DISTORTION pt2 - "Cleaning The Lens"

We dig into how distortion twists a good and true view of God, then trace how that warped lens fuels fear, guilt, and constant striving. We land on a simple path to transformation: renew our minds, look into the right mirror, and let Jesus reveal who we really are.
• defining distortion as losing a true reflection of what was created good
• separating God’s union with us from our changing feelings and perception
• asking why loved people feel unloved and forgiven people feel condemned
• showing how Jesus changes vision by shaping what we hear and perceive
• unpacking the prodigal story as two sons and one distorted identity
• naming common lenses like shame, rejection, religion, and other opinions
• connecting addiction and mental patterns to renewing the mind
• using Scripture as a mirror that reveals identity and restores clear sight
Go back and read this when Ronnie posted or listen to it or whatever. Read it. Play it in your car while you're driving. Play it to your friends. Post it on your Facebook page.

Transcript

Welcome And The Theme Continues

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well again, it's good to see everybody this morning. I'm excited every Sunday about the word that comes. I say this often, but uh it just keeps happening, so that's why I keep saying it. God keeps kind of building on top of what we've already said and just adding just another layer to it. It's kind of the way I look at it a lot of times. Um this today, we talked last week about the word distortion, and really I really wanted to break that word down and help people really see what we're talking about when we say it. And I'm gonna give the definition in just a minute, but this week something's really been on my heart, and it's uh it I kind of come up with a part two of this, but it's talking about cleaning the lens. We talked in prior weeks about the lens that we look through when we're when we're reading scripture, uh, when we're looking at God, when we're looking at ourselves, uh, when we're looking at just things from a spiritual standpoint, uh, you know, what lens

What Distortion Really Means

SPEAKER_00 1:00

are we looking through when we're when we're reading or looking at those things? So again, last week we talked about distortion, and and we said, here's the definition I used. We said distortion is a twisted or a warped version of something that was originally good and originally true. Uh we also said it's when something, this is the definition that I use, I like it, when something no longer reflects what it was created to be. When something no longer reflects what it was created to be. That's a distortion, and we talk about this because it's a really important word to understand. I'll be honest with you, until we started studying the the finished work of Christ and really uh getting down into what the finished work really is. I'd never really, I'd heard this word before, of course, but I've never really looked at it in terms of what it meant as far as Christianity, what it meant as far as uh, you know, us taking on a distorted mindset sometimes or looking at Scripture, looking at the Father in a distorted way. Now nobody wants to admit that. Nobody's gonna stand up and say, yeah, I look at God in a distorted way. We're not gonna say that, but when you really look at some of the things that we believe, we do that often. And it's not a bad thing. Think about the definition. We look at the Father in a way that is opposite of what his word says sometimes. Opposite of what is true and what is good. When we talk about fear and we talk about all these other things in the Bible, God is love. And when we use other terms to describe him that scares people and brings fear to people, we are explaining God in a way that is opposite of what the word says. That is, by definition, a distorted way of looking at the Father. It happens all the time. Sometimes it happens unknowingly. We don't purposely do it. It's just the way we've been taught and trained up. But I've been thinking about something else this week. Uh a little bit, I guess, a little, like I said, another layer onto

Union With God Versus Feelings

SPEAKER_00 3:25

it, a little bit deeper. If the original, and again, let's go back to the definition just a minute, something that no longer reflects the original of what it was created to be. If the original is still there, because I don't believe the original has gone anywhere. I don't believe God has left us, I don't believe that God has distanced himself from us. I believe that he lives in me. I'm just dumb enough to believe his word. And it says that he would never leave me, he would never forsake me. It says that he is one, he is joined together with me, and he lives and has made his residence on the inside of me. I'm just dumb enough to believe that. Okay? So everything that I read has to flow from that. I can't read anything else or believe anything else that tells me something contradictory to God being in union with me. So when somebody says, oh, if you sin, God will distance himself. I won't use the term, but you know what I would say to that? That ain't true. Because I believe he's one with me. Now, does that mean that God is happy with what I did or what I said or whatever? No. I can do things that is displeasing to God. I can do things that quenches the spirit. I've done things before where I've been in a good place with God, man. It seems like God is speaking, and everything just seems to be going the right way. Every step I take is the right step, every decision I make is the good, is the right decision. And then all of a sudden I do something or think something or say something that is probably probably wasn't good at the time. And it feels like I just fell off track. The voice of God, it didn't stop, but I stopped hearing it. And you know what I said all those times when that happened? I always said, God, where are you? I was hearing you so clearly. I mean, just the prophetic voice was there. I could hear it. I could always sense him in every situation. And then all of a sudden, it was like he was gone. And in my distorted way of thinking, I would always say, I wonder where God went. Why did he leave? And really what it was is it was me. It was my way of thinking. It was me thinking that God had left. It was me thinking that he was no longer there, while because I did something or said something that wasn't good, I sinned, as the church would say. So then all of a sudden, because of the way I'd been taught, my distorted mindset said, Well, God must be gone now. That's a distorted way of thinking. It is opposite of the truth. It is not

Why Loved People Feel Unloved

SPEAKER_00 6:30

the truth. So here's my question. If the original is still there, if you don't believe that, then this ain't gonna make sense to you. But if you believe the original is still there and he's never left us, he's never forsaken us, if it's still there, then why do we struggle to see it? Here's what I mean by that. Why do people who are loved by God still feel unloved? Why do we, why do people who have been forgiven still live up under so much condemnation? Why do people who are sons and daughters of God, based on the word of God, he chose us, he selected us before the foundation of the world? Why are people who are sons and daughters of the Most High God, why do we spend so much time living our lives trying to earn what He's already been, what's already been given to us? I think the problem's bigger. I told the story a while ago because I used to think it's because of what I'd done. I did something dumb, I did something sinful, I did something wrong, so therefore, boom, he's gone. And I gotta strive and work and go to church every Sunday and read the Bible every night. Do all these things. Nothing wrong with those things. Listen to what I'm saying. But in my mind, I had to do all those things to try to get back to him. The better I was, the closer he came. Do something good again, oh, here he is again. He's closer. Do something a little bit better, oh, he's coming. And then what really topped it off as you go, you find a great church service that's really got the spirit flowing in it, and you go to that service. Why? Because it brings the spirit back to you. The spirit never left me. I just wasn't sensing the spirit. I wasn't in tune with the spirit like I was. I didn't listen, I've been to many, many great, awesome, prophetic church services where I took something out of it. I either prophesied to somebody, or somebody prophesied a word over me that was on time and needed in due season. But listen, that wasn't my first encounter with the Holy Spirit. It was great, but can I tell you I didn't have to have that to be in union with him? It was good, it was necessary for that season, maybe. It gave me guidance, it gave me direction. Maybe it answered some questions on some things I might have been going through. But it didn't introduce me into a relationship with Christ. I already had that. Now, sometimes those words kind of brought me back into who I was. They would bring me back and say, Brian, get back to who you are. But I was already one with him. But so many times these things happen. People live in condemnation, they live in guilt, they live in fear. But we're children, we're sons, and we're daughters of God. And again, I think the problem is bigger than what I've done or what you've done or what anybody else has done. That's the mindset we take so often is I must have done something. If I'm not feeling close, if I'm feeling separated, if I'm feeling unloved, if I'm feeling unworthy, if I'm feeling tons and tons of condemnation, then apparently I've done something. That's the fault. But what if it's bigger than that? What if that's really not the issue? What you did, maybe it wasn't good. I'm not, I'm not justifying it, but maybe that's not what the problem is. Again, not justifying it, but I'm just saying maybe let's look deeper and say that might not be it.

Jesus Trains Vision Through Hearing

SPEAKER_00 10:55

I believe the problem is how we've learned to see. Vision. Now think about that a minute. You know when Jesus walked this earth according to the word, I wasn't here, you weren't here, but we can go back and we can read the encounters uh in scripture. When he walked the earth, he certainly changed people's lives. No doubt about it. He changed people's circumstances on what they were going through. He healed bodies, he calmed storms, he raised the dead. All those things are are in the Bible. We can read about them, and you can believe them or not believe them, but they're in there. Okay? I believe them. He did all these things, miraculous things. But if you really pay attention, go back and look at the gospels and really go a little bit deeper than just the miraculous, because we get caught up in that. It's easy to, but go a little bit deeper, you'll realize that Jesus spent just as much time changing the way people saw things, changing their vision. He was constantly opening people's eyes, not just physically, but spiritually. How many believe that what you hear shapes what you see? That's a concept in counseling that I use a lot too, but it's the truth. What I hear, you can take a small child that hasn't been in the world very long, so they don't know a lot as far as far as what they see, they're not sure. But what they hear will begin to shape what they see and what they experience. It's important. That's why it's important to positive affirmations. It's important to say positive things about people. It's important to look in a mirror and say positive things about yourself, even when you don't feel it. Some people don't believe it, but I say this all the time in counseling. You can talk your way out of depression. You can talk your way out of anxiety. Now, I'm not discounting how deep those things can be. I'm not just saying wake up and say, I'm done with depression. If it was that easy, everybody would do it. Okay? But I'm saying that we can get to a place to where no matter what I'm feeling, no matter what I'm experiencing, I'm gonna speak the opposite of it every day. I'm gonna wake up every day and say, I'm bigger than this. God, you said that you're with me. You said that I am healed. You said, See, I can start speaking something that is opposite of what I'm feeling and experiencing. And I can change my circumstances. And when I hear that, I know you say, Well, I'm speaking it, yeah, but if you're speaking it, you're hearing it. That's the whole purpose of speaking it. And what I hear begins to change what I see in the mirror. What somebody hears begins to change what they see around them. That's why Jesus often said, and I went back and looked at this, and it was actually 15 times in the Gospels that he said this, or something very similar to it. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Now, that doesn't sound like a very deep scripture, but it is. When you go down and you really look at the meaning behind it, it's a very powerful, deep scripture. He who has ears, let him hear. He was saying something behind what he was saying. It's powerful. Everybody that was standing around him when he was speaking, when he was preaching, when he was teaching, when the when the multitudes gathered. I'm assuming they might have been a few that was deaf, but I'm assuming that most of them that was there could hear. But yet he still kept saying, those who have ears, let them hear. So that tells me there was something behind, a little deeper behind what he was saying. So everybody there had ears. The issue wasn't hearing the words, the issue was perceiving the truth behind the words. The Pharisees heard his words, but they couldn't see him. The disciples walked with him. They spent time with him all day long. They were with him, but they often misunderstood him. The crowds that gathered, they watched miracles, but they missed what the miracles were pointing to. The greatest blindness, I believe this. The greatest blindness isn't having eyes that don't work, it's having eyes that only see distortion. When my eyes only see things that are not true, but yet I believe them, that's a distortion. When I'm focused on those things all the time, when I'm focused on a God and I believe things about him that the Bible does not say that's a distortion. So I believe a greater thing than my eyes not working and being blind is always seeing a distorted God. That is not who he is in the Bible. That's a greater blindness. That's why we always say, let's wake people up, let's open people's eyes. We're not saying people's dumb and we're smart and we're no, we're just saying, even us in here, we're asleep to some things. You you've been under this same teaching for a while, but we're still, some of us are still asleep. Some of us have still got our eyes closed to some things, including myself. That's why I love studying this, because every time I preach a sermon, it wakes me up. This ain't me preaching to you. This is me preaching it. It's helping me as much as it's helping you. Because if I'm gonna stand up here and say it, I better open myself up to live it. I better understand where I'm coming from with it. And there's times that I read back over this sermon I don't know how many times before I get up here. I change it up because if I read something and I say, that don't make much sense to me. My first thought is it's probably not gonna make much sense to them either. So I change it and I try to make it simple. I try to make it something that's easy to understand. Not because you're dumb or I'm dumb, but I just want people to get it. I want there to be an understanding that comes with it. Not just hearing, but a truth, perception of truth in it.

Two Sons And A Slave Mindset

SPEAKER_00 18:33

So I think one of the saddest stories, and I'm not gonna go through details of this story because you know, you know, you'll when I when I say it in a minute, you'll understand. But I think one of the saddest stories that Jesus ever told isn't about somebody who ran away from God. It's about somebody who stayed home. Now listen to this. This is where we go a little bit deeper. We don't just read the surface level stuff like we always do and say, oh, that sounds that's awesome. We go a little bit deeper under the surface. Why? Because that's where the treasure's at. That's where the good stuff. You gotta get your hands a little bit dirty, you gotta dig a little bit. That's where you get the treasures. That's where you get the deeper stuff at. So this story here is about somebody who stayed home, and you know it very well. We call it a prodigal son. Now we know the prodigal son didn't stay home, we know he left. But really, this is a story of two sons. The younger son leaves home, we know he took his inheritance from his father. He took off to what is probably like a modern-day Las Vegas, and he had a ball. Whatever they were doing in that town, he he participated in it. He he had a good time, let's just put it that way. The older son stayed. He stayed home. And when the younger son comes back home after he wasted his entire inheritance, he comes coming back, and all of a sudden he's like, think about the distortion. I gotta stop right here because on the way back, he says, I can't go back as a son. I wonder if daddy will have me back as a servant. Distortion. Number one, you're not a servant, you're a son. He was thinking in the wrong kind of way. It was good that he was going back home. He realized while he was in the pig pen, he had an epiphany and he said, I don't, I don't belong here. I can imagine him waking up and rising up out of the pig pen and having mud and dirt and everything caked all over him and saying, Who in the crap is this? This is not me. I belong in daddy's house. And waking up and saying, Nah, I gotta get out of here. But then somewhere along the way, the thought comes and he has a distorted thought and say, I can't go back. Look what I did. I'm not I'm not worthy to be a son. And he starts having distorted thinking. But the older son stayed there. The older son kept working the fields. The older son kept doing everything daddy wanted him to do. But then when brother came back, older son got mad. Why? Because when he when the son came back, daddy threw a party. He was either waiting on him, he was expecting him every day. Why? Because he knew he was still a son. No matter how dirty, no matter how sinful, no matter how bad he'd done, he was still a son. So every day daddy stood out there looking and peering into The into the field waiting on the younger son to come home. And when he did, man, he threw the coat on him, he threw the ring on him, he threw the sandals on him, and he took the fatted cat, he threw him a party. And when you really read that story, it must have been a party like never before. Because the older son says, You ain't never did nothing like this for me. And I've been here the whole time. I've never left. I've never done the stupid things that my brother has done. And you never done this stuff for me. And I love what it says. I always read as a New King James Version, but I love what it says in the Lewis Living Translation. The oldest son says this to the father. Did you catch that? He said, I've been slaving. But he wasn't a slave. He was a son. Can we say distortion? Nothing about his position had ever changed. He was born a son, he grew up a son, and he was still a son. Regardless of what the brother done. But something shifted. And it wasn't his status, it was his perception. He lived in the father's house. He ate the father's food. He received the father's inheritance. Yet he saw himself as a servant and as a slave trying to earn approval. That's distortion. That's what distortion is. His relationship with the father had never changed. His understanding of the father changed. Because instead of saying this is my father, he began to look at him like as my boss, as my master. Why? Because he said, I'm a slave. His perception shifted. And it isn't. And I mean, when you think about it, isn't that how so many believe believers in the church think today? He's not a good, we sing he's a good good father. But then we treat him like he's not. Not on purpose always. But because of perception. A good good father's not going to leave me when I do something wrong. A good good father ain't gonna cast me into a place of fire and say, burn forever. Let me get off of that. A good, good father is gonna love me through everything. A good father's gonna say, no matter what, you are my child. I chose you, I formed you, I've shaped you, I made you in my image. How can I cast you out? Would you cast your son out, your daughter out? But yet our perception says he would? I have issues with that. I don't care who disagrees. I don't care who looks at me and says, you're trying to make it too easy. I just look at him and say, Does God really give too much grace? Can we say that there's too much grace? Because if you're saying that, then you're really saying what I'm saying. He is a God full of grace. And there's not a cutoff on it. If there is, I haven't seen in the Bible where that cutoff is at when you said you've reached your ultimate level of grace, you have no more. I don't know where that's at. I've never read it. And God's never spoken it to me. If he speaks it to you, let us know. Because that's that would be important. It would have been really important for Jesus when he was walking this earth for three and a half years. I believe because of his limited amount of time that he was here, he really spoke the things that was important. He taught his disciples, and he said, I want you to go and I want you to teach this. And I believe it was the important things. I believe it was the things that needed to be taught. And I and I struggle, and people don't agree with me on everything, but that's fine. I'm not looking for agreement. But I struggle because a lot of the things that we have turned into a theology and we call gospel, Jesus never taught in three and a half years while he was here. He never warned people about it. He never said, if you go this far, you went too far. He never, I need to get off of this. He never said the things that we worry about as a church. Am I going there? Am I going there? He never told on those things. Now you can take your misinterpreted verses and say he did, but let's bring it back to context and we'll show you he didn't. Because it was not Jesus teaching on that. And I'm sorry, I know that upsets people. I know that tears their theology up. I know some people will say we shouldn't, we shouldn't say that because it makes people not, it confuses people. No, I think what we teach confuses people. Oh, God, I'm trying not to go that direction, but I mean it's hard not to because I mean Jesus just did not teach some of the stuff that we're saying. To me, that's confusion. Why? Because it's distortion. We are teaching some things that you will not find in Scripture in context. You'll find it in there, but it's not in context. And when we take it and we pull it and we try to attribute it to God saying it or Jesus saying it and it wasn't, that's distortion. We're teaching a distorted gospel. I don't want to teach a distorted gospel. I want to teach the gospel as Jesus taught it, as he taught his disciples to teach it. So when you think back for a minute, let's get back to this story a minute, the father, the prodigal son. The son was upset. He started having distorted thinking. And again, I said a lot of people, I believe, believers. I'm not talking about non-believers now. I'm talking about believers. I believe a lot of believers think this way today. They're not outside the father's house. Why? Because he's one with me. They're inside the house, just like the older son was. They're serving, they're working, they're trying harder, but still believing they're slaves when they've always been sons. That's what distorted thinking does. It changes how you see God, and how you see God determines how you see yourself.

How Perception Becomes Our Reality

SPEAKER_00 30:16

It will have an impact. If I believe God is disappointed in me, I'll spend my entire life trying to impress him, trying to win his acceptance. If I believe he's distant and far off, I'll stop expecting him to speak to me. I'll start attributing the voice I hear to something else. You know, as we say, Tessa, what you hear, I'll start attributing that to something else. Listen, I I I'll be honest with you, I've heard God many times, and there's been many times I've said, Oh, probably that's just my own conscience. That's just me. That's just my own voice. And it was God. But I didn't hear it. I heard it, but I didn't accept it and receive it as that. Why? Because I didn't believe I was in a position for God to speak to me. Who was I? I was out here doing things I shouldn't have been doing, and God's gonna speak to me. That was a distorted way of thinking. God was trying to love me, and I was feeling like I was unlovable. If I believe I've been rejected by God, I'll chase acceptance everywhere but Him. I'll find acceptance somewhere. Because here's the truth we don't usually live from reality. We want to think we do, but we really don't live from reality. We live from a place of perception. It's what I perceived the world to be. Think about that. Two people can experience the exact same circumstance and walk away believing completely different things because they interpreted it through a different lens. I say that all the time. You can hear everybody in this room's hearing the same sermon today. But you're gonna walk out of here, and if uh, you know, if I call everybody and do a poll this afternoon and say, give me the basis of what that sermon was about this morning, I'd probably get 10 different answers. Now I'm gonna be honest, I'd have some that says, Oh no. And then I'd have some that, you know, would have a good answer, but it may be different than what somebody else's answer is. Why? Because based on where you're at and this and that, you're hearing something a little bit different. I understand that. That's why I say so many things so many different ways. Because I want to hit where people's at. Some people may say, well, you preach the same thing a lot. I do. I preach the same in the same vein a lot, but I come about it in a different way. Why? Because it's important. And plus, because statistically it shows that most adults don't hear something and learn and perceive and receive something after one time. It's just impossible. That's not the way our brains work. You have to hear it three to four or five times before it really starts to sink in. So we do that. I've never stood up and preached the same sermon more than once. But I've been in the same book. So if two people can hear it and get something different out of it, there's a reason for that. It's a different lens that they're using to do what? To hear. You might say, well, I only use a lens to see. No, you use a lens to hear as well. It's the it's the position, it's the how what am I what am I hearing him say based on the circumstances I've been through? Based on what I believe because of my world experiences. What am I hearing? The lens matters. And all of us have lenses. You might say, where did where did a lens come from? What is he talking about? Some were formed by our parents. Some of them's good, some of them's not, some by rejection, some has been formed by failure. A lot of them's been formed by church, some by shame and fear, some by success. Every experience has the potential to become a lens that I look through. And if we're not careful, we start reading God through our experiences instead of allowing God to interpret our experiences. We start molding and shaping God. You ain't got to admit this, but we start molding and shaping God into what we want Him to be based on the experience I just went through. I've done it. We've all done it. That's why Paul says in Romans 12, too, be transformed by renewing of the mind. This is not saying that your spirit needs to be recreated every single day. David used to search himself. He says every day, I'm paraphrasing, but he searched himself every day. He'd wake up and say, God, if there's anything in me that is not of you, clean it. That's called searching yourself every day. But that's not what it's talking about here. It's not talking about recreating myself every day, my spirit every day. Your spirit has been made alive in Christ. It's our thinking that has to be renewed every single day. There's a reason why. Because our minds, I've said this before, but it's important, our minds have spent years adapting to distortion. What does that mean? Whatever I'm thinking, I keep thinking it and thinking it and speaking it and living it, and my I begin to adapt to it.

Adapting To Distortion Like Addiction

SPEAKER_00 36:25

Anybody ever adapted to a bad situation? Maybe you hadn't, but you probably know somebody that's living in a relationship right now where a woman's getting beat every night and the husband's loving her the next day. She's adapted to the situation. There's people that's struggling with alcoholism and addiction and this and that. They've adapted to the situation. That's why when somebody goes up and offers them rehab and offers them an opportunity, a lot of times it takes them a little while before they want it. Because they've adapted to the situation. I was watching the video last night, I can't think of the guy's name, but he does, he does a lot of good inner cities. He goes and he finds some of the ones that strung out or whatever, he'll pull up there and he'll say, Hey, you know, tell me your story, and they'll tell the story, and he'll say, Uh, I want to get you off the street. Let's go. And he puts them in rehabs and he sets them up afterwards with jobs and homes. I mean, it's just a really awesome thing that he does. And I've watched several videos on it. And it was the one yesterday I happened to watch, it made me think about this because he pulled up and the guy told his story and everything, you know, and he says, Well, this is what I do. And he says, uh, I want to help you. He said, You want to change your life? You tired of this? And the guy said, Yes, I'm tired of it. He says, Well, this is what I do. He says, I want to pull you off your street. I want to get you in rehab, I want to get you clean. I want to get you a job. I want to get you living the life that you're supposed to be. Guy was only 23 years old, had his whole life ahead of him. He said, Do you want that? And the guy said, Yes. And he said, get in. Guy said, Can we do it tomorrow? Can we do it tomorrow? I mean, he may not be here tomorrow. I mean, you know, hopefully it turns out to be a great story, but you see what I'm saying? He's adapted to it. And this is an addict's mindset. Tomorrow will be better. Let me go ahead and wow, because I've adapted to this. Let me just one more night, one more day, one more day. And sometimes you may not have that next day. And it made me think about this because this stuff goes together. I know I use addiction a lot and I talk about it a lot, but it is because addiction, the first thing you gotta do, you can't just put the drug down. You gotta change your mindset. Taking the drug away just alone don't always fix it. You gotta change the mindset behind it. And I believe it's the same thing when we talk about transformation. It's changing the way we think, it's changing the mindset, but it's repeating. That's changing the way I think. It's the same thing. So I don't, that's why I talk about addiction so much. And I believe that's why God had me in the addiction field for so long and then moved me to the transformation field. I mean, because it all works together. It really does. So again, if we're not careful, we start reading God and we start trying to make God adapt to our experience instead of us adapting to the Word. In our minds, we've spent years adapting to distortions. And you could probably think of your own. I'm not going through naming anything, but we've we can all think of distorted distortions that we've adapted to, and they've become a part of who we are. And here's what I've learned transformation isn't about God convincing himself to love me. God is not looking down saying, man, that boy's got some issues. He just can't get his life straight. I want to love him, but God help him. God is not trying to convince himself to love us. He already does. It's about him convincing me that he already loves me in the midst of my problems, in the midst of my circumstances, no matter how bad I got it, he loves me anyway. The battle has never been in God's heart. The battle's always been in my mind. That's important. That'll preach. It's always been in my mind. Paul says something, I got one verse or a couple verses, but one I want you to look at right here.

Spiritual Blindness And The Real Image

SPEAKER_00 40:51

2 Corinthians 4 and 4. We're gonna get ready to close it. Paul says something really interesting right here in this verse. Whose minds the God, you see God there? It ain't capitalized. Okay. Just gotta make sure of that. We ain't talking about God the Father right here. Whose minds the God of this age has blinded, who do not believe lest the light of the gospel, the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine. So he's pretty much saying the mind's being turned away from the truth. We are the image of God, but we're not seeing that. Why? Because the God of this age has blinded the people. This is a powerful verse. So notice what Satan attacks, because that's who he's talking about here, not the God the Father. He doesn't create a new image, he blinds people from seeing the real image. The image who is the image of capital G, God. So he doesn't change it all around and say, I'm going to recreate you. He tells you a lie and says, you can't be that. You've got to be this. Don't look at that. And it changes your image and gets you to see something that is not the truth. So even though somebody might say, well, ago, well, he's talking a bunch of counseling stuff. See, not counseling stuff's biblical stuff, too. Because this is exactly what I was saying. What does an addict do? What does an alcoholic do? They turn and they start seeing themselves as something that they're really not. And it's our job as Christians to get in there and say, let me tell you who you really are. It's not our job. Listen, if you can get them to put the drug down or the alcohol down, great. But really, even if I can't do that yet, I shouldn't say this. In the midst of them turning that drink up, can I still tell them who they are? Can I still say God loves you? Can I still say, let me tell you about the image that you were created in? But see, too many of us want to see him poured out drinking and say, oh, I gotta get away from that. I can't put myself in the presence of that sinful stuff. And we lose the opportunity to change somebody's life. Yes, we want them clean. Yes, we want them to put a drink down. Yes, we want them to put a drug down. But there's a process. There's a time for that, and there's a time. Don't walk away because it didn't go in the order you wanted it to go. In. So again, he doesn't create something new, a new image. He blinds people from seeing the real one. That's all distortion has ever done. Blinded us. A loss of sight, not a loss of value. When somebody strung out over here like that guy on that video I was watching, I mean, the whole time he was so geeked out, he he couldn't hardly talk to the guy because he was just moving around everywhere. But the guy sat there calmly and still continued to speak into him. Even though this guy, and then he calmed, it was so amazing watching it, really, because I mean, if you've ever seen somebody geeked out on meth or whatever, but the more he spoke into him, the calmer he got. And he was sitting there carrying on a conversation, and then he says, Tell me your story. And the guy just stood there and told him his story. And it was just so amazing to watch it. The power of God, the Holy Spirit will begin to move into a situation like that. But that's, you know, we gotta be, we gotta be willing to do our part. But it's a loss of sight. What I'm seeing, it's not a loss of value. The image of God wasn't erased, it was hidden beneath lies. And that's exactly what Jesus came to undo, to move the lies and tell us the truth. Think about how Jesus looked at people. I'm gonna get ready to close. Most people looked and they saw a crooked tax collector who was the worst of the worst. Jesus saw Matthew. Others looked and saw a rough, probably foul-mouthed fisherman. Jesus saw Peter. Many remembered Saul as a Christian persecutor. Jesus saw Paul. Others looked and saw a woman caught in adultery. He said, stone her, killer. Jesus saw a woman worth restoring. Jesus never ignored the brokenness. He simply refused to let the brokenness define who they were. He always looked deeper than the distortion. And maybe that's what he's doing with us right now in the church. Maybe he's asking us to keep looking into, or to really stop looking. Stop looking into all the mirrors that's distorting your image.

Scripture As Mirror That Reveals

SPEAKER_00 46:46

Think about that a minute. What you mean? What mirror? The mirror of the past, the mirror of the failure of shame, the mirror of religion, the mirror of other people's opinions. Because none of those mirrors are telling you the truth. They're all lying to you. James says the word of God is like a mirror. It ain't gonna lie to you. I've often heard that verse in the Bible taught as a mirror that shows us everything that's wrong with us. But what if the mirror isn't showing us who we are apart from God? But what if it's revealing who we really are because of Christ? A mirror, I said a few weeks ago, a mirror doesn't create an image, it reveals an image. What mirror am I looking for? What is it revealing? God's words isn't trying to invent a new identity, it's revealing the identity that's always been there from the very beginning, the one that he chose before the foundation of the world. I'm gonna throw this verse right back up there because we've talked so much about it. And I want you to see it in 2 Corinthians 3 and 18. And we'll end with this verse. But we all, who? The pastors and the prophets and the evangelists. No, all. All of us. You mean all the ones that's in church today? No, I mean the ones that's out there messing up, too. I mean the ones that's not in church. But we all with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, or being transformed into the same, there's that word again, image, from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. I believe that's why Paul says in here, behold the glory of the Lord. We're transformed into the same image from glory to glory. He doesn't say we're transformed by trying harder. He doesn't say we're transformed by becoming more religious. He says we're transformed by beholding. By gazing, that word means to gaze and to look upon with intent and purpose. By gazing, by looking intently, by seeing, by looking at Jesus. The more clearly I see him, the more clearly I begin to see myself. Because Jesus didn't just come to show us what God is like, he came to show us what humanity is like. So let's end right here talking about the focus. Because we said to change, we got to change the lens. We got to clean the lens. Our focus is not on how we become more somebody different. We're not trying to become somebody different. Maybe we need to ask, what have I believed? What lie have I believed that's keeping me from seeing the truth of who I really am? Who God loved, who God chose, who God created. Because every distortion begins with believing something that God never said. And every step toward transformation becomes in believing something that God did say. What does his word say about me? Maybe you've spent years looking into a mirror that told you you weren't enough, it told you you were broken, it told you you'd never change, that your failure defines you, you'll never be enough. Today, Jesus gently turns you toward another mirror, and that's the word of God. It don't condemn you, but it's one that actually reveals you. One that reminds you that before there was failure, there was creation. Somebody needs to hear that. Before there was failure, there was creation. Before there was sin, you were already created in his image. Before there was sin, there was image. Wow. The invitation of the gospel isn't to become a better version of a distortion. It's waking up to the image God declared from the very beginning. Who He said you are, who he called you to be. That's what transformation is. We turn transformation into so many different things, but really that's what it is. Who are you? Who did God fully reveal you to be in Jesus Christ? It really comes down to one simple thing. Learning to see clearly again. Learning to open your eyes up and not focus on what the world has always showed me, not focus on what I've always felt, not focus on what I've always seen in those mirrors that's distorted my image, but to focus on the one mirror, the word of God, who tells me everything that I need to know about myself. It reveals truth, it reveals identity.

Speak Identity To Real People

SPEAKER_00 52:44

And we have the opportunity to read in the word all about it. Some people ain't in the word, some people's not in church. But guess what? They got you. I don't have to quote scripture to tell somebody their identity. If you know scripture, great. But you don't have to quote scripture to tell somebody how that they're created in the image of God, that God loves them, that they were created for more than what they're going through, that that what they're experiencing right now does not define who they are. You don't need to be a pastor, you don't need to be an evangelist, you don't need to be a prophet. You just need to be somebody who loves God, loves people, and knows your identity in Christ. That's it. And then you'll grow from glory to glory as you get as it goes on. Those verses, I promise you, those verses will start coming to you. If somebody says, Well, I mean, how do you know that? You'll say, Well, the Bible says here, and that verse will pop up to you. God will bring back to your remembrance those things. You might say, Well, I don't know this. The Holy Spirit will bring it back and reveal it to you, I promise. I've quoted verses during prophetic words with people, and I didn't even know the verse. Telling, I did not even know the verse after it was over, and I and I said, Where's that verse at? But I I quote, I spoke it out. Why? Because the Holy Spirit will bring it to you. You don't have to know every single scripture. Most scriptures I talk about today, I can't tell you exactly where they are without studying it out. And I'm okay with that. Because I know the Holy Spirit is real. I know the Holy Spirit is there. I wish that I know some pastor board they can they can quote the Bible right now. Good for them. My memory ain't like that. And I'm glad they can do it. But it's okay if you can't. Because the same Holy Spirit is in you too. And he's gonna bring back the right verse at the right time. If you're willing. So this today, go back and read this when Ronnie posted or listen to it or whatever. I'm telling you, there's so much in here. I have to rush through it to try to get it in. But I'm telling you, there's there's some good stuff in here. Really good stuff in here that you can use right now in your life. And it will help you. It will help you clean the lens, determine the lens that you're leaking you're reading scripture with, determine the lens that you're looking at God with. And some of those problems that you may be experiencing, some of those that confusion that you may be having, the Holy Spirit will reveal it to you. It's not a bad thing, but he'll reveal it to you. So go back and listen to it if you get a chance. Read it. Play it in your car while you're driving. Play it to your friends. Post it on your Facebook page. Whatever you want to do. Let's pray.

Prayer And Sending Out

SPEAKER_00 56:01

Father God, we thank you. We thank you for the word that's come forth today. We thank you for what you're doing in this season here at this house, Father, for the words that you're speaking to us, for the clarity that you're bringing to us, for the ability that you're giving us just to go deeper, to go beyond the surface level, and just look deeper into the Word of God to help us understand our true identity in Christ. To help us, Father, see something that maybe we've never seen before, to not get stuck in a place and not just have to live in fear and live in doubt and live in condemnation, but to so that we can live with peace, that we can love ourselves, that we can love one another, Father, that we can help one another, that we can pull people out of places that they never thought they could come out of, that we can speak life into them and we can show them their true identity in Christ. They don't have to be in a place where we think they have to be at. Sometimes we can just speak into the circumstance and speak life into a dead situation. And Father, that's what you called us to do. That's what you've anointed us to do. That's what you've put, that's the mission and the goal and the and what you've put in this congregation and in this church. Father, you've called us for more than just traditional church. And you're giving us the words and you're giving us the uh teachings, Father, to step into something more. So, Father, I pray for every person in this room this morning that you speak to them. Let this word today just resonate with them as they walk out of here, as they lay their head down tonight, as they move throughout the week and do whatever it is that they're gonna do. Bring something in this word back to their remembrance, Father. And uh we just ask you to bless each one of them. Uh uh and everything they do, everything they say this week, everything they put their hands to, Father, we call it blessed. And we'll be careful to give you the praise, the honor, and the glory for everything. In the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Amen.