I can remember one of my grandchildren, I looked into her eyes when she was very little, and I said ooh! You are going to have some fun with this one! [Laughter] She is just like you - and I'm thinking oh oh, it goes round! [Laughter] But this is all part of life you know, there's no perfect families, no perfect people, no perfect world. It's a messy beat up world, with all kinds of sin and problems, and grace is what changes it, so we have to receive grace for ourself if we're going to give it to anyone else. Getting the idea? We'll give you a couple more, then we'll just wind it up - getting the idea? [Laughs] So concealing, covering up.
Okay, another thing which is related to it, which people tend to do, in Luke 9:23, you've heard the scripture; Whoever wants to be my disciple, he must deny himself. Whoa! Lyn, you would have had that scripture, take up the cross! Ooh - and so what happens is, you already had a low esteem, and now it just got worse, now I'm a nothing, a nobody, and you're struggling, never good enough. The problem is, we often give up the wrong things in church, [laughs] give up the wrong things, and what happens is we bury the gifts of God. Now listen, God put in you desires. Desires in you can be very evil, desires can be very good. The desires God gives are very good. He puts desires in your heart. He puts dreams in your heart. He puts gifts in your heart, so don't bury the gifts, don't bury the dreams, desires, longings, yearnings, the goals. Don't bury them all down, don't bury your life. Don't bury the things that God says: these are valuable. I find, I look in the church, I see so many people, the goodness in them is all buried, because they're so burdened over all the things that are wrong.
Listen, the things you put aside, and the things you bring to the cross, are pride and arrogance and independence, all that kind of stuff. But listen, the dreams, desires, longings, gifts, this is part of who you are. You have to call them forth, and connect with people that'll help, say: boy you'd be good at that; otherwise we have a covering over our life, and no one sees what we really are, or what we could be. Church is to be a family, where sons and daughters are encouraged to step out and do stuff, try stuff, and if you make a mistake, well good on you, you had a go. You can't exist in a culture where you can't have a go. Just have a go. I've had a go for years. You know almost everything I've learnt, I went somewhere, and I had a go, tried it out. All the things I learnt pretty well in the supernatural I've developed in, I went somewhere else, and I practiced and had a go. I thought I can leave and go home and then [laughs] and took risks, took terrible risks, but it's helped me grow see?
So here's another couple of things, and then we'll just finish them, I'll just finish. Here's a couple of goodies that Christians cover up, and one is, we cover up our background, and won't admit that our background is affecting how we live our life today - cover up our background. Now listen, if you think about your background, your background is about how you were raised, it's the values you got, how you thought about money, how you thought about family, how you thought about conflict, how you thought about emotions, how you thought about anger and handling anger, how you thought about handling disappointments, how you handled success in life. Most of the values you have, they were formed as you grew up in your family, and of course if we grow up in broken families, we need to face the reality that a lot of our thinking is wrong, and needs to change.