Speaker 1: When I was in high school, my mother was diagnosed with a death sentence and I remember that feeling when it felt like nobody understood that how can a loving God take such a wonderful woman?
Speaker 1: But we trusted him and she was healed.
Speaker 1: And that same God that took care of me as a young boy is the same God that is here today.
Speaker 1: There's not a word in the dictionary that can describe what you feel With someone you love and you just have to watch and you have to trust.
Speaker 1: And you have to trust and you have to believe, even when you don't know the answers.
Speaker 1: But I know a God who has showed up every single time.
Speaker 1: I know a king of kings that loves his kids and he is always faithful.
Speaker 1: Baby, will you hand me some cleaning?
Speaker 1: Never mind.
Speaker 1: And he said, if we just believe, he'll do the rest.
Speaker 1: He said if we just call on his name, he'll show up.
Speaker 1: If we just trust him, he'll show that he is alive and well and that he is not a liar, because if he doesn't do what he says, that means God is a liar.
Speaker 1: He's never failed me, whether in death or in life.
Speaker 1: God keeps his word and we just have to trust that he knows what he's doing, because he is for you.
Speaker 1: He is for you, he's for you and if he is on your side, then nothing the world the devil sends your way can stand against his almighty name.
Speaker 1: Continue to pray for him and his family.
Speaker 1: If he wants to give you the details, he can, but it's hard to watch when you don't understand.
Speaker 1: Lord, I feel your spirit here today.
Speaker 1: Thank you, god, for always being faithful.
Speaker 1: Thank you, lord, for being who you are, even when we don't know who we are.
Speaker 1: Father, I ask that you continue to bless this service as we move forward into your word.
Speaker 1: Lord, just do your work.
Speaker 1: We're trusting you, lord, in your name we pray.
Speaker 1: Amen.
Speaker 1: That's how to start a sermon.
Speaker 1: Man, thank y'all.
Speaker 1: Can we give our worship team a hand today?
Speaker 1: They kind of had to do it last minute and usually, if you don't know, we practice on Thursdays, and Thursdays we were stuffing our faces so we couldn't breathe to practice and I promise you I did not time this sermon this way.
Speaker 1: But today we're going to talk about habits and I have a habit on Thanksgiving of eating until I can't breathe and then sometimes that bleeds until after Christmas and then I'm like working the next six months trying to work that Thanksgiving 20 off.
Speaker 1: Brother Jim, you mind coming here and help me for a second.
Speaker 1: So I have here it's called a smart card.
Speaker 1: Anybody have a smart phone?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is called a smart card.
Speaker 1: And so on, this little see the little glittery part right there.
Speaker 1: If you put your thumb on there and you are a good person, if you put it on there and you hold it for 15 seconds and you move your thumb and it's like a light green color, it will change if you're a good person.
Speaker 1: So go ahead.
Speaker 1: 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Speaker 1: Let's go to zero.
Speaker 1: Zero, just in case.
Speaker 1: Did that change color Any?
Speaker 1: No, okay, thanks, let me try it.
Speaker 1: 15, 14, 13, 12, nine, 10.
Speaker 1: Nice, this is All right.
Speaker 1: No color change.
Speaker 1: Either the car's broke or none of us are really good Card's broke.
Speaker 1: I agree with his assessment.
Speaker 1: So what does that mean?
Speaker 1: That means we can all agree that all of us have something to work on.
Speaker 1: We all got issues.
Speaker 1: Some of us had a lot got issues.
Speaker 1: Some of us had a lot of issues, and these issues end up coming out during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday.
Speaker 1: Some of you.
Speaker 1: It was a blessing that the gathering was a little smaller.
Speaker 1: Thursday Family fun who needs six flags when you got family?
Speaker 1: Family fun who needs six flags when you got family?
Speaker 1: So if you don't know, uh, pastor phil is at.
Speaker 1: He's at alabama.
Speaker 1: He's actually preaching at his brother's church this sunday, the one who had the heart stuff going on and had the surgery, and he was just down and he, uh, he, just he needed a break, and so his, his brother, said, well, I'm going to be there already, why don't I just preach?
Speaker 1: So if you came for pastor, I apologize.
Speaker 1: So we all have something we need to work on.
Speaker 1: And if we're not, if we're really down to the root of it, if we really are honest with ourselves and we start naming off if we've lusted, if we've lied, if we've cheated, if we've stolen, we end up being an adulterous, thieving liar.
Speaker 1: When you put it in those terms, like the actual words, then we're all deserving of death, which I love.
Speaker 1: The reason I love that is because that means that the people that we're trying to reach is exactly the same as us.
Speaker 1: There's no difference.
Speaker 1: They are in need of a savior, they are in need of love, they are in need of compassion.
Speaker 1: So the purpose of this little exercise was to show that we all have sinned and that no one is greater than the next.
Speaker 1: So we can agree, we all have something to work on.
Speaker 1: So let's talk.
Speaker 1: Today it's going to be a little more teaching instead of preaching, but I hope you get something from it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think it's good to slow down and really take some things in instead of just getting yelled at.
Speaker 1: So we're going to be talking about building better habits.
Speaker 1: We're going to give you, we're going to build an acronym H-A-B-I-T-S and we're going to break down each one of those and give you some scripture that will help you to kind of remember ways to do it.
Speaker 1: So I have 30 hours of notes, so we'll see if we can make it to 11.
Speaker 1: Sometimes habits can really control us.
Speaker 1: Anybody have a habit that controls you.
Speaker 1: Probably most of us, like right now, could probably think about something Either you can for you or for your spouse.
Speaker 1: Think of a habit that is trouble.
Speaker 1: And sometimes our habits can lead us to a place, to where we're screaming up at the sky God, where are you?
Speaker 1: How did I end up here?
Speaker 1: God, where are you?
Speaker 1: How did I end up here, and nine times out of 10, the answer is our habits.
Speaker 1: The devil gets a lot of credit for things that we end up doing, and the opposite.
Speaker 1: When we do something good, sometimes we end up being like well, I did a pretty good job.
Speaker 1: Dug myself out of that hole.
Speaker 1: No, you didn't, moron, god did.
Speaker 1: That's how God speaks to me me, because that's what I need.
Speaker 1: How did I end up here?
Speaker 1: So let me go with a little bit of example.
Speaker 1: Has anyone ever prayed this?
Speaker 1: Now, I'm not bashing anybody.
Speaker 1: I'm also guilty.
Speaker 1: I told you I'll never preach on anything that I don't suffer from myself.
Speaker 1: Who's ever prayed over their food?
Speaker 1: As they're taking down french fries and a Big Mac?
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Come on, who prayed over their Thanksgiving meal and then ate till they couldn't breathe?
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Like, if we have diets Thursday, we didn't stick to them.
Speaker 1: That's the day God allows cheating, right.
Speaker 1: And so we pray over our food because listen, I'm not bashing you, but we have a mindset of.
Speaker 1: We pray over things that we don't really mean or we don't care to change.
Speaker 1: Have you ever prayed?
Speaker 1: God bless our finances and you don't stop spending money.
Speaker 1: Do you know how to save money, you stop spending it.
Speaker 1: I'm a spender.
Speaker 1: Okay, the reason this came up is because me and my wife are doing the Dave Ramsey thing, and so we're doing the little classes and they have you, take a little test of who's the free spirit, who's the nerd, who's the spender, who's the saver?
Speaker 1: She's the saver.
Speaker 1: I'm one of those that's like, ah, it'll be all right.
Speaker 1: Little blends she's the saver.
Speaker 1: I'm one of those that's like, ah, it'll be all right, lord blends off finances It'll be all right.
Speaker 1: That's our mindset.
Speaker 1: And when we come before the Lord to his throne room in prayer, our mindset is still that same way.
Speaker 1: And we're like God.
Speaker 1: Why is this happening?
Speaker 1: Because you keep making the same stupid choice.
Speaker 1: Is that too blunt for y'all Good?
Speaker 1: So we have habits.
Speaker 1: We have simple habits.
Speaker 1: We have lust, greed, envy, destroying the temple I used to smoke cigarettes.
Speaker 1: I understand that habit well.
Speaker 1: I used to also smoke meth.
Speaker 1: I was destroying the temple of the Holy Ghost and I let it destroy me.
Speaker 1: And not only did it destroy me, it started destroying the things around me.
Speaker 1: Self-doubt I consider that a bad habit, because God can put you in a place to minister to somebody, or put you in a place to be planted and to grow and have roots, and we will doubt ourselves out of our destiny.
Speaker 1: I can't do this, I'm not good enough.
Speaker 1: And then we miss out on God using us to bless somebody else.
Speaker 1: So if you want to be blunt and clear about it, we take the throne and say God, sit down for a second over here while I figure this out, you guys.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm trying to land it easy, you all right, a little bit of turbulence.
Speaker 1: So we tell God you know, hey, you just be over here for a second.
Speaker 1: We have fear.
Speaker 1: Anybody here recently in the last few months been ran by fear?
Speaker 1: Has that ever came up?
Speaker 1: We're not even going to touch that one.
Speaker 1: We're going to drive on Bad finances, not being good stewards of what God has given us Relational habits.
Speaker 1: Anybody had somebody toxic.
Speaker 1: I saw a post Was it you that reposted it?
Speaker 1: It's talking about infants are toxic.
Speaker 1: They walk around the house destroying everything and then they smile and hug you later like they never did anything.
Speaker 1: So we have our own fleshly desires to rule our lives because we don't put God in his rightful place.
Speaker 1: And that's where it all starts.
Speaker 1: And then we turn around and we only pray to God when we need something instead of having a relationship with him, and we may come into church and sing in the songs and doing the dance a religion instead of a relationship, doing the dance, a religion instead of a relationship.
Speaker 1: And God needs and wants us to be in a relationship with him.
Speaker 1: Now, okay, I have been married before.
Speaker 1: None of you know this is not my first wife, she's my second, and the best Little brownie points right there throwing it in.
Speaker 1: And so then, my first marriage.
Speaker 1: I thought that marriage was supposed to be a certain way, that I was supposed to be the man to go and work the hard job.
Speaker 1: I come in, no matter if she works or not, and she's supposed to cook and clean and you know whatever else.
Speaker 1: Take care of the kids you know the standard cookie cutter this is how it works.
Speaker 1: Laundry, you know all the things that I am too busy and tired to do that don't fit in my second marriage, and it's nothing on her.
Speaker 1: I learned something from my first mistakes of always making my partner to carry the weight on them.
Speaker 1: And so this second marriage.
Speaker 1: I was like you know what?
Speaker 1: How about I not do this the wrong way twice?
Speaker 1: I'd rather not be on number three or four or five or six or seven.
Speaker 1: I'd rather not be on number three or four or five or six or seven, because Stephen was very, did not want to submit fully to God and then wanted my wife to submit to me.
Speaker 1: When a man, there's an order that the Bible puts out, but we want to say, woman, submit to me.
Speaker 1: Not in those words, because we like our teeth, but in our actions we act a certain way.
Speaker 1: Or you know, like this is the way it's, submit to me.
Speaker 1: Not in those words, because we like our teeth, but in our actions we act a certain way.
Speaker 1: Or this is the way it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: But the Bible says to submit to God and then everything else will fall into place.
Speaker 1: And so when we put God in his rightful place, we have a posture of submission that will keep us out of the bad habits and the troubles.
Speaker 1: And so our brains work on a trigger and reward basis.
Speaker 1: If you don't know, we've been having a lot of people getting triggered lately.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's true, it's true, and it's because think about it when they get triggered or when we get triggered, I get upset about things too then we nourish it with reward and it's a constant loop of bad habits that get nourished by reward.
Speaker 1: I liked smoking cigarettes because my reward was the nicotine and I thought I looked really cool with smoke coming out of my mouth and we're being honest.
Speaker 1: But I had to get to where the reward was not worthy of the place I had set it in.
Speaker 1: So we are triggered and rewarded and it's called a habit loop, which means it is easy to slip into a routine and difficult to find a way back out.
Speaker 1: Have you ever found your place?
Speaker 1: I'm going finances again because we're doing this class, so it's fresh in my mind.
Speaker 1: Have you ever found your place in financial struggle?
Speaker 1: Like, oh, we got 12 credit cards, we have $50,000 in credit debt and you know car loans are debt too, so you have to calculate that in.
Speaker 1: So you have a car payment, you have a house payment, you have all these things and Proverbs talks about the lender is slave to the loaner, and so we get in these big holes financially, physically, spiritually, emotionally, relationally and we're having to dig ourselves back out because we've implemented these bad habits and they just become nature to us.
Speaker 1: So research shows that a full 40% of the time, our mind is on something else, while we complete actions automatically and to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: This is a desirable place and it enables us to get things done without actually having to think about it.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been driving somewhere and all of a sudden you look up and you're where your destination is, but you don't really remember the ride?
Speaker 1: I've done that several times and most of the time I don't think about it, but it scares me when I stop, and I do Because I'm like how did I get here?
Speaker 1: Like I knew I was going there.
Speaker 1: Okay, we have the destination in mind, but sometimes we put it in the middle on autopilot and we don't really be intentional about our prayer life, intentional about digging into the Word of God, intentional about finding freedom from the things that we have in our lives that hold us back and chain us down.
Speaker 1: And then we stop and we get to the destination and we're like how did I even get up here?
Speaker 1: How did I even get to where I'm at?
Speaker 1: I wasn't trying to get here.
Speaker 1: You ever done that before?
Speaker 1: We make wrong friends, we make wrong decisions, and every little decision, left or right will end you in a place that you may or may not want to be in, and to a certain extent, this is desirable and enables us to complete repetitive tasks without expending unnecessary concentration.
Speaker 1: So if you have low brain cells, you may have high, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: So when you make a decision to eradicate a bad habit, you've already made the first choice.
Speaker 1: So we've already decided at the very beginning that we all have something we can work on.
Speaker 1: Okay, Don't make a list.
Speaker 1: Don't make your wife's list, don't make your husband's list.
Speaker 1: Just stick to your list.
Speaker 1: We'll work on you for a second.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we don't worry about that plank.
Speaker 1: So we have to identify the problem Keeping a habit journal, writing it down.
Speaker 1: If you've ever tried going to the store, okay, for the month or the week, whatever you do, whatever your system is, and don't make a list and see what you come back with, especially if you're hungry.
Speaker 1: That is the worst.
Speaker 1: We've done that a couple of times.
Speaker 1: We're like baby, we've got to eat because we're buying everything.
Speaker 1: I don't know how those people go to the store.
Speaker 1: We've seen it.
Speaker 1: We're talking about how do they pay for that?
Speaker 1: The cart's just packed full.
Speaker 1: I'm like what in the world do y'all?
Speaker 1: How many kids do you have?
Speaker 1: But if you ever go to a store without a list, you're usually in trouble.
Speaker 1: So why would you not attack something that you want to change about yourself and not make a list of how to do it?
Speaker 1: Plan out some steps.
Speaker 1: If you want to be better with finances, if you want to be better in your marriage, better with your kids, make out a list of things that you're doing now.
Speaker 1: And what I like to do is I like to go from the destination and work backwards.
Speaker 1: That's how I like to solve problems.
Speaker 1: I like to be hey, I want to get here.
Speaker 1: So this is my goal.
Speaker 1: Let's go backwards and chop it up into little, achievable steps so that I can make this not seem like too much to handle.
Speaker 1: Because habits can be that way, because you'll end up doing them over and over again, even after you make a plan, because you're like wait a minute, how am I back here again?
Speaker 1: So you want to be able to interrupt the bad habits.
Speaker 1: Interrupt them.
Speaker 1: Bad habits, have you ever noticed, are very, very, very easy to acquire and they are almost impossible to break.
Speaker 1: Smoking cigarettes wasn't that bad for me because I just quit smoking meth, so it was kind of like a well, this is easy, but that habit of having something in your hands was.
Speaker 1: So I did the vape thing for a while to try to break the habit and then knock down the nicotine a little bit at a time and, man, that saved my life.
Speaker 1: I never would have quit.
Speaker 1: So I had to get out of that habit.
Speaker 1: And people usually when they stop smoking they end up gaining weight because of that oral fixation.
Speaker 1: They want to chew on something or have something in their mouth.
Speaker 1: So it was very, very hard to break.
Speaker 1: But good habits are very hard to keep and maintain.
Speaker 1: It's like when you're in school it's easy to make an F, it's hard to get that A For some of you.
Speaker 1: Some of you are just smart.
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk to you.
Speaker 1: So today we're going to break down the word habit as an acronym H-A-B-I-T-S.
Speaker 1: Each of these letters will lead you down the path to better habits and also bring both self-improvement and self-awareness.
Speaker 1: If you have not been paying attention, almost every sermon I've preached in the past since I've been here, there has been some point where I bring up self-awareness, because we have become a non-self-aware church and we don't know ourselves and trying to tell other people what they should do.
Speaker 1: We don't know who we are and we're trying to tell other people who they should be.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense to anyone once you say it out loud?
Speaker 1: No, we have to be self-aware who we are.
Speaker 1: So we have to look in the mirror first before we can start.
Speaker 1: Some of us just like to take the mirror and walk to them.
Speaker 1: Hey, this is who you are.
Speaker 1: Here's a picture of Jesus.
Speaker 1: This is who you should be.
Speaker 1: It is a compute.
Speaker 1: We have to show them how to do it.
Speaker 1: So hopefully today I'll give you some little tidbits of how to self-improve and self-aware.
Speaker 1: One of our biggest reasons we fail to keep good habits and break bad ones is because our distorted identity.
Speaker 1: If you don't know who you are and who you are in Christ, your identity of yourself will be distorted.
Speaker 1: This distorted identity sabotages your success.
Speaker 1: This brings up the first letter in habits.
Speaker 1: We'll use it to discover a better way to make and break habits.
Speaker 1: H is healthy habits.
Speaker 1: I mean sorry, healthy identity.
Speaker 1: You want healthy habits.
Speaker 1: We're good in there.
Speaker 1: Healthy identity you need to first ask yourself who am I?
Speaker 1: Who am I?
Speaker 1: Who do I want to be?
Speaker 1: What do I need to do to get there.
Speaker 1: Often we're ready to start something new and get rid of the bad.
Speaker 1: New Year's resolutions are coming up.
Speaker 1: We make it till January 3rd right, I'm going to get fit this year, I'm going to be ripped.
Speaker 1: And then we make.
Speaker 1: We go to the gym like six times and we're like man, this is hard and I'm seeing no progress, like there's, there's no change and I'm killing myself because we start the the process of comparing to the other guys who've already been in there 10 years.
Speaker 1: And we do do that spiritually, I think, and we think listen, you've been, you've been.
Speaker 1: He's been coming to church for three months and God delivered him of this, this, this and this.
Speaker 1: And I'm still doing this over here.
Speaker 1: God, what's going on?
Speaker 1: Well, you haven't dug into your habits yet.
Speaker 1: You haven't dug into who you are.
Speaker 1: You have to have a healthy identity.
Speaker 1: Listen, often we're ready to start something new and get rid of a bad habit.
Speaker 1: We make a plan based on what we'll.
Speaker 1: Do you ever do that Like, okay, what do I do to get to where I want to be?
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's change this.
Speaker 1: Instead, we need to start with goals based on who who our God is and who we want to be.
Speaker 1: Saying I'm going to run a marathon is based on what you want to do.
Speaker 1: Saying I am fearfully and wonderfully made by God's strength, I want to become a runner is based on who God is and who you desire to become.
Speaker 1: You start with the who and it will lead you to the do.
Speaker 1: This is an identity-based goal.
Speaker 1: We need to put the who before the do.
Speaker 1: Learning who you are and whose you are changes the way you see yourself and then will change what you believe can be possible in your healthy habit goals, for example.
Speaker 1: Too many of us like to believe a lie, like I will always be this way.
Speaker 1: Has anyone that you know or love ever used the excuse well, that's just the way that I am.
Speaker 1: That's dangerous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's dangerous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the way you are.
Speaker 1: God doesn't like it, change it.
Speaker 1: I mean, if we always stay the way that we are, how are we pursuing Christ If we always stay in our mindset of how we like things?
Speaker 1: And when I've preached before, I like things a certain way.
Speaker 1: I like the remotes where I put them.
Speaker 1: If somebody moves them, I get heated.
Speaker 1: I have my ways that I like, but spiritually, emotionally, physically, mentally, I can't change anything about me until I figure out who I really want to be.
Speaker 1: And this is an identity crisis.
Speaker 1: This is an identity-based fear that needs an identity-based truth.
Speaker 1: Like the Spirit of God didn't give me fear, he gave me power, love and self-control.
Speaker 1: Your journey will start in this verse because that last part, self-control what are some of your identity-based lies?
Speaker 1: I want you to really think about it.
Speaker 1: You may not have come to church to think, but today you need to.
Speaker 1: If you want to make a change, you need to think about it.
Speaker 1: If you want to make progress, you have to first map out the path.
Speaker 1: So you have to think about what are your identity-based lies that you can replace with God's truth.
Speaker 1: Because when we start to do the who before the do, we start to realize who God is, and that starts to change how we do as well, which is also known as the fruit to the spirit.
Speaker 1: And if you aren't having the right fruit, you need to check your root.
Speaker 1: If you aren't, I'll say it again, just write it right across your face.
Speaker 1: Whatever, if you don't have the right fruit coming out, you need to change and figure out the root, because you may be rooted in some bad habits.
Speaker 1: You may be rooted in some bad relationships.
Speaker 1: You may be rooted in a bad job, and some of these things can be scary and crazy to even think about changing.
Speaker 1: But what is it worth to you?
Speaker 1: Sometimes the change in the growth and ripping up the plant by its roots to go plant it in another place is painful, but it's necessary.
Speaker 1: You have to get in better soil.
Speaker 1: You have to get around like-minded people like this church, because we want you to be connected to God, we want you to come to salvation.
Speaker 1: We want you to be connected to each other, to have great community.
Speaker 1: We want you to find freedom from the things that drag you down, the bad habits that you have that will keep you from growing closer to God, and we want you to get connected with the community.
Speaker 1: That's the four principles we believe at this church that your identity, that you have settled in with and have become okay with, what is it?
Speaker 1: What do you see when you look in the mirror?
Speaker 1: Do you see who God says you are?
Speaker 1: Do you see what everyone else around you says that you are?
Speaker 1: Do you see what your spouse says you are?
Speaker 1: There's a thing called codependency and you can easily base who you are on what someone else thinks of you, and that's unhealthy.
Speaker 1: When I told you I was married before, when she left me, my world like fell apart.
Speaker 1: That's where I really started drinking, I really started doing drugs, and because I felt empty inside, I was looking for something to fill, fill me.
Speaker 1: I knew the answer this man over here he's my, by the way, hey Dad, thanks for coming, don't get tricked.
Speaker 1: He didn't come to hear me preach, he came for the food for Thanksgiving, so.
Speaker 1: And so I had this emptiness because I based who I was in a relationship on them.
Speaker 1: And then, when that was gone, I felt like I didn't have another leg to stand on and I was just falling over.
Speaker 1: I felt like I didn't have another leg to stand on and I was just falling over.
Speaker 1: I felt like I couldn't stand anymore, and so that codependency choked the life out of my relationship with God, and so I had to get alone and really rebuild who I was again in Christ.
Speaker 1: And then God brought me the one that will stand beside me and won't let me stand on her.
Speaker 1: She's not my pedestal, she's my partner.
Speaker 1: She's the one God sent me so that we would be here today to do this and actually when we went through CAMS it's Calling and Ministry in the Church of God a husband and wife was leading it one day and they said listen, this works is she stands beside you, not behind you.
Speaker 1: I'm like woo mic drop.
Speaker 1: That's good, but that's the truth and I feel like we uh, we need to sometimes just learn our place and let God have his.
Speaker 1: We can never change our habits if we first don't address our identity.
Speaker 1: Romans 7.15 says this, and I love this because this describes me up and down.
Speaker 1: Things y'all know about, things you don't.
Speaker 1: Romans 7.15 says this I do not understand what I do For what?
Speaker 1: 15 says this I do not understand what I do, for what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
Speaker 1: That was from Paul.
Speaker 1: He wrote majority of the New Testament.
Speaker 1: This is a man who knew what it was to struggle with his flesh.
Speaker 1: This is a man that understood that bad habits will destroy you and that they are hard to get rid of that in order to really grow, sometimes you have to take the weeds out and they hurt.
Speaker 1: They can be entangled in your roots.
Speaker 1: They can pull some of your roots out, but if you do not get rid of what is killing you, it will end you Five years down the road.
Speaker 1: You won't be here anymore.
Speaker 1: I do not understand what I do for what I want to do.
Speaker 1: I do not understand what I do for what I want to do, I do not do, but I hate what I do.
Speaker 1: This inner conflict in himself, a man who believed in Christ, who was giving his life, left everything that he knew for the cause of Christ and was still conflicted with fleshly desires.
Speaker 1: This isn't me coming to you saying get it right, idiot.
Speaker 1: This is me coming to you saying you can get it right If he was struggling in this way.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't shame each other.
Speaker 1: We should lift each other up.
Speaker 1: Paul understood the struggle, fighting against habits, and Romans 6 through 7 says For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with.
Speaker 1: You're going to have to kill some things and you're going to have to leave it bleeding and run.
Speaker 1: That's a little graphic, sorry, but that's how I think about things, because if I don't, if I don't take this serious, I'm going to end up back in the old Stephen area and I'm not going to let it happen.
Speaker 1: This is something that I cling to when I was making the changes that I knew God needed me to make that we should no longer be slaves to sin, because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
Speaker 1: We have to die daily Because if we don't, the wrong things will grow.
Speaker 1: So in order to grow in maturity, we have to kill off some things.
Speaker 1: We must prune the things in our minds, hearts, lives, so that true growth can take place.
Speaker 1: Being intentional I'll say it again being intentional, doing things with a purpose, will lead you to the promise.
Speaker 1: Being intentional with your habits will set you free.
Speaker 1: So we've covered healthy identity and now we're at the A Ask for help.
Speaker 1: This is a big one to me, because I know I probably lost half of you right there.
Speaker 1: Like, hold on now.
Speaker 1: Nobody's supposed to know that I'm going through something, but the Bible actually tells us to confess one to another.
Speaker 1: Don't go giving your business to somebody you can't trust.
Speaker 1: Keep your inner circle tight.
Speaker 1: You can trust your pastors, but don't just go blasting your business everywhere.
Speaker 1: Okay, because some people will blast your business.
Speaker 1: Circle tight, you can trust your pastors, but don't just go blasting your business everywhere, okay, because some people will blast your business everywhere too.
Speaker 1: So use your brain and keep it close.
Speaker 1: Make sure you can trust them.
Speaker 1: You have to ask for help.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because we need accountability.
Speaker 1: If you don't like accountability, then you seriously have some issues.
Speaker 1: We have to be able to keep each other accountable.
Speaker 1: I have to know that I can call Brother Jim and say listen, man, I messed up again.
Speaker 1: A pastor of the church messes up, I ain't Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mess up.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just a fact.
Speaker 1: And see, that's the mindset that we have in the church is that, oh, if someone messes up, we got to cut them down.
Speaker 1: That's not your job and actually there's a system in place in the Bible that you first go to them.
Speaker 1: If someone's wronged you, then you bring it to some elders, then you bring it before the church.
Speaker 1: There's a process.
Speaker 1: You don't get up and testify about your uncle over there that's dealing meth and you're like well, I just wish the Lord would save him.
Speaker 1: That's not going to help anybody and they won't come back.
Speaker 1: So we have to be careful of how we confess one to another, but we have to be vulnerable to each other Men vulnerable to men, women to women.
Speaker 1: I should have to point that out, but I will.
Speaker 1: Okay, ladies, don't come up and talk to me about your personal business.
Speaker 1: I'm married to that lady right there.
Speaker 1: She's the only one that can talk about her stuff to me.
Speaker 1: So just saying, I'm being blunt.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is not me chastising anybody.
Speaker 1: This is me playing it safe and following what I feel is the right protocol.
Speaker 1: Men on men, women on women, we help each other out, okay, cool, so call me up.
Speaker 1: So, in order to be mature, though, we have to accept these things.
Speaker 1: We have to be willing to be vulnerable to somebody else, because if you close yourself off and you don't ever let anybody in your little bubble, you will start piling up things that you're hiding.
Speaker 1: If you don't feel like you can get caught, you'll try to get away with it.
Speaker 1: That's what they call skeletons in the closet, and that also reminds me of a Bible story of when the skeletons came back alive.
Speaker 1: They will come and get you, and it will destroy everything you love.
Speaker 1: So be vulnerable to somebody, be intentional with your habits.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know, what are they going to say about me?
Speaker 1: Who cares?
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what path you take.
Speaker 1: They're going to talk about you.
Speaker 1: Either way, if they're going to talk, they're going to talk.
Speaker 1: Is that a country song?
Speaker 1: Okay, it sounded really familiar, maybe, sorry, not a country fan, sorry.
Speaker 1: So who cares?
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter?
Speaker 1: Like, if you go this path and you go that path, the people who's going to run their mouths are going to run their mouths, no matter what, because you can't make everybody happy.
Speaker 1: You should be only concerned about the word of God and what it says and making God happy.
Speaker 1: And that's where you stand and you don't budge.
Speaker 1: You don't go to the left and the right.
Speaker 1: We live in this day of flux where we just go with the flow and what everybody else is saying.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say it too.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do church this way and if they shut churches down, we're going to shut down too.
Speaker 1: No, this is ridiculous, because God doesn't change.
Speaker 1: So what does that mean?
Speaker 1: That means that God, who healed plagues and leprosy in the Bible, can heal people of Corona and can protect his people.
Speaker 1: God is faithful and God is just.
Speaker 1: We have to be able to ask for help.
Speaker 1: We have to be held accountable At the end of the day and listen.
Speaker 1: You have to do what's best for you.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, ladies and gentlemen of your household, you are held responsible for what your house does.
Speaker 1: You're going to have to answer for what happens in your home.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, for you and your family, you're going to have to answer.
Speaker 1: Habits are always a prescription for something so good.
Speaker 1: Habits like becoming a part of the faith community are a good medicine.
Speaker 1: I love seeing y'all's faces in here.
Speaker 1: Me and my wife.
Speaker 1: We stand back there and we just say hi to everybody.
Speaker 1: Everybody's laughing, hugging, shaking hands.
Speaker 1: It feels good to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.
Speaker 1: And if you get here late, you're missing out.
Speaker 1: Because it's good If you don't hang around after service and just talk to some people for a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's fun.
Speaker 1: I'm almost liking that guy.
Speaker 1: Little bit, it's fun.
Speaker 1: I'm almost liking that guy.
Speaker 1: A few more weeks maybe, but it's a good medicine to get around people.
Speaker 1: That's why the Bible says don't forsake, don't forsake, don't forsake, don't stay at home.
Speaker 1: Because it's good to be around people.
Speaker 1: It's encouraging, it's uplifting.
Speaker 1: My dad the other day was talking about when he was a preacher for 30 plus years and he would talk about he would go in places where they would have contagious stuff and he'd pray for them.
Speaker 1: He said, if they had, let me I'd go in the Corona room right with them and lay hands on them.
Speaker 1: If God protected let me just throw this out there If God protected the prophets and the ministers and the word of God, what's different from today?
Speaker 1: Maybe you're not serving the same God protected, the prophets and the ministers in the word of God.
Speaker 1: What's different from today?
Speaker 1: Maybe you're not serving the same God I'm serving Because I believe whether he takes me now or later, that is his choice.
Speaker 1: Whether he takes me with some crazy virus or I get in a car wreck and my body's chopped in half, that was a little graphic.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I said I'm graphic, but listen, I'm trying to get this story to you that whatever God decides to do with this temple, that is his.
Speaker 1: He can do it.
Speaker 1: Can God murder?
Speaker 1: No, if he is the creator of life, when he steals that deal, it's not murder.
Speaker 1: So whatever he chooses to do with my life, because my life is completely his or my family, if he takes my child tomorrow, that's his choice and that's a hard thing to say.
Speaker 1: But my life, my family and my home, we are going to serve the Lord and whatever he decides to do with our family is his choice.
Speaker 1: So we need accountability, and bad habits are isolating.
Speaker 1: When you're struggling, this isolation becomes a prescription to more pain, and this step is not optional.
Speaker 1: You have to ask for help.
Speaker 1: We all need accountability and we all need community.
Speaker 1: This step cannot be left out.
Speaker 1: We have, or you have to make the habit or have you made a habit of neglecting to be with the community of others, here or at home, watching online.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying you have to come here if you don't feel comfortable, but you have to have community.
Speaker 1: The prescription is simple Ask for help, but don't just ask for help.
Speaker 1: Once you have to make it a habit to ask for help.
Speaker 1: In James 5, 13 through 16, is anyone among you in trouble?
Speaker 1: Let them pray.
Speaker 1: Is anyone happy?
Speaker 1: Let them sing songs of praise.
Speaker 1: Is anyone among you sick?
Speaker 1: Let them call for the elders of the church.
Speaker 1: Pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well.
Speaker 1: The Lord will raise them up If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.
Speaker 1: Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
Speaker 1: The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
Speaker 1: We live in a day where our word doesn't mean as much as it used to.
Speaker 1: It used to be where, if I said to you, hey, I'm coming over at three and I'm gonna help you move, I would have been there at 2.30.
Speaker 1: If I said to you, hey, I'm coming over at 3, and I'm going to help you move, I would have been there at 2.30.
Speaker 1: Early, that's on time.
Speaker 1: That's how I do it.
Speaker 1: And I feel like we've lost that and we've bled that into our prayer life and our relationship with God.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe not you.
Speaker 1: I've been guilty before of saying you know, I'm going to pray about it.
Speaker 1: And my dad said the other day he said, if I don't pray about it, right, then I'm going to forget when I get home.
Speaker 1: And that's true.
Speaker 1: In a good conscience and good faith, we're like I'll pray for you, man, and then I forget I'm ready for some hand-grabbing in the middle of Walmart and start pleading for the Lord to come down right there, shake some people up Might not be so crowded then.
Speaker 1: So H-A-B healthy identity ask for help and be kind to yourself.
Speaker 1: This is a hard one for me.
Speaker 1: I beat myself up constantly for things that go on in my head or things that I remember from my past.
Speaker 1: I beat myself up and I ask go on in my head or things that I remember from my past?
Speaker 1: I beat myself up and I ask God to forgive me all over again, even though I didn't do the act again.
Speaker 1: But I'm like God, I'm so sorry, I don't even know where that came from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he'll whisper in your ear, but you don't have to listen.
Speaker 1: So be kind to yourself.
Speaker 1: Breaking old habits it will be difficult, it will be hard.
Speaker 1: Give yourself a little bit of a break, because habits didn't happen just overnight.
Speaker 1: Well, you may have some habits that have been accumulating over years, and me myself, I'm like man.
Speaker 1: I'm ready.
Speaker 1: Next week I'm to be free, and it doesn't work like that.
Speaker 1: Sometimes God will deliver that way, but a lot of times, if you're like me, you have to work for it or you'll forget the lesson God has to make me where I have to work for it.
Speaker 1: Hard To stop cursing was so difficult to me because the tongue can shoot off like that.
Speaker 1: There's a reason the Bible talks about it being a bridle where it'll turn this way, that way, and you got to be able to bridle your tongue because that can breathe and speak life or destruction over people.
Speaker 1: But be kind to yourself, clean, to God's truth and healthy identity.
Speaker 1: You are his child.
Speaker 1: Listen, sometimes I have to do it.
Speaker 1: If things go in my head and my past flares up or whatever, I start pleading the blood and yelling out loud and telling it to get out.
Speaker 1: I believe that the existence of what we know right now was a spoken word for a reason.
Speaker 1: I believe Jesus was called the word for a reason because there is power in words was called the word for a reason Because there is power in words.
Speaker 1: And so you have the power each one of you individually have the power to speak life or death To when bad habits rise up.
Speaker 1: No, talk to it like it's a.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say stupid little kid.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to say stupid, talk to it, sorry's a.
Speaker 1: I was going to say stupid little kid.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to say Talk to it, sorry, rewind, go back.
Speaker 1: Talk to it like it's a kid, that no.
Speaker 1: Or a dog.
Speaker 1: Is that better?
Speaker 1: Sorry, that kind of was a dog thing, wasn't it?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Stop staring at me, but this negative self-talk has anybody ever talked negative about themselves before?
Speaker 1: But this negative self-talk has anybody ever talked negative about themselves before?
Speaker 1: Because we go back to the not feeling worthy, we have self-doubt, we don't feel like we deserve what God has given us.
Speaker 1: I don't deserve this woman, I know it.
Speaker 1: I still can't figure out why she sticks around, but she is.
Speaker 1: So hey, thanks Lord.
Speaker 1: What me?
Speaker 1: I start self-doubting.
Speaker 1: Selfdestruction, I think, plagues the church today.
Speaker 1: In individuals.
Speaker 1: We doubt ourselves, which in return, is doubting god.
Speaker 1: Did god make you or not?
Speaker 1: So either he is terrible at his job or he made you exactly the way you're supposed to be.
Speaker 1: Now, these personality traits we're talking about, easy, don't bleed that over into that.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about just you being you.
Speaker 1: I mean, look at Peter.
Speaker 1: God couldn't shut his mouth for nothing.
Speaker 1: But God called him a cornerstone and said on him he would build his church, because he knew that that's the way God created him.
Speaker 1: Peter was a go-getter, but he couldn't shut up.
Speaker 1: So let's skip ahead to I.
Speaker 1: We're running out of time.
Speaker 1: So H healthy identity.
Speaker 1: A ask for help.
Speaker 1: B be kind to yourself.
Speaker 1: I investigate and change.
Speaker 1: You can get all the way up to I and do all these other things and nothing happen because you don't change anything.
Speaker 1: Imagine if a murder happened and the detective was like, well, it's a murder Job done here.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: So why would you do that to yourself?
Speaker 1: Why would you just let things just be?
Speaker 1: And I think I think that's how things in America have changed the way they've changed, because we just let things be and we don't speak up for righteousness and justice.
Speaker 1: We just let things be and we don't speak up for same-sex marriage be, and we don't speak up for same-sex marriage.
Speaker 1: And see the thing about that?
Speaker 1: That people that they can't find a good middle.
Speaker 1: They either go hard left, hard right.
Speaker 1: Well, guess what?
Speaker 1: If you lie, cheat, steal, it's the same as homosexuality.
Speaker 1: And nobody goes against the politicians, because that's all they do.
Speaker 1: Why don't we preach against that?
Speaker 1: It's sin.
Speaker 1: And we like to put our levels of what is what and God's like.
Speaker 1: Come on now.
Speaker 1: Come on now Because I feel that we like to wear a badge of honor of well, I'm not that way anymore.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't be either.
Speaker 1: You don't know what habits led them to where they are, and so be kind to them and be forgiving of them, because God hasn't done a work in them yet.
Speaker 1: We've all been there.
Speaker 1: Investigate and make changes.
Speaker 1: When we feel like we just can't break out of the habit loop, let's stop investigate and make changes.
Speaker 1: When we feel like we just can't break out of the habit loop, let's stop, investigate and make changes.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing about breaking a habit loop there's always a way.
Speaker 1: How do we know?
Speaker 1: Well, let's look at 1 Corinthians 10, 13.
Speaker 1: The Apostle Paul tells us God is faithful.
Speaker 1: He will not let us be tempted beyond what we can bear.
Speaker 1: Now listen, this is where a lot of people get this confused and say that God won't put anything on you more than you can bear.
Speaker 1: That's a lie.
Speaker 1: He says he will not let a temptation come on you that you won't be able to bear, because he will make a way of escape.
Speaker 1: Why would God put things on you that you can bear?
Speaker 1: If you did, you wouldn't need him.
Speaker 1: There'd be no need for God if all the things that he brought to you you can bear.
Speaker 1: If you did, you wouldn't need him.
Speaker 1: There'd be no need for God if all the things that he brought to you you can handle.
Speaker 1: So just throwing that out there.
Speaker 1: He would not let us be tempted beyond what we can bear, but we are tempted.
Speaker 1: He will also provide a way out so that we can endure it.
Speaker 1: Remember, investigate, make changes, rely on God, ask people for help and keep taking the next step as he guides us.
Speaker 1: Then we go to T trust the process.
Speaker 1: You have spent years building these bad habits.
Speaker 1: It will not be a tomorrow freedom type of deal.
Speaker 1: It won't.
Speaker 1: It's hard.
Speaker 1: It's hard to not get an attitude when someone says something stupid.
Speaker 1: Let's just be blunt.
Speaker 1: Sometimes in my own mind I have such a low tolerance for dummies and then my wife reminds me you are one.
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: She doesn't say that, but she is smarter than me, so sometimes it feels that way.
Speaker 1: This will not be a disappear overnight situation.
Speaker 1: It is going to be a process, most likely a painful one, but we should trust God and trust that God is in the process.
Speaker 1: He is working something new, something beautiful In your life as you discover healthy identity and you ask for help and you be kind to yourself and you investigate and you trust the process.
Speaker 1: Processes like developing good habits are not something we utilize in order to avoid relying on God's help, whether it exists because of his help.
Speaker 1: When we trust in God with these daily actions, they become God processes.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, without God's help, all of your best efforts become a self-salvation project.
Speaker 1: That kind of do-it-without-God behavior is what got us into this mess in the first place, when you think you could do it on your own.
Speaker 1: You don't rely on him and you take it on yourself.
Speaker 1: You end up creating bad habits and then you're screaming at the sky God, what happened?
Speaker 1: You did?
Speaker 1: Dummy, just kidding.
Speaker 1: I say dummy all the time.
Speaker 1: Sorry, but self-dependency always ends in self-destruction.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm not talking about making money for your family.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about building wealth and getting a degree.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about you know, making money for your family.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about, you know, building wealth and getting a degree.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about any of that.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about spiritual dependency.
Speaker 1: If you always have a self-spiritual dependency, you will have a self-destruct button.
Speaker 1: Spiritually, proverbs 3, 5-8 says this Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
Speaker 1: In all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths straight.
Speaker 1: Do not be wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and shun evil.
Speaker 1: This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones.
Speaker 1: You'll feel it down to your bones.
Speaker 1: You ever felt something before and it's just like, whew, you ever go outside and it's be chilly and you feel it in your bones.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of feeling it's talking about, but a good kind.
Speaker 1: But it is not something you have to do alone.
Speaker 1: If you always listen to this, if you're taking notes, write this down, this will help you in so many ways.
Speaker 1: If you always do what you've always done, you will always get what you've always gotten.
Speaker 1: If you always do it the same way, it's always going to turn out the same way.
Speaker 1: If you're going to, at least take the effort and use the rest of your brain cells to complain about it, change it.
Speaker 1: At least put the effort in to change it.
Speaker 1: This is not me doing this to you.
Speaker 1: This is like come on, I'm rooting for you.
Speaker 1: It's difficult, it's hard, but you do not have to do it by yourself.
Speaker 1: You always do what you've always done.
Speaker 1: You always get what you've always got.
Speaker 1: Do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.
Speaker 1: And the last letter is S.
Speaker 1: You have to be able to celebrate the small wins.
Speaker 1: Remember, I said earlier I like to find the goal that I want to go to first, and then I come back in these little chopped up baby steps, because every little small baby steps still count as steps.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if you're let's.
Speaker 1: Just I'm using an example from my own experience.
Speaker 1: If you're a smoker, okay.
Speaker 1: You smoke cigarettes okay.
Speaker 1: How many is in a pack?
Speaker 1: 20, 21, 11, I don't know what it is, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: Take a pack, okay.
Speaker 1: Remove one, smoke that pack that day, or whatever you smoke, smoke one less.
Speaker 1: And over the next year, if you continue to take one out every single time and you discipline yourself and you don't buy more, you eventually will not be a smoker anymore.
Speaker 1: The same process with developing new habits and getting rid of the old ones.
Speaker 1: You have to start with the smallest, the Ramsey stuff.
Speaker 1: They have a debt snowball and you start with the smallest and work your way up.
Speaker 1: I guess that's why I got it.
Speaker 1: It's in my brain.
Speaker 1: I told you Start with the small things.
Speaker 1: What's one thing that your spouse can point out to you that she or he can't stand?
Speaker 1: Set that one on the shelf.
Speaker 1: It's like okay, what else you got?
Speaker 1: We're going to start small.
Speaker 1: That may start a fight, but at least you're trying.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 1: The point is to have the conversation to get to where you're wanting to go.
Speaker 1: So celebrate the small wins.
Speaker 1: Baby steps are still steps.
Speaker 1: They still count and deserve to be celebrated.
Speaker 1: Baby, I noticed this month you hadn't even chewed one time with your mouth open.
Speaker 1: You hadn't smacked one time.
Speaker 1: That's right, girl.
Speaker 1: I'm on the baby steps.
Speaker 1: Celebrate it.
Speaker 1: Say okay for this one meal.
Speaker 1: You can smack all you want.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go in the other room, you know.
Speaker 1: Celebrate with each other, make it a fun thing.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's some probably deep, dark things in our hearts and our minds that we fight every single day, because the devil is real, but he's also a liar.
Speaker 1: So you do not have to stay where you feel like you're trapped.
Speaker 1: You don't have to stay in the habits that you're in.
Speaker 1: You don't have to stay in this complacency.
Speaker 1: You can move towards a better and brighter life, but only when you make the choice to first figure out who you are in Christ.
Speaker 1: And let me tell you it's very simple You're a child of God If you've accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior.
Speaker 1: Bottom line.
Speaker 1: You are a child of God and you ask for help Because, see, what happens is new Christians or people who are maybe a little seasoned, but you feel like, okay, everyone knows I've been a Christian for a while.
Speaker 1: I can't ask anybody for help.
Speaker 1: The devil's a liar.
Speaker 1: You can't.
Speaker 1: You're never too old, you're never too young, you're never too new to ask for help.
Speaker 1: Help will get you where you need to go and where you want to go, and so if you really desire to make changes, you need to have somebody to keep you accountable.
Speaker 1: Be kind to yourself.
Speaker 1: You're going to mess up One day.
Speaker 1: You may I'm just using this reference again.
Speaker 1: You may go buy another pack of cigarettes.
Speaker 1: Take two out of that one.
Speaker 1: God is a God of mercy and grace.
Speaker 1: We need to be merciful and graceful to ourselves and to others.
Speaker 1: Investigate and change.
Speaker 1: Dig deep into what you want to change.
Speaker 1: Dig deep into who you want to be and figure out what you need to do.
Speaker 1: You have to investigate it and change it.
Speaker 1: Trust the process.
Speaker 1: Know that the process is the process, because you took a process to get where you are.
Speaker 1: It's going to be harder to fight out than it was to slide in.
Speaker 1: So trust the process God is in the process and celebrate the small victories.
Speaker 1: The number one reason the church will not progress is its failure to address bad habits that constantly work against the progress God is trying to do.
Speaker 1: There's a reason, I feel, when the word says to not forsake the gathering, it's because we're stronger in numbers.
Speaker 1: But let me say this clearly we can also be weaker in numbers.
Speaker 1: My bad habits can feed your bad habits.
Speaker 1: My bad attitude can feed your bad attitude.
Speaker 1: When my wife gets upset with me about something and she lets me know it, I get upset right back, and now we have two bad attitudes.
Speaker 1: When we started with one if you ought to know, that was a math lesson, math lesson.
Speaker 1: And so how do we extinguish that?
Speaker 1: One of us has to get out of the bad mood and go apologize to the other one.
Speaker 1: Whether I was right or not, I didn't say either one.
Speaker 1: So don't try to don't, maybe, and have to go apologize to the other one, and that helps get both of us then to good moods.
Speaker 1: So our habits we have to help keep each other accountable and that will help you.
Speaker 1: Looking back, look, if you're trying to change your diet, if you're trying to change your finances and things like that.
Speaker 1: If you get around other people who don't eat right, you're not going to eat right.
Speaker 1: It's common sense.
Speaker 1: If you get around people who just spend and want to live a certain lifestyle above their means, you're going to try to keep up too.
Speaker 1: So wouldn't it make sense, if you want to have better habits, to get around other people who are also trying to build themselves better, and that's the goal of this church and community of people?
Speaker 1: We want to become better.
Speaker 1: We don't want to go backwards, we want to be better.
Speaker 1: Is anybody, are we in agreement?
Speaker 1: Agreement here that we all want to be better?
Speaker 1: I put up two hands because I need to be twice as better, but we live in a constant state of flux, moving forward, backwards, side to side, then back some more, when we all truly love to move forward and make progress.
Speaker 1: Can we agree on that?
Speaker 1: We all like to have good things happen in our lives.
Speaker 1: If you get a promotion at your job or you come to a new church and you love the new church I mean, we're still technically new here and we still love it and it's like a constant moving forward for us.
Speaker 1: There's other things to do.
Speaker 1: We love it.
Speaker 1: We talk about it all the time, we tell everybody we know.
Speaker 1: But when we all truly love to move forward and make progress together, our human nature is constantly trying to drag us back down to the place of complacency.
Speaker 1: That's our human condition of complacency.
Speaker 1: That's our human condition.
Speaker 1: We like things the way we like things.
Speaker 1: So when a church body as a whole, or if your spouse is like, hey, let's go this way, there's probably the other one that's like, yeah, I don't know, it's scary, over there with no money, like we've been through that, like she was a saver, I was a spender.
Speaker 1: I was like, hey, it's fine, it's okay, the money's there.
Speaker 1: Well, the money is there.
Speaker 1: So then we can go to the store and get whatever we want, and then we're constantly having money coming in and going out with someone else's name on it, because we have the money, we can spend the money.
Speaker 1: So then there's no money.
Speaker 1: That's how it works.
Speaker 1: So we have to all unite together to be able to help each other out.
Speaker 1: Pulling us towards the easier path is complacency, and it is our enemy as a church, spouses, families.
Speaker 1: Complacency will kill a.
Speaker 1: We can't live in the blessing when we are unwilling to lay at the altar of sacrifice, if you're not willing to give anything up, it will just be dead weight you're dragging.
Speaker 1: If you're not willing to put your family, your friends, all your relationships, your jobs, everything on the altar of sacrifice and say God, whatever you want to do, whatever you want to do, it's all yours anyways.
Speaker 1: Until we get to that place, you will be the same the rest of your life and chances are, if history tells anything, it'll be worse, because we constantly will move to worse instead of better.
Speaker 1: Better is a fight, better is a struggle.
Speaker 1: Better is hard.
Speaker 1: But I believe as a church, as brothers and sisters in Christ, if we band together and we hold each other up and lift each other and encourage each other, keep each other accountable, say, listen, you messed up, that's all right, dust yourself off, let's go again.
Speaker 1: That's what will make a healthy church.
Speaker 1: That's what sinners need to see in a church.
Speaker 1: Churches become empty because people don't lift each other up, they tear each other down.
Speaker 1: If you're talking behind someone else's back about their issues or you know, gossiping and stuff, shut up.
Speaker 1: There's no place for that here.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, was that blunt again?
Speaker 1: I'm trying to land it easy, but listen there.
Speaker 1: There's too many things that we let slide and we just sit back and watch and we don't stand up for truth.
Speaker 1: That's unacceptable.
Speaker 1: If we believe in truth, then we need to stand up for truth, bottom line.
Speaker 1: Can we be in agreement?
Speaker 1: Let's pray and I'll let y'all go.
Speaker 1: Father, we thank you for your word.
Speaker 1: I love how any subject you can find something encouraging in the Bible.
Speaker 1: Father, none of us are perfect, but, lord, help us, lord, to break our bad habits and to lift each other up.
Speaker 1: Help us, lord, to find our identity in you, our secure identity in you that we are your child and you love us and you care for us.
Speaker 1: Help us, lord, to investigate and make the changes necessary.
Speaker 1: God, help this community to see that this is a church that lifts and encourages and not tears down and destroys.
Speaker 1: Help us, lord, to just be there for each other, to keep each other accountable, and help us to allow ourselves to be exposed, to be vulnerable to someone else, god, because that's the way you designed it.
Speaker 1: That's how we flourish.