King's Banner Podcast
Welcome to King's Banner Podcast. We got tired of the same ole answers when we started looking for help when it came to our walks with God. So together we go deeper than most would on topics that most people have heard or were taught but never fully understood. It is our way of simplifying concepts that we may have over complicated throughout our lives. Bringing theology and life experience into each episode. It is our hope and desire to help you in your Christian walk.
King's Banner Podcast
Body Soul Spirit
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A lot of people think the Christian life is mainly about trying harder. We don’t buy that, and this conversation with Pastor Justin explains why: if you don’t understand what a person is, you’ll misdiagnose what’s wrong. We walk through biblical anthropology and the trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit, then contrast it with the secular assumptions many of us absorb without noticing.
We talk about how Gnostic thinking still shows up today, especially in the way Christians confuse “the flesh” with the physical body. From Colossians to Genesis, we trace the logic of creation, the breath of God, and what actually “died” when Adam and Eve sinned. That leads straight into the meaning of being born again, who your Father is, and why the gospel is not “Jesus makes your life better” but “Jesus makes you new.”
Then we get very practical. Using 2 Corinthians 10, we frame spiritual warfare as a battle for belief: strongholds are lies, speculations, and lofty thoughts raised against the knowledge of God. We discuss why recurring sin patterns often persist because we keep protecting a lie, and why repentance is not just saying sorry but changing your mind. We close by calling ourselves to turn the lights on, confront darkness with truth, and pray for real breakthrough.
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Welcome And Piney Woods Banter
SPEAKER_00Hey guys, welcome back to the King's Banner Podcast. I am again here with Pastor Justin, and I think uh I think it's gonna be a good day.
SPEAKER_01I mean I certainly hope so. Yeah, you know. We'll find out. It could all go south and uh you know. I mean we went we went south, you know, south east.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't that bad. I was looking at a map recently because I was talking to my sister. Yeah. Um she lives in Vegas, and we were talking about like daylight hours and things. I'm like, well, we're still and I looked at the map, I'm like, we're still 200 miles south of you by by uh by latitude. And I'm I'm just like, we went real south. We did. It's we did, yeah.
SPEAKER_01We went uh down into the the what do they call them? The pines? No, no, no, not um it's not Moria. Um what is it the the piney woods? The piny woods, that's what it's called. Yes, back where all the smugglers and bootleggers used to be bringing them the gospel, just doing the Lord's work out here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So what do we what are we digging into? So
Body Soul Spirit And Why It Matters
SPEAKER_00we recently had a message where you touched on trichotomy, like the breakdown of the body, the soul, the spirit. Yes. Um, and you hit on it at a level worthy of a sermon. Okay, but I wanted to dig into that a little bit. Okay. I wanted to hear, like, all right, let's actually break down where this is biblically, uh, where we see this, what what it means and why it matters.
SPEAKER_01So you have like um you have a biblical anthropology, uh picture of how God lays out what men are, and you have a secular anthropology, which comes at things from a very different perspective. And I gotta tell you, I think the average person who calls himself a Christian without knowing it, oftentimes is walking around with a secular anthropology. Um, I'm uh I'm a you know, matter and circumstances that have been thrown together, and I'm just trying to work out my stuff with God from that place. Yeah. But the Bible paints it um in a different light. You know what I mean? You were created with purpose, you were created in the image of God. Um, God breathed his own life into you, gave you a spirit, gave you a uh a mind, the ability to think and process, gave you a body. And as we've been going through Colossians, uh so many of these people had Gnostic thinking, which was this idea that your body is inherently bad, and that your, you know, your soul, your spirit, that's the only good part about you, and you have to put off the body in order to actually be liberated from what it is. Well, the the Bible, in a lot of ways, people don't realize this, was really punching back at this kind of idea by telling you that you were created in the image of God, that God gave you a body, that this body was good, and then it takes it a step farther and says, and Jesus put on a body. And at that point, every Gnostic would have been like, absolutely not. Um, you know, this is this is egregious. Uh uh, the purity of spirit would never put on the carnality of the body. And this gets um this gets entangled a lot because the body or the Bible uses this idea of the flesh a lot, yeah. And sometimes we get them mixed up, like our our flesh is a bad thing, and the soul or your spirit is the only good thing about you. And I would say, no, like, how do you taste steak with your body? Yeah, how do you hear music with your body? How do you how do you like uh any two-year-old kid will tell you the second they see something fluffy, I want to touch it, I want to pet it. Like, I want to that like that's a good thing.
SPEAKER_00Can I pet that dog?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. Those are good things that we have. And in Colossians, kind of where we were at, Christ is talking about the triumph over these difficulties that we have. Um, and yeah, I touched on this idea a little bit of what's called um a trichotomist position. No, uh, some people are dichotomous.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would say just growing up in the church, if you don't think about it, it's a very default church position. Yeah. Of like, oh, we we're our body and our souls.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So so sometimes the the the Bible will use them interchangeably to uh communicate the inner man. Like when the Bible talks about the heart, it's not talking about your your organ. You know what I mean? It's not it's not making that point. We know it's referring to the inner man. Well, is your heart your soul? Is your heart your spirit? Is your heart your conscience? Is your heart your subconscious? You know, like what is it? Well, I'm I'm it's it's communicating the inner person, who you are at your deepest level. Um, so we can get these things mixed up a little bit. So dichotomous are people who say the soul and the spirit are functionally the same thing. I don't actually think that makes sense. I think we are three part in our nature. Uh, a lot of people will say, well, God is a trinity, that it makes sense that we're three parts as well. I'm like, okay, that's fine. I think um a better argument for those things is like back in Genesis. Um, and if you understand some of the language used here, so like soma is the language used for body. Yeah. Um, I like to distinguish this a little bit with sarks, which is the Greek word for flesh. Uh now, again, they can be used interchangeably here and there, but tends to be when sarks is used as talking about your desires and proclivities for evil, your body is used
Genesis Breath And The Meaning Of Death
SPEAKER_01to describe the you know the body of Christ, you know, who you are, who you are, like the the good things that you've been given. Yeah. So you have a body, you have the word um uh you have the word uh for soul, which is suke. And this is where we get our word for psych psychological, psychiatry, uh, psychiatric. It has to do with your mind, your personality, how you think, how you process, the way that you, the way that you live. And then you have spirit, which is pneuma, which is where we get our word for pneumatic pneumonia, means breath, wind, spirit, all the same word in the Greek, used in a bunch of different ways. And what does God do to Adam when he, you know, he takes him, he forms him out of the dirt, and then he breathes life into him? You have this kind of life being given to him when Jesus before uh he ascends, it says he takes the disciples and he breathes on them, which is poetic, right? Taking us back there. But I like to tell people, like, okay, so in the garden, God says, the day that you eat of this fruit, you will certainly die. They eat the fruit, well, they don't immediately die, their body doesn't die immediately. And I like to ask people, did their personality die? Did their ability to think die? No. What what died? Well, it was their connection to God, the spirit, the thing that God breathed into them that is supposed to produce life in them, that's the thing that is severed. So our spirit, if you want to think about it as the center of who we are, beats blood into our thinking, the way that our mind processes, and beats blood into our physical bodies. And so if you're if you're thinking from a from a biblical standpoint, when Jesus says, or when God says, same thing, on the day you eat of this, you will surely die, he's making the point that when you are severed from me, everything in you is going to produce death instead of life. And we see this immediately. Suddenly people are getting murdered, people are lying. I mean, you got the story of Lamech, you got the story of Cain and Abel, and then, you know, several chapters before the ark, it's like people began to call on the name of the Lord because everything is going south. There was a separation. Now, we talk about this in Christian circles as original sin.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01We are inheriting sin from Adam. Now, being separate from the life of God, our Father is instead Adam. And in him we get our, if you want to think about it this way, our genetic coding. You know what I mean? Our brokenness. What we were supposed to receive was life from God being born from him. And instead, we are now born of Adam, walking the opposite direction, disconnected from God, and like he says in Genesis, dying, you will die. I'm living in death, and it will produce death, as opposed to like Deuteronomy 30, which says, choose life so that you may live. So there's a dying death and there's a living life. And those are ways of doing life that are functionally different. One is in communion with God, one is separate from God. This is important. The Bible also makes distinctions in other places, like in um uh Hebrews chapter 4, it talks about the Word of God, um, dividing between soul and spirit, joints and marrow. You have other places like in 1 Thessalonians 5, where he says, Uh, blessing be to you and your soul, body, spirit. He's making distinctions between these things. And where the Bible makes distinctions, I think it's important to make distinctions. And functionally it just makes sense with the rest of scripture. Um, so, so the idea when we think about a biblical anthropology is I'm there's three parts to who I am. And when we get to the idea of the gospel, this is incredibly important because you're look, if you get saved and you are funny, um, you're still be, you you'll still be funny, you know, before you were saved and after you're saved. If you're not funny uh before you're saved, you're still not funny after you're saved. That doesn't funny. It's unfortunate, is what it is. I I had a guy in our group, um, I I told him, I was like, if you were a thug before you got saved, man, you're still a thug after you get saved. Just the behavior changes. It's a different, it's a different mentality. I still can't wear what he would wear and get away with it. It doesn't matter. Your personality, the way that you uh the way that your mind is, how God made you, um, doesn't change from a from a personality and thinking standpoint. It just gets sanctified and turned into what it was originally meant to be. This is the whole idea of what it means to be born again or born of God. Yeah. Why is it that I can say Father God? Why is that a thing? Well, because either Adam is your dad or God is your dad. Either I'm connected to Adam and death, or I'm connected to Jesus in life. And so when we say born again, what a Christian is actually functionally trying to say is have you been reconnected to God? Have you been born into that family, given a new spirit, his own spirit living within you, so that you can begin to produce life in your members? Because something that is disconnected from God, like I said, it was pumping blood into these other areas of you. When your spirit is disconnected. Yeah. When you're when your spirit is dead or you're disconnected from God, well, what is being produced in your mind and in your body? Sin. Yeah. Brokenness. It's producing all this nonsense you don't want to. The things that used to be thoughts that are aligned with God now are aligned a totally different direction. The stuff that I uh should do with my body, because of being in right standing with God, now I'm doing all kinds of other things. I'm producing stuff in my body because of the thoughts and thinking that I have that are now producing a kind of death in the way that I live. So when God gives you a new spirit, you're born of God. You're born again. Now that thing that was producing death in you is beginning to produce life and starting to renew and restore what was broken. This is the kind of the whole picture in John chapter three, you know, when Jesus is talking to Nicodemus. Nicodemus is like, Can I can a person be born again? Can he enter back into his mother? Yeah, like gross, dude. Like, what is your why? Why are you this way? Who did your mother hug you too much or not enough? Like what cliche happened to
Born Again And Who Your Father Is
SPEAKER_01you? I don't I don't understand.
SPEAKER_00But so here's a probably a very simple question, but uh do you think Adam's in heaven?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think so. One of the reasons is because uh when Adam sins, one of the first things that God does for them is cover them with skin. When before they were covered with plants. Yeah. So if you think about them putting on plants that try to cover themselves, they get covered in skin. The thought there, and some people push back against this, is that God made the first sacrifice to cover them, which I think is fascinating all by itself. But there's already this typological picture of what's going to happen down the road. Yeah. But yeah, I think I think they're I think they're in heaven, and you'll get to see the guy who maybe doesn't have a belly button. I don't know. I don't know. We'll find out. We'll find out when we get there. Um, yeah, but I I think he's I think he's in heaven. I think you uh God covers them, and those who have faith in him and return, God makes a way. But those people are anyone before Christ is saved by placing their faith in Christ in the future uh crucifixion or resurrection of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00You were talking about this before, the the crucifixion working its way forward in time, but also working its way backward to the garden.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. We we look back to Jesus for salvation. They were looking forward to Jesus for salvation, they just didn't have a name.
SPEAKER_00It's such a wild thing. And yet with a with a theology that uh really allows for the sovereignty of God, I feel like it just makes perfect sense. Turns out, yeah.
SPEAKER_01The the problem is salvation um is uh what we say monogistic, meaning God saves us. Yeah, we don't save ourselves, God saves us. Sanctification is synergistic, which means it's something we do with God. And so um when we get back to this kind of idea of the trichotomy of the person, what what we're dealing with is somebody is made in these three parts. So let's say you have a new spirit that God gives to you that's producing life. You have his own spirit that he places within you to do these things, and uh you still have patterns and neurological pathways and processes by which you used to live that still have all the desires and tendency to go a different direction than what you should. You have desires for good things, but you still have all these old habits that you're used to. And it it, I'm gonna be honest with you, it kind of drives me crazy. Like a lot of people like to talk about this kind of um, you know, there's two wolves within you, and whichever one you feed is the one that grows. And like I get it, but the Bible's actually communicating that when you're born again, your old self is dead. He's actually dead. I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me. The life that I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. Meaning that what happened on the cross is almost outside of time, in that anybody who places their faith in him has already died with Jesus. Your sinful self was crucified with him. You have a new spirit that is given to you, and that new spirit is going to produce life in you. Uh, and so when people talk about like, uh, the old man, you know, well, if you mean what what if what you mean by the old man is my desires and proclivities that are still wanting me to go down roads that I'm not supposed to go down, and Christ has now given me the power to say no to those things or say no to ungodliness, to use biblical language. Um, if you're saying, no, I'm still a slave to who I used to be because that man's not going to go away until I'm dead, I would say, well, that's actually the opposite of the gospel. Yeah. The gospel is not God saved you, and you're gonna continue to struggle and be an idiot for the rest of your life. And um, you know, this is your cross to carry. Sin is not your cross to carry. No. Christ carried your sin for you and crucified it. You need to walk in the freedom that Christ says that you actually have. Yeah. And um, most people, man, I think I think they just get buried in lies.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right? Like Satan is the father of lies. Yeah. He literally, and and we've been given the spirit of truth. So there's obviously some kind of war there going on. Um, but if you believe lies and you've walked a certain way for your whole life, I I think sometimes it's easier to lie to yourself than to actually just say no to things that you have the ability to say no to.
SPEAKER_00A hundred percent it's easier. I mean, sin patterns are are they're patterns, and like as people, we like pattern recognition. We like to see things. And so you're looking at these sin patterns, and it's the what you've always done, or it's yeah, it's easy, it's simple, it's um this the cliche phrase the devil you know. Um, and the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. Well, it turns out the the devil you know is still worse than God.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he's still the devil, is still the devil.
SPEAKER_00Like um, I wanted to touch on a little bit because I was thinking about it, you anthropology, like uh biblical anthropology versus a human anthropology. Yeah, and I think there is actually um a perverted but somewhat correct human understanding of trichotomy. Sure. Uh specifically in our pop culture and our our you know songs. I can think of the song Listen to your heart.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like you you've got people who's like people know, I'm like, oh, I know up here, but oh, there's heart's telling that there's a deeper level than just your brain. Like, yeah, it it's even the devil has to use the confines of of what is real to try to try to appeal to people.
Strongholds Lies And The Battle For Belief
SPEAKER_00To try and appeal to people, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, and you have within this too, this is important because some people think like um if somebody's just happy and great all the time, then they must be fine. And then you have some people who are a bunch of eeures, you know, and the reality is your flesh can be programmed in a couple of ways. Like either I have a natural disposition towards everything's good and I'm happy and I'm joyful, or everything is terrible. Listen, the person who thinks it's terrible might be more honest, but they're still caught up in the same nonsense of isolation and anxiety and everything else. The person who's positive is just generally being self-righteous and is still going to hell. You know what I mean? And I think sometimes as Christians, we'll run into people and it's like, well, if they're happier than we are, uh, then I can't share the gospel with that person. You know, they're if they're if they seem like their life is better than that. He doesn't need Jesus, he's got a billion dollars in a private house. His marriage is better than mine is. I how do I talk to him about his marriage? Well, it's like a false understanding of the gospel. The gospel is not like Jesus takes your life and makes it better. The gospel is like I'm killing the person you used to be and making you a new person entirely. Yeah, and so just just the idea of the spirit being changed in general. And I think these songs that you're talking about and referring to, whether they are positively like you're the man, you're the best, do this, do that, or oh, everything is terrible. You know, what are they? It's the joke, right? What do you get when you play a country song backwards? You get your dog back, you get your truck back, yeah. Exactly. Uh there's there's these two mentalities that are appealing to that inner consciousness. But the reality is both of them are in Adam and dead. Uh, I want to do a sermon at some point called Who's Your Daddy? You know, and it's just gonna be right out of Romans 5, and we'll talk through that process and explain some of that uh in a little bit more depth. But I wanted to get into this a little bit because when we talk about the trichotomy of the individual, what we're dealing with um ultimately comes down to belief when it comes to sanctification. So we were talking about, you know, uh salvation is monergistic, God saves us, sanctification is synergistic. There's something we do together. Yeah. And I would say we can still suppress the truth, we can still quench the spirit. Uh, when God is trying to do a work in your life and uh bring breakthrough in the way that you process and think so that you can live a particular way, we can still allow lies to live and do a work in our life and produce dead fruit in our present by not listening to the spirit of truth or specifically here, the word of God. Like the Bible is supposed to drive what we're doing. And if the spirit of truth is in us, but the father of lies has um set up shop in some places in our thinking, your spirit can be telling you one thing, and I know I'm saved. Like I know I love Jesus. Why can't I win in this area? Yeah. I your problem is not your discipline uh or your you know, I'm just not focused enough. Ultimately it comes down to belief.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, there's this text, and I I brought this up briefly uh in our sermon, but I'm gonna go to it, let's talk about it a little bit more. Second Corinthians. Chapter ten, verse three through five. For though we walk in the flesh, our bodies, we do not wage war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We're destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we're taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we're ready to punish all disobedience whenever your obedience is complete. Okay. So functionally, strongholds, these fortresses, whatever they are, um, well, this is what I'm getting at. He tells us what they are. They're lofty thoughts. I like the speculations.
SPEAKER_00Lofty. Yeah. Like lofty oftentimes can be like considered a good thing. A good thing. Like, yeah. You're one of the things you say is you want to put the cookies on the bottom shelf. Yeah. You want you don't want things to be out of reach for people to understand.
SPEAKER_01I want people to get it, man. Yeah. I want people to get it. And I I love it, it's kind of the same language he uses in James, um, James chapter three. When he talks about worldly wisdom, he says it's earthly, natural, and demonic. You know, like I love to say it sounds like um, you know, sounds like somebody selling like a new shampoo. It's earthy, it's natural. It's demons. Wait, what? You know, like there's a way of thinking and processing that feels right sometimes because of the patterns and the the consistency are are are living a particular way, but ultimately is still taking you to places that are, you know, killing you. Yeah. And I want to like encourage Christians with this one a little bit, because it's very possible that you're saved and you're not getting breakthrough in your life in particular areas, not because Christ is not strong enough or conquered it, but because you still have lies that you believe and are living out, even though you don't admit those things. So you read the Bible, you're like, yes, that's absolutely true. And then you go and live your life, and you're so used to being on autopilot that these other areas where you should be living in truth, you're still functionally believing things that you used to believe, and that's producing the same things in your life. Yeah. So when we talk about speculations, it's the oldest argument, you know what I mean, in the Bible. Satan says, Did God really say? Yeah, well, what if this was the case? What if that was the case? What if this is what's actually happening? And I think a lot of people have speculations, you know? Yeah, but if this was happening, but it could be, you know what I mean? Like if if you're seeing what's going on with all the alien files and everything coming out right now, you know what I mean? There's a lot of speculation. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of speculation. If this is the case, then look at everything else that could be true. And there's always a premise that I think that's given. And if you swallow the premise, you just get everything else wholesale here. And it's like, dude, you don't want to be very careful about swallowing a premise or flirting with it too long because you'll have to um also absorb the consequences of that premise. Yeah. And Satan will make a premise seem delightful and then take you places that you don't want to go with it. So when I say speculations, it's it's ultimately a a what if that has nothing to do with what scripture has said. Yeah. And if you bite into that what if it takes you where you don't want to go.
SPEAKER_00Well, and I feel like as Christians, if we believe the Bible, which we should, yeah, we can trust that if the consequences of a premise lead you to a point that are contradictory to the Bible, you can lead back to that premise and say, Well, it might sound good. It might sound good. This premise might sound good, but if it leads to this, it's clearly not of God. Yeah, it's clearly not true.
SPEAKER_01So, so in the epistles, Paul uses this logic all the time. Every epistle is Paul walking in saying, Hey, what's up, guys? Um, hey, here's all the things that you're doing wrong. Uh, here's what you should be doing. You're doing the wrong things because you're thinking the wrong things. Here's how you should be thinking. Like his his communication almost in every single letter he writes is you're thinking about it wrong and it's producing wrong behavior. If you think about it the right way, it will produce right behavior, which means the battle after you are saved and in Christ is ultimately a battle for belief and right thinking. And uh a big problem we have today is you have a bunch of people who say they're Christians who don't think like Christians.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You have a bunch of people who are maybe have given their life to Christ, but are primarily spending their time being indoctrinated by a worldview or a bunch of other stuff or a bunch of lies and not by the word of God, and then going around calling themselves a Christian and espousing things like abortion and don't see any contradiction in those things. Um, which kind of brings us to the next thing because he says speculations and then lofty things or lofty thoughts raised up against the knowledge of God. So lofty thoughts is a fun one. Like I I like to talk about this like a secular high ground, you know. This is uh this is moral posturing, yeah, you know, this is virtue signaling. Uh-huh. How many people, man, when they're trying to get away with sin, make it sound like they're the victim. Oh, yeah, or like the best thing to do in this particular situation is to help someone. And by help someone, I mean murdering this baby. Yeah, well, that's the big one. If we're still crazy, I don't care about your virtue signaling.
SPEAKER_00If I don't get an abortion, my life is over. No, if you get an abortion, that baby's life is over.
SPEAKER_01Right. Well, how many people are like, uh, you know, I just I don't want to create any conflict around the dinner table, so I'm just gonna leave Jesus out of it. Okay, that's a lofty thought. You think you're being pious, but actually you're just rejecting what Jesus told you to do. I mean, think about all the all the stuff that people tell themselves because
Lofty Thoughts Empathy And Cultural Deception
SPEAKER_01they think they're being a martyr. You know, I'm doing the right thing in this moment. I'll, I'll, I'll sacrifice so that other people don't have to. Like, that is what this is. Yeah. And we have to get to this place where we what's so frustrating about this, bro, is that I think the culture of empathy that we live in has led people to not just be a victim of this personally, but to victimize other people in this process. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? You like take people into your delusions, and the culture of empathy is go there with them. Don't coach them, don't try to make it better, just understand with them. And I'm like, empathy is a good thing. I don't want to place myself in the mind of somebody who is set against God.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I'm not even supposed to. Yeah. That's not something I'm I'm not supposed to go there and resonate with somebody who is setting themselves up against what God has told us to do in the first place. I can understand the the wicked thinking that you have, but that's precisely what it is. My goal is not to try to absorb those emotions myself and go there. My goal is to herald this. Yeah. Um, which is why this text is important because he's saying we're going to war against these things with truth, which doesn't just mean this is an internal fight. This means it's an external fight. Every Sunday, my goal is to get up and go to war with speculations and lofty thoughts and anything that sets itself up against the truth of God by bringing the truth forward and trying to edify and crush lies that are keeping people in bondage, keeping people in addiction, keeping marriages flailing. When you are honest and speaking the truth, you are going to war, not just with your own strongholds and lies, you're picking fights with other people's lies. And I we're supposed to do that. Yeah, you know, that that's part of what it means to herald award is to go out there and go to war with lies. Yeah. Um, why? Well, well, because God is actually calling us to expose lies and expose darkness and not act like those things aren't happening. But uh, I would say this in our lives, there are strongholds, oftentimes, which are lies. Yeah. So just lies that we believe. I've caught this here, I've caught this there, this traumatic thing happened to me, and I believe something I shouldn't in the moment, or this thing didn't happen to me, and I've come to believe these things so that I would survive. And the reality is, is when the Bible is telling us to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice and have our minds renewed so that we can be transformed instead of conformed, it's ultimately saying you need to lay down the way that you used to think and the way that you used to live and allow Christ to reign in you. And it finishes that verse in Romans 12 by saying, so that we can know what the will of God is. Like, yeah, if you're so filled with the way that you always used to do things, and you're not asking yourself the question, is the truth guiding what I'm doing, or is it lies? Well, then you're gonna go on autopilot and you're gonna continue to live out the dead fruit from your old patterns and self when Christ is saying, I've literally come to liberate you from those things. And some people are like, Oh, I'm just gonna struggle with the sin forever. And Romans 6 is pretty heavy on that. He's like, Shall we go on sinning that grace may increase, may it never be? How should we who have died to sin continue to live at it? Like his point is if you're struggling with pornography, Christian, and you're like, I just I don't know how to get free of it, bro. Your problem is not discipline, it's belief. You just don't believe you're free.
SPEAKER_00No, I've seen stuff like that where and I think biblically one of the best prayers is Lord, I believe that you can heal this. I believe that you have already had victory in this, and help my unbelief. Yeah, help my unbelief. Because people are like, Well, I why would I pray that I believe that if I don't believe it? Yeah. Well, tack on help my unbelief because you should believe it.
SPEAKER_01Or or even more directly, because your feelings are driving not the truth.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, because you've come to accept something and are so used to relying on that thing, even though it's producing death in who you are.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And man, if you don't have like a steady dose of the word of God getting into your life, you may have a spirit that is alive, you may have a connection with God, but if you're not renewing your mind and allowing the spirit of truth to break down those doors and actually get rid of some of the lies that you're dealing with, you're gonna continue to see stupid stuff happen in your brain that is then gonna proceed to happen in your life. So renewing our mind and allowing those things to change. I mean, look, dude, I've I've prayed with people before who have struggled with hypertension, who've struggled with ulcers, who have struggled with all kinds of stuff, man. And I've watched them uh like give their life to Jesus or repent of stuff that's going on that they didn't even realize. I've been carrying this bitterness, I've been carrying this anger, whatever it is. Unforgiving. Dude, they their physical body literally gets healing when they believe the truth of the gospel and what Jesus said about these things. Yeah. You know, like this body, soul, spirit combination is really important that we understand because what is going on with your spirit, what's going on with your mind, directly affects your your body, even physically. Like some people are like, I don't believe in healings. I'm like, dude, God's healing people all the time. Sometimes it's like miraculous this happens. Sometimes we're holding on to lies in a way that's physically hurting our bodies.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know, get free. We literally in our modern culture use phrases like he's clinging to life. Like it, he's not physically clinging to life. Like your mindset and your spirit, the way you have those things, like it impacts your health. Like, I think about um my grandfather who um passed away a few years ago of lung cancer. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um smoking three cigarettes at a time while he was on oxygen. Yeah. I mean that dude was a stud. I loved it, knew he was ready to go.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he he was holding out um like he was dying. Yeah, but he held out um for specific things to be accomplished in his life, and it got down to the wire. And um when when he had seen the fruit of his labor, the fruit of that accomplishment, and he could let a breath out and say, Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_01He took just for context, he took care of his wife up until the end, who was struggling with Alzheimer's, and it was nasty and horrible, and he worked his butt off and loved her, and then when she passed into glory because she was amazing, yeah, he knew he was done. Yeah, you know, yeah. He was like, I I did it. Yeah, I walked her home, and you know what I mean? Shortly after that, he was he was gone. Yeah, yeah. He didn't he didn't have to hold down. Yeah. Um that guy was amazing. But I I think um as we're digging into this, uh I think it's important that people realize the fight is, like I said, not for discipline. It ultimately is for truth, which means that the mind and your freedom has everything to do with the way that you think and where truth is dominating versus where lives are dominating. So this places the war for a Christian, snack dab in the middle of your mind.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01How do you think? How are you thinking about this? How are you thinking about that? And what I like to tell people is walk through the exercise of identifying
Repentance Means Change Your Mind
SPEAKER_01the fruit in your life and then walking back to the root. So what I'm trying to tell people all the time is okay, so what are the things you're seeing in your life? Are you angry and controlling? Are you despondent and isolating? Are you willy-nilly and frivolous in your thinking? Well, what are the what are the things that are going on? Now ask yourself, what am I, what is my heart desiring in this moment? Yeah. What what is it that I'm doing to try to get those things? How am I feeding that? And then how, yeah, how am I feeding that? And and ultimately it boils down usually to two things either rebellion or unbelief. Yeah. Either I know what God said, and I don't care, I'm gonna do my own thing, which is just a lie and believing, or unbelief. I know what God said, but I just don't believe him. And the unbelief tends to lead to despair, fear mentalities, isolation. Rebellion tends to lead to anger, need for control, or just or just the party mentality of none of it matters, I'll do what I want. It's totally fine. Like either way, it's a pride problem. Yeah. Rebellion is pride, unbelief is pride. Either I know what God said, but I'm gonna do this, or I know what God said, but I don't believe him. Both of those are you saying, I think I'm smarter than God. Yeah, both of those are I think I know better. Yeah. So when you look at look, I'm just gonna go there. When you look at your life, if you think you're a victim, I want you to know that's probably sin. If you're living in a victim mentality and you have given your life to Jesus and you're still seeing your life as woe as me, when he literally has given you everything, you're probably in sin and you got some lies that you need to uproot. You need to find those strongholds and fortresses that have set themselves up against the knowledge of God, no matter how aggressive that speculation or lofty that thought, yeah. It needs to submit to Christ. Yeah. And then wherever in your life you're like angry or in, you know, need control or have a stupid party mentality where you just want to have fun, but ultimately walk those things back and find out where has God said this, and I'm just not ready to repent.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01All of these things require repentance, which literally means uh I think the word is uh metanoite. It literally means change your mind. Like change it. Like change how you're thinking. Most people think repentance means tell God sorry. That is not what repentance means. If you have kids, you understand this. You don't want a sorry from your kids. You want them to do something different, which means they have to think about it differently. Yeah. Or they'll just stay in this cycle of I'm sorry, God, I did it again. I'm sorry, God, I did it again. I'm sorry, God, I did it again. God is not trying to reach you and so on. I'm sorry. Hits your brother. Or you perpetually feel guilty and shameful about your about your decisions and knowing that you're not going to change anything about it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01The mind has to be changed. The spirit of truth has to reign in those places, and you have to begin to let truth speak in regard to these areas of your life that you're seeing all these things come up. I mean, I don't know if people realize this, but anytime you're ever frustrated or angry or whatever, it's just a blocked goal. Uh this is um this is Neil Anderson. He talks about this a lot. But hit the whole idea is if I'm pissed off, I just wanted things to go this way and they didn't.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01If I'm despondent and frustrated, it I just wanted things to go this way and they didn't. All of it is me saying I didn't get my way. So I'm behaving this way instead, trying to get manipulate, control circumstances with my behavior to get what I want. Oh, we're back to pride. Here it is again. So when we talk about empathy and this, like I said, this idea of like get in the hole with somebody, just be there with them. And it's like, I'm he's not God. Yeah. They're not God.
SPEAKER_00I can love people, be there with them.
SPEAKER_01I can want to help them, I can want to get them to a better place, but my goal is not to let their emotions or their trauma or whatever rule in the moment and decide whatever is going on. No, we got to get you help. We got to get some truth injected into this situation, or lies are gonna continue to rain in your life, and you are going to see yourself as a victim, or you're gonna see yourself as better than what God has let out uh led us to believe and said is actually true. So getting the word is really important. And I I would just say this look, follow the fruit, go back to the root of what that is, whether rebellion or unbelief, and repent. It's it's that simple.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Tell God, I have believed I've been believing this lie that you're not good, or I can't trust you, or or I uh, you know, you you aren't there to take care of me. You're not gonna be able to, you know, provide. You're not whatever those might be, or God, I know you said this, but I really just want to do this. God, I know you said this, but I'm having fun. God, I know you said this, but I don't feel convicted about it yet. I can't tell you how many people I've heard say, you know, when God starts convicting me about this, I'll change it. And I'm like, okay, so I guess the inerrant, authoritative, infallible word of God just wasn't enough for you. Yeah, sorry. When I feel like it, I'll change it. No, repent, change your mind. Yeah. Where where life says you're a victim, Christ says you're a victor. Yeah. Where like, you know, where life wants to tell you you're awesome and it doesn't matter, Christ is calling you to say this very much matters. Change it, do something about it. And um, if we don't make confession and repentance, man, a regular part of our life, then lies are gonna rule our life instead of truth. Yeah. We have to, have to let truth reign in our minds to produce life in our bodies so that we would act and live in a way that's actually consistent with the word of God instead of just drifting along in the same patterns that used to rule us. And if you're
Turning On The Light Closing Prayer
SPEAKER_01that person who's like, I just can't kick this sin, I just can't kick this mentality, I just can't kick these things, I want you to start smelling lies. I want you to realize, oh, there is an area in my thinking that is dominated by a stronghold, which is a lie that I've come to believe that is now producing fruit, that is dead in my present, in my life, in my body. Yeah. And um, man, when you begin to identify lies, when you understand what you've been given that is the spirit of God that's producing life in you, then all of the difficulties come down to where's the spirit of truth? Where am I not allowing it to speak into how I'm supposed to think? And I'm I feel great because I know I'm saved, but my life still looks like hell because I'm not allowing Jesus into those places. He rules and reigns. Yeah. And any area you're not allowing Jesus to do a work in your life is just an area where Satan is gonna take and use. And I'll tell you this right now um lies are like rotting fruit. You know, if you got one lie that's rotten, the whole barrel of apples is gonna go bad very quickly. Lies and darkness never stay in one place, they spread. Yeah, and suddenly what was a small problem now is affecting my marriage, now it's affecting my kids, now I'm divorced. Yeah, this is how this works.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you've talked about that in theology too, where um you'll get a pastor who's doing good, doing uh preaching well, and yet uh there's the one pastor I I can't remember his name, but you talk about how um you know he prayed for his dad his whole life, prayed for his dad to get saved for. Yeah, and his dad didn't get saved, and it he let that lie pervade his whole theology.
SPEAKER_01He decided that a good God wouldn't let my dad go to hell. There's the lie, right? Or the misunderstanding. Uh, and then suddenly I'm changing my entire theology to walk this direction, and now I'm inviting a bunch of other people into lies as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, man, lies are damning. They're from the pit of hell, and when we speak lies to people, we're speaking for Satan for him. This is why when Jesus talks to Peter and Peter says, Lord, these things aren't going to happen, and he says, Get behind me, Satan, for you don't have in mind the things of God but the things of man. What is he saying? Satan is speaking through you right now. Yeah, you are speaking lies, and you're speaking from a worldly system of lies. I didn't give you those words. Yeah, I didn't. That that's not from God. And what what is Jesus doing? He's taking those thoughts captive and making them submit to him. He's saying, nope, we're not going there. That's we don't believe those things. And I wish I wish more Christians just had a spine. Yeah. I don't mean to be a jerk, but so often we're more interested in making people comfortable than actually capturing lies and making them submit to Christ. This command in this text is if you want to go to war, you want to actually do this, start exposing lies and calling people to the truth. And you know what that means? Calling people to repent, not sitting there and just coddling them in their sin and acting like it's fine or trying to come up with an argument within their own worldview that continues to help them feel validated in their victimization or their control and rebellion. That's not how you get people help. That's how you high-five them on their way to hell. That is not what we're trying to do. We're to confront those lies. We're to speak against those strongholds, and we're to make take every thought captive and make it subject to Christ. And whether that's an internal war that you're fighting, or whether you are trying to do that in your life against the people or for the people that you're walking with, it is really important you embrace that calling and know if you want to see breakthrough in somebody's life, truth has to prevail. Turn the lights on. Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. So what are you as a Christian? A light. Go be a light. Go turn the lights on. And uh you'll piss some people off. But that's also the way that they get set free. Go with God. Yeah. Go crush it. Go get after it. So I uh I want to say a quick prayer, I think, today, just for anybody who is struggling with this in particular. Yeah. And just ask that God would give them some breakthrough. So let's do that. God, I pray for anybody today who is wrestling with deep embedded lies. God, I pray that you would do a work in them. You would help them identify things that are producing fruit in their life right now that's dead. I pray that you would reveal to them those lies that they're struggling with, God. And I pray that you would give them the courage, the tenacity, and the ability and obedience to repent. Turn from those things. And Lord, just replace those lies with the truth of your word so that they would begin to live according to your word, not according to the standards of this world. Do work in them and through them, Lord. I pray for anybody who needs to confront lies today that are going on in their family, in their workplace, wherever, Jesus, I pray that you would give them the courage to confront those lies with truth and that we would see strongholds fall in Jesus' name and people get healing and hope that they need. We pray in your name. Amen. Amen. Right on. Thanks for saying. Talk to you soon.
