Speaker 1: We'd love to have you come.
Speaker 1: We're going to be back in Ephesians, chapter six, today for the message.
Speaker 1: In the last couple of weeks we've been in a series entitled Battle Ready, battle Ready, and this series is all about wearing armor.
Speaker 1: Now, if you haven't been here, you're like wearing armor.
Speaker 1: What are you?
Speaker 1: We're talking about wearing armor.
Speaker 1: Why would it be wear armor?
Speaker 1: Are we in a battle or something?
Speaker 1: The answer would be yes.
Speaker 1: We are in a spiritual battle, of spiritual warfare.
Speaker 1: In fact, the verse we looked at the last couple of weeks is Ephesians, chapter six, verse 13.
Speaker 1: And it says that we are to take up the full armor of God so that we can resist in the evil day, and have prepared everything to take your stand.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about armor.
Speaker 1: Take an iron stand Now.
Speaker 1: Last week we talked about a couple pieces of armor.
Speaker 1: Does anybody have a really good memory and remember one of the two pieces of armor we talked about last week?
Speaker 1: Breastplate of Righteousness, that's right.
Speaker 1: I heard it somewhere up there.
Speaker 1: Remember the other one, the Belt of Truth?
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 1: She's looking at our notes.
Speaker 1: I love that, the Belt of Truth.
Speaker 1: We talked about the breastplate of righteousness and then living in our identity and Christ living in the righteous that we have.
Speaker 1: And we talked about having the Belt of Truth, because truth keeps everything together.
Speaker 1: Now, today, we're going to talk about two more pieces of armor.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about a shield and a helmet.
Speaker 1: Now, when I think of a shield, something comes to my mind, and this shows you how spiritual I am, how much spiritual depth I have and how much theological understanding I have.
Speaker 1: When I think of a shield, this is what I think of in this text.
Speaker 1: I think of video games.
Speaker 1: Any gamers in the room?
Speaker 1: Gamers in the room?
Speaker 1: Ok, a couple of gamers in the room?
Speaker 1: Oh, we got some gamers in the balcony.
Speaker 1: Can somebody tell me what's a video game that either you played or that you play, or you grew up playing Pac-Man?
Speaker 1: Pac-man people in the room?
Speaker 1: Yeah, ok, all right, somebody else?
Speaker 1: Yeah, some of you guys are liking that.
Speaker 1: Something else, what's another video game?
Speaker 1: You grew up playing Zelda?
Speaker 1: Yes, bro, I play Zelda too.
Speaker 1: My god, somebody else?
Speaker 1: Another video game?
Speaker 1: What's that?
Speaker 1: Mega man?
Speaker 1: Mega man, you're going to play Mega man?
Speaker 1: Ok, I played a couple of games I played.
Speaker 1: Is I played Donkey Kong?
Speaker 1: Donkey Kong people?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like.
Speaker 1: I've been yelling that, you've been ignoring me.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, donkey Kong, I'm with y'all.
Speaker 1: I'm with y'all, donkey Kong, mario Kart, ok, mario Kart, and I don't know if I'm allowed to say this in church, but we just keep it real here.
Speaker 1: I grew up playing Halo.
Speaker 1: I love playing Halo.
Speaker 1: That was a game that I played.
Speaker 1: I played Halo, and one thing when I played video games I always really loved to get was a shield, because if you play video games, you know If you have a shield, you're protected, so you're not scared of the attacks of the enemy.
Speaker 1: In fact, you're kind of walking around like you can try to attack me, but I got a shield.
Speaker 1: I'm walking on that battlefield.
Speaker 1: I have this shield.
Speaker 1: Oh, a tap coming Shield.
Speaker 1: They were going to learn about the shield that will allow you to spiritually flourish, but if you don't have the shield, it can cause you to spiritually plounder what Shield is called the shield of faith.
Speaker 1: But we're also going to talk about a helmet.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 1: I remember when I first started riding a bike, when I was just a kid, and if you guys remember back on the day when you first started, when you first learned how to ride a bike, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: So I started riding a bike and I remember one year for Christmas, I got a 10 speed bike.
Speaker 1: I was a really big deal.
Speaker 1: My mom always told me you've got to wear your helmet, you've got to wear a helmet.
Speaker 1: I was really crazy Especially I was getting older wearing a helmet, because you know, helmets it kind of looks like a little kind of dorky.
Speaker 1: At least I did Not saying that you did with your helmet, but I did with mine.
Speaker 1: I was like I really want to wear it, but I wore a helmet because, well, my mom told me and I didn't do it, my mom told me I was going to get a little I don't know if I'm allowed to say that in 2023.
Speaker 1: But you know.
Speaker 1: So I wore a helmet.
Speaker 1: But let's fast forward to today.
Speaker 1: Let's pretend I don't know how they desire to do this, but let's pretend that I were to get a Harley Davidson motorcycle.
Speaker 1: Let's say we're just going to not even a Harley, just a motorcycle.
Speaker 1: First of all, let's state the obvious I would be so much cooler than I am right now, because if you have a motorcycle, you're just really cool, right Understood.
Speaker 1: Second of all, if I got a motorcycle, I can guarantee you the one thing I would always wear helmet Because if you're going down the road 65 miles an hour on Interstate 80, and you get in a wreck and you're riding a motorcycle without a helmet, then, game over, you've got to have a helmet.
Speaker 1: Because your helmet protects your mind, you're thinking, your mental faculties, your mental health Got a helmet.
Speaker 1: You get in a car crash, you're in a trouble riding a motorcycle Today.
Speaker 1: Shield helmet we understand these are important in the real world as far as the physical world, but in the spiritual world, having the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation is just as important.
Speaker 1: So you can put it this is what it says in Ephesians 6, chapter verse number 16.
Speaker 1: It says in every situation, take up the shield of what's that next word?
Speaker 1: The shield of it's right, shield of faith With which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil.
Speaker 1: One, faith, is our shield.
Speaker 1: This also begs the question what is faith?
Speaker 1: Hebrews, chapter 11,.
Speaker 1: It tells us what faith is.
Speaker 1: Faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen.
Speaker 1: That's what faith is.
Speaker 1: Faith is belief and true belief produces action.
Speaker 1: Faith is belief and this true belief produces action.
Speaker 1: So faith is believing.
Speaker 1: It's faith, according to this verse, it's the reality of what's hoped for but what's not seen.
Speaker 1: And we could kind of describe this in a really simple way.
Speaker 1: Faith is living your life like God is telling the truth.
Speaker 1: This is really vital that you get.
Speaker 1: This is really important that you understand this.
Speaker 1: Faith is living your life like God is telling the truth.
Speaker 1: So we look at the word of God and we look at the promises of God and we live our life in response to that, like God's word is actually true, god's promises are true.
Speaker 1: Now that verse verse 16, it says that the first three words of the verse it says in every situation, in every situation, so in every situation, I'm going to live my life like God is telling the truth.
Speaker 1: So that means when I get a medical test and the results don't come back how I hope they will come back, I live in faith.
Speaker 1: That means when I lose my job, that means when I can't find my job, I can't find a job.
Speaker 1: This means when the kids are acting cray-cray, when their grades are all over the place.
Speaker 1: This means when you're overwhelmed with life.
Speaker 1: This means when gas is now $5.89 a dollar.
Speaker 1: In every situation, we live our lives like God is telling the truth.
Speaker 1: So, no matter what I'm facing, I'm going to have faith.
Speaker 1: I'm going to live my life like God is telling the truth.
Speaker 1: But why do I do this?
Speaker 1: Why should I live my life like this?
Speaker 1: Well, the verse 16 told us because of the flaming arrows of the enemy.
Speaker 1: And our faith blocks the flaming arrows of the fiery arrows of Satan.
Speaker 1: Number one Now think about the imagery here, guys.
Speaker 1: This is not a pretty strong imagery.
Speaker 1: Fiery arrows.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen a war movie with fiery arrows?
Speaker 1: You know what they do, how they take their arrows and they light them on fire.
Speaker 1: You can see the arrow, or maybe all the groups of arrows, going through the air and then hit somebody.
Speaker 1: You get hit by a fiery arrow that I call the medic.
Speaker 1: You're in trouble.
Speaker 1: Here's the image here.
Speaker 1: The image here is Satan has fiery arrows.
Speaker 1: It's pointing at us Psh, psh, psh.
Speaker 1: And what blocks the fiery arrows is the shield of faith.
Speaker 1: It's me living my life like God is telling the truth when the arrows are coming at me.
Speaker 1: But that really begs an important question what happens when my faith tank is running low?
Speaker 1: You ever have to happen to you.
Speaker 1: Some people have the spiritual gift of faith.
Speaker 1: Some of you are in the room and now I envy you.
Speaker 1: You have faith about everything.
Speaker 1: You're like yes, there's a crazy circumstance, no problem for God, god can do it.
Speaker 1: Like a person has stage five cancer they get two weeks to live, that's OK, god's going to heal them.
Speaker 1: Like, you have this amazing faith.
Speaker 1: But then people like me, sometimes I just don't have a gift of faith.
Speaker 1: Sometimes my faith is really strong and sometimes my faith is kind of running low.
Speaker 1: What do we do in our faith tank?
Speaker 1: It's going down.
Speaker 1: It's what we do.
Speaker 1: We feed our faith.
Speaker 1: Say what, yes, we feed our faith.
Speaker 1: Now, a while ago and you guys know, one of my hobbies is I used to work out and a while ago I was learning lots of different things about this.
Speaker 1: This is years ago now and I was talking to a coach and I said, hey, I want to get healthier and I want to get stronger and I want to learn how to do some of this stuff.
Speaker 1: Would you teach me to show me how to do some of this stuff?
Speaker 1: And she started asking me some questions that were none of her business.
Speaker 1: Ok, I can do that, we can do this.
Speaker 1: She was like so what is your diet?
Speaker 1: Like I didn't ask you to ask me that question.
Speaker 1: I just want to know how can I get healthier, how can I get stronger?
Speaker 1: What's your diet like?
Speaker 1: Well, I do have the important food groups of gummy, candy, ice cream and fast food.
Speaker 1: I got the important ones covered?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, ok, is that OK?
Speaker 1: She says to get healthier and to get stronger, you're going to have to feed yourself certain things.
Speaker 1: You have to feed yourself the right things.
Speaker 1: I'm just like oh, I want to hear this right.
Speaker 1: She's like this is what you need to do.
Speaker 1: That's what she said.
Speaker 1: This is really powerful.
Speaker 1: She says because what you input reduces what you output.
Speaker 1: She said what you input reduces what you output.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to our faith, it's the exact same way.
Speaker 1: When we feed our faith, our faith gets stronger.
Speaker 1: Now some of you are like I'm thoroughly confused.
Speaker 1: What are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Romans 10, 17 says this it says faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.
Speaker 1: So, as I'm putting the Word of God into me, my faith is going to grow.
Speaker 1: This is why coming and gathering on Sunday mornings like this is so vital and so important.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because your faith is going to grow.
Speaker 1: This is why you having a regular time where you spend time in the Word is so important, because your faith is going to grow.
Speaker 1: It was really cool Last week in passing I mentioned hey, I'm doing a U-version devotional.
Speaker 1: If somebody wants to be a part of it, you're welcome to.
Speaker 1: We have over 40 people be a part of a U-version devotional and I just passively mentioned it.
Speaker 1: That is so cool.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because you're getting in the Word of God and the Word grows your faith.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'll talk to a Christ follower and the faith is just running low, probably down there, and they're just kind of struggling and maybe they just start feeling it.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like sometimes you've got the Jesus feels and sometimes you just don't have the Jesus feels right, and they're just kind of struggling in their faith and they're trying to go through the motions and a lot of times I'll ask them a couple questions.
Speaker 1: I'll say one what fuels your affections for God?
Speaker 1: What is it that causes your heart to love God and what feeds your faith?
Speaker 1: Because usually what fuels your affections for God, feeds your faith, what builds you spiritually?
Speaker 1: Like maybe there's like a go-to worship song that you listen to that just does something to your heart.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a passage of scripture that you run to and it just it fuels your affections for God.
Speaker 1: There's passages and Psalms from Acts, psalm 42, powerful, it fuels my affections for God.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's going to a meaningful place and visiting somewhere, like if I go to, like a beach or something for me, I'm just like, oh, my goodness, this is amazing, god created this.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's joining a serve team.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a serve team Like this is, as you use your spiritual gifts, your faith grows.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's talking to a friend and that friend just encourages you and it fuels your affections for God, because sometimes what can happen is our faith tank can run low, and when our faith tank can run low, sometimes a friend can speak into us and give us what we need.
Speaker 1: And sometimes what we have to do is we have to borrow faith from somebody else.
Speaker 1: You've done that before.
Speaker 1: You ever borrowed faith from somebody else.
Speaker 1: I'll give you an example of this.
Speaker 1: About a year ago now it's crazy to think.
Speaker 1: About a year ago now, it was really a dark and hard season and I was in Chipotle with a friend of mine and that was a good place to go.
Speaker 1: I was in Chipotle with a friend of mine.
Speaker 1: I'm in Chipotle and we're just kind of talking.
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of sharing my heart.
Speaker 1: I'm just crying.
Speaker 1: I'm just crying in Chipotle.
Speaker 1: It's not something you usually see in Chipotle every day right Short, stubby white guy just falling right there.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in Chipotle, I was crying.
Speaker 1: I had my faith tank was really low.
Speaker 1: My pain and hurt tank was really high.
Speaker 1: It was a massive gap.
Speaker 1: And my friend looks across the table at me and he says I want you to know something.
Speaker 1: God is still with you.
Speaker 1: I want you to know something.
Speaker 1: I want you to know something God has not forsaken you.
Speaker 1: I want you to know something that God's going to see through this.
Speaker 1: I want you to know something that God can turn this crazy trial into a powerful testimony.
Speaker 1: I want you to know something that I believe in you and God's not done with you.
Speaker 1: I want to tell you I'll never forget that day for the rest of my life, because I didn't have faith.
Speaker 1: My faith tank was as low as it had ever been in that moment and what I had to do because I had no other choice was to borrow somebody else's faith, was to borrow his faith that he had.
Speaker 1: That I did not have, and I had to do this, guys, because faith is powerful.
Speaker 1: Faith is powerful.
Speaker 1: Faith blocks the fiery arrows of the devil.
Speaker 1: Right now, the last month or so, we've got some different people in our church that had some serious health issues and they've made some major steps of progress with their health issues.
Speaker 1: We've seen people that have been healed of some different diseases.
Speaker 1: We've seen the gospel going forward in our church.
Speaker 1: We've seen God working our church in a very mighty way in the lives of people.
Speaker 1: How does this happen?
Speaker 1: This happens through faith, through us believing that God can do what he says he can do.
Speaker 1: It comes from us believing that God is telling the truth in his word.
Speaker 1: This is one of the reasons why, the first Thursday of every month, this Thursday, we have worship and prayer night upstairs in the youth room.
Speaker 1: It's what we do we gather and we pray.
Speaker 1: We gather and we pray because we're going to be people that are going to have faith, that believe that God can do great and mighty things, and we invite you to come this Thursday 7 o'clock.
Speaker 1: If you have a special need, our church leaders will lay hands on you.
Speaker 1: We will pray for you because we want to be a people, a faith and it is powerful when a group, when a church community says I'm going to live my life by faith.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what, guys.
Speaker 1: I believe that God is going to be great and mighty things in our church in the future.
Speaker 1: Guys, I believe that the best is yet to come in our church in the future.
Speaker 1: I believe that, as this service is pretty full filled up, I'll let you guys don't see 9 AM service visual secret.
Speaker 1: 9 AM service is starting to fill up as well.
Speaker 1: I believe that in the not too distant future, we're going to have to have conversations about adding a third service.
Speaker 1: I really believe that.
Speaker 1: I really believe that there's people out in our community that are hurting and that need hope, and we are going to be the people that are going to give them healing and hope because we're going to show them the love and mercy of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: I really believe that as we make Jesus known in our community and as we invite our friends and family, people are going to come to faith in Jesus Christ and people's lives are going to be changed.
Speaker 1: I believe in a next generation that is looking for identity and looking for meaning, that we have the hope and we are going to raise up the next generation of mighty Jesus followers.
Speaker 1: They're going to be leaders in our world for Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: I believe that God is just getting started with what he's doing here and we got to be people that will believe.
Speaker 1: Can somebody say amen, amen.
Speaker 1: The shield of faith, we got to have it and in every situation, when the enemy comes, choose the fiery arrow, faith, yok.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna live my life like God is telling the truth in every situation and we're gonna be that group of people.
Speaker 1: I'd say what?
Speaker 1: If you've been around here for a couple years, you have seen God work in this church.
Speaker 1: You have seen it.
Speaker 1: Guys, we're just gonna start and your life, I believe, guys, just getting started.
Speaker 1: But we have to have the shield of faith.
Speaker 1: Second of all, we need to wear the helmet of salvation.
Speaker 1: The helmet of salvation.
Speaker 1: It protects our mental health, and I say that in just that.
Speaker 1: It's the very general sense.
Speaker 1: It protects our minds.
Speaker 1: It protects our thinking.
Speaker 1: Verse 17 says take the helmets of salvation, Let me salvation.
Speaker 1: To receive salvation, we need to understand the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: The gospel is the death, the burial and the resurrection of Christ and the moment we turn from our sin and we put our faith in trust in Jesus Christ, we have forgiveness, we have salvation.
Speaker 1: It's not the moment that we decide to be better people.
Speaker 1: It's not the moment that we say I'm just gonna get baptized because my friends are getting baptized, this is a good thing for me to do.
Speaker 1: It's not then.
Speaker 1: It's not the moment that we say, well, I'm starting to believe in God, I believe in God now, I'm good.
Speaker 1: No, no, no.
Speaker 1: It's the moment we turn from our sin and we put our trust, our faith, in the person of Jesus Christ and what he did for us on the cross.
Speaker 1: We have salvation, we are saved.
Speaker 1: And maybe you're in this room right now and you don't have salvation.
Speaker 1: You've never made that decision to trust and follow Jesus.
Speaker 1: Maybe you know a lot about it, maybe you're religious, maybe you have family members that they've done that, but until you do that, you don't have salvation.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're in this room and you're just thinking about faith, maybe you're an agnostic or an atheist.
Speaker 1: Can I say you're welcome here, I'm so glad that you're here, and Maybe what you need to do is come to this place where you realize you need Jesus and you trust and follow Come, and when we do that, we receive salvation and With that salvation comes realities, comes gospel realities because of that salvation.
Speaker 1: And we use the realities of that salvation, the realities of what we find in scripture, to protect our thinking.
Speaker 1: Paul wrote about this in Saint Corinthians, chapter 10.
Speaker 1: This is what he says.
Speaker 1: He says we're humans, but we don't wage wars.
Speaker 1: Humans do so.
Speaker 1: This right here he's talking to Jesus followers, so people who know Jesus.
Speaker 1: So, yes, we're humans, but we don't wage war like humans do.
Speaker 1: In other words, we don't rely on our self-discipline, we don't rely on on our dread, we don't.
Speaker 1: We don't talk about this.
Speaker 1: No, no, we don't use human weapons.
Speaker 1: We use verse four, god's mighty weapons.
Speaker 1: We use the word, we use prayer, we use our identity, we having, we use the community of other Jesus followers.
Speaker 1: We use these weapons not worldly weapons to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy arguments.
Speaker 1: That's a strongholds here.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a really strong, heavy word, doesn't it know I, that's a really strong word, it's a stronghold.
Speaker 1: It's an area which we're held in bondage, often due to a particular way of using.
Speaker 1: So it's possible that me, maybe you, we have certain strongholds in our mind of human reasoning, of maybe worldly mindsets.
Speaker 1: That's causing us, that's causing us to not live lives of faith, that's preventing us from moving forward in our spiritual journey.
Speaker 1: And this is what Paul says that we need to do with these in verse 5.
Speaker 1: He says we destroy.
Speaker 1: This is Bible.
Speaker 1: He doesn't say we need to talk to those strongholds and we need to think about we really want to live our lives this way.
Speaker 1: He says we destroy.
Speaker 1: We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God.
Speaker 1: This is violent.
Speaker 1: This is the language here.
Speaker 1: We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ.
Speaker 1: Teaching a thought to obey Christ.
Speaker 1: What this means is we take this thought and say does this align with Scripture?
Speaker 1: Does this align with gospel promises over my life?
Speaker 1: And if this doesn't, what we do is we actively and aggressively put these thoughts into captivity.
Speaker 1: We take them into obedience to Christ.
Speaker 1: What it's saying?
Speaker 1: We capture them.
Speaker 1: It would be somewhere like this.
Speaker 1: It would be if there was a.
Speaker 1: Let's say there was somebody who did a really serious crime.
Speaker 1: I'd say they did an upmurdering right and they were running from the police.
Speaker 1: The police officer went and said hey, buddy, come here, you're in trouble.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't have done that.
Speaker 1: Those are the guys he would go and grab them, he would seize them, he would arrest them and he'd put them under the authority of the law, put them in jail.
Speaker 1: That's what you do.
Speaker 1: That's what's being communicated here.
Speaker 1: I'm having a thought that isn't in obedience to Christ.
Speaker 1: It's contrary to Scripture, it's contrary to gospel promises over my life.
Speaker 1: This is what I do.
Speaker 1: I acknowledge it.
Speaker 1: I don't like to suppress this thought.
Speaker 1: I don't say, oh, I'm not thinking that thought.
Speaker 1: No, you are.
Speaker 1: You're thinking that thought.
Speaker 1: It's in your head.
Speaker 1: I'm acknowledging this thought.
Speaker 1: I'm going to take this thought into captivity.
Speaker 1: I'm going to put this thought into obedience to Christ.
Speaker 1: You cannot control every thought that goes into your head you can't.
Speaker 1: But you can control what you do with that thought.
Speaker 1: And if we don't take our thoughts captive, eventually our thoughts will take us captive.
Speaker 1: If we don't take our thoughts captive, eventually our thoughts will take us captive.
Speaker 1: What we have to do is we have to say, hey, hey, hey, I had this thought.
Speaker 1: This is in my mind.
Speaker 1: I'm going to take this into captivity and I'm going to put this under the authority of Christ.
Speaker 1: I heard one time of somebody that they were really struggling with that negative self-talk.
Speaker 1: They couldn't mess it up, they felt.
Speaker 1: They felt like terrible.
Speaker 1: They've said all kinds of terrible things to themselves and they took this passage and they said no, no, no.
Speaker 1: These are not gospel promises that God's promised to me.
Speaker 1: This is not the truth of Scripture, how God sees me, this is making me not realize like I'm not living my life, like who God says that I am.
Speaker 1: So this guy did something that might be like a little crazy.
Speaker 1: You might think it's a little crazy, but he went to a local print shop and he got a card and he got this card laminated and on this laminated card it said this did that thought come from a loving God?
Speaker 1: And he carried it around with him everywhere he went and whenever he would have a negative thought.
Speaker 1: This is what he would do.
Speaker 1: He'd talk to the person did that thought come from a loving God?
Speaker 1: What's he doing?
Speaker 1: He's claiming the promises that God declares over his life.
Speaker 1: He's taking those thoughts into captivity.
Speaker 1: Sometimes what we think we have to do with these thoughts is sometimes we think that the way we can get rid of certain thoughts is just by telling ourselves get rid of them.
Speaker 1: Stop thinking about this If you tell yourself.
Speaker 1: Stop thinking about this, stop thinking about this, stop thinking about this.
Speaker 1: What are you doing?
Speaker 1: You're thinking about it.
Speaker 1: So, to put on this hell into salvation, what we have to do is you have to take these thoughts into captivity and fill our minds with something else.
Speaker 1: I want to illustrate this.
Speaker 1: Before I illustrate this, you guys got to be honest with something that you're going to be honest.
Speaker 1: Right, we're honest with you.
Speaker 1: We're going to be honest, okay, guys, the best place in the world to be honest is the church service.
Speaker 1: It's the best place.
Speaker 1: You can't be honest here.
Speaker 1: You can't be honest anywhere else.
Speaker 1: Right Now, some religious people never really just got kind of shocked when I said that.
Speaker 1: But you got to be honest, okay.
Speaker 1: So let's see, guys just got nervous, where are we going?
Speaker 1: So I want to illustrate this and this in our lives and what we do with thought and how we wear the helmet of salvation.
Speaker 1: This vase right here, this vase represents our minds.
Speaker 1: Come on, the vase right here represents unhealthy and ungodly thoughts that fill our minds, that we all have it, in fact.
Speaker 1: Can somebody tell me what is an ungodly and unhealthy mindset that can fill our minds?
Speaker 1: Doubt, doubt, doubt can fill our minds.
Speaker 1: That can be a real thing, right.
Speaker 1: Doubt, yup.
Speaker 1: Failure, okay, yeah, failure, like we think we're a failure.
Speaker 1: We think we're a failure, yup, okay, yup.
Speaker 1: Jealousy, that's right, jealousy, jealousy can fill our minds, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Pride can fill our lives, right, pride, thinking, I know, like I'm in control, like I got this.
Speaker 1: I wish people would just listen to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can be filled with pride, that's right.
Speaker 1: What's something else that can fill our minds?
Speaker 1: Fear, fear, selfishness.
Speaker 1: How about this one?
Speaker 1: How about lust?
Speaker 1: Lust can fill our minds.
Speaker 1: How about this Shame?
Speaker 1: Shame, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Fillings of guilt yeah, that can come along with shame, that's right, it can.
Speaker 1: This overwhelming feeling of guilt, that's right.
Speaker 1: This shame, even though we're free in Christ, that's right.
Speaker 1: We can have.
Speaker 1: We can have like money, like we can be just obsessed with money.
Speaker 1: I just need more money and more money.
Speaker 1: This can fill our minds.
Speaker 1: And when our minds are filled with all these different things, there's still room in here for some other stuff, right, like there's still room for God, you're right, you've been thinking about God.
Speaker 1: I think you have.
Speaker 1: Oh, right, yeah, there's room for you.
Speaker 1: Think about your family a little bit.
Speaker 1: You think about, maybe your hobby there's room for stuff, but but your mind really spilled with all these other things and for some of us there could be one thing Maybe that was mentioned, maybe that was not that completely fills this up in our mind.
Speaker 1: It's worry, anxiety, maybe it's something that what we think is a.
Speaker 1: I just I just gotta get this out of my mind.
Speaker 1: I just like this on my mind and we try and we try and we try and we just our minds are filled with it.
Speaker 1: But this represents this water, represents gospel promises that God's made of your life.
Speaker 1: It represents scriptural truth in our life.
Speaker 1: And the way that these thoughts are removed is by filling our minds with something else.
Speaker 1: What can happen as we fill our minds with truth?
Speaker 1: At first it seems like nothing's happening.
Speaker 1: Like whoa oh, how's your name?
Speaker 1: Like you told me that I should read my Bible.
Speaker 1: I did it for three days.
Speaker 1: Nothing changed.
Speaker 1: Does it work?
Speaker 1: I Went to church twice out of like a four week.
Speaker 1: Like I went to church two times.
Speaker 1: Like look at me.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel any different.
Speaker 1: I Didn't change after Nate plus me, a person a I uh Listen to Caleb on the way home from work the other day.
Speaker 1: Then I went home and I was stressed out so I cussed at my kids yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: And what happens.
Speaker 1: Happens is is Is we put a little bit, a little bit of truth in our minds, and that's a good thing, but it takes more Than just eating an apple a day to be healthy.
Speaker 1: But what happens Is, as we prioritize filling our minds with truth and we we start getting serious about it, eventually Some of these other thoughts start to come out.
Speaker 1: Eventually, what was once filled with fear in doubt, that fear in doubt, is kind of starting to go away a little bit.
Speaker 1: And now we're we're feeding our faith and now it's going away, and the jealousy and the anger and the feeling less than Start to go away.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 1: Now, what's happening here is is I'm just feeding my faith, I'm just feeling my mind with the truth of God's word, I'm I'm listening to worship music, I'm being faithful to church, I'm I'm reading my bible consistently, I'm reading a devotional and, as I'm feeling, feeling my mind, what's happening is All these other things are going out and now, before you know it, over a consistent period of time, not overnight, Not in the week, not in a month.
Speaker 1: I wish I could say that that's not reality Is our mind starts to be filled with these other things.
Speaker 1: I want to point something out.
Speaker 1: These two falls right here.
Speaker 1: They're not in your mind, but they're still there and in our lives.
Speaker 1: We might always have a propensity for a certain struggle.
Speaker 1: You might always have a struggle with an addiction.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying you'll never get victory over it, but it might always be in the back of your mind.
Speaker 1: You might always have a propensity to worry.
Speaker 1: You might always have a propensity towards anger.
Speaker 1: You might always have a propensity towards pride, towards something, and that might be in the back of your mind, but it doesn't have to fill your.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to fill your mind.
Speaker 1: But what we have to do is we have to fill our minds with truth and fill our minds with gospel promises.
Speaker 1: And some of us are frustrated In our faith and we're wondering why we can't get victory over certain things, but we're filling our minds with everything else.
Speaker 1: Like some of us are like man I'm showing, with being jealous and being envious of other people, but we spend three hours a day scrolling on social media.
Speaker 1: Who'd expect, Pastor Nate, like my mind is filled with fear.
Speaker 1: You watch the news two hours a day.
Speaker 1: What do you expect, pastor Nate?
Speaker 1: I need victory over lust, like I really need to get over it For lust, like I really struggle with lust.
Speaker 1: But then we watch movies that have sex scenes and I mean we listen to music that talk about sex all the time.
Speaker 1: What do we expect?
Speaker 1: We say we, we.
Speaker 1: We say we.
Speaker 1: We say we struggle with greed, we struggle with pride, we struggle with these things, but then we don't run to scripture that's going to give us the power to overcome this.
Speaker 1: And then we say god, it's not working, guy, you're not work.
Speaker 1: God, I prayed about it.
Speaker 1: I pray five times.
Speaker 1: Such a martyr, but I guess I'll stay faithful.
Speaker 1: This is what we do.
Speaker 1: We fill our minds with certain things and then we feed ourselves with certain things.
Speaker 1: Then our minds will fill with things.
Speaker 1: We wonder why.
Speaker 1: This is why, because what you input produces is alpha.
Speaker 1: Here's my question this morning what are you feeling, your mind?
Speaker 1: Did I even get home, marmel?
Speaker 1: Who are your people?
Speaker 1: You, like with your friends, are going to influence your thinking.
Speaker 1: This is real stuff, guys.
Speaker 1: You can't self-talk your way out of wrong thoughts.
Speaker 1: You can't listen to enough YouTube videos to pump you up out of your own thinking.
Speaker 1: We need something powerful, we need mighty weapons, we need God's weapons.
Speaker 1: We can do this.
Speaker 1: Going back to that shield does none of that.
Speaker 1: We talk about that.
Speaker 1: How should faith mean a doing?
Speaker 1: How are you going to read faith, guys, when we live in this helmet of salvation and the shield of faith?
Speaker 1: You can't spirit it.
Speaker 1: You can't.
Speaker 1: If you're Jesus following, you can flourish, you can't, but you have to choose.
Speaker 1: Put on the helmet, you can't get the shield.
Speaker 1: Let's do this together.
Speaker 1: Let's be battle-stricken.
Speaker 1: Let me try to do that.
Speaker 1: Let me thank you.