Growing Fruit: The Heirarchy of Self

Welcome/Intro/Prayer

Goood Morning Church! How is everyone doing this morning?

Review: Who Remembers what we learned about last week?

Conflict Escalation Cycle:

Disagreement, Conflict, and Entrenchment (Slides)

Some of the tools does anyone remember them? (Slides)

Question: What if the other person is so committed to entrenchment that there its a hopeless situation?

Power of Prayer: God can do more than we can imagine! DONT PRAY LIKE DAVID, pray that they would have an openness to God and let him do the work.

In every situation we have control of one thing: how we respond. Do your best to control your responses and ask God to lead you in your interactions with this person!

This morning we are going to continue taking a deeper look into ourselves and invite God to enter into every part of our being and bring love, light, and transformation. Would you join me in prayer to prepare our hearts for what God has for us this morning?

Hierarchy of Self

Deeper Self- What is at the Core of our being? What does every human share in no matter their race, background, job, language, culture, or preferences? That which God gave all of humanity.

Dr. Betty Pries, calls this the deeper self- the most intimate part of us, and in many ways that which gives us our identity as humans. These two things are image and breath.

I want to turn to the opening chapters of Genesis and explore these two parts of our deeper self.

Can someone read Genesis 1:27 out loud for us?

What does God create Adam and Eve in ? His own Image!

What do you think it means to be made in the image of God?

What do others say it means to be made in the image of God?

Martin Luther King Jr. Says, “The whole concept of the imago Dei, as it is expressed in Latin, the ‘image of God,’ is the idea that all men have something within them that God injected.  Not that they have substantial unity with God, but that every man has a capacity to have fellowship with God.  And this gives him a uniqueness, it gives him worth, it gives him dignity.  And we must never forget this as a nation: there are not gradations in the image of God…  We will know one day that God made us to live together as brothers and to respect the dignity and worth of every man.”

Billy Graham says, When the Bible says God created the human race in His image, it means that God put His character or imprint on our souls or spirits. We aren’t God–but we are like Him (although limited). Because of this, we have the ability to love, and to know right from wrong. Because we bear God’s image, we are different from the animals, and all human life is sacred.

Max Lucado says, We all ask the question, “Am I somebody important?” It’s easy to feel anything but important when your ex takes your energy, or old age takes your dignity. Somebody important? Hardly. But remember this promise of God: you were created by God, in God’s image, for God’s glory.

God spoke, “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature, so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth” (Genesis 1:26 MSG). God never declared, “Let us make oceans in our image,” or “birds in our likeness.” The heavens above reflect the glory of God, but they are not made in the image of God. Yet you are. And because God’s promises are unbreakable our hope is unshakable.

We also share God’s Spirit or Ruach, God’s breath is inside of us.

Can someone read Genesis 2:7 out loud for us? What brings adam to life? God’s breath.

Everyone take a deep breath. Every breath we take is a reminder that God sustains our life through his breath.

We now know the exact science of what causes us to take a breath and how the body does it naturally,

but Our understanding of what it means to be alive is to share in the breath of God.

These are the two things that make up the core of our self and being. Can we do anything to change these realities in another human?

Can we rob anyone of their God given image? or the fact that God’s breath lives in them? NO!

These two things give us value. diginity and idenity.

Illustration: Who has there wallet with them today raise your hand? Can I borrow a bill?

This bill has value, no matter what I do to it, how I change its appearance, even if I rip it color on it, yell at it. It holds it’s value.

This is something we must remember about ourselves and others, especially when we are in places of conflict.

Transition: So if the core of our being or deeper self is image and Spirit what else makes us who we are?

Descriptive Self- Our Descriptive self includes our characteristics strengths, limitations, and background (circumstances of birth). (Slide)

This is the part of ourselves that makes us special unique and diverse.

Characteristics- Our characteristics include the marker of our identity that cannot easily be changed, including our race, sex, skin color, height, hair type, body shape, level of extroversion, but these also include categories of idenity including roles, titles, and positions that we take (parent, spouse, grandparent, farmer, teacher pastor)

Strenghts- All people have different strenghts and skills.

I can do things that you cant. Jess can do things that Gary cant. Steve can do things that Elsie or Neson cant.

In the same way, we all have our limitations

I will never be an olympian or an opera singer.

NOTE: these are not limitations that emerge from low self esteem but limitations that are embedded in the container we are each given to dwell in when we are born.

Paul talks about this in the Letter to the Corinth 1 Cor chapter 12 that every member of the church is not only a part of the Body but has a gift

A part means that we all bring something different to the table, we cant all be a hand or a leg, but we cant be a body without each other!

has a gift. Something to share with the Body.

Everyone: has both a function and a role for Gods Kingdom: Do you believe this?

(Plug for ITPs), What has God placed me in this Church Family to be?

Circumstances of our Birth - Family history, Mother tongue, communities of our childhood and social class of our origins.

None of us chooses where or to whom we are born.

None of these parts of our self is neither good nor bad, but neutral.

Unfortunately, Sin exists in the world.

In this World, we dont exist as neutral beings, but we exist in an unspoken contract where our descriptions of self are in constant comparison.

We engage in judgement and constant comparisons, regarding some as better than us or worse than us. When this happens we feel “naked” and vulnerable.

Dr. Pries writes: As we regard our characteristics and compare them to those of others, we can fall into ego attachment or shame- -or both at the same time. We overemphasize some characteristics- attaching our ego to the satisfaction of these characteristics, congratulating ourselves that we are not that which is the other--while we seek to hide other charac-teristics, negatively attaching ourselves to these characteristics, hoping no one sees the shame and self-hatred with which we regard ourselves.

The Defended Self-Emerges from this a third layer or Skin

Dr. Pries Describes it as, This new layer of selfhood, which I call the defended self, is the self we develop to hide our vulnerability. This is the place of both low self-regard and narcissistic bravado. It is both the painful stories of "Why did I blunder again?" and the over-glory moments of "Without me, this family/organization/group will never work."

Most often, it is the defended self--sometimes regarded as the false self--that we present to the world. Attached to or ashamed of our descriptors, we present to the world an over. emphasis of some characteristics and make an (often failed attempt to hide other characteristics that we would prefer none would see or notice. Often, we do not even want others to see our ego attachment and shame, so we cover these too, adding new defended-self layers on top of the existing defended self. We don masks upon masks until multiple layers of defenses cover our descriptive self.

Summary: Does everyone need to understand this selfhood metaphor in order to gain access to goodness, generosity, and grace? The short answer is no. While the architecture of selfhood uses an image to describe what it means to be a person and be in relationship with one another, the principles of what it means to be a person are neither unusual nor inaccessible. Indeed, we can summarize the model's key principles as follows: (a) there is a location of goodness deep in each person, however invisible to us it might be; (b) the container we have been given to inhabit is perfectly neutral; (c) we (and that includes all of us) tend to live according to our masks, our false self--this gets us into trouble; (d) we are, each of us, deeply beloved; (e) the force that loves us is also the source that births the goodness that resides in each one of us; and f) while we are uniquely different from one anothet, we are also one.

I want to land on this space of defended self and where we can grow in this area.

This defended self exists in everyone.

Some people call this layer or a wall that we put up.

Others call it the masks we wear.

As we learned last week it is living out of our defended self and our lack emotional regulation that gives rise to conflict. So how do we move forward?

Transition: This is where Jesus comes in. This is Where Jesus becomes our Example, Identity, and Our Goal

Jesus: Example, Identity, and Goal

Jesus is our example:

In Philipians 2: Paul describes Jesus example, Phil 2:6-8

Philippians 2:6–8 NIV

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!

In many ways, this passage addresses how we deal with the self that says, we are better than another person, but what about the voice of shame in our lives that says we arent good enough?

Shame- : “a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior; a loss of respect or esteem”

convitction- is when God’s Spirit illuminates something wrong in or outside of you through prayer, bible, or someone saying Hey i noticed this, tell me more. Not so you can feel lesser about yourself but to be and do better.

Convitction- leads to true healing, true repentence and growth. Shame only leads to lesser view of self, self inflicted wounds, denial, insecurity, arrogance and Spirit stagnancy.

Yet, by God’s grace Jesus sets us free from shame.

Jesus dealt with that shame on the cross, Hebrews 12:1-2 tells us this, that Jesus scorned the shame of the cross, but He also destroyed the power of shame, by Redeeming us on the cross.

In Christ, we have the example of both dealing with ego and shame.

Identity: The Bible Tells us all about this . We are just going to read straight from our Bibles for this.

Psalm 139:13-14.

Eph 2:10.

1 Peter 2:9.

2 Cor 5:17.

Jesus is also our Target. He is our Goal. look at what Eph 5:1-2 says (slides)

I think too often, we think about living out our faith as avoiding sin.

Bible defines sin, as “missing the Mark”, who then is the mark Church? Jesus.

Thus, I think part of understanding our selves is a Journey Inward, a Journey toward our core self our deeper self, a journey toward Jesus.

Would you pray with me?

Wrapping UP

Know:

Why:

Do:

Reflect-

Act-

Share-

Dream/Imagine: