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Fierce Church Sermons
Finding Truth in a World Full of Lies: A Hot Take on the Bible II
Is the Bible still relevant in a world that runs on AI advice, TikTok trends, and instant validation? 🤔📱
Absolutely. Because it doesn't just tell us what we want to hear—it tells us what’s true. 🙌
This week, we’re diving deeper into how Scripture cuts through the lies of worldly culture 💬—from self-love without sacrifice to false justice without God. The Bible is our anchor ⚓ when everything else keeps shifting.
💡 What does the Bible say vs. what the world says?
⛪ How do I get back on track when I’ve messed up?
I don't know a ton about alcohol. I gave up drinking when I was a younger man for a number of reasons. One I felt like it fought some of my priorities. Not that there's anything wrong with having a drink when you're out to dinner, or multiple different variations of that, but for me it was a distraction from where I wanted to go with Jesus. In addition, to be quite honest, I fall asleep anytime I drink alcohol and like I don't want to slow man, I want to go. That's why I always have with me a delicious energy drink, no carbs, no sugar Important to keep it tight. So I don't want to go slow, I want to go fast, but nevertheless, what I do know is that on most alcohol that you would buy at the supermarket, there is going to be a proof on the container. The proof is the measurement of how much alcohol is actually in this thing. How potent is this thing? So if you got a beer that's going to have a lower alcohol content than a thing of whiskey, it's telling you up front this is what percent alcohol this beverage that you are perhaps purchasing, how much is in it that you are perhaps purchasing? How much is in it? I kind of wish. Maybe we need a new measurement as we go into new times of truth. What's the truth proof, what is the truth percentage of this thing that is being claimed? Because I feel like there's a lot of stuff that is now being said is true but maybe not be entirely true. So just think about the rise of AI-generated media, just for a second. Okay, so you've got.
Speaker 1:First. You can have folks that have, like a chatbot that is talking to you and you don't even know at first that it's a chatbot, right? So you go online and you're talking to somebody oh, I'm talking to you. Oh, you're a robot and it behaves like a human. But it is a robot I always try to start off with. Now, are you human? That's my first question when I'm talking to one of these things. But I want to know. I want it to tell me up front hey, this is 100% human or this is 0% human. What are we dealing with?
Speaker 1:But then you've also got stuff that goes deeper, like deep fakes. That's where there seems to be one person, but they take someone else's face and computer stitch it on to that person. So now the person who it isn't is behaving like someone they aren't, but it's not presented that way, it's just presented. Hey, this is just a human doing this thing. So there's a lot of trickery, a lot of deception that you could get into.
Speaker 1:There's also technology now to even not only know your voice if you wanted to re-communicate it just through text but also sound like you. You can take people, like famous people, celebrities. You can take Joe Rogan's voice and put it into something you want to say, and then you can deepfake Joe Rogan onto something, and now it sounds like he's saying what you want to say, and yet it's not necessarily. There's no proof on the thing that says this is 0% true or this is 30% true. That's just one example. There are censorship wars, aren't there? There's free speech wars. We're at the point where censorship and speech are now weaponized, and the thing about it is everyone tends to spin it their own way a little bit.
Speaker 1:You can't really trust that what you're seeing is necessarily 100% true. It's maybe like oh, that's 90% true, or that's even 95% true, but when it comes to I mean, you've seen this recently Even with stuff like whether it's gender, whether it's race, whether it's history, whether it's political beliefs, whether it's religious beliefs, you just don't. My point is you just don't know. You don't know. This person isn't telling you. By the way, this is 90% true and I'm just embellishing the rest, or I'm just telling you my opinion on the rest.
Speaker 1:What about the explosion on things like TikTok and Instagram of what I just might call pseudo-spirituality? Okay, so it's stuff like mysticism and manifesting wrapped up in pseudo-Christian lingo. The problem is it doesn't present itself like that necessarily. There's no like hey, it's this much you know Eastern mysticism, it's this much Christian. It doesn't present itself like that. It just presents itself as this is true. We don't have any label that is telling us how much of it is true or how much of it isn't true.
Speaker 1:And then you even have this ridiculous thing where people have their own truths and they're fighting other people's truths, so like well, my truth says this opposite of your truth, and they're so. You see this on news channels all the time. One is claiming these are the facts and then another claiming these are the facts, and then a third is claiming these are the facts, and all those facts are fighting and they're all saying they're a hundred percent true. But you know by they can't all be 100% true. But we don't know how much is true of what. That's really difficult with regard to the cultural milieu that we're in right now. So I just wish there was some version where we could say what percent true is this thing? Thankfully, there's a thing that is 100% true.
Speaker 1:We're in the hot take series, and a hot take is just someone weighing in and saying, hey man, here's a potentially controversial, potentially offensive something I feel deeply passionate about and I just want to weigh in and tell you what it is, and you'll see these online all the time. But God has some hot takes, and today we're doing another as part two of a hot take on the Bible, or maybe we just call it a hot take on true. What is God's hot take on true? We have to start with some presuppositions. We've got to start with.
Speaker 1:Here's some things the Bible is claiming is 100% true, no matter what happens across the centuries, and that is you and I are insufficiently equipped to glorify God, like we were designed to. The sin disease or the hell disease has gotten in our bones and in our veins, and even though we're created to glorify God, that means always pointing out his awesomosity, always demonstrating just how good and how wonderful and how beautiful and how powerful he is, even though we were made to do that, demonstrating his love to the rest of the planet, perfectly always. We don't do that, the way we're invented to, and so there's something hurt in us that is misrepresenting the God who created us. There's worse, though, than that. Maybe not worse, but equally bad. There's what we might call sabotage. There are dark forces at work that are trying to cause us to not only not represent them, but they know one of the key ways to get us to not represent them is to give us a little bit of mix, a little bit of lie, a little bit of truth. Tell them a little bit of truth, but then also tell them a little bit of lies, because then it'll be hard for them to determine the difference. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:One of the great things about this drink okay, whatever, as long as it's zero sugar. For me, zero carb, I'm good with the energy drinks. Man, you're like Hardy, you're going to die early. And I'm like dude, I know you don't need to worry about me. All right, hey, at least I'll die energized. Okay, I'll get to heaven happy and zippy.
Speaker 1:But what's great about this energy drink is not just the container that it's in. I mean it's. I guess it's pretty as containers go. What's great about this drink is what's in it. You crack it open, You're going to have a delicious drink that's going to make you feel really pizzazzy suddenly. Now, if I had just this container, but inside was soft scrub, that's a whole different outcome for me. Right, it would be. The container would be a lie, even if there was still a little bit of residual energy drink left in the container. Yes, there's some. I guess it's 1% true that it's energy drink, but it's 99% true that it's soft scrub. Now, if I just leave it in the container, though, you'll never know it until you take a sip.
Speaker 1:And our spiritual enemy that is sabotaging us does a lot of things like that. He says this is what's true, you like this, this is pretty, but he doesn't remind you that he's pouring soft scrub into it, or he's diluting what's true. He's adding lies. He's adding things that are captivating and soul-catching and crushing. That's what he's trying to do. I'll give you an example of how this not only comes from the enemy, but comes even from within us, because it'd be bad enough if, okay, I'm just kind of born with a sin disease. It'd be bad enough if I was just being sabotaged by the enemy. But there's something even inside of me that even knowing all that, I still drift. Somebody say drift, I drift toward what is dark, even when I know it's dark. Yikes, that's bad.
Speaker 1:I can remember being probably 11 or 12 years old and I was looking at one of my first ever dirty magazines that I'd happened across and I remember having the distinct thought, as I'm looking at these naked women made in God's image that were forbidden for me to look at, I remember thinking in my mind wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm not married to this woman. This is not okay for me to look at her. Now I was like 11 or 12. That was a deeper theological thought than I probably was even able to have at that moment. But I believe even back then the spirit of God was warning me hey, dude, this isn't, this is. I'm not down with this. It doesn't matter if anyone else is down with this, I'm not down with this.
Speaker 1:And what I did in that moment was I stifled that and shut it down. I'd be like I don't want to think about that right now. My friend, that's what we do with a lot of things we even know it's wrong. We're like I know it's wrong, but yeah, I don't want to think about that right now. So that's the predicament we're in. What we're going to find is because we drift and because we're sabotaged.
Speaker 1:The most important thing we can do to center ourselves, the most important thing we can do to equip ourselves, the most important thing that we can do to heal ourselves is to go back to what is 100% true all the time, every day, every century, every millennia. God's word is not going to be fickle. It's not going to go back and forth with the winds and with the tides. It's going to say always true. Whatever anybody else is doing, whatever's politically happening, whatever is happening in the culture, whatever the prevailing ideologies are, god says no, come back to this. This is what is true. This is God's hot take on what is true.
Speaker 1:And Paul, even as he's getting ready to die we don't know how he knows, I'm sure by the Holy Ghost he knows he's writing to Timothy and he's like pretty sure this is my last stint right here, bro. Pretty sure this is my last letter. I'm about to go home. I just have an awareness that I'm going to be going home soon. And in one of the final moments of this letter, he focuses his protege, timothy, who's a pastor, who's going to be influencing people. He focuses him on hey, by the way, dude, you got to keep it tight with God's truth. You got to keep pushing that out. You got to keep helping people understand that, because Paul knows, as we just remembered, there's always going to be mix. There's always going to be mix. There's always going to be those same saboteurs that are trying to mess it up. 2 Timothy 3.14,. We're going to go back here this week, but as for you and for us, today we're going to say that's not just for Timothy, it's for us.
Speaker 1:As for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from who you learned it. As for you, whether you know it or not, like Timothy, you have influence. You ever posted something and then you even felt a little bit of like, oh, I shouldn't have posted that. I feel weird now that I posted that, because now people think I think that or I'm affiliated with that thing and I don't even want to be affiliated with that thing. You have influence and the things you put out there, the things you say, the things you do into the planet. God's word would teach. You have influence on the people around you as you. As for you, you need to continue in what you've learned Verse 15, and how. From infancy, you've known the holy scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith faith in christ jesus.
Speaker 1:All scripture is god-breathed. Last week, last weekend, we talked about the truthfulness of the bible, the bible and the trustability of the bible. If you need a refresher on that, I encourage you to go back to the website fiercechurch. You can look at the videos or go to our youtube channel. Uh, I'm sure it's like youtubecom slash fierce church, but in that we present a case. Here's why you should believe the truthfulness of the Bible, even today, even though there's plenty of saboteurs coming against it. It is rock solid. It is a sure thing. You should trust it.
Speaker 1:All scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. And the question becomes okay. So he wants us to focus on this and get changed and be rebuked and corrected and learn all these things. Why bother? Why bother? Why should I do that? Why don't I just give myself to the winds of the culture? Why don't I just float down this stream? Everybody else is doing this. Why shouldn't I do it?
Speaker 1:Here's some biblical reasons. The first reason is because if you give yourself to God's re-correcting process through his God-breathed word, you're going to have number one more fellowship with God. You're going to have clearer, cleaner, tighter. The fog is going to be pulled away. More Sin is going to stop stopping you as much and you're going to see more clearly. You're going to have more intimacy John 14, 21,. It's not in your notes, but Jesus says everyone who has my word and keeps it, he will be loved by my Father, in the sense that God will show himself to him and manifest himself to him. There's a greater manifestation of God's presence when we prioritize growing in let's just call it holiness Growing in closeness to God. Deciding God's priorities are going to be my priorities. Then suddenly I'm getting closer and for some of us we're running. I don't feel close to God anymore. I'm not saying this is always the reason, but one of the reasons might be because not only have you maybe fallen into sin or given yourself to sin, but you've stopped going back to the word.
Speaker 1:The word has a power. It blows away the fog of sin. It blows away the fog of compromise. It brings greater clarity and discernment. We're transformed by the renewing of our mind according to God's word, so that we'll be able to test and approve what God's good will is, his good and perfect and pleasing will, what the spirit of God is saying through the scriptures there is.
Speaker 1:As you expose yourself to God's word, you're more likely to know God's will, not only within the Bible, but out in the world. Your eyes are like sharpened somehow. You understand and see what God would want in different situations more clearly. It frees us more and more from the power of sin. This is what's dope. You see, everybody sins. Everybody stumbles in many ways. We all do. Nobody's condemning you for that, especially if you're walking in Jesus, dude. There is no condemnation for those that are in Christ. But what we can do is we can experience. If we keep giving ourselves to sin, we can be experiencing increasing bound-upness. We'll call it. I'm increasingly bound up and I just can't get out, and that's what happens when I give myself to sin. But when I give myself back to the Scriptures, even from my sin, I get more and more free.
Speaker 1:Listen to what Job said in Job 17, 9. The righteous keep moving forward. Let's say it together Keep moving forward. Let's say it again Keep moving forward. Let's say it again Keep moving forward. Let's say it again Keep moving forward and those with clean hands become stronger and stronger. Nobody has clean hands in the name of themselves. We only get clean hands from Jesus. But when we find ourselves bound in sin and then we say, what am I doing? I'm going to run back to God's word. We come back to God's word and we wash our hands and God says not only are you now clean again, you're getting stronger, you're Popeye and up dude For those who know who Popeye is you're getting stronger and stronger and stronger because you keep coming back and keep moving forward. Keep moving forward to God's word. God's word is a.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you've seen Pulp Fiction. Okay, uma Thurman ODs on heroin and the only way they're going to save her. It's like a freak out moment. They shouldn't be doing heroin. Obviously they know it's wrong. Plus, she's like the wife of a gangster they're in trouble unless they stab her in the heart with a shot of adrenaline. Really, it's a crazy moment. I don't recommend the movie necessarily, given its holiness level, but nevertheless they, you know, like right through her chest, shoot the adrenaline into her heart. And as weird as that is, it's a good image of what happens with God's word, because our hearts begin to OD on sin and we just want it more and more and more and more.
Speaker 1:And when we come back to God's word, god says watch this Boom and sticks it right in our hearts, flushes our soul clean with the blood of Jesus and with the power of the Holy Ghost, and we get stronger and stronger. And he says wake up. And we wake up. See, the smartest thing you and I can do after a sin binge, the smartest thing you can do is run not only to Jesus. Run to Jesus, but run to the book. Son, run to the book, crack that thing open. Say God, feed me. I'm devouring sin because my soul is so hungry. Let me feed on the real stuff here, come on somebody. Well, not only that, we get greater. I mean, this isn't why you do it a little bit, but a little bit it is.
Speaker 1:Though when we give ourselves to holiness and the training of God's word, dude, there's just more reward on earth long-term, like there's a compounding effect of obedience. Obedience is blessed, sin is cursed. See, sometimes we're walking in curse and we're like, oh, god hates me, no, god doesn't hate you, god loves you, he sends his son for you. But sin comes attached to a curse, like that's what sin is. It's cursed. And so as we come back to God and we start to obey, blessing begins to populate our life and our soul again. Psalm 84, 11,.
Speaker 1:No good thing will the Lord withhold from those who do what is right. Why should you get back in the book? Why should you run back to the book? Because no good thing will the Lord withhold from those who do what is right. And if you're going to do what is right, you're going to need a shot in the heart of Holy Ghost. Adrenaline, greater blessing in the future. The righteous who walks in his integrity. Blessed are his children after him.
Speaker 1:Can I just tell you, once you've got kids and once you start to realize it's closer now. I'm closer to leaving this planet now, and that's true for everybody within the sound of my voice. It's closer now than when you first started. You're getting closer. The lands, the atmosphere maybe, is getting a little bit thinner because you're beginning to approach the heavenly gates and the idea that wait a minute, so my obedience can pay off for my kids and can pay off for my grandkids, because God is a tri-generational God and every generational God, and that blessing can compound and roll down Dude. Oh my gosh, do you know how exciting that is? Do you know how heartwarming that is to think? Well, I know I'm a scrub most of the time, but when I get it right and when I can get it right for God, I'm trusting you, god. I'm going to be gone, but you're going to be here and you're going to be taking care of my little ones and my big ones and their little ones. Yeah, it's pretty dope. Let's keep going.
Speaker 1:Only god's word anchors, protects and empowers and matures us by answering here's four questions. The first one is what is true? God's word answers what is true. What is true? All scripture is god breathed and useful for teaching. This teaching is the same word used for the apostles instruction.
Speaker 1:When the apostles would teach, they would teach what's true. They would teach what's true about life. They would teach what's true. They would teach what's true about life. They would teach what's true about here's, what's true about heaven and hell and God's creatures and all the things that are going on around you. This is what the Bible says is true, and it's true all the time.
Speaker 1:In a slippery generation where truth feels slippy, is an anchor for the soul. It says whatever you're seeing, dude, boom, this is true. This is what you can count on, this is what you can rely on. It doesn't matter what the opinions are, it doesn't matter what the ideologies are. God's word says well, if you want to know what's true, this is true. Keep coming back to this and you'll keep re-thinking and it will get you back to dude. There's one voice that matters. There's one voice that is important. All these other voices, dude, they're going to go quiet. All these other voices, dude, they're all going to be dead soon. Okay, look, everybody you know is going to be dead sooner or later. That voice is still going to be here. It's still going to be seeing the same thing 300 years from now, that it's saying right now that it was saying 300 years ago. People are going to keep walking with God and they're going to keep synchronizing to this book, and that's why it's the wisest.
Speaker 1:See, god's word is not AI generated yo. It's almighty God generated. It is from the master, it's from the source, it's from the one who has your best in mind all the time. And what we don't understand because we're a generation, it's not even like the new generation, it's been the generational way. I want it now. I want stuff instant. I'm sorry, baby, if you want a deep life in God's word, it takes a lifetime. It takes year in and year out, season in and season out, going back to God's word, allowing it to shape you and change you. So there's some things that it might not be intuitive to you. It will probably one. You know, five or six generations ago it was intuitive to everybody. Everybody kind of knew this.
Speaker 1:But here's some things that aren't necessarily intuitive to you but are true according to God's word. You are not your own, you were bought by God. The Bible tells us things that are true, that we would not intuit. Okay, some things the Bible tells us. Yeah, I would figure that, but there's a lot that it tells us. The reason you need to hear it is because it's not intuitive. The world tells you you are your own and you can do whatever you want with your body and with anybody else. As long as you don't think you're hurting anybody. You can do it. And God says actually, I'm your creator and I also not only created you, I bought you back. I paid a very, very high price for you and you are mine and therefore I get to be the one that tells you this is what's best for you, this is what I want you to do.
Speaker 1:Here's another one. It's not very popular today, you might even reject it out of hand a little bit, but you are eternally accountable, but also you're eternally valuable. Both are true. You are eternally accountable. What that means is people want to hear this Dude, there's definitely a day coming and, as sooner than most of us think, we're going to stand before God and say I need you to give account of every careless word you've spoken. I've got all the data right here. I saw all of it and I want to hear what you say about this. That's an accountability, but also you're eternally valuable. That's why Jesus Christ came and died for you. That's why Jesus says okay, when you show God your stuff, that's not going to go well. So instead, take my stuff, take my record, take the film of me walking around and always obeying and always healing and always doing good. You can have my record and then that audit is going to go much better for you. You matter forever, but that's why your today matters. You matter forever, but also your today matters. How you live today matters. Here's another one Justice.
Speaker 1:Talk a lot about justice. Justice is rooted in God's character, not just human conscience, because justice across time changes according to humans, like what they think. What they think is just what they think is right. That's going to change with the centuries. But God says no. I am the definer of reality. I tell you what just is. Human justice is subjective. Human justice is subjective. Human justice is weak. Human justice will buckle under the pressure of having to be just in every situation all the time.
Speaker 1:What you need, god says according to God's word, it's good to have judges and it's good to have good judges, but what you need even more than that humankind, is you need a perfect judge. You need a perfect judge that's not gonna die on you and is always going to be right and can always weigh and balance every little nuanced moment and still get the right answer. You need a Jesus judge. That's what you need Because, at the end of the day, people, in the 21st century, justice isn't something that's voted on. Justice isn't something we all take a poll and be like. What do we think justice is? God has already said what justice is it's whatever his ways are. That's what's justice.
Speaker 1:So what is true? That's the first thing the Bible re-synchronizes us to. Here's the second thing the Bible tells us where am I off? Where am I missing the mark? Where am I not doing? I want to know what God says is true, but I want to know how I'm doing. Like, how am I doing with this whole living a life that is supposed to be glorifying to God? How's that going?
Speaker 1:All scriptures, god breathed, and useful for teaching and rebuking. This word means to convince. It's a little alert, it's a little alarm bell saying you're not always thinking like God, you're not always acting like God, you're not always talking like Jesus would want you to, you're not always giving yourself to the behaviors that Jesus would want you to. And what's great about this is it's not a condemner, it's not like if you ever had I had this, really I had this dean that was like mean sauce dude. Like you couldn't be around him, he'd blow up on you. Now, to be honest, I was kind of a punk kid, so maybe that had something to do with it. But my impression of him was always like dude. This guy's mad. And if you're not careful you can. When you're young you can. Authority figures can kind of translate in your mind to what God is like. But God's not like that dude.
Speaker 1:God is like the friendly fatherly coach that says that's not right. Here's what's right. I want you to do right because I want you attached to the blessing. I want what's best and highest for you. All the time.
Speaker 1:The Bible doesn't tell you. It's not there just to tell you what the people are doing wrong, what the humans are doing wrong. It's there to tell you what you are doing wrong. That's what the Spirit of God does with it. Now I want to give you some tensions. This is where our culture has got it half right some of the time.
Speaker 1:But as we come to God's word, god's word says it's only half right. Here's where it's not right. Here's the first one. If it feels right, it must be right. If it feels right, it must be right. And, to be sure, god gave us our feelings and our feelings can be very good and they can be very happy and feelings are great sometimes. Sometimes it really is like man. You got to like, pay attention to your feelings and what are they trying to tell you, and that's a real thing. And, at the same time, while our feelings are real, they're not always reliable, see, I mean, you know this. Your feelings can be shaped by, like, what you ate or didn't eat, or how much sleep you've had, or who you've been exposed to, or what just happened in the office right after you got there. All those things can change your feelings and so, therefore, our feelings aren't necessarily right.
Speaker 1:We need to go back to what does God say is true. Here's another one I can follow Jesus and still be the one who defines who and what I am. It's awesome to know that Jesus loves you, no matter what state you're in, wherever you are, whatever you've done, whatever you think, whatever you're being, whatever that is, jesus says I love you just how you are, I'm for you. Come to me, I want you. But as creator, he also gets to define what we are, what we really are. We'll be true the rest of your life. We are what he says we are. And he says if you want to follow me, this is the condition You're going to have to take up your cross daily and follow me. There's going to be.
Speaker 1:It's not just that. I want you to be the best branded version of you you can possibly be. I want you to have the Jesus brand on you. I want you to live a cruciform life. I want you to live like you're actually bowing to Jesus, so you can bow to the stuff of the world and you can bow to Jesus.
Speaker 1:Where we get screwy is we think we can bow to both and Jesus says no, my deal that I came to make was I did come to save you, but that me saving you is also you saying yes to me forgiving you and saving you. Is you saying yes to me ruling you? The reason you got in trouble in the first place was because you weren't God ruled. So Jesus can't come in and save us and be like yeah, don't worry about the God ruled thing anymore either. No, it's to get us back by grace, through faith, to being God ruled.
Speaker 1:Here's a couple more. Are y'all still with me? Is this like convicting, or is that why y'all quiet? Or are you just praying that you're going to like bust out here any moment with some good amens? Here's another one. As long as I'm not hurting anyone, it's fine. As long as I'm not hurting anyone, it's fine. Yeah, not hurting anyone is a really good idea. Like that is very godly, very compassionate. That's an awesome thing.
Speaker 1:The problem is the presumption that you always know what is hurting anyone, because you don't always know. There's things that hurt people, that you and I can't discern or can't feel are hurting anybody, because we're not perfect judges and we don't have perfect wisdom, and there's things that are actually very harmful, that we think are harmless wisdom, and there's things that are actually very harmful that we think are harmless. See, rebellion against God is rebellion against everything he says about the universe. Even when we don't understand, he says no, I need you to behave this way, because this is how it's going to work best and I have your best in mind. And when you don't do it, it leads to death, even though you don't see death coming, even though you're going to be dead and there's still going to be ripple effects for the sin that you chose. You just don't know that. That's why I'm telling you to do X, y or Z. Here's another one Love means never judging anyone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's half right. Love does seek to say hey, I'm not better than you. I don't have any like I'm not morally superior to you to look down on you. I'm as broken and as fallen as the next person. I need Jesus just as much as anybody. But if I love you, I've got to be able to point out you're hurting you and or you're hurting others, and I might be wrong about my judgment. But I have to come in and say you might need to look at this. If I really love you that's biblical love.
Speaker 1:Okay, I can have on this table. I can have a pill of arsenic and a pill of Tylenol. Now, if I take the pill of arsenic and I'm like this ain't going to hurt me, and you know that it's arsenic and not Tylenol and you're like, hey, man, I just need to affirm this kid Carter, that's a great color on you. Yeah, thank you for affirming me, but that's not gonna help me. Don't just affirm me while I take arsenic. Judge the situation. Say no, take the Tylenol, bozo. Don't take the arsenic, that's gonna kill you. Come on somebody. Guys, speaking the truth in love is not mean, it's rescue, it's helping someone you care about. Now if I was like who are you to tell me I can take whatever pills I want. Then you can be like all right, moron, it's your funeral dude, but don't say I didn't love you because I tried to tell you.
Speaker 1:Here's the next thing. The word asks or answers how do I get back on track. And that's so good, it's so good. He doesn't just tell us how we got off, he says here's how you get back on, how do I get back on track. Rebuking and correcting God's word comes to correct. This word means to straighten up. It says hey, here's how you get back on the way.
Speaker 1:When I was a young man, my parents took us to the Caribbean island of Eleuthera and we went into a cave and it was pitch black, dude, and nobody had any cell phones. And even if you would have had a cell phone, there were no lights on them and people didn't have flashlights. And so we're in this deep, deep, deep, deep cave and there's a rope that somebody had just wisely, probably with a flashlight, laid on the ground and bolted into the rocks somewhere. So if you got lost and you could, because you can't see anything, you can't see anything. It's a crock in movies when there's light in caves. There's no light in caves and all you could do is. You can just feel down. I'm like, okay, I got the rope, I'm just going to, like, hold this until I find my way out, or run into a wall, and then I go the other way.
Speaker 1:God's word is like that in the midst of our blindness in sin, sometimes, dude, we're so jacked up that we get emotionally lost. We get in an emotional whirlpool. Emotionally lost, we get in an emotional whirlpool, we don't know which way is up, and it's like I don't even dude. Every one of those moments, you're like, dude, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing anymore. Hey, here's the secret. Pause, reach down. Where is it? Where's God's word? Oh, I got it. Okay, it's still dark. I'm just going to start holding this thing, though, and following this as far as I can, because sometimes, dude, we just I mean humans are just like this. We just get too deep. We get too deep in our own emotions. We start feeling sorry for ourselves, we start thinking this, that and the other thing, this person is against us. I've worked myself multiple times in my life into an emotional tizzy where I'm like oh, jesus, just take me, come on, somebody's done that besides me.
Speaker 1:Listen to this verse that the Lord led me to. When I was in that specific moment, I pondered the direction of my life. This is Psalm 119. I pondered the direction of my life. Here I am pondering oh Jesus, I got this problem and this problem and this problem. What do I do with my life? He says, and I turned to follow your statutes. I turned to follow your statutes, his God guidelines, follow his. Are you messed up? Are you emotionally wrought up? Hey, dude, don't figure it out, don't be like. I got to find a way. I guess I'll smoke some weed, that'll help. Here's what'll help Ponder the direction of your life and turn and follow his statutes. That means, follow your way back to God's word. Come on, man. Proverbs 18, 9.
Speaker 1:This is an important one. So, before I even read that, we were in a season many of you know this we were in a church split, the church that we were pastoring split, and I was just in a very wounded time. Okay, this is, I'm like 22 years old. There's a whole moment, as my daughter says, there's a whole thing, and I'm pretty hurt, I'm pretty sad, I'm pretty mad, I'm pretty like man, all these people hurt me and I'm just kind of like boiling about it, just stewing about it, and God leads me to this verse.
Speaker 1:It says he who is loose and slack in his work is brother to him who is a destroyer. Listen to this he who does not use his endeavors to heal himself is brother to he who commits suicide, and what God was essentially saying to me was okay, you done. Okay, get up, don't just lay there. I know you got shot, but if you've got shot in front of the hospital and you don't try to crawl in, you're just like giving up, dude. You're just committing suicide by not seeking your healing. God's like I will heal you, but I want to see you seek it.
Speaker 1:Get up, dude, come on, come after me, come back to God's book, come back to God's word. So what do you need to do to get back on track? I don't know, it might be get up, don't quit. Quit laying there feeling sorry for yourself. Okay, I'm sad for you. I am genuinely Dude. Whatever it was, I'm sure it was really bad, and if we were to sit down, I'd be like dude. That really does suck.
Speaker 1:After that, though, dude, don't just lay there. Are you going to be bitter all your life? You have the power to get healed by God's word. If you get up and pursue healing. Maybe you need more counsel, maybe you need to confess your sin, maybe you need to just have more gratitude, maybe you need to have more generosity. Whatever the thing is, the word of God will tell you, just like it told me no, here's what you're doing and here's what I need you to do.
Speaker 1:And sometimes, well, carter, I went. You know, I spent five minutes in the Psalms and it didn't do nothing. That's probably what's wrong with your thinking, though, dude. You can't just spend five minutes in the Psalms and be like God didn't fulfill his part. That's not seeking him. He doesn't want you to seek to have your problems over. He wants you to seek him. In him is healing? Dude? He's not an AI, he's not a genie. He's God. But he doesn't just show us what's wrong. He doesn't just show us how to get back on. Here's the last one. He shows us how to live strong in the Lord. How do I go the distance?
Speaker 1:All scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching and rebuking and correcting and training in righteousness. This is the concept of raising a child. It's training them up, it's giving them goals. This is the way you should go and this is what you should do and this is how you should get there. And, my friends, god's word will lead us in If we'll let it.
Speaker 1:Whatever time we've got left, the rest of that lifetime can be spent training and growing and compounding in wisdom and in strength and in stability and in fearlessness. And yeah, you won't get that perfect before you go home, but you can, dude, you can. There's such a joy in having I mean, many of you know this, we've been walking with the Lord a long time. When you've seen him move a thousand times, dude, life is just different. Like your confidence level to move forward is just different. When he's trained you in his wisdom, dude, you're just that much less dumb. All right, you're not doing everything right yet, but you're doing a whole lot less dumb than you used to. I mean, that's my story. I ain't brilliant, but thank God, I'm not that dumb.
Speaker 1:Here's what else God's word does, though. It responds to the season. This is why it's better than an AI, at least AI right now. You can give it a certain amount of circumstances. Here's what's going on. But it doesn't know you. It doesn't know how you're different than you were three days ago. It doesn't know how that's different than how you were three months ago or three years ago or three decades ago. God knows exactly where you are and his word, through the Holy Spirit, will respond to where you are now. That's why God's word is different in different seasons. You can go to the same text that you were at three years ago, but now you're different and it's different. It's speaking to you differently because it knows where you are.
Speaker 1:Come on, dude, that's shot. Somebody say amen for that one. That's pretty dope. It's not just like I'm reading it to understand some concept. No, dude, it's following you around and it will give the counsel you need for now If you will give your life to it, if you keep going, if you get back up and run to the word.
Speaker 1:It takes courage, though. It takes courage to say I'm not going to live for the voices around me that might be 90% true or 10% true. I'm going to live for the God who's 100% always honest with me. Because, dude, I don't know if you notice this, I'm not dissing anybody, but I've seen influencers make promises all the time and their things don't necessarily keep working.
Speaker 1:I've seen drift happen very easily. I've seen people that claim to be your friend end up being your enemy. I've seen feelings that demanded to be heard just be liars. Aren't you so glad that God doesn't leave you and I to figure out life on our own? He doesn't Dude, he doesn't. He's got his word for you. He says not only will I teach you about me and about life and where you're getting wrong and how you get back on, I will stay with you over the long haul, from baby all the way till your grave. I will be your God till your death, and I will tell you everything that you need to know in order to find your way out of the dark.
Speaker 1:Here's the thing, though. As it said in verse 16, it needs to be not just us. I got to learn all the things about the Bible. I got to get corrected. I got to figure it out. No, no, don't try to figure it out. It needs to be God breathed. It needs to be God. That means the Holy Spirit needs to do it.
Speaker 1:The Holy Spirit is the one who says this is what you need, but you are not able to get it. You're not able to understand it. You're not able to illuminate the text yourself. You're not able to devour it, you're not able to assimilate it, you're not able to know the right applications for it. That's why, every time we come to God's word or maybe this is somebody's application for today Every time we come, we're saying God, I need you to speak.
Speaker 1:Your word speaks, but I need you to speak to me freshly today, fresh manna. Today I need your word. I'm not able, but, god, you are able. Can we become a people of the book, please? I so wish that people would slander us in town by saying doggone, that fierce. They are, so into that book. I pray for the day that happens. Let's pray for it right now. Let's bow our heads, god.
Speaker 1:We want to be people that are into the book. We want to be people that are into the book. We want to be people that are saturated, living God-breathed lives, that are unashamedly coming back to learning from, being corrected by and growing up in your word. Thank you so much, lord, that you did not just send us like a bunch of words. You sent us your very honest, 100%, true word. Help us to hang on to it. In Jesus' name, amen. Hey, thanks for tuning in today. If God has used the ministry of Fierce in your life, please consider paying it forward with a financial gift at fiercechurchgive. If you want more resources like this. Check out all of our channels at YouTube, tiktok and Instagram. Check out our podcasts and check out our blog at fiercechurchblog. If you haven't already. Please consider sharing this to help people you know take their next step. We'll see you next time.