The Rock Family Worship Center

WHAT IS SAID vs WHAT IS TRUE

• The Rock Family Worship Center Alma, GA with Pastor Bryan Taylor

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We name the gap between what God has declared and what we are living, and we refuse to treat that tension like proof that God is absent. We challenge the stories we tell ourselves under pressure so we stay rooted in truth without denying what we see. 

• the gap as the distance between revelation and experience 
• why the gap is not separation from God 
• what is said versus what is true when feelings get loud 
• walking by faith without ignoring reality 
• how Hebrews 11:1 anchors confidence in the unseen 
• why interpretation makes the gap dangerous 
• Israel in the wilderness as a picture of misread delay 
• Jesus’ “forsaken” cry as perceived absence not actual absence 
• how we rewrite theology to match pain and uncertainty 
• Romans 8:32 as a rebuttal to the “God is withholding” story 
• staying present in pressure without letting it redefine identity 
• why problems and diagnoses do not get to define who we are 
• addiction as pain-management when buried wounds stay unhealed 
• why we push back on identity language that keeps the past alive 
• the power of words to resurrect what should stay dead 

Go back and listen to them. Go back and print them off. Look at them. And if you don't understand it, if it don't make sense, ask questions. Please ask questions. 


Why This Series Happened

SPEAKER_01

It's very seldom. I I never try to plan anything as far as saying that I'm going to do anything like a series or whatever. I've never I don't preach series, you know, three or four sermons at a time on a topic. This has probably been the first one I've done. And I didn't plan it out that way. It just more and more stuff kept coming as we sort of as we got into it. Um But I'm gonna try to end it right here on on this this morning. But uh I want to say this. If you haven't if you get a chance, go back and listen to all of these or read through. You can read through the transcripts. You can go online and actually print the transcript off. And it's it's word for word uh what was said. Uh it'll show you exactly where you want to go, it'll tell you where it's at in the in the message or whatever. I really feel like we've stepped into something talking about this gap, that we've stepped into something that's uh that's a struggle for a lot of people. Uh, and I'm talking about Christian people. People who are born again, people who go to church every Sunday, people who do things, you know, try to do things the right way, but sometimes life just don't line up with the belief system and think they struggle in areas. I believe we really have tapped into something right here uh that could help a lot of people. Uh it's not just us. Um, it's kind of a merge between uh the spiritual side of it, the psychological side of it. Uh, and basically it's just answering the question, how do we walk this thing out? And the more I started reading through some of this and and looking at it, uh this today is kind of a summary because it brings up some really important points when we're talking about that gap that we need to realize for ourselves and we need to realize when we're when we're talking to other

Defining The Gap

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people. Uh so the title of the day is What is Said versus what is true. What we sometimes hear in our head, or we say to ourselves, or we say to somebody else, versus what's actually the truth of it. Because I believe most people don't struggle with what is actually true. Now, what I mean by that is they don't struggle with the truth itself, they struggle with what feels true. Sometimes not knowing what the truth really is compared to what I'm feeling. You know, we can always say, I'm whole, I'm forgiven, I'm united, I'm one with Christ. Those are powerful words, those powerful statements to make. But then when life happens and we experience when our experience doesn't line up with what we just said, how do we respond out of that? That's really what we're looking at. So that's that space in between, that's the gap that we're talking about. Uh I I believe this this message on the gap has been sp has been powerful for a number of reasons. Uh I was sitting there last night, I got up, and I and I was going over notes and everything, and I'm not going to announce it now, but I'm going to I believe this is going to go further than just these messages. Uh so you know we'll we'll talk about that a little later, but we've got to understand that gap. Uh the gap is the distance between revelation and experience. I'm being something's being revealed to me, and then I'm experiencing something, and between that is that gap area. Um it's important to recognize, too, and this is one of those areas that I really wanted to kind of hit on and make sure that we understand. When we're talking about a gap, we're not talking about the distance between ourselves and God. We're not talking about a gap in distance or a gap in separation between us and God. What we're talking about is the distance. See, that distance between us and God has already been closed. We're not separate from Him. In no way are we separated from Him. So that gap has been closed. But the gap is where that we're talking about is where lived experience. What's actually going on, what's happening in my life when it doesn't immediately agree with what's already been declared true based on the Word of God. I know the truth, I hear the truth, I believe the truth, but here's what I'm experiencing in my life. And I think every one of us has been there if we're not there right now. Every Christian, I believe, has been in that place to where they hold to the word of God. They speak it, they decree it, they speak it over their life every day, but then boom, experience happens. So you got this, you got this, and what comes in the middle? That's the gap. How do we maneuver? What is it, number one? How do we maneuver through it? What happens when we're caught in that gap? Those are questions I think we've got to ask. So again, it's the space between what is finished, what happened on the cross, and what still feels unfinished in our life. That gap is where I think where faith gets tested at. And it's not about whether we can repeat truth. We say all the time, and we believe in decreeing the word of God. We say it all the time, homo lego speaking the same thing that he already spoke. We believe in the power, life and death lies in the power of our tongue. So we believe in speaking and decreeing the word of God. So I'm not speaking against that. But what I am asking is when we're in this gap, this is where faith gets tested at. And it takes a little bit more sometimes than just speaking the word. We stand on that and we speak that word, but it's not about whether we can repeat that, but can we stay rooted in the truth even when nothing around me confirms it? I know what I believe, I know what I'm standing on, but nothing around me in my life is confirming that truth. Can I stay rooted in it anyway, regardless of what I see going on around me?

When Prayer Meets Confusing Reality

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I was sitting there, we was talking about Josie's situation. I was telling Sherry a few minutes ago when we was talking. It's kind of different for us. And I say us, I mean people that's truly praying and decreeing the word. And I know what I'm praying. I know when, you know, the last time before she went to the hospital when she was still sick, and I was holding her and praying for her, I know what I was praying. And I was praying that everything coming back into alignment, that doctors are amazed, that they are confused, that they can't figure out what's going on. And it's frustrating because where are we at right now? Doctors can't figure out what's going on. They just can't seem to figure out. They know certain things are not lining up and certain things are just not right, but every test, there's no diagnosis. They can't pinpoint what's going on. And on one hand, you want to say, no, we need an answer. We've got to have something to stand on. But then on the other hand, I'm saying I know what I prayed. And I prayed that everything line up, that everything come back into creative order, and that doctors would just not be able to find nothing. Why? Because everything's going back into order. And every test they run, everything's lining back up again. So it's hard sometimes. Because you know what you're standing on. You know she's still laying in a hospital, so it's not always lining up, but then again, every test they run, they just can't pinpoint anything. And it's confusing sometimes because you know what you prayed and you know what you're standing on. So that's what we're talking about right here. Can I stand on that word of God even when the things around me don't always align and don't confirm what I'm saying? As we stated last Sunday, this gap does not mean an absence from God. I'm not in a gap because God's way over there somewhere, and I'm lost over here in a gap and I'm trying to get to him. It does not mean absence. Scripture never hides this. Scripture talks about it. In fact, it's built into the story. In 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 7. Y'all,

Faith Is Not Denial

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most of you know this verse, Paul talks about we walk by faith, not by sight. That's a powerful verse, and we quote that verse so often, and most of the time we quote it when we're going through something. When we don't know what the outcome's gonna be. We're just in this position and we're trying to figure out how to get to the other side of it, and we always quote, we walk by faith, not by sight. Why? Because I can't see the answer. I don't know what's gonna happen. So I speak this verse, I decree this verse all the time.

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See, this verse is not a call to ignore reality.

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And sometimes it's been kind of used that way. We're not ignoring reality, it shows us that what we see and truth don't always align in the moment. What I'm seeing going on in the natural and what I'm decreeing going on, because that's what he's already said has occurred, does not always align immediately. Now, Hebrews 11 and 1 pushes this just a little bit further. It says, now faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Now think about that verse. That's a familiar verse. We use it a lot. We call this the definition of faith. It's not actually a definition of faith, it says what faith does. Okay? So when you look at this verse, notice what faith is anchored in. It's not a denial of what we see. We're not denying that things may be happening in front of us. Things may be, we may be experiencing things in our life. We're not in denial of that. But confidence, according to this verse, confidence in what is unseen. This verse is anchored on what is unseen. The gap is not proof that something is wrong. It's the space where the unseen reality has yet to catch up with the lived experience. What is that unlived reality? There's things that I'm still waiting on God to bring to fruition in my life. There's things that I'm still waiting to get to in my life that I don't see yet. I see a building sitting out there on Cumberland Road that's called the Rock Worship Center. Now you drive by there today, you ain't gonna see a building. Okay? You're gonna see some land that's been cleared off, but there's not in the natural a building sitting there. But I know what I'm standing on, I know what I believe, I don't know how we're gonna get there, I don't know how it's gonna happen, but I know what I've seen in the spirit. I've seen the building, I know what it looks like. So the gap is not proof that something is wrong. It's the space where the unseen reality has not yet caught up with the visible experience. Also, another important thing: the gap is where interpretation is formed. And this

The Gap Shapes Interpretation

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is really where I wanted to get to today. I really could have just said this one thing here and been done, but I wanted to kind of build up to it. This this is interpretation. How do we interpret our experience? How do we interpret this place that we are in our life right now? And each one of us is probably a little bit different places, none of us are in the same place. So the gap is where interpretation is formed at. What makes the gap dangerous is not the gap itself, but it's how we interpret the gap. Remember, revelation and then lived experience, what I'm experiencing in life. There's your gap. How big is that gap? I don't know, it's different for different people. Where am I at in that gap? I don't know, it's different for different people. But what I do know is the way that I interpret what's going on in that in that space is totally up to me. Two people can live in the same gap and come out with two very different conclusions about God. One person says, God must be absent. I know where I should be at. I know what I believe, I know what the Bible says, but I'm not experiencing that in my life. God must be absent for some reason. And another person in the very same place. The other person says, I may not see it yet. But that doesn't change what is already true. Two totally different perspectives, coming from the same place. Why? Because of interpretation. I'm interpreting the experience based on what? One person's interpreting it based on what they are seeing in front of them. So they're throwing Hebrews 11:1 out the window where it says, you know, I mean, the other one, walk by faith, not by sight. They're throwing that out because they're living, they're basing their experience, their interpretation is based on what I'm seeing, what I'm experiencing every day. And the other person is turning around saying, It don't matter what I experience, it don't matter what I'm going through. I know what the word of God says. I know I may not see it yet, but I know where I'm going.

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Two different experiences.

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If we look at Israel in the wilderness, they are a perfect example of what I'm talking about right here. They had been delivered, but that everything still felt unstable to them. You got to remember who these people were. Now they were living in bondage, they were slaves. And what they were delivered, and they were set free, but for a lot of them, I don't think that they still were honestly set free. I think they still seen themselves. Their perception of themselves was, I'm still a slave. They didn't know how to live free. They knew how to live in that place that they lived in. So they had been delivered, but they still felt unstable. And it shows this in Numbers chapter 14, verse 2 and 3. It talks about the whole community grumbled. And they said, Why is the Lord bringing us to the land only to let us fall by the sword? Why did he bring us out of a place, even though we were in bondage, we knew this place. Even though I may be an enslaved, I was fed, I was taken care of, and now the Lord has brought us out of a stable place, and he has brought us into a place that we're unaware of, that you know, it's something new to us, and we're gonna fall by the sword. That was their perspective of this. They interpreted the gap where they were, where they and where God was taking them to. They interpreted that completely different. They looked at it as abandonment. Why did God leave us? Why did he take us out of this place, get us out here in the middle of nowhere, and abandon us? But the problem was never God being absent, it was their interpretation of the delay. It took them a while to get there. Okay? It shouldn't have taken them that long. But it took them a long time to get to where they were going. Where God said, This is for you. I've already made it for you, I've set it up for you, it's yours. But it took them all that time to get that mindset out of them. The gap is where Jesus reframes our reality.

Jesus Enters The Gap

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And if you think back to it, I was thinking about this last night. Even Jesus steps directly into this tension, this gap. On the cross, he he enters into the deepest expression of what I call the gap language. In Matthew 27 and 46, look at what he says. He says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me as he hung on the cross? See, that's a that moment is not a theological contradiction. That moment is the collision of perceived absence and actual divine presence. God never left him. Now we teach God left him. We teach that God could not look upon sin, so therefore he had to distance himself, which biblically you can prove is not correct, but we teach that. But yet in Scripture, later on it reveals in 2 Corinthians 5 and 19 that God was in Christ while he was on the cross. He did not distance himself from him, but yet he was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. So if we read this verse right here, that he was in Christ while he was hanging on the cross, how can we then go back and say he distanced himself because he couldn't look upon sin? We got to make a decision there. Which verse are we gonna believe? Well, the other one's not actually a verse that says we did, that's an opinion.

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I'm gonna go with scripture. Not man's opinion that God just could not look upon sin.

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Even when it looked like separation, reconciliation was happening. See, this that kind of reshapes everything. That gap is not proof that God is not working. When somebody ourselves or we see somebody else is in that gap, it is not proof that God is not working in their life. It may be the very place where his work is hidden, but not absent. What do I mean? We may not see this person making those strides toward where we want them to be. We may not see them quickly moving to the place that we feel like they should be at. But God is working in the gap. He's never left that person. Why? How do you know that? Because he said in his word, I'll never leave you, I will never forsake you. And I went back and I looked at that verse because I wanted to make sure that I wasn't misinterpreting that verse. To make sure that that verse did not say, I'll never leave you, I'll never forsake you unless you're in the gap. And it doesn't say that. No matter the situation I get into, no matter the dumb decisions and crazy mistakes that I make, he said he would never leave me, he would never forsake me, regardless of what I get into.

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And I believe that. I hope you believe that. So the gap exposes what we truly believe. You

Stop Rewriting Theology Under Pressure

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ever heard people say sometimes it's in the roughest moments that you know people, truth will come out?

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You put people in a tough situation, you put their back up against the wall, they'll start saying some things that ordinarily they wouldn't say. They'll roll over on people that they ordinarily wouldn't roll over on. Truth will come out in pressured situations.

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Used to hear it about people who's drinking sometimes.

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Old saying, you know, somebody gets drunk, they'll speak the truth. Listen to them. Because that stuff, something's coming out, and truth is coming out. So the gap exposes what we truly believe. This is where it becomes deeply personal. This is where you need to look at yourself and you need to ask these questions. In the gap, people often, sometimes unconsciously, rewrite their theology to match their experience. Let me say that again. In the gap, people will rewrite their theology, what they believe, to match the experience that they're going through.

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Which is where the title of this message comes from.

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What is said versus what is true. Just because I say it doesn't mean it's the truth.

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Just because you say it does not mean it's the truth. Think about some examples. Maybe because of what I've done, I'm being punished. I've said that before. I believed that with everything in me before.

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Because of choices I was making and what I was doing, even though I was born again and I was a Christian, I was making certain decisions that I truly believed in my heart that God was punishing me.

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I believed it. Maybe I haven't done enough yet. I still got a little bit further to go. I'm doing good, but I haven't done enough yet. Maybe God is delaying things because I'm not ready. We've said all of these things before.

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We've heard other people say these things. And what are they doing?

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They are saying things that try to justify where they're at. I'm not where I want to be yet. So maybe God has just got me here. We're justifying, we're coming up with things.

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We're rewriting our theology, and I'm saying it like that because we start to believe that this is the truth. We start to believe this is the Bible, and we will teach sermons around it. I've heard sermons told around if you do certain things, God will punish you in that moment. So we start rewriting it. We start rewiring our thinking process to align with the experience that I'm encountering right then.

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But Paul pushes back against this mindset in Romans 8 and 32.

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He doesn't agree with this. He doesn't align with this. Look what he says. He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

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The argument is really simple. If the hardest thing has already been done, think about that.

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If the hardest thing for God to do has already been given, it's already been done, then the gap cannot interpret, be interpreted as withholding something. God is not withholding love from us. God is not withholding grace from us. He's not withholding something because we're in the gap.

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The gap doesn't redefine God. And we can't redefine God while we're in the gap.

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It reveals what we believe about Him when outcomes are unclear. I want to know the Word well enough that I hold to the Word of God. When I go through something, I stick with what the Word says even when my outcome don't match it. I'm not rewriting the story and trying to make it match my experience. Because I don't have any other justification. So I've got to come up with something that fits why I am where I am. Why not just take accountability for where I am and say, regardless of where I am, I know what the word says, and though I don't see the outcome yet, I don't see the light yet, I'm in darkness maybe in my life, but I know where I'm going because I know what the Word of God says. I know He is with me, He's never abandoned me. I know that He is there all the time and He will not leave me.

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I'm not by myself in this. So again, the gap does not redefine God. Can we maneuver through the gap?

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Listen to this now. Can we maneuver through the gap? Remember, I kept saying last week it's a process. Revelation, what I know to be true, this big gap in here, and then my experience, what I'm actually going through. There's the gap. But can we maneuver through the gap without trying to close it too quickly with faults that aren't biblical? Because maybe I'm stuck in a place over here, and I think that because of where I'm at, and because of my experience, I come up with something to justify it, thinking it's going to close the gap. Because my goal is what? To get out of this thing quicker. That's the mindset. But I believe there's a strength, a really quiet strength in learning to stay present in the gap without rushing to fill it with fear-based explanations. Paul describes it this way in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 8 and 9.

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And I

Maturity Under Pressure

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love the way he describes this.

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We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed. We are perplexed. What does that mean? We may not know the answer. We may be looking in every direction because we're maybe a little bit confused, but not in despair.

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Persecuted, but not forsaken.

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Struck down, but not destroyed. That's a powerful verse that we need to buy into. We don't need to just read it. We need to buy into this verse. We need to believe this verse. We need to speak this verse. Notice something important here.

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He never denies pressure. He never says pressure is not going to come. But he reinterprets it. We interpret it as persecution.

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We interpret it as being, you know, just a bad situation. I'm struck down. I'm abandoned. I'm alone. That's my interpretation. What does he do here? He reinterprets all that. And that's the shift. Maturity is not eliminating pressure. It's refusing to let pressure define me or redefine me.

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In the midst of pressure, I know who I am. I may go through hell sometimes, but I know who I am.

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I may be in a boat like the disciples, and the storm rises up, and I don't know what I'm going to do. But what do I do? I go back to his word. Jesus said, we're going to the other side. So in the midst of my circumstances, when everything seems to be coming against me, I stand on the word.

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I'm not trying to eliminate the pressure.

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I'm refusing to let the pressure define truth. No amount of pressure, no circumstance, no problem, no situation will ever supersede the truth of what's already happened, what's already occurred, what Jesus has already done for us, what God has already said about you.

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Nothing can trump that. But I can redefine it in my life and let it start to trumpet.

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He's left me. He's left me because I'm in a bad place. And see, it kind of goes back to that same thing where they said that God, when people try to say that God couldn't look upon sin, so he had to turn away from Jesus. Number one, that's not accurate because he was in Christ.

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How can he turn away from you when he's in you?

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How can he walk away from you and not look upon sin that you may be participating in if he's in you? See, but we try to redefine that and we try to say, oh, I'm just in a bad place. He's left me. I got to get back to a better place. I've heard people say, I just got to get back in church. Yes, we want you back in church. But that's not what we're teaching, though. We're not saying that God has left you because you're not in church. You're not here on Sunday, so God is here, so you're out there, so God's not with you. That's not what we're saying. God is with you. He is in you.

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He's made his residence on the inside of you.

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But because of the way I feel, I create this mindset that he's not with me because I'm not in the right place and it makes me feel better. It really does make people feel better. But you know what it'll do?

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It'll keep them out of church. It'll keep them from coming. We gotta go back to the truth. I'm getting ready to close right here.

Problems Do Not Define Identity

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The gap will always exist in some form. It's always because we're not perfect.

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There's always gonna be problems that come up, situations that occur, people that get on our nerves. Triggers. Do you ever get around somebody that just triggers you with their presence? I mean, you you just something in you when you get around that person, they are a trigger to you. Situations. Gap is not going nowhere between promise and manifestation. That's what we're talking about. There's gonna be a gap there sometimes between truth declared and reality experienced. There's gonna be a gap between what is finished and what is unfinished, what is still unfolding in our life. That's why I truly believe there's always gonna be a gap because I'm always seeking more. Even if I get to this place and I say this is where God wants me, boom, I get there, God's gonna say, no more than that. I've got more for you. And there's always gonna be something else to move forward to.

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So there's always gonna be that gap in there.

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So I think the key is how do we begin to operate in this gap and learn to operate in it correctly? So the question is never whether the gap is real. The question is whether the gap becomes the lens that we look at our life through, or whether we look at life through the finished reality. Am I gonna judge my life by where I am in the gap? Or am I gonna judge my life by the reality of the finished work of Christ? And just realize there's things I'm going through. But guess what? I'm defining my life by the finished work, not by my experiences.

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What the verse says, we walk by faith, not by sight. Problems don't define me. They may be real.

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I'm not denying those things, but they do not define me. Alcoholism, drug addiction, depression, anxiety, that does not define me. It may be problems that I have honestly encountered in my life, but it does not define who I am.

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Because what Christ has completed does not become less true simply because it has yet to be fully seen.

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The more I see of the finished work of Christ, the more that I begin to understand it and I begin to believe it, I begin to walk in it, the more I see the manifestation of stuff. That's why I mean, I'm not saying that it's hard not to come across and look like you're being arrogant, but I don't mean it arrogantly. I just mean it that problems don't bother me that much anymore.

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Things I go through, I just kind of let's keep going. I'm headed down the road, I hit a stumbling block, guess what?

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It's not gonna stop me. I'm gonna figure out a way around it, over it, through it, whatever. It's not gonna define who I it may slow me down a bit. It may cause me to stop and have to question some things, but it does not become the defining point in my life. Can you imagine for a moment? Don't call it out, but think about yourself. What if your life was defined by your worst moment? What if we had to write a biography and you had to get up here and read? You know, in the back of a book, there's always a little about the book, and then on the inside, one of the first pages is a biography about yourself. What if you had to write something like that? A biography about you, and you were defined by the worst moment of your life. Can you imagine writing about that?

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That is not what defines us. That's why I don't care what you've been through.

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If you need to tell me to get it out because you feel better, great. But I don't need to know it. Because I don't see you that way anymore. I don't look at people in that way anymore. I don't care what problems they've encountered. I don't care if they're still going through those problems now. What I see is what Christ has finished on the cross. And I see who they are because of that. And my goal is to get them to get their mind off the problems and get their mind on the truth. And the more we do that, the more that we understand the finished work of Christ, those problems are not problems anymore. And that's what I mean by that. They're truly not problems anymore, they're opportunities. It's an opportunity now for me to discover some things about myself that I can fix. Yes, I'm still weak in this area, but I can fix this. Yes, this came up and it brought something out of me. Guess what? I can fix that. This person came up, and man, I wanted to just that anger come out. So guess what? I still got some anger in there. I need to work on this. It exposes areas of my life that I can fix, that I can do some work on. So it's an opportunity now and not a problem and not a setback.

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We've already been set up for success. We've already been set up to win this race. But it's up to us what kind of path you take to get there. That's why some people's life looks like they just ease through.

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I've literally had people in the past look at me and say, dude, nothing bothers you. And I take that as a compliment. Because it don't. Do I have problems just like them? Absolutely. My problems may be worse than theirs.

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But you won't see it. You won't notice it. Why? Because I'm going on.

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And that's not, again, that's not saying I'm better than this one or that one. We all have that opportunity. It's according to how you look at it. And what is your perspective on that problem? Because what Christ has completed does not, I said this a while ago, does not become less true simply because it has not been fully seen yet.

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So faith is not the ability to explain the gap, but the courage to refuse letting the gap explain God. I don't determine who God is based on that gap. Because if I do that, then he's not a good father. Why? Because he's abandoned me. He's left me here. I gave my life to him, and all hell broke loose in my life. That happens. But you can look at it like in that way, and you're gonna get stuck in a place.

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Or you can say, I don't know why, where these things are coming from, but I know who God said I am. I know what Jesus Christ did for me, and I'm gonna get through this thing. And I'm gonna keep moving, regardless. And this gap, every problem that comes, every situation that arises, no matter what happens in this gap, I will not let it define who my God is. And it will not define who I am. That's the problem. The problem with teaching about this, and I'm telling you, I believe, I believe we have tapped into something powerful. The problem with teaching this is if people misunderstand it, they think the gap is a place of isolation. And I'm always fighting to try to get out of it so I can get to God.

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That's not the case. God's with me in it. It all really comes down to how do I interpret it?

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I don't see it as a problem. I truly see the gap as opportunity. When

Addiction Pain And The Words We Speak

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something's buried, as we said last week, you can't fix something that you're always burying. Pain has to come out.

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Pain has to be exposed before it can be healed.

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You know why a lot of people go down the road of addiction? It's not because they just love the drugs or the alcohol. I've said it many times, and I don't say this jokingly, I say it sincerely. Nobody just wakes up one day and says, I'm gonna get addicted to meth today, so I can lose everything in my life.

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Nobody wakes up and says that.

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But stuff happens, and they bury stuff and they push stuff down, and all of a sudden they get into a place where they need a release, they need something to help because they can't deal with these emotions. And I want to change what I'm feeling. And the drug and the alcohol, it does that, and it makes me feel better, and it makes me feel better. Me feel so good that I never deal with the stuff over here that caused it in the first place.

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And I'm in this gap. And all we're saying is, let's deal with the stuff.

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I say that in the counseling, let's deal with the stuff before we just focus on the addiction itself.

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Why? Because the stuff is driving it. It sounds simple. And it really is, but we've trained ourselves to look at it in a different way. I want to make one small correction from something from last week.

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Not really a correction, just help you understand where I was coming from. I made the comment that I don't like AA. I don't like the part of AA where people stand up and have to say, My name's Brian, and I'm an addict. I don't like that part of it. And that comes from because understanding who we are in Christ. And I don't like the fact that people will continue to define their life by what they went through.

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The AA program itself is a great program.

SPEAKER_01

The 12 steps is a great program. It's helped many people. So when I say that, I'm not saying, I'm not putting down the entire AA program. I shouldn't have said it like I hate AA. I don't mean it like that.

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I mean I hate that one aspect of it.

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Because I want to be defined by who I am in Christ, not by my situation, my circumstance, my one bad season in my life. I never want to be defined by that one season that took me down. Maybe I've come out of it. Why are you gonna keep looking at me like that?

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I've come out of that. See me for who I am now. But that's totally up to us. How do you interpret your life? Yeah. It does, it keeps it alive.

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I mean, I used to say it like this. Every time, you know, that's why we say life and death lies in the power of our word. When we say that, every time I speak negative, I'm bringing life back to a situation that should be dead. We keep resurrecting the dead. You don't think you have the power to resurrect? You do it every day. You take a situation that is dead in Christ, you keep speaking it, and because life is in your tongue, you resurrect it back. Leave it in the past. Let it go. I'm not denying it was there. I'm not denying it was hell going through. I'm not denying it it caused a lot of problems in my life. But guess what? I stepped out of it. It no longer, I may still struggle some. I may still be pulled back some in that direction, but it does not define me now. And when I find the thing that defines me, now that pull is less strong.

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Those voices, they're not as loud anymore.

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If you've been there, you know what I'm talking about. Those voices, the volume gets lower and lower and lower and lower until it's not even an issue anymore.

Final Challenge And Prayer

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So I challenge you to go back and look at some of these messages together. Because it may have been, I think it was four different sermons, four or five, but man, they just all just come together.

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And you need to understand that gap.

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Because we've all it's there, it's real. And we need to understand how to help people understand it. I don't even say anymore, help people get out of it, because I don't think we'll ever get out of it. I think it's a matter of how we interpret it and how we live and maneuver through the process and grow and mature.

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That's what that's what we're looking for. Go back and listen to them. Go back and print them off. Look at them.

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And uh if you don't understand it, if it don't make sense, ask questions. Please ask questions. Because I'm telling you, we've tapped into something that that I think can change a lot of people's lives. I really do. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for this day. We thank you for what you're doing in this congregation, in this church. We thank you for every person that's here right now and what you're doing in their life, what you're speaking, the revelation that you're speaking into their life. And I pray, Father, that they just have this urgency to go deeper, to learn more, to truly understand what you're telling us in this season, what you're showing us, not just for ourselves, but so we can truly step out and be the people that you called us to be in this time and in this community. And Father, we thank you for what you're doing with this new facility. You've given us a vision, Father, and I pray and I continue to stand on the fact that you will provide the provision in due time, in due season. I don't know how, but you will provide the provision. And Father, I thank you so much for this season that you've had us in, talking about this gap. I pray that it just becomes a deeper revelation to everybody who has the opportunity to see it, hear it, read it, that it begins to make sense. I believe we've stepped into something that's uh truly can can help people, truly can change people's life. And Father, we'll always be careful to give you the praise, the honor, and the glory for everything. In the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Amen.