused on that. And then we have you know the midbrain, which is really protection. So if we go back to non processed emotions or triggers to adverse childhood experiences, that's where we get into shame. And we get into lack of attachment pain and or powerlessness. And trying to bring that to the forefront, protection gets in the way.

00:24:24.000 And that's where anger and you know other emotions come into play, trying to not you know stay in function if you can because they don't want to mix like sometimes it's difficult, very difficult you know. Emotions that are really triggers in a very things that just really hurt you. You look back at what the hertz were that you experienced and the trauma. So that's what happened.

00:24:53.000 And it's a pretty you know just a simple overview of it, but it's so complex how God made it, but yet we have just, well, just go down to this one sentence. We have unprocessed emotions based on the trauma or complex trauma. And then we have to bring to process. So that's the key to walking that line to bring them to the forefront, deal with them as we were talking earlier, that's the freeing part of it, but it only works when you have the empathy of people walking alongside you who have experienced it or are a loving person that just wants you with healthy.

00:25:30.000 And just to be living wholeheartedly. Yeah. Loving, respectful. Extremely humble. It requires a special like Gerard said, probably somebody that's gone through it and experienced it. Right. Because that's where you develop those things. Absolutely, there's no question about it, but you understand how where you are now yeah.

00:25:59.000 And I know that Alison had mentioned too you know our lives, but I look back and say, I just thank God. So where I am now, I know I went through a whole host of issues and things. And again, it's, you know, you heard people too, and then you hurt by it because the bottom line is hurting people who are people. And then you saw things that were mirrored from your parents that you just didn't know how to include that into your own, raising up your family or child. So these things are very important to understand.

00:26:27.000 And Jesus really, really, you mentioned humble. The example that Allison mentioned, you talk about humble. The creator of everything in a spiritual realm and in this world realm, physical realm, did that. He did that for the apostles. And not only that, for three, a little over three years. He took the apostles on a journey, and he taught them. And I love this quote by doctor dean rankine.

00:26:57.000 They would go from place to place as it's outlined in the Bible. And it will questions and whatnot. And because it took time to go from a place to another, doctor Frankie said sometimes really great. He said you know, there'll be a question. And Jesus would just sit there and say, well, let's pull up a rock. And I'd sit down and he would teach them. And he wouldn't be judging him or saying, you should know better, isn't that? He would just sit there lovingly teach them how best to you know move forward in so many different ways that we all experience today, the emotions and so forth and unprocessed and how to love people.

00:27:32.000 And those apostles changed the world. Yeah. The Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit, and those apostles changed the world. And we're a benefit of it today. Yes, we are. Yeah. Do you have anything else about that? No. Okay. I think we covered the areas that we wanted to cover. I would like to say that our podcast is fairly new.

00:28:02.000 I think this is our 8th one. And we're really excited to be doing this, but we would also like your thoughts as well on areas that you would like us to talk about, teach about. Help with. Anything that we could talk about that would be beneficial to your lives that would be helpful to you or to help you help someone else.

00:28:30.000 We would be honored to do that. Well, that's true. That's a great way to put it up now. Thank you. And so I think at this point, I don't have anything else to add on this. Oh, I do. I'm sorry. So going off of what Alison mentioned, we would like to do a series of things. So if you have something like a topic or something that you really like to you know just have further explanation, we don't like to do lengthy podcasts, but we would love to do a series of podcasts on a particular subject.

00:29:02.000 So as you mentioned, if you would like to you know maybe send in some ideas or however you want to do it through a meal math musings at Gmail dot com or I guess we're out there in some other formats. We're on Spotify. We're on Apple podcasts. We're on a couple more. But if you go to Spotify or Apple, you will find us. We're on Google Podcasts.

00:29:26.000 And a few more iHeartRadio and so yeah, you could go there and you can, but also to our website. Mail Mac musings dot org. And there is a contact place there where you could write into us and ask us to speak about something as well. Sure. So it would really look forward to your input that's key and important for us as we move forward.

00:29:55.000 And so once again, I just want to say thank you for joining us. And you know I just have a great, wonderful week. Last week. God bless you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye bye now.