.jpg)
The Rock Family Worship Center
Taking The Church Outside The Walls
The Rock Family Worship Center
TESTING OUR BELIEFS
Sometimes we need to test hand-me-down theology with three simple questions and show how love, not fear, reveals the Father Jesus revealed. Stories, scriptures, and practical filters help us let go of beliefs that can’t pass the light of Christ.
• why inherited beliefs need testing
• fear as a poor teacher and controller
• 1 John 4:18 and love casting out fear
• Jesus as the exact image of the Father
• doctrines that glorify effort over the finished work
• prodigal son as a picture of belonging
• applying three filters to salvation and end-times claims
• moving from behavior management to inner transformation
• shifting from getting to heaven to bringing the kingdom
We're gonna uh talk about something this morning. Uh Rennie's already got it up for us. See where we're going with this. Uh testing our beliefs. Uh this is uh gonna be a little bit challenged this morning, I hope. Um I say that from the standpoint of I believe that uh I believe that we should always, no matter what we teach, no matter what we're learning, I believe that we should always be willing to ask questions. Uh to have some kind of gauge or have some kind, you know, something we can look at to say, you know, is what I'm learning is what I'm teaching. I I mean I do this from the standpoint of teaching it and also learning it when I'm learning from somebody else. But I think I think we should all do that and be be okay with doing that. So that's what we're going to talk about this morning. This is something God put on my heart the other day. I actually seen uh somebody had made a post on somebody else's post, and I was just reading the comments, and uh he was saying something that was related to this, and it just kind of hit me. I said, you know, that's that's a good idea to be able to take what we believe and not debate it with somebody, not always fuss and argue about who's right or who's wrong, but for my own self, have something that I can hold the word up against and say, is this what the word of God actually is supposed to mean? Because there's you know, we've said it before, we've taught enough messages in this church to prove that there's a lot of things that we call Bible that's not in the Bible. There's a lot of things that we call uh you know gospel that is just simply passed down tradition. That's not to knock anybody who taught it or anything. It's just, you know, it's just the truth. If it's not gospel, if it's not in the Bible, it's just not in there. And just because it sounds good don't mean we can include it into the Bible. We can't add or take away from what's already in the Word. So I think we should be willing and be able to challenge anything that we're being taught and anything that we're teaching. Um I always like to start off with questions. That's my style of teaching. I love to ask questions. I love to kind of provoke people to think a little bit. And I had a couple questions here to start this off, to open it up. You know, what if much of what we believe about God has been filtered through fear, tradition, and insecurity rather than through the person of Jesus Christ? Uh what if our theology is saying something about God that God never intended for it to say? What if we're just taking bits and pieces of it and we're creating our own theology out of it? We're creating what we want it to say rather than what it actually says. It may be good, it may be, let's not say it's not good information. It may be very helpful to somebody, but we can't create a verse out of many different verses and then say, well, the Bible says, and that's where we get in trouble a lot of times. That's where people who are not necessarily believers that want to critique the word of God, that want to critique you as a Christian, can so quickly come back and say, show me that in the Bible. And guess what? You can't do it. So then you look like a hypocrite. You look like you're out here saying something just because it sounds good rather than being backed up by the word of God. So that's why it's important. It's not because it's bad information or anything like that, but it's because it's not, it possibly is not the word of God. And I believe we live in a time right now where people don't always stop and ask why they believe what they believe. I think we are we're so robotic in church sometimes. And that's the one thing that I've always said I don't want our church to be like. I don't want you to just believe it because I said it. Please don't do that. I believe what I say is the truth. If I didn't, I wouldn't stand up here and teach it. But I also understand that you can gain revelation by going in that word and reading something for yourself and seeing what God shows you on it. I believe that we we get different things out of verses based on where we are in life. There's verses that I've read years ago, and God specifically poured something out of that verse that I needed to hear and needed right then. Now I read that verse today and I get something totally different out of it. Some of it's just maturity and revelation, and sometimes I believe it's where we're at, and God, the Holy Spirit, speaks to us. But I believe that we're in a place now where we're, I'm even gonna go as far as we're taught not to do that. We're taught this is the word of God, and you don't question it. I'm not questioning the word, I'm questioning how we're presenting the word sometimes.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So think about this.
SPEAKER_01:If we were willing to ask those questions, if we're willing to question what's coming down to us, what's being taught to us, um, and really open ourselves up, because I believe that we defend doctrine sometimes more fiercely than we defend people. Okay? We may hear something taught by somebody and we're like, I'm gonna stand on this. And I can tell you, Facebook shows that. You can get on there and look at somebody debating on Facebook, and you can see really quickly, people are holding on to what they've always been taught. Whether it's in the Bible or not, they will hold on to that tradition. Okay, but the truth, the real truth, the biblical truth, isn't afraid of questions. And this is something I'm learning more and more, and it's hitting me more and more because I was at a point where I said, I know what I feel like the truth is, I know what I feel like God's saying here. But how do you bring this out when it's coming up against what somebody has always believed? And you know that's gonna happen. You know that what you're about to say is automatically just gonna slap somebody right in the face of their what they've always believed. And it's difficult sometimes to do it because you don't want to come off that you're always you're always just trying to come up against somebody's tradition or what they've always believed. So I'll tell you from a personal level, that's something that I have battled with. That's something I've prayed about. That's I've said, God help me learn how to do this in the right kind of way. And one thing I've learned is if it is the truth, it isn't afraid of questions. I don't mind somebody questioning me. I don't mind somebody coming up and saying, Well, where did you get that from? How did you get that understanding? Because truth is never afraid of questions. Now, you'll get some people who say, you know, they will be really, really quick in saying, that's what the word says, don't question me. You know why? Because they're afraid of questions. Because they don't want you to question what they're saying. Number one, a lot of times because they can't back it up. Or they don't want to have to go dig and back it up. They just want to tell you what they've always heard. I don't mind going and digging and researching and backing it. We got enough tools out here today. Anybody should be okay doing that. You're not having to go dig in books that's this thick. You get on the internet and you dig and you know, research. You can find stuff that most people years ago could not find. So we have a great opportunity to dialogue, okay, and not just have a monologue with one person standing up teaching and everybody else is just listening. We can actually communicate about things. The most dangerous, dangerous beliefs, I believe, are the ones that's never questioned. And we have a lot of people who do not want their beliefs questioned. It's not questioning God, and I believe that's the misconception that's uh sometimes taught. That if I question this, then I'm questioning the Bible. Or if I question this, I'm questioning God. I'm not questioning who God is. I'm not questioning what Jesus did. I'm questioning the way we're interpreting what we're reading in the Word of God. And I think that's okay. And I believe I honestly believe we should do that. I believe that's why Jesus taught in parables. I really do. Jesus could have just come out and gave them exactly what they needed. I believe he was smart enough to do that, but he didn't. He talked in parables, and he was pretty much saying, go figure this out now. I'm giving you this roundabout parable, and I want you to seek and I want you to find the truth in it. And I believe that's what asking questions does. It don't give people the exact answer always, but it provokes them and motivates them to go out and search and go out and find because it's on that process of trying to find that you're gonna come up with all kinds of things. Things that you weren't even asking, you're gonna start seeing. And it's gonna educate you and it's gonna show you things that you weren't even looking for. That's what it means to be a disciple. It don't mean just be a follower of Jesus. We we hear the disciple and we think the ones that run along behind Jesus while he was walking. Yes, they were disciples, but they were learned ones. They were people who learned from him and learned not just from his words, but learned from his experience and what he taught them. And we grow up in church environments where certain beliefs are handed down so often, like it's almost like family heirlooms being handed down. You know, granddaddy said this, so he passed it down to his kids, and then those kids pass it down to their kids, and it's just become truth within that family, but is it the truth of God? And that's hard to ask because nobody wants to go back and say, well, you know, what granddaddy or grandma or whoever was saying was wrong. We're not, I don't even want to use the word wrong. They were teaching to the to the level of their understanding. And there were certain things they understood at the time that was in their mind was right, it was biblical, it was correct. And then as we moved along and we we learn more, we get deeper revelation, sometimes that changes because we see more. And we take these beliefs that's passed down and we protect them. We do. We protect them, we quote them, we even fight over them sometimes. Nobody's gonna take this away from me. This is what my grandma gave me. My my great-granddaddy passed this down. I'm holding on to this, and and we will fight over that thing. But rarely, rarely do we ever stop to ask, where did this come from? Other than I heard granddaddy say it. Where did this actually, where did granddaddy get this from? Where did great-grandma get this from? Where did this belief actually come from? And what is it actually producing in me? You see, not all belief systems lead to freedom. Some lead to fear, some lead to shame and guilt, uh, some lead to striving, some lead me to a mindset that I'm distanced from God, that I'm separated from him, and I have to produce and I have to do things to try to get back to him. That's why it's important to ask these questions. Because Jesus didn't come to establish a religion that keeps us afraid of him or afraid of God. He came to reveal a Father who is better than we ever imagined. And that's all the finished work is doing. I know a lot of there, there's a lot of people. Again, you can get online and you can, there's certain people I'm connected with online, and you can see that there's a lot of folks on there who don't agree with the finished work theology. And I'm okay with that. They have their reasons they don't agree with it. Okay, and that's fine. I could walk into a lot of Baptist churches, traditionally Baptist churches, and they wouldn't agree with what we teach on the finished work. And that's okay. I don't agree with what they're teaching and the way they're teaching it. So we're seeing things a little bit different. I'm not trying to say I'm better or I'm right. I'm just simply trying to say, let's take what you're saying, let's take what I'm saying, and let's put it up against the words of Jesus Christ. Let's put it up against the Bible, and let's see what the Bible actually says. And let's find out which one's actually word and which one's potentially just tradition. That's all we're saying in this. So today I want to give you three questions that I think will help you. It'll test anything, any teaching that you receive, any doctrine that you say you believe, any belief that you're holding on to, even the ones that you've held on to your whole life? This is three very simple questions that I believe you can set down and take that belief, take that tradition, put it up against these three questions, and find the answer you're looking for. So here's the first question.
SPEAKER_00:Is fear dictating what I believe? Think about that just a minute.
SPEAKER_01:Is fear, whatever my belief is, whatever my doctrine is that I'm holding on to, is fear dictating what I believe?
SPEAKER_00:Real simple one.
SPEAKER_01:Fear, I believe, is the birthplace of bad theology. If my theology is coming from a place of fear, it's not going to lead me in a good direction. When fear dictates belief, love gets pushed out. Why? How do you know that? That's your opinion. No, because the Bible says that love casts out fear. Okay, they can't stay in the same place. If it casts it out, it casts it out for a reason. Love and fear cannot stay in the same place. It don't work like that. So when fear dictates my belief, then my belief cannot be coming from a place of love. I mean, it's you I've got to ask myself, where is this coming from? Where is this originating from? When love is gone, our view of God becomes transactional. What do I mean by that? Well, if I'm good, he's pleased. If I mess up, if I fall, he withdraws from me. It's like a transaction. As long as I'm doing what's pleasing, then God's pleased with me and he's happy with what I'm doing. But as soon as I slip, as soon as I make a mistake, as soon as I do something that the church calls a sin, then God distances himself from me. He's no longer with me, and I've got to now try to work my way back to him. So it's like a transaction. Okay. But listen, fear may motivate you for a season, but it will fear will never transform your life. Living and trying to live on a belief system that is motivated by fear is never going to transform you. And when I'm talking about transformation, when I'm saying some of these words, you've got to understand what I'm talking about. When I'm saying transform you, I'm talking from the inside out. I'm talking about something going on on the inside of you. It may change your behavior. Fear will change behavior. I can remember when Cy was little, if I grabbed a belt and held a belt up, whatever he was about to do, he didn't do. Why? Because the fear of getting that belt changed his behavior. So it works from that standpoint, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about transformation coming from the inside, and then things changing out here. So it may change and it may motivate for a short season. Okay? That's why the Bible even says there's pleasure in sin for a season. There's pleasure in not knowing, not aligning with God for a little while. Why? Because when you're doing that stuff, come on, don't get all religious. When you're doing some of that stuff, it feels good. If it didn't, you wouldn't keep doing it. People don't do it just to be doing it. They do it because it feels good. And there's pleasure in it for a season. You can talk to any addict, and they'll tell you in the beginning, man, it was wonderful. But then one day, might have been a month, might have been a few months, might have been a year. Something hit and it was just like, okay, this ain't fun anymore. It ain't fun every day that I gotta wake up and it's not that I want this, it's I need this now. I've got to have this to survive. That's not fun anymore. You take a step over from enjoying it to it's it's it's necessary. So there's pleasure in it for a season. There's pleasure in walking away from. I'm not I'm not saying go do this. I'm just saying it's the reality of it. There's pleasure. Some people say there's pleasure in walking away from God for a little while and not knowing my true identity. Because then they can go out and live like whoever they want to live like. They can do what they want to do, they can do what makes them feel good. And that's fun for a little while.
SPEAKER_00:But then something else here. So think about.
SPEAKER_01:Well, let's let's go to this verse. 1 John 4 and 18. That's why I say this. Let me let you read this verse here. 1 John chapter 4, verse 18. It says, There is no fear in love. We just said this a while ago, but I still want you to see it. There is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear. Because fear involves torment. There's so much you can pull out this verse. Fear involves torment, but he who fears has not been made perfect in love. Perfect love casts out fear. That's the main part you need to see here. So if my belief system keeps me terrified of punishment, if my belief system keeps me terrified of rejection and of abandonment, I've stepped outside of perfect love.
SPEAKER_00:According to this verse. Okay. Think about how many messages in the church are designed to control behavior through fear. I'm not naming names. I'm just I preached them in here too.
SPEAKER_01:I preached many messages and sermons over the years that was motivated by fear. I might pull some old messages up one day and just pull it in here and preach it just like I preached it then. Just so you can see the difference in what I teach now versus what I taught then. Because I think we need we need to be able to recognize the difference in these. You know, because it's so easy to try to just escape all of this by saying, well, they're teaching the Bible, he's teaching the Bible, no big deal. No, it's bit it's deeper than that. Yes, we're teaching out of the same Bible, but are we getting the same understanding? You can teach out of the same Bible and pull from a group of verses, and I can come at it from love or I can come at it from fear. That's not the same, I will not get the same outcome. People will not walk out with the same mindset. If I'm teaching one out of love and somebody else is teaching it out of fear, you're not going to get the same out of it. Even though it's the same Bible. Not the same. I want you to think about those messages in the churches that we hear sometimes that are designed to control behavior through the process of fear. What do you mean? What does that really look like? Maybe I haven't heard verses, uh, scripture and and and messages like that. Let me help you. You better repent before it's too late. You better repent before it's too late. Jesus might come back before you get to your car today. That's motivated by fear. The overall message behind it is not that bad. They're trying to help, they want you to get saved, but the motivation behind he may come back before you get out this door is fear-based. So again, the message is not all bad, but the way they're coming about it is through fear-based motivation.
SPEAKER_00:If you don't tithe, the devour is gonna come and get you. We believe in tithe. We believe in giving.
SPEAKER_01:But we all but you will never hear us teaching this church because I mean you can go online and there's a lot of people that don't give anymore to church because you got so many people saying that giving and tithing is not a New Testament commandment and this and that. You can go in there and read that for yourself.
SPEAKER_00:You are not cursed if you don't tithe. Now there's gonna be there's a difference. If you're if you are let me, I won't use anybody else as an example.
SPEAKER_01:I'll use Cindy as an example. She is blessed to be married to me. If she chooses to leave and divorce me tomorrow, I'm not gonna curse her. But let's just say, instead of me saying, let's say she feels like she's blessed to be in this marriage. I feel like I'm blessed to be in it, she feels like she's blessed to be in it. We have a blessed marriage. If she chooses tomorrow to leave and just say, I'm done with this, I'm not gonna curse her. But she may walk out from under a blessing. Does that make sense? I'm not I'm not putting anything negative on her, but if I walk out from under a place of blessing, then I'm not receiving that blessing. Okay? I may go find it somewhere else. Good for you. But that particular blessing is in this area right here. The particular blessing that comes with tithing is obedience and the love for God. So I'm not cursed if I don't do it, but I am walking out under the blessing that comes from it. Big difference in that. And some people, even the way I just said that, some people would say, Oh, you're telling people they're cursed if they don't do it. No, I'm not. You're you're misunderstanding what's being said. We're never saying that. Now, the people who teach against it, I'm still trying to figure out how they're paying the electricity bill and paying the water bill and paying all that, because they don't just keep these lights on because we're a church. Okay? I mean, this stuff has to be paid. And if they're teaching everybody in their congregation not to tithe, I'm just trying to figure out how everything's getting paid. Because it's like a house. I mean, if you're you know living in a house and nobody's working, stuff don't get paid. Lights get cut off. Okay, things like that. So we have to, we have to look at it with a with a the right frame of mind. The other one that comes to me here, if you don't believe exactly right, you'll be left behind. Now, you can go back and read, I've never in my life read the Left Behind series. It got really popular back in the years ago. A lot of people was reading them. And a lot of people got really scared that if I didn't do this or I didn't do that, or I didn't go to the right church, or I didn't say the right prayer, that all of a sudden the rapture was gonna happen and I'm gonna be left behind. I mean, it's just it's crazy what some of these things are are teaching, and people are believing on them and they're holding on to them, and they're saying that's Bible, and it's not Bible. We want to get into all that. That's a whole nother thing, but I'm just telling you, it's not there. And I even go back to these questions here, and I ask myself, number one, did Jesus teach this? Because if it was that important, then why didn't Jesus teach it when he was here? If it was really that important, let's just say, well, Jesus didn't have time, would he not have taught his disciples to teach it? So there are certain things, just common sense. Take theology out of it, take spirituality out of it, just common sense. If it was that important, and Jesus wanted me to know this, and it was so important that if you do it, you're good. If you don't do it, you're burning in hell. Why didn't Jesus tell me that? He never did. That's just common sense questioning. Okay, and then I start going to these other questions. Is fear dictating what I believe? Fear is dictating that. Why? Because I don't want to burn in hell.
SPEAKER_00:So people that don't want to burn, make a decision. The decision is not bad.
SPEAKER_01:Please understand what I'm saying. The decision to understand and awaken to the things of Christ is the best thing that you'll ever do in your life. But if it's being done simply because the fear of burning is fear-based, it is being motivated by fear. And fear and love don't work mutually together. Why? Because we just read it.
SPEAKER_00:Love casts out all fear, they don't work together. Fear never produces intimacy, it produces compliance.
SPEAKER_01:If I was just this dude that just is is mean and abusive and whatever, I could make my wife do what I wanted her to do out of fear. And we we know there's relationships out there like this. I'm not joking about it serious, but I'm just saying we I you can make somebody do something out of fear, but there is very, very little intimacy that's gonna come from that. And if you've ever met anybody that's in a serious abusive relationship, then you know what I'm talking about. You may look at that woman and she may act like she loves him, but it's coming from a place of fear. I'm gonna act like I need to act. Why? Because if I don't, he's gonna beat the crap out of me. So I'm producing a false love that's motivated by a real fear. That's a message right here. A false love motivated by a real fear. Somebody write that down in case I don't remember it. Jesus never used fear to draw people in. He never did. He used love to awaken people's hearts. Love transforms what fear can only suppress. I'm I'm I'm staying on this right here probably a little longer than I need to, but I want you to see here, you got to see here that love and fear do not work together. They cannot work together. So here's the question again. Am I believing something because it reflects God's love or because it keeps me safe from God's wrath?
SPEAKER_00:That's fear. If fear is the foundation, it's time to rebuild.
SPEAKER_01:It's time to rethink, it's time to deconstruct. Some stuff. And when I say that, I mean there's some thoughts and ideas and beliefs that I've had over the years that I had to go in there and deconstruct. I had to tear them apart. Why? Because the new understanding that I had, they couldn't know this was based on fear, this is based on love, and they couldn't join together. So I had to deconstruct some stuff. I'm still every day deconstructing in my mind.
SPEAKER_00:Because you can't have a mentality of fear and love in the same place. Second question. Is Jesus glorified?
SPEAKER_01:Whatever it is I'm believing, whatever it is doctrine that I'm holding on to, if I take whatever it is that I'm believing and I'm speaking and I'm teaching, and I hold it up and I ask the question, is Jesus glorified by what I'm saying or what I'm believing?
SPEAKER_00:Every belief must pass through the lens of Jesus. Got to. Does this belief look like him? Does this belief sound like him? Does it reveal the heart that he displayed?
SPEAKER_01:He was only here preaching for three and a half years, but I'm telling you, he gave us an example of a lot of things. Even though he wasn't here long. He provided examples, it's all through this word of who he was and his character and his love for people and different things like that. In Hebrews chapter 1, verse 3, look what it says here. Who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. What is this verse talking about? If Jesus is the full revelation of the Father, does it hear and it says it in many other places? He's the full revelation of the Father. Then anything that doesn't look like Jesus cannot accurately represent God. If it doesn't look like Jesus, it can't represent God. Why? Because he is the exact image of God.
SPEAKER_00:He's one and the same. So if my theology paints God as angry, inconsistent, conditional, but Jesus reveals a God of mercy, inclusion, and forgiveness. Who do I believe? I mean, I have to be honest at that point.
SPEAKER_01:Because Jesus showed me a God who is always consistent, He's never changing.
SPEAKER_00:He's unconditional, which means He loves without condition. But yet I'm being taught something totally opposite.
SPEAKER_01:Are you going to keep believing what you were taught by man, or are you going to believe what Jesus taught us about the Father? That's what I'm saying. You got to hold these two things up and compare them against each other. This is where you hold them up. Is Jesus glorified in this? I choose Jesus because he is not just part of the story, he is the story. He's not just a little piece of it out here. He actually is. The story is about him. When Jesus healed the leper, when he forgave the woman who committed adultery and embraced the people who were outcasts.
SPEAKER_00:Think about that just a minute. The woman committed adultery.
SPEAKER_01:And rather than scorn her, he sat with her, he talked to her, and he said, Go. Sin no more. Don't do this anymore. He wasn't, see, you got to catch this. He wasn't saying, go and don't sleep with somebody else again. He wasn't saying that. I know that's what we take out of it. He was saying, go and don't see this side of yourself again because that's not who you are. Do not sin. He said, sin no more. See yourself opposite of God no longer. See yourself in the way that I see you. Everybody has said this about you. Everybody has done this to you. Them guys back here wanted to stone you. They had rocks in their hands waiting to stone you, and yet I stepped in. He said, Whoever is without sin cast the first stone. And then they ran off and I sat down with you.
SPEAKER_00:I didn't hit you over the head with a rock like they wanted me to do. I sat down and I loved on you.
SPEAKER_01:Now I want you to go and I want you to see, I want you to be this. On that other side of yourself. I want you to be this. So when Jesus healed the leper and forgave the woman, he embraced the outcast. He was showing us what God has always been like. He wasn't doing anything any different. He was showing us this is what the Father is like. How do I know that? Because the word says he only does what he sees the Father do. He only says what he's heard the Father say. So Jesus is the exact replica, the exact image of the Father. So if I want to know if what I'm doing, is what I'm believing, is what I'm teaching, lining up with who the Father is, I've got to put it up against Jesus. And say, would Jesus do this? I mean, I know it used to be crazy, you know, everybody where to braceless. What would Jesus do? I think we need to do that more. I think we need to look at them a little bit more and say, is Jesus being glorified by this? That's what glorifies him. Not rules, not rituals, not tradition, but the revelation of the Father. That's what glorifies him. If I grab on to a doctrine that magnifies my effort and magnifies it and minimizes the finished work, think about that. If it's all about me looking good and me feeling good, but it minimizes the finished work, it's out of alignment. It is absolutely out of alignment. If it glorifies sin more than grace or hell more than reconciliation, it's missing the point. Ain't no other way to look at it. It is missing the point. Don't care how well you preach it, it might be a great sermon that can still miss the point. I've listened to a lot of sermons from different people, just going on there, just listening to a few minutes of their. They're not bad sermons. They're really good sermons. You're like, oh, I'd like to preach that. It's good. And then you hear someone say, whoa, just miss the point.
SPEAKER_00:Sounded good, but missed the point of where we're trying to take people to.
SPEAKER_01:So the first question was, is fear dictating what I believe? The second question, is Jesus being glorified by what I believe? The third thing, third question. Does the belief show me a father? Listen to this. Does what I'm believing show me a father different than what Jesus revealed? This is an important one. All of them is important, but this one here really hits it. This is where many people get stuck at. Because religion has taught us to see God as a judge first and then a father second. But Jesus flips that.
SPEAKER_00:He really does. He flips that completely. He said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And what did we see?
SPEAKER_01:We've seen all the things that he done. I just mentioned. We've seen him sit with the lady that committed adultery. We've seen him invite outcasts in. We've seen him do all these things that in the natural, come on now, quit being so spiritual. In the natural, you wouldn't do. I wouldn't do. In the natural, we would scorn those people. In the natural, we'd say, no, I'm a believer of Jesus. I can't be around that mess. Come on, people do it every day. Christians do it every day. I can't let that infect me. But guess what? I got so much Holy Spirit in me. That ain't infecting me. I can be around it all day and it's not infecting me. I'm going to infect it if you let me stay around long enough. I'm going to influence it before it influences me. That's the mindset. That's the kingdom mindset. I'm not scared to go around people who are still living whatever life they're living. I'm not scared to be around them. I'm not scared to talk to them. I'm not scared for them to come in here and fill the rest of these empty seats up. I want them to. Because I believe that we have a message that can change their thinking about who they are. And they'll no longer have to keep waking up every day because now they are out of that pleasure season. And now they're in this season of saying, I have to have this every day. I've got to do this every day. And I believe we've got a message that says, no, you don't. There's something different. There's more to it than what you're doing. But if they never hear that message, how are they going to know? Let's say one day they get up and they just say, I want to go to church, and they go to church, and the first thing they hear is you're going to hell. What do they do? They get up, they walk out, and they grab their drug again.
SPEAKER_00:I'm going to go to hell, I'm going to go high. I mean, I have to cut that one out.
SPEAKER_01:That's not telling you to go out and get high, but that's the mindset. How many times have I said it's not about what's being said exactly? It's about the mindset that it's creating in people. And when you, when somebody finally they're still struggling, they're still dealing with things, but they work up the nerve to walk into the doors of a church. And that's hard for people, I'm telling you. There's a lot of people it's difficult for them to walk in. But if they get the nerve up to walk in, and the first thing they're told is how sorry and pitiful they are and how they're going to burn in hell. They don't want to hear that. They already know that. In their mind, that's what they believe. But yet we want them walking here and say, I don't care what you're going through right now, I don't care what you're dealing with. God loves you. He chose you before the foundation of the world. He selected you. He created you in his image after his likeness. He loves you.
SPEAKER_00:That might make them say, I might hang out here a little while.
SPEAKER_01:Because at least they're not beating me up. I've already beat myself up for five years. I don't need somebody else to do it. I know what I'm doing wrong. I don't need somebody else to highlight it in front of everybody.
SPEAKER_00:But they're just, man, they're telling me this guy loves me. Even as bad as I am right now, they're saying he loves me. That's the kingdom. Listen, I'm not telling that dude to go back out and keep doing what you're doing.
SPEAKER_01:But I'm also not dumb enough to think that telling him he's gonna burn in hell is gonna make him stop.
SPEAKER_00:Lest Pastor Don used to say it, love the hell out of them. Love the hell out of them. You love them enough, that stuff's gonna go. That stuff's gonna go. That's it. You can't beat it out of them.
SPEAKER_01:You're not gonna talk them down low enough to where they feel so bad that they just decide, hey, I'm just gonna make this big decision here. No, they're not gonna do it, it's not gonna happen like that most of the time. I'm not saying it's never happened before. There's exceptions. But for most people, it's not gonna happen like that. If we keep beating them down, tell them how sorry they are and how bad they are, they don't want no part of us.
SPEAKER_00:They don't want no part of the church, and they're not gonna come.
SPEAKER_01:I think about the uh prodigal son always on this when I think about this. Does the belief show me a father different than what Jesus revealed? I always think about the father in the prodigal son story, because what was he doing? He could have easily, he had, he had every reason to say, you are no longer my son. Kick Hill Mount and you're done. But every day he was waiting on him. Every day he was waiting on the son to return to what? To who he was. He never stopped being a son. That dude that strung out right now that's out there that's scared of walking to the church, never stopped being a son. The girl out here that's doing whatever she's doing, she's never stopped being a daughter. She just don't see it. And she's living in a place now to where she don't see it, so her behaviors are not lining up. Her behaviors are lining up with what she sees or he sees. But how do we change that? We tell them who they really are. That's not excusing the behavior. It's not that's not us saying that we're okay with what they're doing. We're not excusing sin. That's I mean, it makes me so mad when I hear somebody say that. Oh, you just you that finished work's just excusing sin. Man, you're an idiot. You don't even know what it's saying. Quit putting that out there to people.
SPEAKER_00:All we're trying to do is love them where they're at and get them out of it. You're casting them into hellfire. Why can't we just love them? No matter where they're at right now. But the prodigal son story was a father running to embrace a son who wasted his inheritance. But he never turned his back on him.
SPEAKER_01:He never walked away from him. He threw him a party when he came back and put him right back in the position that he was supposed to be in. And then we always overlook the other son, too, that was still there. The other son got mad. Y'all know the story. The other son got mad, and he said, Well, you never done this for me. You never gave me the fatted calf. You never threw a party from me, you never done this for me. And the daddy looks at him and says, Because all of that's already yours. You own it already. How can I give you something that's already yours? That's a father's heart. And that's what the father is saying. These things are already yours. Freedom is already yours. Redemption is already yours, salvation is yours. All these things are yours. Wake up to it. Wake up and realize what I've given you.
SPEAKER_00:Last verse I want you to see here. 1 John 3, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01:Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God. Stop right here. Behold what manner of love. And you go but you have to go back and study this verse out. Get the context of it, see what he's really saying here. The heart of the gospel is not what we've been, that we've been spared judgment. The heart of the gospel is that we've been restored to family. What are he saying right here? What manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us? Look at what the Father has bestowed upon every single one of us. That we should be called children of God. Not addicts. Not alcoholics, not this, not that. We should be called the children of God. You know how hard it is for somebody who is living a specific kind of life to believe that when you tell it to them? Hard. It's hard for them to see themselves in that way. That's what we're here for. That's the ministry. It's to show them something that they don't currently see in themselves. The heart of the gospel is not about sparing judgment. It's about bringing people back in and restoring them back to their true identity in Christ. If I believe, if what I believe makes me afraid of God's presence rather than at home in it, that belief's got to go. If I'm believing something that makes me afraid of God, I've got to question that. If it makes me question my belonging instead of affirming it, it's not the gospel. Don't care how good it sounds, it's not the gospel. It's religion dressed up in holy language. That's what we get in the church a lot of times. We get religion dressed up in holy language. And it sounds good, but it's not the gospel. The fatherhood of God is the lens through which everything must be seen. A while ago you said Jesus. Exactly. And Jesus and the Father are not changing my mind on that. I'm just trying to let everybody say that Jesus and God are one. Jesus come to reveal the Father. We don't know what God's like. Well, if you know what Jesus is like, then you know what the Father's like. And that was Jesus' own words that said that. Without it, grace becomes a concept instead of a relationship. Grace becomes uh about things we have to do and work that has to be accomplished rather than just about relationship with the Father. So I'm gonna get ready to close here. Let me say this in closing. I believe we need to test everything through these three questions. Is fear dictating what I believe? Is Jesus glorified? And does this belief show me a father that is different than the father that Jesus revealed? If a belief fails, in my opinion, even one of these. Whatever I'm believing fails, even one of these, it doesn't need to be defected, it needs to be released.
SPEAKER_00:It needs to be let go. Because any one of these, if it fails, not the gospel. And that's not my opinion.
SPEAKER_01:This is coming out of the gospel itself and what Jesus said. Here's something I hope you realize. I said this similar, well, something similar to this earlier. Truth doesn't mind being tested. I know there's probably gonna be some people in here today, you can walk out and you're gonna have some questions. That's okay. There's a box in the back, you can ask by air, you can come online, you can ask me, you can call me, you can text me, whatever. Truth does not mind being questioned. I'm okay with questions. I may not always have the answer, and I'll tell you that.
SPEAKER_00:I'll find it. But I'm okay with you questioning.
SPEAKER_01:It never fears scrutiny because it's the truth. The finished work of Christ will always stand up to the light of love. Always. At the end of the day, this isn't about getting God right. I'm right and other pastor's wrong, or our denomination's right and their denomination is wrong. That's not what it's about. It's about seeing how right we've always been in Him. It's not even about us as much as it's about Him. And when that becomes real, when that becomes something that we can truly see, fear dissolves. Jesus is glorified, the fatherhood of God is no longer questioned, it's then experienced. When I see God as the true Father that He is, I start to experience things. I've told you before, there's things in this Bible that I've sat down on an altar before years ago, and I said, God, I don't understand this. I said, You said this and this and this and this, and I went through and I had stuff, and I said, I ain't seeing none of this stuff in my life. I was mad. I ain't seeing none of this in my life. And if I can't live it out, I won't stand up and preach it. I mean, that's the point I was at. And it wasn't, and then I found out real quickly it wasn't God. It was me. It was the place that I was in at the time. It was the mindset that I had at the time. It was the sin that I had, it was that I've seen myself in a different place. And but once I started understanding who the Father truly was, in spite of myself, all of these things started that I was waiting on, I started experiencing them. Why? Because now I had a relationship with the Father. I understood who he was. Even when I messed up, even when I made a mistake, I still knew who I was. And I started experiencing things that I formerly just read about. It was just Bible. It's amazing when you take these words and you read them, and it's one thing to read them, but then when you start experiencing them, they really start happening in your life. And they can. But these three questions are like they're like truth filters. They expose where fear, misrepresentation of Jesus, or distortions of God have crept into the church doctrine.
SPEAKER_00:I put something in there late last night as I was sitting up watching the end of the world series.
SPEAKER_01:Because I I and I'm not gonna go through the whole thing, but I just want to pick at least one out. Because when you say, okay, let's use these questions, how do we do that? So I started looking at three or four questions or beliefs that's in the church today that I know that people believe. It's taught from the pulpit, and I hear people say it on Facebook all the time. They're quoting it, they're saying it. And I just started looking at a couple of them, like one of them. I'll just tell you all three of them here. I'll put it, and then we can look at one. You must earn or maintain your salvation. That's taught. God's love is only for believers. That's taught. I've seen that face, but I used to make that face too. That's taught, though. God's love is only for believers. The end times are a terrifying judgment for the world. We know that's taught. I mean, that was just three of them I put in there. We're not gonna go through all three of them. We don't have time. But let's just go through this one. You must earn or maintain your salvation. Many are taught they can fall from grace. How many times we heard that?
SPEAKER_00:Backslide. Fall from grace. Based on what? Only way you can fall from grace is based on behavior.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, you can't base it on God because then you would be saying that, okay, he loved me today, but he doesn't love me now. I was with him today, but I'm not with him now. If he's a God who does not change and he's an unconditional God, I know it's not about him, so it has to be about me. So therefore, my behavior caused me to lose intimacy with him. My behavior causes me to lose salvation. Many people are taught this. Some of y'all are looking at me like I'm funny, like it's funny, but really people are taught this. Is fear dictating what I believe? Question number one. It fails, question number one. It's completely driven by a fear of loss, and it creates a performance-based mindset. So if you put that question up against this belief, it fails. Question number two, is Jesus glorified? It fails, question number two. And you go, I'm challenging you to go back and do this. Don't take my word for it. It minimizes Jesus' finished work, implying that the cross wasn't enough to keep me. Why? Because if I can fall based on my behavior, then guess what? The cross wasn't good enough. What we teach in the finished work is the cross is good enough. And no matter what I do, my behavior, my bad mistakes, my bad decisions do not change what he done.
SPEAKER_00:It's sufficient. So it fails question number two.
SPEAKER_01:Question number three. Believe it or not, it fails this one too. It turns the father into a manager, somebody who's like keeping score, not a loving parent embracing a child. Like you little baby toddler runs up to you, you would embrace that child. Even if they've done something wrong and they're crying, you wouldn't just start beating on them, you would embrace them first. You might beat on them later, but you would embrace them first, then you would correct them later. This is making it like we do something wrong, and God just says, beep, get down, get away from me. You're no longer, you're no longer wanted here. Because this is not just talking about earning salvation, this is talking about maintaining salvation. That's just one. Again, we could go through these other ones, and I'll just give you a hint. I went through all three of these and all three of them on all three questions. They failed, every one of them. Every question that failed.
SPEAKER_00:When you hold it up against this question, fails. At the end of the day, truth never hides behind fear.
SPEAKER_01:If a belief needs fear to survive, keep this in mind. If your belief, whatever you're believing in your heart, needs fear to survive, it's already dead.
SPEAKER_00:We do not need fear to survive.
SPEAKER_01:But when we believe and what we believe looks like Jesus, when it glorifies Jesus, when it reveals the Father's heart, that's when we're finally seeing things clearly. That's when we're finally taking the word of God, and we're taking our beliefs and we're testing. I'm not testing God, I'm not questioning God. I'm just taking what I believe and I'm putting it up against the word of God and saying, let me see if this holds up. And if it don't hold up, am I this is a whole nother sermon. This might be part two. If it don't hold up, am I strong enough to let it go? There's a lot of people out there right now that they know it don't hold up. But they can't let it go because man, my whole family's gone to this church.
SPEAKER_00:We've been going to this church since it was since it was built, and my granddaddy built it. Good. Maybe the next couple generations need to tear it down. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:We gotta let go of this. We gotta let go of the idea that we're saying somebody's wrong because we think differently than they do.
SPEAKER_00:They're not wrong. I said this.
SPEAKER_01:Last Wednesday night, and I believe this, and I don't know that I've ever really said it to her, but even Miss Bahola. When we first started teaching this, she was the one because she was the grandmother of our church. She was the one that I said she's gonna have the hardest time believing some of this stuff. And I did, I worried about that. I watch her, she motivates me when she's sitting there. She motivates me because I see her nodding her head, and you can see when people are grabbing on to what you're saying. And it's motivating because somebody who is, and I don't mean this, you know, she's one of the oldest ones in here, she should have the biggest problem with some of this we're teaching. Because she's been through so many different, you know, teachings and churches and denominations through the years. And that's not the case.
SPEAKER_00:It's a lot of times the younger people that are struggling, and it shouldn't be like that.
SPEAKER_01:But I think there's a group of people out there, you know, and some people get so mad because they don't want you to steal their people. I don't want nobody else's people. Because if 25 people come from New Vision and say, we're gonna come over here today, guess what we got to do? We got to deconstruct some stuff. But if 25 come off the street that ain't never been in church, we can just build them right up. I'm just using New Vision because I used to go there. So why I'm using that. Any other church. People who's been in church and their mind is tertified, we got to break them, you gotta break things back down. People who are never been there, man, you can just go ahead and take them where they're at right here and build them straight up.
SPEAKER_00:It's harder, it's harder to teach to a Christian than to teach somebody who's never heard the word before.
SPEAKER_01:I think that's why people love the mission field. Because on the mission field, man, it's so exciting because these people's never heard this. And when you say, you can say the something that's so simple. Man, these folks go crazy, and you're like, and then you just start going. You talk about healing, and they all run up there wanting to be healed, and you're like, wow! And the belief that they have and stuff like that. So it's it's very, very intoxicating to go in a mission field like that and see the things that should be happening here, it's happening there, but it's a different mindset, and it should be happening here too. And the only reason it's not is because of the mindset. That's it.
SPEAKER_00:So, what is our goal? Let's change mindsets.
SPEAKER_01:I don't mean this ugly anymore, but I'm gonna say it anyway, and I don't care who gets mad about it. My goal as a pastor is not to get you to heaven.
SPEAKER_00:My goal is not to get you to heaven. That's not what I'm here for. That's not what that's not the anointing God put on me.
SPEAKER_01:My goal is to bring kingdom. It's to transform minds. To get people to think differently. That's transformation. Repentance, to think differently, to repent, to think differently than you've always thought. That's what it's about. We're worried about something up there or something down there when God's worried about the in-between here. How are you gonna live now? Why don't you bring what's up there down here? That's the plan. That's why it's not my job to get you there. Because the plan is he's bringing it here.
SPEAKER_00:We don't like to hear that. Again, that's you can take your Bible and your Bible will show us that.