John Murphy

This is the Rock House Center podcast and I'm John Murphy.

Beth Murphy

I'm Beth Murphy and we're going to talk today about why it could be so difficult to trust God.

Beth Murphy

The barriers to trusting him and why people feel like they're would, would like to be able to trust God, but find that they just cannot.

John Murphy

It's important.

John Murphy

I mean, if someone wants to get to the piece that they're really desiring and yearning for, you can't get there around.

John Murphy

The God question is he trustworthy?

John Murphy

Do you trust him?

John Murphy

That peace is so dependent on trusting God and that's the way God built us so that we would pursue him until we find him and lean on him and trust in him.

John Murphy

But there's an important aspect of that.

John Murphy

Which is it you have to know that he is trustworthy?

John Murphy

You must.

John Murphy

Know him, it's important to understand.

John Murphy

Who he really is.

Beth Murphy

Knowing him and his character relationally in the depth of our heart is where trust resides.

Beth Murphy

Because if we just we sort of academically know about him.

Beth Murphy

But we have a whole different I guess heart impression or heart stamp.

Beth Murphy

Of God and his character.

Beth Murphy

Then we don't really know him.

Beth Murphy

We don't know.

Beth Murphy

It's like the difference in reading a book about someone who lives down the street or actually getting to know them and going on walks with them and having them over for dinner.

Beth Murphy

It's an intellectual head, knowledge about them, or relational.

Beth Murphy

Knowledge of really, truly knowing them and it's that truly knowing God.

Beth Murphy

And his character and being then able to trust him and receive his love.

Beth Murphy

That's where the peace come from.

John Murphy

Yeah, and there's a scripture that makes it really clear that that is a dynamic of the way that we are made that we can't get to peace really, without this understanding of who God is, and the second Peter 1/2 Scripture which I just love this scripture, it goes may grace, which is God, favor and peace, which is perfect. Well, being all necessary.

John Murphy

Good all spiritual prosperity and freedom from fears and agitation, agitating passions and moral conflicts be multiplied in you in the full, personal, precise, and correct knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

John Murphy

So this is, let's talk about a lot of all words.

John Murphy

Here we have all necessary good.

John Murphy

All spiritual prosperity.

John Murphy

The wellbeing, all of these things are based on the degree to which we understand correctly who Jesus and God are, so that's what the scripture is telling us.

John Murphy

So it's really important to know them so that we can understand they are worthy of our trust, and then therefore we can trust them and it is out of that trust is where the peace.

John Murphy

Comes that we're also hungry for.

John Murphy

We all want that supernatural peace where we can be assured in whatever situation we're in.

John Murphy

We can have this sense of peace.

John Murphy

It is necessary to get to know God and get to know Jesus to arrive at that place of peace, that we're all looking for.

Beth Murphy

Scripture makes it clear that we do have an enemy who seeks to steal, kill, and destroy.

Beth Murphy

Who is the father of lies and is the deceiver?

Beth Murphy

So the ultimate victory that Satan wants to win with God's children is to deceive us about God, because everything flows from there.

Beth Murphy

All of our experience is about life, our relationship.

Beth Murphy

It's the way that we feel when we get up and and launch the day and when we go to bed at night and close out the day and everything in between all emanates from what our view of God is, which is therefore the view of our life.

Beth Murphy

Our purpose in our life.

Beth Murphy

Everything emanates from whether or not we are.

Beth Murphy

Able to connect with God and know him truly to be who he really is, and so the enemies.

Beth Murphy

Most vigilant strategy for believers is to deter us from believing and knowing the truth about God and relating to him in a meaningful way.

John Murphy

Yeah, it's a very successful strategy and we know how successful it is because of the people who come here that we work with who have a wrong understanding of who God is.

John Murphy

He's not someone that they can.

John Murphy

Trust that they don't feel like that.

John Murphy

He is the father that he says he is and so they are very burdened.

John Murphy

They have fear they don't trust him, and because they can't trust, they have a very hard time having peace.

John Murphy

They have a lot of uncertainty, anxiety, fears and other kinds of things come because they have believed a wrong thing.

John Murphy

They have believed they had.

John Murphy

Really have a wrong picture?

John Murphy

A wrong character in their heart of who he is, so we've seen a lot of suffering because of that one foundational thing.

Beth Murphy

People will often report when they come to Rock House Center for counseling that they have a trust problem.

Beth Murphy

Either they've noticed it.

Beth Murphy

Their family members have told them or a therapist has told them they have a trust problem or someone in a small group at church has told them that.

Beth Murphy

But what we don't typically understand is that underneath any trust problem is the foundational inability to trust God because we're we are wired.

Beth Murphy

To need him, we call them divine needs at Rock House Center, and so when he's not in that slot, we've got a radar, so to speak.

Beth Murphy

That's out looking, searching for, trying everything on for size is does my husband or wife?

Beth Murphy

Will they fit in that slot?

Beth Murphy

Can I trust them completely?

Beth Murphy

Well, no.

Beth Murphy

cause they're they have failings.

Beth Murphy

They disappoint us.

Beth Murphy

They let us down so they're not.

Beth Murphy

They're not infallibly trustworthy.

Beth Murphy

We try everything else, and then we get our children and whether our children are loving us, respecting us.

Beth Murphy

Meeting our needs or making us feel loved or successful as a parent and they fail us and so that feels like get another feeling.

Beth Murphy

I can't trust them.

Beth Murphy

I can't trust my friend who lied to me because they're not they did something that was clearly not trustworthy.

Beth Murphy

Experiencing those things for what they are.

Beth Murphy

Can't really happen in the right context until we get connected to the only one who is completely and totally trustworthy because we're wired to need that that 100% infallible, trustworthy one. And there is only one.

John Murphy

Yeah, and so when someone fails us when we have a foundational abiding trust in God when somebody fails us and shows that they are untrustworthy.

John Murphy

It's not fun, but it doesn't rock us to our foundation. We have a source of something that we can trust in 100%. I don't need that person to be trustworthy, because that's satisfied by God.

John Murphy

So I can have a level of resilience at peace even when in great disappointment.

John Murphy

With whoever it is that I'm dealing with.

John Murphy

But if we're going around looking for the person who's going to be that thing, that's going to that person is going to be ultimately trustworthy that I can go.

John Murphy

I can rest in the reality that this person will never let me down.

John Murphy

That person does not exist.

John Murphy

If you have tried this over a number of years and a lot of our clients have tried this and come in with a lot of disappointment.

John Murphy

And a lot of anger and a lot of frustration in relationships.

John Murphy

Just because the foundational place of trust wasn't satisfied in their relationship with the Lord.

John Murphy

And so they were looking for more than any human could really.

John Murphy

River and they were tied up to fail.

John Murphy

They were tied up to be to suffer because of.

Beth Murphy

That so a way that you can identify that's gone on in your heart is when we feel like a broken relationship is devastating.

Beth Murphy

It just feels like the bottom dropped out in my life when someone broke up with me.

Beth Murphy

Or a relationship ended?

Beth Murphy

Or we discovered that someone we had really thought was our best friend has lied to us or gossiped about us, betrayed us.

Beth Murphy

Find that someone has an affair.

Beth Murphy

All those kinds of things.

Beth Murphy

Was that like you said or not, nobody is looking for that to happen or hoping that's going to happen, but the difference between it being a devastating blow that people describe in terms like my life just left the rails.

Beth Murphy

At that point it just came apart, everything came apart.

Beth Murphy

And I haven't been able to get it back since then.

Beth Murphy

It was devastating to me.

Beth Murphy

Or, you know, the revelation that a parent has had some significant moral failing after you know all these years of representing a certain standard and then finding out that for a decade they had a secret life going on again?

Beth Murphy

Not good, basically a way that people describe those sorts of events.

Beth Murphy

It clearly feels like they feel like they lost God because the person was in the God roll and when they did something that was so disappointing or actually sometimes can even be when the person dies.

Beth Murphy

It just feels like I lost.

Beth Murphy

I lost it.

Beth Murphy

I lost every.

Beth Murphy

Because it's feeling like I lost God because I don't know how to trust God.

Beth Murphy

I've been looking to this person for that.

John Murphy

Yeah, I've been trusting them for very foundational assurances about how life feels.

John Murphy

So when I have this person in this place and they're in this role in my life, then there's a tremendous amount riding on them.

John Murphy

And if for some reason they're gone or they have a failing or whatever, then it rocks me to the core the way I experienced this when I first saw that.

John Murphy

There was something off.

John Murphy

In my relationship with God was when I recognized one day that when I thought about God's character and how I felt, God felt about me and how I felt that relationship was going from his end.

John Murphy

It really reflected tremendously on the relationship I had with my father in the early years.

John Murphy

Were really the formative years of my life.

John Murphy

You know zero to 15 or 16 when we weren't getting along that well, and I had it was amazing.

John Murphy

The number of things about my father I attributed to God.

John Murphy

So as we call our parents, gods of our youth, they're the only.

John Murphy

They're the big people that run the planet.

John Murphy

They are the ones that we look to be the perfect trustworthy ones.

John Murphy

And of course, we're needy and small, and they're available, and so they're there.

John Murphy

And so we put all this focus and wait.

John Murphy

Sure dependency on them for to answer the deepest things of who we are.

John Murphy

And they get in this position where we slide them into that place and if they have not talked about God, then they're the only God I've got.

John Murphy

So, they are the ones that are going to have to fill that place.

John Murphy

So, the gods of our youth can cause us to have wrong understandings about God.

John Murphy

They are ambassadors, have got it says in Ephesians 6 so they are representing his character and we're really building a grid.

John Murphy

Of who God is through the representation of our parents?

John Murphy

You know what all of our parents have failed to some degree.

John Murphy

All of our parents have not represented God's character to us when we needed our depth that we needed or whatever. We have in many cases I signific.

John Murphy

Amount of the failings of our parents smeared on our impression on our grid.

John Murphy

Our understanding of who God is, and that's the thing that we need to challenge.

John Murphy

And by the standard of who he says he is, and by his demonstrated behavior.

John Murphy

And there are many things about God that demonstrate that he is fatherly and loving and trustworthy.

John Murphy

And we need to touch that and we need to reject the lies and accept the truth of that.

John Murphy

He really is the perfect father.

John Murphy

He really is.

John Murphy

The answer to the deepest needs that we have.

Beth Murphy

Children also pick up lies about themselves based on the way that the gods of their youth have.

Beth Murphy

Have represented God, of course, unwittingly.

Beth Murphy

Parents are not intentionally doing this.

John Murphy

They've done the best they can do, we're.

John Murphy

Not beating up on apparently.

Beth Murphy

Absolutely, and you know.

Beth Murphy

So I'm just thinking about the woman saying she remembered.

Beth Murphy

As a 7 year old wishing that her mother loved her as much as she loved cigarettes and murder mysteries, and concluding that there was something wrong with her as a child, that if I were just a better little girl that mother would love me more.

Beth Murphy

That's really also a lie about God's character that he could even be that way. He could that he would be like an earthly parent with limitations on his love and be drawn off to something else that has captured his heart more than.

Beth Murphy

His child has captured his heart and of course, that's not what it meant about that child mother at all.

Beth Murphy

But it's what the child interpreted, and so you know, it's a very hopeful thing.

Beth Murphy

And just thinking about life in the role of a parent where we can realize things that we've done or misrepresented things about God to our children.

Beth Murphy

And the objective is not a thought that we would ever be a perfect parents.

Beth Murphy

Is but to just be able to recognize we want to redirect the course of where we're going and redirect our child to the true God, and so the the focus for a parent becomes getting the depth of trust in God and the character of him in their own heart, so that as they're representing it to their child, they can.

Beth Murphy

Clearly, just honestly communicate that I didn't represent him perfectly in this way.

Beth Murphy

Or didn't represent him at all well in that way.

Beth Murphy

But let me connect you to who God really is.

Beth Murphy

I think of it like plugging in a wall socket, connect directly to God as the real source, as the real trustworthy one.

Beth Murphy

That is what we all need.

Beth Murphy

That's that's what we need.

Beth Murphy

That's what our children need.

Beth Murphy

So that we understand that yes, in fact I can trust him because he is eminently trustworthy, and he's the one who's going to heal my heart and help me trust him.

John Murphy

You know there's so many things, it's hard not to dig into some of the realities of how father, how, loving what a great Father God really is, and all the things that he's done and just the his expression.

John Murphy

Of course, first represented by the story of the prodigal son, where he rejoiced over the sons return.

John Murphy

He obviously was distressed at the Sun.

John Murphy

Never left and took his possessions of the household with him, but when he returned there was no conversation about that.

John Murphy

It was just excitement and to have him returned and to restore him and to give him the robe.

John Murphy

In the ring, it could take the fatted calf.

John Murphy

I mean clearly the message is that the love of God is absolutely supreme to all behavior of humans and that just a great picture of the true character of God.

John Murphy

He's not someone who's following you around with a clipboard to remember everything you've done wrong.

John Murphy

He is not expecting the worst.

John Murphy

He's expecting.

John Murphy

The best.

John Murphy

He does not take account for evil, the scripture says.

John Murphy

He has established us as his children, that he has brought us out of this place of sin and death, where we were a spiritual, eternal trainwreck without him, and he came and saved us.

John Murphy

He didn't have to just save us, but he also adopted.

John Murphy

He adopted us and then he also transferred us into the Kingdom and then he made us brothers and Sisters of Christ.

John Murphy

And he's preparing a home forest in heaven.

John Murphy

And if we go beyond that, it talks about how he has made us a royal priesthood to ultimately at some point, as we progressively transform to reflect the.

John Murphy

The perfections and the virtues of his own son.

John Murphy

This is the true heavenly Father.

John Murphy

And when we.

John Murphy

When we see our beliefs about our who?

John Murphy

He is next to who he really is.

John Murphy

We need to see the gap here and we need to reject those lies that don't line up with all that he has done to restore us to him and all that he has done to honor us and to treat us equally with Jesus himself.

John Murphy

It says that he wanted to make us brothers and sisters of Christ to what he's trying to tell you in this scripture.

John Murphy

Is and this is Romans 829, where he says that he's trying to tell you that he loves you as much as he loves you.

John Murphy

Jesus, he would withhold nothing from you that he would give Jesus.

John Murphy

You're a brother and sister of Christ himself.

John Murphy

That is who the father is and anything you believe that opposes that is something that we need to recognize and reject so that we can know that he is trustworthy and therefore trust him and therefore have the grace.

John Murphy

And all of the blessings that we talked about in the first scripture.

Beth Murphy

Well, I think the way to get there of course, is to ask God to get us there.

Beth Murphy

There are.

Beth Murphy

Many people, thousands, millions of Christians walk around suffering just feeling like I wish I could trust God more and can't do that.

Beth Murphy

Can't have the faith they wish that they could have, and it's always because of this.

Beth Murphy

It's always an underlying misunderstanding, misrepresentation of God, and so of course God.

Beth Murphy

Waiting with.

Beth Murphy

Arms open wide.

Beth Murphy

Usher us into his embrace and living under the shower of his truth and the shower of his love to receive all that he has for us.

Beth Murphy

And so the pathway there begins with.

Beth Murphy

Just praying and asking God to change our hearts to undo these things and basically kind of like imprint a new stamp on our hearts.

Beth Murphy

We've had a wrong imprint we need to undo the old imprint.

Beth Murphy

Or ask God to undo the old imprint and put a new imprint based on the truth of his character and his covenant relationship with us.

John Murphy

Yes, so let's move into prayer now about this particular thing.

John Murphy

So Heavenly Father, we just ask you right now to invade our heart with the truth of who you are.

John Murphy

Heavenly Father revealed to us.

John Murphy

The lies that we have believed that have kept us from trusting you.

John Murphy

The things that have caused us to maybe dishonor you.

John Murphy

The things that have caused us not to be able to rest in you.

John Murphy

To rely in you to adhere to you.

John Murphy

To really take ourselves out under our own keeping and give ourselves over to you.

John Murphy

Father, we know that you are worthy.

John Murphy

Of all of those things, and Lord, we just reject.

John Murphy

Right now every lie that comes to our mind about your character.

John Murphy

We just reject all those things, Lord.

John Murphy

And we send them back to hell where they belong and we ask you father, that you would replace them with the truth of who you are.

John Murphy

Of how fatherly you are, how.

John Murphy

Perfect your Love Is All the things that you've done.

John Murphy

And worked to sacrifice us sacrifice.

John Murphy

To restore us to you, Lord.

John Murphy

We thank you, Lord, that you love us equally as you love your own son.

John Murphy

Father, I ask that you would heal me of all the ways that I have suffered from the lies.

John Murphy

Board I asked that she would build a.

John Murphy

Assured and peaceful and trusting relationship out of the relationship.

John Murphy

I used to have with you.

John Murphy

Lord, I ask that you would strengthen me.

John Murphy

To turn to you in all things.

John Murphy

That you would cause.

John Murphy

Me Lord, to identify and resist the lies.

John Murphy

That may come into my thinking about who you are.

John Murphy

And replace them with the truth.

John Murphy

Or I'll ask you to strengthen me.

John Murphy

Or to invade my heart and cause me to.

John Murphy

To trust you completely based on who?

John Murphy

You are Lord.

John Murphy

I thank you that you are trustworthy.

John Murphy

I think you are.

John Murphy

All that you claim to be.

John Murphy

And I asked you, Lord, to give me peace.

John Murphy

Give me the peace that comes from resting in you completely because of who you are.

John Murphy

I just pray all these things.

John Murphy

In Jesus name Amen hey man.

Beth Murphy

I'll just agree with you on that.

Beth Murphy

I thank you Lord for all that you're doing in the hearts of the people who prayed this prayer today and will continue to pray it.

Beth Murphy

We thank you for joining us here in this podcast and look forward to speaking with you again soon.

John Murphy

Yes, thanks for being with us goodbye.