What if the place that hurt you is the place you heal? That question threads through a raw, hopeful conversation with senior pastor Carlos Ortiz Jr., who opens up about childhood abuse inside the church, a secret life of addiction masked by achievement, and the quiet night in a college dorm when a whisper to “trust” began a long, layered recovery.
Carlos doesn’t sell quick fixes. He shows how small daily choices—one sober day, one honest prayer, one well-timed apology—stack into transformation.
We walk through the winding call from law school ambitions to ministry, the hard feedback that he “left a trail of tears,” and the rebuild of leadership from winning at all costs to caring for people.
Doubt becomes a companion, not a verdict. Starting in the book of James, Carlos reframes double-mindedness: let faith drive and let doubts ride. Together we explore practical tools for releasing control—praying “Search my heart,” inviting trusted feedback, and practicing timing as love rather than urgency—and why reflection beats the cultural rush for instant answers.
A simple arborist’s lesson lands hard: stakes support young trees, but left too long, they stunt growth. Pride, boundaries, and survival tactics once kept us safe; now they can suffocate maturity, marriages, and teams. Carlos urges us to revisit rather than run—returning to painful places with boundaries to find the healing we avoided. Along the way, we talk marriage repair, parenting with humility, seeing family through God’s eyes during the holidays, and how churches can welcome skeptics and seekers with honesty and hope.
If you’re carrying wounds, wrestling with doubt, or gripping control, this story offers a map: tell the truth, take the next small step, and let humility lead. Subscribe, share this episode with someone who needs courage today, and leave a review to help more people find their way back to healing.
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, purchase any of her products, or book a call with her, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
SPEAKER_03:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, Sylvia Warsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
SPEAKER_00:
Hey light branders, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Release Out Reveal Purpose. And today’s Carlos Ortiz Jr. And it is such a pleasure for me to have him on my show because he’s the senior pastor of my church. And when I first met him, I was blown away, not just because he was so genuine on stage, but I love that about him. But he was Hispanic like me, and so I could relate and I could find myself in the stories. And even better yet, our son, who didn’t like going to church, started wanting to go to church because Carlos was on stage. And I knew there was a blessing in disguise because it was a moment in time that I was really searching for a church and for a place. And we had been there, John had been there, John Burke, and then he passed on the torch. And I was so excited because being Hispanic myself, I always love when Hispanic people rise to the occasion and are given these major gifts, a blessing. So he’s not just our senior pastor, he’s a friend, and he’s someone that I admire greatly for the work he’s done around the world. So without further ado, thank you so much for joining us, Carlos, on Release.
SPEAKER_02:
It’s it’s my pleasure. Uh and yes, you are a friend of ours, and my wife loves you and our family and enjoy the time we spend talking together. And uh just you and your husband just love you guys so much.
SPEAKER_00:
We do, we adore you. And there came a moment I was like, I really want to interview him on the podcast because he has such wisdom to share. There’s a story of transformation that you shared on stage with us at the church that I know needs to be heard on this stage because there’s so many people out there that don’t realize that where they’re broken is really where the healing needs to happen. And I know you have an amazing story of transformation. So can you please share with us that those broken pieces of you and how you landed as a pastor?
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, so I think uh if I’m gonna share a little wisdom for those who are listening today, you know, especially as we come into the holiday season, where we can come into a place where I think sometimes the reason why we in the culture love the holidays, because it’s actually escapism. Whether it’s Halloween or Thanksgiving or Christmas, it’s like we get to escape and we get to live in the nostalgia of maybe what could have been or what used to be. But these are actually really good seasons to see things for what they are. Um, and and that I think I had to do that in my work. And the and the other thing is for those who are listening, as I share my story, there’s there are layers to our stories. And even though many of us can pinpoint one or two actions, one or two things that really marked us or scarred us or now trigger us, we actually are very layered people. And I’ll even say this for the guys who are listening, or if you’re a woman listening, happen to be married or dating somebody, guys are much more layered and complicated than what we give off or what we’ve been told for many most of our lives. And so for me, as I’ve walked as a follower of Jesus and a person trying to walk in healing, I’ve had to give myself permission to say, 30 years later, and I’m still working through stuff, right? Because I’ve there are so many layers and nuances and stories. So the the larger story is I grew up as a as a pastor’s kid. My dad was in a denomination known as the Assemblies of God, it’s a Pentecostal denomination, and uh he had a really tough job. He would help churches that were broken, whether the pastor had an affair or somebody stole money, and there were a lot of them. I know the culture tells us that all the churches are bad. There weren’t a lot of them, but the ones that were, we went and my dad would kind of clean up the church per se. So when we came to a church, people didn’t like us because we were going to bring change. So I grew up going to churches where people didn’t want us to be there because they liked the church the way it was. But my dad was such a good pastor, very involved in the community, very involved in English and Spanish speaking churches and all those kinds of things. But with my dad am I doing so much work, I fell prey to sexual predators within the church. So on two different occasions, actually, two different churches, multiple occasions, I was a victim of sexual abuse in the church. The same church that my dad was trying to lead. Um, and it wasn’t a family member, but it was a friend close enough that could be a um a wolf in sheep’s clothing. And so that happened until from the time I was eight till I was about twelve. And at that point, um I just really was reeling as a young teenager or as a preteen. And by the time I was 15, I already had a drinking problem. So I was already an alcoholic, I was drinking a lot of alcohol, doing drugs, and yet I was a pretty good student, and so I got to mask a lot of that. So I learned pretty early how to mask things. So I was a straight A student, I was a captain of my teams, I was a good athlete, but I was really hurting on the inside. Um, and then I I got I was um arrested a few times, still I was president of my senior class, and I was going to jail and I was in trouble, and I was going to the courts, and I was on probation, went off to college, and um basically by my sophomore year, I was just rock bottom. Uh I was still getting straight A’s, I was an honor student, but my soul, my heart, every my emotions were just torn apart. I was sleeping with anything that moved, basically, right? So I was trying to find healing and redemption in the part that broke me, but it was breaking me more. Um, and one night stands and broken relationships, and um, I had a girlfriend that we had, you know, she lost a baby, which we were we were thinking about having an abortion, like all these things that were happening when I was a young adult. And I was by myself early on my sophomore year of college, and it was a room by myself, and I had a moment that was like this very ethereal spiritual moment, and nobody was preaching, and there wasn’t music, it was just me by myself and the reality of facing myself. You know, Sylvia, those times where we look in the mirror and we see the reality of who we are, and I saw that, and I just heard this gentle whisper, like, just trust me. Well, nobody was around, and I didn’t believe in God at the time, but it’s like just trust me, and my heart knew what it was saying, like trust God, but I didn’t believe in God, um but my heart wanted to believe in God. My mind, the academic in me was like there’s no God, but my heart wanted there to be a God, and I heard that voice, and I had just tears going down my face, and I was like, I can’t trust you the way my parents trust you. I can’t do this. And this went on for like two or three hours, and I was by myself in a room, and then I finally just gave in and I said, Okay, I’m gonna trust you. And my goal was just to not sleep with anyone. My first goal was don’t sleep with anybody, don’t get high today. And before you know it, it was like, okay, maybe I won’t get high tomorrow either. And then it was like, maybe I won’t get high or sleep with anybody for the first week. And here we are 30 years later, and I still set those small goal goals. Now, not the same goals, right? Of not getting high or just sleeping with random people, but it’s layered and nuanced. So I said yes to that, and then I got really involved with my local church and had somebody took me under their wing as a young adult, and they asked me to be a small group leader. I’m like, you don’t want me leading anybody, like I you don’t want your kids with me. And I started a small group with like three kids who were like the troublemakers in the church, and one of them was my little brother, and and two of his friends, and before you knew it, our group of three turned into like a group of 35 teenagers, and my pastor was like, You might have something here. I’m like, No, no, no, I’m gonna be a lawyer. So I was a business undergrad, and I was gonna go to law school, I was gonna make a ton of money because I grew I was tired of being poor, the poor pastor’s kid. And by senior year, I met my wife Libby. I was following Jesus, and my wife looked, or my girlfriend at the time said, I think you’re called to be a pastor. And I said, No manches, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is a lie. Don’t don’t talk like that. And I talked to my pastor, and he goes, You know, this journey to pastoring is a private one. We cannot tell you, we can affirm it, but we can’t call you to it. So that’s when I began my journey, and I told God, I’m gonna do it for a couple years, and then you’re gonna change your mind because I’m gonna be really bad at this, and I’ll just go back to law school. And uh here we are, 30 years later, still doing it. And I like how Libby tells you, like, I think you learned to be a pastor. You know, so every time we struggle as pastors, because pastors struggle, like, I don’t know if I want to do this anymore. This is really tough. Libby will say, I don’t know if we should do this. I’m like, girl, it’s your fault. Like you told me I should be a pastor. So we kind of laugh about it, but that’s that’s kind of my story of going into ministry, and then there was so much healing that came after pastoring about my past and some of the brokenness of my of my sexual life, of my my my physical life, and uh and God’s seen me through that. And so that’s kind of the general overall story.
SPEAKER_00:
I I love how God uses the people closest to us, the people we love, the people that can that’s why love transforms, because we want to do it, right? He oftentimes uses Donnie as a messenger to me, and there’s times I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to hear the truth. And Donnie’s so big on the truth, and now I’m coming around to the idea of the truth. It took me a while. I’m very stubborn, like you. Yeah, and um interestingly, enough when you said you wanted to be a lawyer, my father wanted me to be a lawyer, and I refused him. I said, nope, I’m not being a lawyer. I took the upset, I did everything he wanted me to do, but I just my heart wasn’t in it.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
And it took a while for me to find my path now. It’s never linear. Uh, in your case, it happened pretty quickly, though, to a degree in that in college, as you’re wanting to go into this, God intervenes and says, no, no, no, no, you’re gonna follow this path, and I’m gonna put a girl in your path that’s gonna convince you to probably took a girl, probably took a girl in my life to kind of convince me.
SPEAKER_02:
But yeah, so I agree with you, like things just aren’t linear. And so this is why really it’s important for people to understand their own story. Because even when we have parts of our story that are linear, the growth along the way isn’t always linear, right? So for me, the story is pretty connected, but the the underneath the thing, it’s not so linear. There’s a lot of things I grew in, there’s things I did backwards. You know, Libby and I, for example, we first got married, and we were everybody was like, you know, these two young people, they love Jesus, they love each other. They they threw us a big wedding, we had hundreds of people at our wedding, and then we’re done being married, and we were living together, and the first three years, I’m just gonna say it sucked. They were bad, and I know that because my wife told me they were bad, right? She was like, I don’t like being married to you, and we had to do a lot of work just to get started in marriage, much less five or ten years down the road. And so there’s a lot of work, and there’s there’s that’s the thing, we can’t get away from doing the work. You can’t just say whether I believe in God or I don’t believe in God. Okay, that might be the surface level question, but man, there’s so many questions, right, that are underneath that that both inform that decision and either deconstruct it or affirm it. And so for me, I did not believe in God, but I had a lot of questions about God, even though I didn’t believe in God. And as I began to really engage those, um, it really opened up my heart to a moment where I said, okay, God, I believe in you. But it still took me years of studying. I went back to grad school, I went to SMU in Dallas for grad school. And so it’s like my journey of searching God, even as a pastor, continues to this day. You know, I question everything. I have doubts about a lot of things. But I think it’s come to become a gift and a strength as opposed to, okay, now I believe in God, so I have to believe in all 100 things or all 50 things they taught. No, no, no. God’s wired you a particular way. Bring that to the table, you know, with you. And so that’s been a good part of the journey for me, is all the questions and doubts and fears. And then we had kids, and I didn’t want a kids, but the kids have a different level of learning, you know.
SPEAKER_00:
How do you release that doubt though? Because I mean, you’re a pastor, and everybody looks to you to kind of guide us. How do we do this? How did you do it? How did you just start releasing those layers of doubt?
SPEAKER_02:
So, for those who for the people who are who are listening who maybe are Christians, uh, a lot of times when somebody comes to faith, people say, Well, start reading the book of John or start in the New Testament. And so that’s great, because that’s that’s really good for most people. But for me, and for people those are listeners who aren’t followers of Jesus who are exploring, I I started in the book of James, which is weird because it was just like a thing, and now I know why. Because James chapter one talks about trials and tribulations and the things you’re gonna face, and to have confidence in God when you face these things. But then verse 8 says that a double-minded person is unstable in all their ways. And that was the first verse I ever remembered. And I think it was God telling me you can carry your doubts, but if you carry your doubts equally to what you know, you’re gonna be unstable in everything you do. So you either need to be driven by your doubts or driven by faith. And it doesn’t mean you you only have one or the other, but only one of them can drive you, Sylvia. You know, it’s like when you have the reins of something, you either go right or left. You can’t tell it to you can’t tell a horse to go both. The horse gets confused and then it does whatever it wants to do. So for me, it wasn’t releasing doubt for those who are listening who have a lot of doubts, it was putting doubt in its rightful place. Okay, right? Because that’s how I think a lot of times people who are exploring faith or hey, is Christianity real? We get this idea that if I have doubts, I can’t be a Christian or I can’t have faith. You should have doubts. You should have doubts about a lot of things, and some of those doubts are actually really good. How things are done, why things are structured the way they’re structured, those are really good things. Even as a pastor, you’ve heard me say, you don’t just hear a pastor speak and believe a hundred percent, not because it’s a lie, but is it in context? What does scripture say about that? And that’s why we use a lot of scripture at our church because I we are grounded in scripture, it’s not just a TED talk for Christians, right? So we use a lot of scripture so that we teach from that, and so that helps people say, okay, I still have my doubts or my concerns, but I’m gonna be driven by faith. And as I hit certain blockades, maybe a question will help me in this. The other thing is, as an academic, a true academic is looking for truth. A false academic is somebody who’s actually looking for answers to support what they already think is true. So am I willing to be wrong? Well, an academic’s willing to be wrong. A lot of my professors in grad school were saying one of the best gifts you’ll have as an academic is saying, I don’t know. And how many of us had professors or teachers or parents who seem to have every answer, but then eventually they have to like their defense mechanisms protect them, and then now they can’t be wrong. Yeah, especially in certain cultures, many cultures around the world, especially immigrant families, right? Our parents know what’s right all the time. They can’t be right all the time, it’s impossible. And so they say they say things like, Well, just do it because I said so. Well, but why did you say so? Because mom knows best, or because I’m the man of the house. And those things actually shut off a young person from truly learning the why, understanding why this is a good decision. And so for me, moving forward as a spiritual leader, I don’t need to have all the answers. I need to know how do I walk in wisdom, and then how do I step back when I don’t have an answer and discern what is happening. And what we have now in the culture, and we’ve talked about this before at our church, and you and I, is we’re looking for an answer. So we go online, we go social media, we go chat GPT, because we want a yes or a no, a left or a right, a black or a white. And sometimes it’s none of that, it’s pause, step back, let me survey what’s happening, and then I can speak into it, right? And and ask him.
SPEAKER_00:
And now I I ask him all the time. It’s like, look, I’m thinking this. What does your word say? Because one of the things that I remember John Burke saying was, How did you know if it’s your own thoughts, this the sermon piece, or you know, this is God speaking to you? How do you know? And if it lines up with his word, then it’s the Holy Spirit. If it does not, that’s something else. And that’s where reflection comes into play a lot. Not a lot of people reflect. Very few, very very few people reflect that really like you said, step back and allow him to inform. Because we want the answer now. We want to move forward now. It’s the instant gratification that we’re in right now.
SPEAKER_02:
It’s instant gratification, and especially those of us who are either wired a particular way or we are uh patriotic to this country, we want to win. We want to win, we want to be on the right side of whatever is happening, and that’s a natural thing, but sometimes we don’t stop and take a step back because in that gap of not having an answer, that’s where tension is, that’s where doubt is. And we sometimes don’t know how to wrestle with those emotions or those thoughts. So we’d rather say, well, instead of sitting on it, let me go and I go down the rabbit hole of podcast or rabbit hole of this and that. And it’s like, no, no, no. What about if you listen to a podcast that makes you think, that makes you wonder, is not trying to spoon feed you answers about certain things, right? Yeah. And kind of what we’re trying to do today, help people think and process and feel, and what is God and what is not God, and what is spiritual. Sometimes, as a spiritual leader, I’m not trying to tell you what to do because then I have to keep telling you what to do.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:
We’re not a cult, I want to give you a tool for your toolbox to make better decisions. In wisdom according to God’s plan.
SPEAKER_00:
So and I’ve always found that to be true about you. Because there’s been times that you’ve, you and I have had a conversation, and I’ll see you pause and step back. Like you want to see something to me, but you’re like, if I tell her that, knowing how Sylvia is, she’s just gonna go ahead and I need her to reflect on that. Yes. Like she needs to ask God about that. Is she right about that? And I caught that like one time in our conversation. We were talking about Donnie and about how he had mentioned something in therapy, marital counseling, of he saw as I was in the fourth level with it was myself and God, and he was out of the loop. And I remember that conversation because the look on your face gave it away, and it stayed with me, Carlos, forever. That look stayed with me, and it it’s a way that the Holy Spirit highlights certain things for me in my mind and says, You need to look into that. What do you think that look meant to you? And you’re and I’m gonna think about it.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
And just recently that answer came full circle.
SPEAKER_01:
Wow.
SPEAKER_00:
Like full circle. And it was right before we went to Nashville, Tennessee. It was the the anniversary gift I had given my husband for 12 years. And I had just talked to Libby, your wife, and I knew my heart had been transformed. I knew that I was on the right path. And this is why. Because he had a major meeting that week, and I wanted to apologize to him for dishonoring and disrespecting him in our marriage. I’m getting emotional. But um I was waiting for God’s timing. I didn’t want to rush into it. I didn’t want to pull a Sylvia, you know, like now. It wasn’t about me. It was about my husband. It was about our marriage. It was about God and the covenant we’re in with him, right? And God was saying, wait, because he has a big meeting. And I remember thinking he has a big meeting, and he needs to have all this focus on that meeting because his bosses are going to be there watching him. And he he does very good at his job. We both know that, right? And I pause and I step back and I say it’s not the right time. I’ll know God will tell me when the right time is. And it was interesting because we were in Nashville and it was a week later, and I felt peace. And that’s when I apologized. And I had prayed for weeks, like two weeks. I I avoided certain people. I only hung out with very particular people, and that that was with women that I knew were very in love with their husbands, with their wife, and with Raker Bishinger, people, women of faith, not masculine energy women, which I’m surrounded by at times, you know. I didn’t want that. I wanted the peace and the love. And when I did, he was very gracious about it. He didn’t get angry because I had prayed Ezekiel 36, 26, to soften his heart so that it was not a heart of stone, but a heart of flesh. And so that when I spoke to him, he’d be able to receive that apology. And he was very like nonchalant about it. I’ve been stressing about it and praying about it for weeks.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:
But I remember, I remember your look that one time. And so I know that as a pastor, you you want to guide. But I also know that you know certain people in your in your community need to think about it and they need to invite God into the mix. And only God can transform our hearts. He’s the only one that can.
SPEAKER_02:
He transformed your heart. Yeah, it’s true. And and yet, you know, as we are called to not only just believe in Jesus, but follow Jesus, be the word disciple, right? We’re supposed to follow the way of Christ in our life. There are times to look at people and say, hey, I don’t know if that’s a good idea. But I think a lot of pastors, leaders, parents, those of us who have an authority or a power over people for a particular time, we have to be very careful how we wield that, right? How we wield those words or that authority or that decision making. Are the people, the people who follow from out from under us better for having been under our care? Whether that’s in business, a podcast, a pastor, a parent, are people having are they better for having been under our care, under our power? And have we used our power to really help them grow? No, sometimes we have to use our power to protect, right? So there’s times you have to step in and say, hey, no, no, no, we’re not gonna do that. Or hey, hey, don’t go out into the street, or hey, that’s a bad call. But sometimes we forget how much our nature likes power, so we we we can convince ourselves we’re doing that to help people, but eventually we’re just trying to control people, right? And and so for me, this has been my journey to pastoring because my nature is I’m type A, I’m a driver, and so for many years, people love being on my teams because we would win and we would do a lot for Jesus, you know, and and and we would just take no prisoners, and people on my teams liked it because we were gonna beat all the other teams, the departments of the church or other churches, and that’s not healthy. And I was probably 10 years in, and and one of my pastors sat me down and he said, Yeah, I was young, I was in my late 20s, and he sat me down, he said, Uh I love having you on my team because I know your team’s gonna do well. But man, you leave a trail of tears behind you. And I was like, Oh man, I’m so sorry. Nobody ever told me, and somebody finally had the guts to look at me and say, Okay, I can’t just steer him anymore. I gotta sit him down and say, You cannot keep doing this to people. You are hurting people, and so that’s when I had to create new tools for my toolbox. Where do I use my energies? Where don’t I use my energies? Where do you use my power? Not use my power, my words, not use my words, and kind of reshape who I was as a leader, both as a spiritual leader, as a father. My th we have five kids, my three younger kids have experienced a whole different dad than my older two. Course! Of course, yeah, and so but so I told the church this last year. I was doing something with my younger kids and my older daughter, who’s you know in her 20s and she works at local hospital, Bella, and and she’s like, Well, if that were us, you would have done this and this and this. And this thought came to my mind, Well, you told me I should get better. Is that not me getting better? And she stepped back, she goes, You’re right. You have gotten better, you’re a better dad. I’m and I had to look in and say, I’m so sorry I didn’t do this for you. Yeah. But you giving me that feedback at 16 or 17 helped me with your younger siblings. So it’s all of us doing this together, Sylvia. And I think that’s the other thing that we missed out in today’s culture, is that especially if you grew up with a family dynamic, sometimes that family dynamic could be very overwhelming, especially in Latino culture or immigrant culture, where you’re like your family is the identity and you don’t get a sense of self.
SPEAKER_03:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:
But then we fight so hard to have a sense of self that we push away from family because somehow we have to to get our own identity. And as we grow mature, we have to learn to emesh those things, not enmesh, combine those things, not enmesh them. It’s work you’ve done recently, the last couple of years. I won’t share your story, but I know with your family where you’ve stepped into conversations, right? I’ve had to do that with my family. It doesn’t mean I go back and say, okay, my dad is my daddy again, and my dad gets to tell me what to do, but hey, this is my dad, I’m gonna honor him. And then there are clear boundaries that we have, but now we’ve we’ve agreed on the set of rules, and let’s move forward as a family, you know? Yeah, we just live in a culture where people either have one or the other, and that it’s somewhere between that sweet spot.
SPEAKER_00:
Well, for me now it’s the identity in Christ. That’s been the last couple of years for me, and that was a hard one because I didn’t know scripture at all. In fact, I laughed when God said in 2020, Are you gonna use scripture in your first book? I’m like, how? I don’t even know the Bible. Like, how am I gonna do this? And he’s like, You don’t worry about the how. I’m the one that worries about the how. You just stay obedient to what I’m gonna tell you to do. You just have your notebooks and you just, you know, I’m gonna download them and you’re gonna write. Um, and no way, I’ll I’ll I’ll do the figure out it out. This is the part where I think most people, because we’re in a culture of wanting to control at every aspect of our circumstances, this is a part that’s tough for for young people. What would you say to them, those that want to just stay in control and not let go?
SPEAKER_02:
I I would say, we’ve said it several times on this call. I would say the scripture tells us to always search our heart. So I’ll give you a tool. Um, David in the Psalms would say, Search my heart, O God. Is there any wicked way in me? Is there anything that keeps me from the way everlasting? And so that’s actually a prayer I pray every day. But it’s a danger, it’s a dangerous prayer. Because every time I’ve prayed it, God has shown me something. Like I’m thinking I’m having a bad day, I’m a victim of something, you know, so I’m getting 10, you know, a thousand emails that are awful, whatever. And then I say, God, search my heart as any wicked way in me. And God’s like, Oh yeah, you need to call and apologize to so and so. Oh, you need to go. I’m like, okay. But I think, Sylvia, to your point, when we want to control, we have to ask ourselves why. And and and pinpointing a person or something that triggers us is actually not the end result. That’s actually the beginning. Once you identify it’s because my mom, or because I was abused, or because of my addiction, now you have the real work. How did I get into that situation? What were the effects of this situation? Because control comes from somewhere. That’s because I I didn’t have control in a particular situation. So I say when somebody has that, before you start trying to change the outward, look inward and pray. That I um that is not good, that is not righteous. Um, I’ll tell you a really cool story. It goes with this. The last few weeks we’ve had quite a few people attending, a lot of new people attending our church. You probably noticed it’s there’s a lot of new families and people representing our community, like a pretty diverse group of people. And uh and recently we’ve had a lot of people who are atheists start attending our church. We’ve always had that in our culture in our church, but every weekend I’m meeting new people who are atheists. And I say, Well, tell me what brought you to Gateway. And they’re like, Yeah, I just feel like I’m supposed to just kind of explore faith. And I actually kind of like these services, and I don’t even believe in God. And so if you’re listening today and you’re and you’re not a believer in who Jesus is, okay, let me tell you why this is happening. See, in scripture, we are taught that we cannot bring somebody to faith, no matter what kind of how good the preacher is, how good the music is, how awesome the church is. Scripture says that you can only come to know God unless God’s spirit draws you to him. So I to I find rest in that as a believer in Jesus. It’s not my job. God’s at work. So you hear me say an atheist having a feeling about going to church, because we believe before somebody believes, they come along. That God is already at work in people’s hearts. So today, everybody who’s listening, whether you’re believer or not believer, you can ask God for help. You can say, Okay, God, there’s I wanted a control, I wanted to do this. What’s the issue of my heart? And if you ask very honestly, you will get an answer. You’ll get at that mirror effect of here’s why, this pain, this hurt, this upbringing, whatever it might be. And I that’s the first thing I would tell somebody who has control issues. The second thing is once you’re willing to be honest, who’s a safe person in your life that you can then process these things with? Maybe a safe person at work that you really trust. Hey, how did I show up in that meeting today? And give them room to be honest with you. If you’re married, your spouse, hey, when we argued last week, how did I show up and be give them space to be honest with you? Sometimes we do this with our kids. Hey, when when we got an argument yesterday, did I do something that really hurt you? And giving your kids room to give you. See what it does is you’re you’re you’re testing the waters of giving over control. Do it with people you trust. You don’t just don’t put on Facebook. Anybody have feedback for me? You’re gonna get a bunch of people who don’t even know you. So who do you know? Who do you trust? Say, hey, I’m working through this issue. Will you help me? Hey, I say I tell a lot of people this when I when I tell somebody on your team at work, when we go into this meeting, I present, I want you to give me honest feedback. How was it? It’s a way of testing the waters in a very safe way with people you trust. Um, so those are just a couple tools. Why do I do it? And then how do I take steps towards not being a controlling person in a safe environment?
SPEAKER_00:
I love it. I I do love your tools because they’re very relatable. Number one, number two, there are a lot of people that don’t even know where to start or how to take that first initial step. And we both know that that initial step, especially like for you in that college room. I I still go back to that story of you were in there by yourself, and you could have chosen to stay exactly where you were, but you heard something inside of you, like you said earlier. God pulls you towards him. I felt that pull. I had turned away from God for 10 years in my first marriage. And as soon as he asked for a divorce that first week, I actually was sitting down, writing these things down because God was downloading something to me this week of your identity is in me, Sylvia. This is where your identity is at. And I want you to go back and look at all the significant emotional events you and I’ve shared, and you’ll see how I’ve been there for you and how the results I can give you, and only I can give you those results, right? So he pulls you towards you. The way it happened with me is I felt the need to get close to God again, and it came out of nowhere, and you would have thought it didn’t really come out of nowhere. I was in a dark, dark chapter. I was coming out of divorce, into like stepping into a space that was terrifying. I had a little boy and I didn’t know what I was doing. And the pull was get to know me again, get to talk to me, tell me, share with me. And I started to just write. I just started my journal, and the more I did it, the more I felt at peace. Right. And I go back to your story of it’s just it takes that action step of listening to that voice and doing what it’s asking you to do. It’s simple, but my God, to do it. You’re like, ah, but I can do this.
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, it’s one of the things I’ve been I’ve been noticing lately. There is a desire in people and a desperation to know themselves and understand who God is. To the point where Sylvia, there’s times where I see a lot of new people who are exploring faith or new to faith, or have deconstructed and are really trying to get to a healthy place of understanding of growing in God again. That in that desperation, in that humility, humility is like a fragrance that draws God. Pride actually repels God. So when you think you have it all together and you think you have put it, you know, you’ve figured out life, that actually repels who God is. It’s it’s it’s it’s in the invitation towards towards uh brokenness and humility that God’s like, yeah, this is this is where I am made for a relationship. You know, I am made to be, you know, God your father, the one who created you, the one who formed you and shaped you. And I think a lot of people need to be reminded of that. That man, that’s why I used to stay humble. I I get asked all the time, how do you why do you how do you tell all the stories you tell on Sunday mornings? Like my wife would kill me if I shared some of those stories. But we just have an agreement that these aren’t stories to entertain, these are stories to model for people. It’s okay to have questions, it’s okay to have doubts, it’s okay to screw it up, it’s okay to like have a day, you just mess up. Like, but my mess ups at 48 are not the same mess ups when I was 28.
SPEAKER_00:
No, no, no.
SPEAKER_02:
A lot of us, a lot of us have a rhythm that we’re we’re 28, 38, 48, and we’re making the same mistakes we made 10, 15 years ago. A lot of that is because we haven’t had those honest moments in the mirror and being willing to say I need change.
SPEAKER_00:
Oh my goodness, yes. The humiliate these, I told Donnie said, How how do you think the enemy is coming in towards you? And I said, My anxiety and my pride. My pride was tough to get past. I just discovered that was the whole reason of for the exercise that God had me on since March of this year, which was I talked to Haley Carter about it because as I was getting commissioned to be part of the church, it was one of the questions. And she said, How are you doing with that? I was like, It’s really humbling. It’s very humbling. But I was because he he said, You need to remove the sin from your tent, Sylvia. And what is, and to me that meant I had to sit back and reflect, what is my sin? What have I done? How have I hurt others? And then really like take a good look at, and I made a list of people, and even the my bully in pickleball, the the person that I like could not see, we we were part of the same groups and stuff. I actually approached her and and apologized. I had offended her. I didn’t know what I had done to her, but she and I had this major rift, and and I called her up and before she left in June to go to her summer place, I said, Can I just invite you for a smoothie? I I just want to talk to you. And we sat down and I said, I don’t know what I did, but whatever it was, I’m very sorry. And I re I repented, you know, to and it just opened up a conversation. It was very healing, but it’s it was my path to exercise that humility because I knew my pride was standing in my way. And I remember what I told you about that full circle moment, it started with that look on your face. Yeah, because I could tell that you knew that my pride was a big part of my block. But I had to realize that. I had to sit back and reflect it in what, and it was not an easy thing. I to sit in front of my building was like. I’m the girl and an apologize to her. Why her? You know? And that is like because she’s on your list. You asked me for help. I’m sharing with you what this is the truth. You wanted the truth. Here it is. So go do it. Because it’s gonna prepare you for your husband. The biggest one you’re gonna have to like do.
SPEAKER_02:
Well, it I I will say because I know we’re coming to the end of our time, but I want to share something with you. A few years ago, um, we moved to Austin right before the pandemic. We bought our house six weeks before the pandemic, and I’m so glad we did because afterwards we wouldn’t be able to afford it because all the houses went so up and so high in price. But we uh it was a newer house um in a in a good neighborhood, and so it had new um new everything. New everything. So it had new trees. And uh if you’ve lived in Austin last few years, you know we’ve had a few freezes during the winters, and and so I I left, you know, they had the stakes and to keep them up with the winds and the ice and all that kind of stuff. And after the second freeze, I kind of noticed that maybe our trees were gonna die uh from the freezes and and and whatnot. So we brought on an arborist to look at our trees and kind of assess what’s going on. They’re only a few years old, we need to get new trees. And he said, you know, the problem wasn’t the winter storm for you. That was for a lot of people. The problem wasn’t um the winds, the problem is that you left the stakes in the ground after two years, you didn’t allow the tree to grow to then resist the wind and resist the ice. And I was like, Well, wait, why do they put the stakes to begin with? And he says, Well, you have to have the stakes because when they’re infants and when they’re babies, baby trees, you want you need it needs help and the support. But eventually the thing that helps you support and survive becomes the detriment to maturity. Well, how many of us listening today? Our pride helped us survive trauma, our our drive helped us survive you know, poverty. Our the way we’re wired helped us survive being first, you know, an immigrant here or facing sexual abuse like me. So the thing that protected us, once we’re no longer in that zone, can be the very attitude that actually suffocates us from trying to get healthy. Man, that’s a really tough lesson for us. Um, because with my parents, my parents are great people, but we’re all in water. And I remember my wife about five years ago said, you put up a boundary with your parents when you were young, but that boundary has turned into a barrier. So now what was healthy has become unhealthy, and you’re keeping your family out. And I wonder how many people listen today you’ve survived, you’ve built a business, you’ve built a family, whatever you’ve done, education, you’re a doctor, you’re a lawyer. And the thing that got you there might be the very thing keeping you from actually living the life you actually want, whether in Christ or in your business. And we have to have those moments we’ve said several times today, where we look in the mirror and we’re honest with ourselves, and we walk in humility and say, okay, that thing helped me for the first 20 years, 30 years, 40 years. It’s actually going to kill my marriage. It’s going to kill my law firm, it’s going to kill my practice. And we have to have those moments of honesty.
SPEAKER_00:
So I love that. I love that because it’s very real. This is a really raw and real conversation. It’s not sugar coated. We’ve been very honest. It’s a humbling experience to look in the mirror and to say, okay, God, share with me what I remove whatever the wicked ways, you know, the verse that you were talking about from David. Yeah. So any last words of encouragement for those listening?
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, I think something that that we um we’ve kind of we’ve kind of hit on already, and then you and I were talking before we started recording, and that is we live in a culture that gives us permission and affirms us running from particular situations. And the truth is the same church, the same place, the church that hurt me as a kid, the same place I found healing in as an adult. And it’s the same place I now help heal others. And so I wonder how many of us, as we look in the mirror, are honest with ourselves, may have to revisit some things. Not may, we all have to revisit certain things so that we can find the empowerment to move through those things. Because if we don’t, we will lose a huge opportunity, and then we end up building a life avoiding things instead of the life in the very place God may have wanted you to be. And so as you look in the mirror, as you’re honest with yourself, always be willing to revisit. And remember, that person may have hurt you, that bully may have bullied you. It doesn’t mean you have to be best friends, it doesn’t mean you have to do life together, but it does mean sitting in it, working through it, and allowing yourself to find some healing in the very place that hurt you is is kind of the way God works. And it’s hard to it’s hard to acknowledge that, but you can’t give into the culture that says, well, just run, start a new life, do your own thing. You can do it, but it’s so much sweeter and so much better and more healthy to go back to that spot, find healing, and move from that point on. It helps remove some of those darts and those pain points. So um, as we’re in this holiday season of seeing family, seeing friends, we some of us might be sitting in that right now. You might be in the house with the very people who hurt you. Ask yourself the question first before you accuse anybody else. And once you have that answer, have a different viewpoint of those same people. I see my parents very differently. They they did the best they could with what they had. And I found a lot of forgiveness in that and healing, and I want that for others as well.
SPEAKER_00:
And what a gift to give to yourself, in all honesty. In this season of giving and gifts, might as well give yourself that gift of healing by doing what just what you said, God loves to do, because it is important for us to be able to move through life. We don’t want to get to the end of our life and have those regrets on our deathbed. Of like, I wish I had talked to them. I you have the opportunity now, especially if your parents are alive and those people are alive. Those conversations were the best I’ve had in the last couple of months, I’ll tell you. And the last couple of years of my father’s life, they’re the best because I was able to tell them exactly how I felt. And like you, I now know and I see, I started to see them in the light through God’s eyes, which is it changes everything. It transforms the way you view people when you can see them in that light, in that beautiful, honest light. And all of my listeners have released that review of purpose know how I usually sign off on the on the show is to always to remember Matthew 5.14 that says to be the light. Be that beautiful light that you were meant to be. Uh, look at God, look what a beautiful light he became. It didn’t matter where he started, look at where he’s at today. You know, use that light for the betterment of humanity. This is what how we were all gifted and meant to be on this earth. And I just thank God that I had the privilege and the honor of interviewing my own pastor. My heart was racing the entire time, but I got through it. It was so awesome to have you on the show. Thank you for coming uh and being here with us and blessing us. That this show will be released, interestingly enough, on December 25th of this year. So Merry Christmas to all.
SPEAKER_01:
Please marry that.
SPEAKER_00:
Bye-bye.
SPEAKER_03:
So that’s it for today’s episode of Release Doubt, Reveal Purpose. Head on over to iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on iTunes will win a chance the Grand Prize drawing to win a$25,000 private VIP day with Sylvia Worsham herself. Be sure to head on over to sylviaworsham.com and pick up a free copy of Sylvia’s gift and join us on the next episode.