From Victim to Victorious | Allen & Stacy Jo

Victim mentality, truth identity, inner healing, and transformation in Christ are the focus of this in-between episode of Faithfully Invested with Allen & Stacy Jo. 

In this conversation, Allen and Stacy Jo talk about the difference between living from lie-based beliefs and living in God’s truth and glory. They explain why real freedom is not about trying harder or cleaning up behavior from the outside in, but about letting the Holy Spirit reveal the root and transform you from the inside out. 

Allen shares part of his own story, including how deep lies formed in childhood shaped destructive behavior for years, and how true healing only began when those lies were exposed and exchanged for Jesus’ truth. 

This episode also contrasts two powerful biblical accounts:

• John 5: the man at the pool and the danger of victim mentality 
• John 9: the man born blind and the power of surrender, healing, and belief 

In this episode, they cover:

•  Why what you believe shapes your identity 
•  Why the root matters more than the fruit 
•  What it means to fight from victory 
•  Why your past does not define you 
•  How to begin releasing lies and receiving truth 
•  Why Jesus heals from the inside out 

Key takeaway:
You are not a victim.
You are not the sum of your failures.
Your truth identity is found in Christ. 

If this episode encouraged you, challenged you, or pointed you clearly to Jesus, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Reviving Recovery: Unbound is now online! We worship, we learn, we break out into gender specific groups and we journal with each other and with the Holy Spirit. If your heart is stirring listening to this, pay attention Healing begins here. Click the link below to join us at Reviving Recovery:Unbound.

www.revivingrecovery.com

See you in the room!

Reviving Recove

Transcript

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (00:00.088)
Hello and welcome back to Faithfully Invested. We are grateful for all of you out there and we welcome you back here with us. I'm Alan. And I'm Stacey Jo and we are really glad that you're here with us today. Today we're diving into a big one, y'all. Yeah, that's exactly right. We bring it to you because the Holy Spirit first brought it to us to share with you, to whomever.

If you would like to be transformed from the inside out, this one is for you. So listen up.

You know, when we are ready, he is able to do for us more than we could ever do for ourselves. Absolutely. And when we, we just got to get out of the way. Yeah. And we got one of my favorite words of the year is yield. We got to get out of the way. We got to yield to him so that he can reveal the root of our challenges. Cause it's all about the roots. Right.

And if we are to discover our truth identity, you know, we must allow him to reveal the deep seated. What are you saying? Truth identity. you're repeating truth identity. truth identity. I mean, we have to allow him to reveal to us the deep seated lie based beliefs that can tarnish our thoughts and our emotions and our actions. And today is what we call an in-between episode.

We do these in between our seasons where we discuss segments of our online life recovery ministry called Reviving Recovery Unbound. You've probably heard us talk about it if you've been here for any period of time. And today we're going to talk about victim mentality versus living in and for God's glory. Because we don't want to have that victim mentality.

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (01:59.456)
in a society that is just drenched in victim mentality. One of my favorite bands has a line that says, if victimhood was currency, then you sure wouldn't starve. being somewhat, know, hay-check yourself concerning today's society. But hey, right out of the gate, we don't want to focus on pop culture. We don't want to focus on victim mentality. Right out of the gate, we want to

with a smile and the joy, joy, joy down, down in our hearts. So happy today, people. Today is day that the Lord has made. So let us rejoice and be glad in it. And likewise, we proclaim that we must, regardless of our circumstances, rejoice in the Lord always. And again, we join the apostle Paul in saying,

Rejoice. Yes. Yes. Was that a little too much? No, no, I think you're all right. Sometimes you're a little over the top. It felt a little over the top, but you know, the whole joy, joy, joy. If you just sung it, it might have been a different story. I'll leave that to you. You're the singer lady and you know all those older, older songs. Yeah. The Zacchaeus one, a couple of episodes ago.

That's funny. I go back and I listen to that episode just to hear you do the Zacchaeus song. my goodness. Anyway. Well, as we all know, know, rejoicing isn't always easy, is it? mean, rejoicing sounds wonderful when things are going well. It sounds wonderful when we're on the mountaintop, but when life feels heavy or when we're in the waiting or we are hurting,

maybe we feel stuck, rejoicing can feel like the very last thing that we wanna do. Absolutely, just we get a little silly here and we do wanna rejoice in the challenges and we work toward that, but we're not perfect. There's only one perfect one and it is challenging to...

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (04:19.883)
to rejoice in the storm. have our down days. We have our down days. We have down moments in, I would say I have down moments in most days, but it's do we decide to live in that or do we decide to rise above that? So just simply choosing to rejoice through the challenges and praising Him through life's storms presents a perspective shift that we got to embrace. We got to embrace that perspective shift to advance our faith into maturity's depth.

and beyond. Yes, you know, shifted perspective.

is what we're talking about today. We're talking about what we believe and how those beliefs shape our identity. And whether we're living like victims or living like men and women who belong to Jesus Christ. Yeah, that's it. Our advancing faith-filled lens empowers us. Let me, our advancing faith-filled lens empowers us to faithfully believe

for his transformation over futile behavior modification. Transformation over modification. And that's the word that matters right there is transformation. Not just behavior cleanup, not just trying harder, not just I'm gonna get myself together this time.

because it's not about that. It's not about behavior modification. Nowhere in God's word does it say, hey, just be better people. Just try harder, will you? Many of us spend years just trying to modify what only the Holy Spirit can transform. Yes. I tried for years to fix myself. You too? Yeah.

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (06:07.693)
mean, you you saw me in some of those days, but I tried for years to fix myself and without surrendering to Jesus, it was just exhausting because we're not created to fix ourselves. We were created to trust God with our lives and as we follow and we learn from him, we have to remember that his ways are always higher and greater than ours. So I'm going to urge you just to settle in and listen with the eyes of your heart how you can use

yield to him today. You ready to go? Let's go. Let's go. Here we go. Some time ago, I was discussing a Holy Spirit healing opportunities and I had a guy. He said, Yeah, but but what if he doesn't? What if he doesn't heal me and at the time I was I was young.

in ministry and I was set back a little bit and later in that morning during worship

The Spirit provided an answer for me and I was perplexed and He said, hey, just believe for it. I had an intense vision that day. was pretty cool. But what He said there is to the answer, what if He doesn't? What if He doesn't heal me? What if He doesn't do this? What if He doesn't answer my prayers? He's like, well, just believe for it.

That's really just such a strong word, just believe for it, not because we control the timing, but because even in the waiting, even in the not yet, mean, God's always working. Yeah, always working. If our healing doesn't come when we want it, and as Americans, as John Eldridge calls us, disciples of the internet, because we want everything in three seconds or less,

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (08:04.975)
So if we don't get our healing when we want it, perhaps the Lord is honing our faith. So what can we learn while we wait? Take it from someone who's not a big fan of waiting, not a big fan of waiting at all. He's definitely not a big fan of waiting. I'll just attest to that fact. But take it from me. We gotta praise him while we wait and we gotta believe for it because when we do, mm.

Yeah. Well, know, waiting, waiting exposes what we really believe. I do we believe God is good when the answer is delayed? Is he still good in our minds when the answer is delayed? Or do we believe he's present when when pain is lingering?

Maybe you can ask yourself, do you believe his truth over your feelings, your history, or the fear? I mean, we have to release that junk and just be still and listen to what he has to say while we wait. There is always, always, always a teachable moment in the challenge of the wait. There's always something he wants to show us. Yeah, I love what you said there.

release the junk. Every day, I gotta release this to you. Earlier today, I'm looking at what tomorrow looks like and what my week looks like and I'm just like, well, we gotta do this first. We get to do this. This is fun. This is good. We love sharing the truth that we've discovered through his word and through our experience with him. We love doing that. But my point is I'm looking out through the week and I'm just like,

Lord, I release that to you. And tomorrow morning, I'll release that to him. Everyone and everything gotta release it to him because it's silly just to think that I'm in control and anxiety not welcome here. But getting back to our point, when we believe for it joyfully through the challenge, our faith rises through the storm, our faith grows. Could it be?

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (10:21.655)
Quite a hypothetical question. Could it be that increased faith, aligning with new or renewed beliefs, is the Lord's intended gift for us while we wait and believe for it? We believe so. Yeah, instead of seeing the delay as abandonment, we begin to see it as...

spiritual formation. yeah, exactly. That's exactly right. And if we're seeing it as abandonment, where's that thought coming from? It's coming from a lie-based belief, which is what we're talking about here. But in Christ, we always win when we wait and believe for it. Now, unless you're driving, write that down.

In Christ, we always win when we wait and believe for it. Absolutely. Our transformation is His to provide, and our part is to believe, to listen, to follow, and obey. Yeah. And that's one of the key tensions here. We want healing.

but we often want it while holding on to our excuses. And we want freedom, but we often want to stay attached to the old identity, you know, because it's comfortable.

Really though well, I mean like me a toned body But I keep finding every excuse in the book not to get to the gym. I Mean because it's comfortable right it's comfortable right right, but is it comfortable? mean, that's a really good question

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (12:00.064)
I mean, if we want something that we've never had, then we got to do something we've never done like get to the gym. Yeah, or just go to the garage. Yeah, we it. We got a pretty nice gym in the garage. But but this leads us what we're talking about here leads us to

Reviving Recovery Unbound's core declaration that says, our first moves toward freedom are an applyable heart for the Lord, an openness to his divine perspective, and a willingness to embrace new or renewed beliefs so that the spirit's renewing of our hearts and minds may transform us. We gotta be open.

We gotta be open, we gotta get out of the way, we gotta yield, and we gotta be open to new opportunities to heal that go far beyond ourselves because it's not within ourselves to heal ourselves. No, and the challenge is much deeper than behavior. I mean, today we dig deeper into, we're gonna dig deeper into how our beliefs play out in our actions. Yeah, truth be told, the beliefs...

whether they're positive or negative, our beliefs are the roots of why or how we do what we do. Our beliefs dictate our emotions, which manifest desires that result in our behavior. This is what we know because we've experienced it.

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (13:34.006)
And our present if we're dealing with negative behavior, present negative behavior is most commonly a reaction of a lie based belief from our past. In other words, our present behavior launches from emotions and thoughts that are rooted in a lie based belief. Yeah. Now I remember when I first heard this, I didn't get it at all. So I mean, if you got questions, you know,

Well, I mean, that's such an important point, because sometimes people only look at the fruit. And they say, Well, there's the challenge. Yeah. You know, but the fruit is not the beginning of the challenge. But that's the end result. And it's not the fruit we got to be looking at. It's the roots. It's the roots. And I'll say boy howdy, boy, because that's what you would say, boy, howdy, howdy, telling you, it's all about the roots, girl.

But it's true, it goes back to the root, not just the fruit. I'm just so pleased that she said, boy, howdy. I'm sure you are. So what the point is here is that if we got corrupted roots, then the fruit is also corrupted. we use a tree analogy here, which we got from our dear friends, Kimo and Natalie, Bethaiah.

If the roots are in infertile soil, if they're in bad soil, if we got bad roots, then the tree is going to be fed up through the trunk out the branches is going to produce bad fruit.

So if you got bad roots, you got bad fruit, and you can cut the branches off and can take all the fruit down, and it's still gonna grow bad because it comes from bad roots. So when we're talking about corrupted roots, maybe that makes more sense. So if the roots are corrupted by a lie-based belief, if you're not in good soil, then your fruit's also gonna be corrupted, and the fruit would be the behavior. Damaged roots.

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (15:38.53)
cannot produce anything but damaged fruit. Right, and that is why surface level fixes never last for very long. I mean, our spiritual and emotional healing must be addressed from the roots, because anything else is like placing a small bandage on a bullet wound. Yeah, absolutely. And to that, I would say blamo. use a... You get a boy howdy, I get a blamo. Right on. Right on.

Yes, but I say and I write in the book that conventional counseling, you know, there's a scene in a movie where the counselors saying, hey, it's not your fault. It's not your fault. We can have somebody tell us it's not our fault. While that may be true, they can tell us it's not our fault till we're blue in the face. But until we have an alternative experience,

we're going to continue to believe that because information doesn't transform. Only the Holy Spirit transforms and we got to get rid of that. There is an experience, there's a wound we carried away from that experience and then there's the lie that that wound has created and that's the lie based belief that we're talking about and that's the root of the challenge. And just saying, hey, it's not your fault. While it may be true, it's just information and that don't do much. Right. Now we're going to get into the bandaid over top of

that wound here in a few minutes. You know, you have a personal experience with the Lord. Yeah. Yeah. So regards to that. Yeah. But my personal experience with the Lord, through several challenging years led me to the why the why I acted immorally for decades. It wasn't that I drank and drugged and

all the nonsense that I lived through. It wasn't that I did it, but why I did it. It was rooted in a lie that I believed from my early youth. It wasn't the pornography that I viewed since age nine that initiated immoral behavior, but it was the lie that I wasn't good enough for my dad to stick around and love me and raise me. It was that lie that I believed. The pornography was only the useless distraction I used as self-medication to bury the

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (18:02.767)
hurt. And unbeknownst to me at the time, the lie that the enemy fed me was that other woman and her kids are better than you. That's why he's over there and not here with you. You're not worthy of your own daddy's love. That's the lie that that the enemy fed me. Unfortunately, that lies groundwork was laid in earlier in my life and because our home

Dad was a tough guy. I won't I won't I won't get into it. He came up very tough. He survived three years in the jungles of Vietnam. It was it was tough the first seven years of my life and our home was more full of angst and violence than it was love and exponential fear ensued from a very early age. Fear ensued from a very early age and that fear was rooted.

And the lie that I wasn't worthy of love and I don't and and but I do want to go back and I want to and This all this happened, but I want to say when when my dad and I had a great relationship And there was forgiveness there. I wrote about that in a book called navigating your storm and Dad and I were good. There was forgiveness He was totally forgiven and that not only changed my perspective but his

perspective. the Lord showed me why He was the way He was, and He gave me a heart of compassion for a man that desperately needed just that. And He knew Christ, so I get to hang out with Him again. That's right. That's right. But that is where so many people, you know,

live without even realizing it. I mean, they're reacting to old lies from old wounds and old pain, as well as old agreements with the enemy. Then they wonder why their behavior just keeps repeating. Yeah, it's on repeat until until until the Holy Spirit reveals it we get to release it to the truth. It'll just keep repeating because that lie cuts deep and then sprouted roots.

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (20:10.861)
That lie I just spoke of, the not good enough.

It's proud of the roots through my young soul while demanding self-medication for decades to cover the pain. Pornography and food were just the beginning. Regardless of the self-medication form, it was only a symptom of the ailment that was rooted deep in my soul. And through the years, no matter how much pornography, booze, drugs, promiscuity, or food abuse ensued, the fear and the pain never went away until the lie was traded for God's truth.

only in Jesus Christ because he is the capital T truth. Yes. Amen. And that is so powerful because that you said it the pain never left until the lie was traded for truth. Absolutely. Changed my life. So.

I realized that I had to stop running. I ran for years. I wasn't always a Christ believer. I ran very far and very, well, as fast as I could run. I had to stop running long enough to listen, though. That's the point. I had to stop playing the victim and I had to get to know my Creator. And I had to say yes to Jesus.

And when I did, that's when life began to change. I first learned about him and then over the last, I would say over the last 15 years, I have spent getting to know him and still have such a very long way to go. Yeah. And that's where this gets deeply personal for every listener. know, recovery is not about us trying to figure out how not to do what we do.

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (21:56.618)
Our recovery is about getting to know our Creator, Father God, and our Savior Jesus Christ while trusting the Holy Spirit to reveal our defiled roots and cleanse us with the truth. Yeah, that's absolutely correct. Through the process,

our truth identity is revealed and restored. Truth identity revealed and restored as we trust the process. Living lives worth living is entirely rooted in our identity and we must be willing for him, for the Holy Spirit to show us those corrupted roots that we've been talking about. And here,

It's beneficial to heed David's words in Psalms. Search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my thoughts and see if there's any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. Friends, we encourage you to...

I love Psalm 139. Truth be told, I'm a big fan of all the entire Word of God, but David's Psalms are, even if they're... Anyway, I love the Psalms, but Psalm 139 has a special place with me. So we encourage you to read slowly through Psalm 139 and wrap your heart around it.

David declares to God, I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. And this is how, this is how we get to know him instead of just knowing about him. And that's the difference that changes everything. Yeah, that is so spot on, babe. I recognizing ourselves as creations under our divine creator. I mean, that really does change everything. Even if we do not realize, you know, or understand ourselves,

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (23:50.416)
as distinguished creations, it doesn't make the truth any less true. It doesn't. So, friends, do you believe it? I mean, we're not here to tell you what to believe. We're only here to inform you of the truth. And the truth is that we are respectfully distinguished creations, and it is time that we wholeheartedly, wholeheartedly embrace this truth and let the Lord begin to heal us from the inside out. You know, once I began to embrace this

truth and believe it. I was on my way to recovery from the inside out instead of from the outside in like I tried to do it for so many years with behavior modification. And there's a tremendous difference. Discovering from the outside in is us trying to fix ourselves. And that is just as Brenda Smith would say, nonsensical nonsensical because that's the whole I've got this control thing. That's preposterous. And

Yes, preposterous. you know, honestly, if we could fix ourselves, I'll speak for myself. If I could have fixed myself, don't you think I would have done it by now? Yeah, you got it. That's it. And I tell guys this all the time. Maybe not all the time, but often, hey, if you could fix yourself, you know, why would you be here? Right. You know, don't you think you've done so by now? You know, it took me.

Never mind how long it took, decades to... The whole white knuckling. Anyway, attempting to recover from the outside in, like we said, just leads to behavior modifications at best. But when we believe that the Holy Spirit resides within us and desires to transform us from the roots, this opens doors.

It opens doors to let Him reveal the lie and be filled with Jesus' truth as He meets us in our pain. Jesus always meets us in our pain. We gotta be willing to face the challenge. We gotta be willing to go where the Spirit guides us.

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (26:06.687)
and face the pain and Jesus always meets us in that pain and we have an opportunity to exchange lies for truth and that exchange, that's transformational. That's what we're talking about. That is a blammo. When you experience that, that's your blammo moment.

Yes, and the onion continues. Yeah. So before we move on, let's just sit with a few questions. What are you running from? Where do you find your identity? Are you bound in a victim mentality? And are you willing to fight from victory instead of striving for victory?

Think about that for a minute. Are you willing to fight from victory? Because in Christ we are victorious. Are you willing to fight from victory instead of striving for victory? Yeah. That phrase is so powerful. Fighting from victory. So what do we mean by that? As men and women found in Christ, we should understand that our adversary, know we have an adversary, is most commonly known as Satan.

the enemy of our soul, he was already defeated through Jesus' death and resurrection. The adversary is defeated. Do you believe that? The adversary is defeated. He has no authority over Christ or those who are under and in Christ's authority. Yes. mean, fighting from victory, changes how we stand, it changes how we pray, how we think, how we respond.

And, you know, we're not scrambling here for scraps of hope. No. You know, that's not what God created us to do. We are standing under Christ's authority. That's it. That's it. And we got to remember that Satan only operates in a belief system that enables him to do so. I want to say that again.

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (28:16.295)
Satan only operates. He's only got the sway over you that you allow him to have. He only operates in a belief system that enables him to do so. So we got to stop enabling his operation and stand on our Christ given authority. The only catch to this is that we must believe it. So what do you believe? Do you believe it? Do you believe what the word says? Do you believe that he is who he says he is?

I believe it. And this is where John chapter 5.

and chapter nine give us a powerful contrast because in John chapter five, you know, Jesus encounters a disabled man at the pool of Bethesda and Jesus asks him, do you want to be made well? But the man doesn't receive or reject Jesus's offer. He just gives him an excuse. And that really exemplifies the victim mentality. It does, it does.

He's burdened, the man at the, the paralytic at the pool is most commonly known in John chapter five. He's burdened that others always get into the pool before him. His victim mentality binds him to his finite ability and it blinds him. The healer is standing right before him. It blinds him to Christ's infinite healing ability.

So what I love here is that Jesus doesn't give, he gives no ear to the excuse. He simply looks at the guy. he doesn't help him into the pool. He doesn't say, Hey, I'll be right back. He doesn't say, Hey, help me. Help me help this guy. He doesn't, he doesn't listen to the excuse. He gives no ear to the excuse. He looks at him. He issues a call to action. He says, get up, pick up your mat and walk. He issued the man a call to action.

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (30:12.725)
And then later, you know, when confronted, the man pushes accountability and presents another excuse. Then we read that he didn't not know who Jesus was. And that was such a sobering point because he took what the Savior had, but he didn't receive the Savior. And how often do we want Jesus's stuff? know, how often do we want what he has instead of

receiving Him just for who He is. Yeah. We want His hand over His presence. His face over His face. provision, we've heard it said and I think we've said it. We want His provision over His presence. Yeah.

Not so much, you know, and that comes with maturity, maturity and faith. later in chapter five, Jesus, he sees this fella in the temple and he says, see, you're made well, sin no more so that nothing worse happens to you. And I believe this is a call to the man's identity, a call to recognize from whom his healing came from.

But the man, he didn't acknowledge him. He didn't acknowledge the healer. He took the healing. He received Jesus' mercy for healing, but he failed to believe in the healer. He took the healing and he left the healer. If you go into chapter five, John chapter five, you'll see that he submitted to religion over relationship.

And that's such a warning. You can experience help and still stay bound up if you don't surrender to the one who came to save you. And that's Jesus. Jesus. Yeah, no one else came to save me. Right. Yeah. He's the only one. I listen to these pop culture songs and save you. Who's going to save you when I'm gone? And this hasn't, you know, when saving no one. We might be able to comfort someone for a time, but we're not. I know this guy's

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (32:31.531)
saving anyone. It's not within our finite ability as humans to save anyone. But in contrast to the paralytic at the pool in chapter five, got John 9 portrays, John chapter 9 portrays Jesus healing the man born blind. Jesus acts

with authority when he smears mud on his eyes and he tells the man to go wash and to pull the salome and the man returns with full vision. That'll preach all day long, but we'll keep moving. Yeah, and unlike the man in John 5, when asked how he received his sight, that man boldly proclaimed that Jesus was his healer. He did? Boldly.

He didn't hesitate. Yeah. And when this guy, when the man formerly born blind, when he was confronted by the religious authority, he confidently stood on his new identity. He was not the man born blind. He was the young man full of vision. He had a new identity. He knew who he once was, but more importantly, he recognized his healer and he proclaimed Christ in the

face of religious authority.

just know this, and he knew Jesus. He recognized, I mean, they cast him out of the synagogue. The religious authorities cast this kid out of the synagogue, and it didn't matter to him because he saw the light of the world, literally. He saw the capital L light of the world. He received and believed Jesus as Messiah, Savior, and everything transformed. Transformation followed.

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (34:27.275)
And near the end of the chapter, Jesus reveals himself as the son of man and the sight-given man declares, Lord, I believe, and he worshiped him. And here we recognize that religious condemns, religion condemns, but relationship gives vision. Jesus never advocated religion. Oddly enough, the enemy's deception over millennia would have...

people see Jesus as the most religious character of all time when there's no religion in him. He's all about relationship. Yeah, but that was the solution right there. Not just receiving a benefit, but receiving and believing in Jesus. Not clinging to that victimhood. He could have clung to that victimhood, but as you said, he saw the light of the world and he embraced his truth identity that was found only in Christ.

not staying in darkness, but following the light of the world. Yeah. So friends, if you only see these accounts as ancient biblical stories, we encourage you to move out in faith and believe in their truth. they're just so... We believe that this actually happened. This is historical.

and it's still going on today. We believe in their truth. We encourage you to believe in their truth. And once we came to believe in the truth, the truth set us free to live in our truth identity. Capital T, truth, identity, found only in Christ Jesus. For decades I was bound by debilitating lies, victim mentality, destructive emotions, and diabolical behavior. I was bound as a liar.

as a thief, as an addict, and I wallowed in the whole pour me mentality until I nearly died. I was emotionally crippled and blind, and Jesus awakened me. He woke me up. I am awake, but not woke.

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (36:42.701)
Jesus showed me how to amend my sin, and as I chose to follow Him as my companion, life continued to transform. The longer and closer I follow and the more that He shines His light.

into my life, into our life, into the life of our home and into life of our family. And today I faithfully believe, we faithfully believe his truth and he's exponentially altered every aspect of our lives. Every aspect. Every aspect has strengthened our marriage. It's only Jesus. And today, today I can say that I see clearly and I walk progressively with him and I fall and I get back up and he's like, come on, let's try.

Try it again. I am worthy. I believe that I am worthy of all that He places before me and so are you. You are worthy of all He places before you. So I ask you, do you believe it? What lie do you need to release to Him? Yeah, so we all have a choice to make.

Will we remain bound by the enemy's lies and excuses or will we move out by faith and follow the light of the world so that we can see the new life before us? What choice are you gonna make? We encourage you toward the latter, friends. The light of the world never disappoints. That's right.

What we believe ultimately forms our identity and our heartfelt beliefs, they're either gonna bind us in darkness or they're gonna free us into His glorious light. We are created for more than we can see. We are created for life.

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (38:32.441)
And hey, did you know that your past does not define you? Did you do you know that we are not the sum of our failures? I know it. I know it too. Do you know it? Do you know that you are a child of the one true and living God and that there is power and authority and authentic Christ centered belief? Yeah. So we're we are learning.

from the fall and we're rising in Christ's truth. We are not victims. Say that with me right where you are. You are not a victim. I am not a victim. In Christ we fight from victory. We are more than conquerors through Christ who loves us and we are worthy of his love and his love makes us worthy. In him we are new living and life speaking creations.

Yeah, there's power and authority in our praise and our prayers and our worship. We speak life over ourselves and over others. And today and every day, every day, our freedom is in God's truth. And today, this is what we believe. And every day, this is what we will continue to believe. So it's your time.

This is your time now to open up the windows and let his light shine over you and your family every day. Let his light and truth saturate your life daily. Let his love permeate your heart and mind as you pray, as you listen, as you journal through your time together. And always speak life over yourself. Speak capital L life over yourselves and others. Speak his word over yourselves and over your family, over your children, over your coworkers.

Shall we pray? I think we should. All right. Let's do it. Father, we thank you. Thank you for your truth. Thank you for that identity is found in our truth. Identity is found in your truth. Lord, would you spotlight for as you have spotlighted for us, would you spotlight for our friends? Will you spotlight for our brothers and sisters for for all listeners? Or would you would you show them?

Allen & Stacy Jo Thorne (40:55.199)
what they must release so that they might receive your truth. What lie must they release today, so that they may receive your truth? But we thank you that your spirit does more in a moment than we could ever cover in a lifetime. We thank you that you are the healer, Lord, and we seek you daily, Lord. Let us seek you daily. Your word says, as we seek you with all of our hearts, we will find you.

We love you. We love you, Father. We love you, Jesus. We love you, Holy Spirit. And today, we thank you for the ability and the belief that we can and we do release everyone and everything to you, Lord, and trust that you will make all things right as we surrender to your great, perfect, and pleasing will. It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.

Well, friends, thank you for spending this time with us today. And if you're interested in being healed from the inside out, please message us at faithfullyinvested.com and we will get you more information. Absolutely. And we pray that this encourages you deeply, challenged you honestly and pointed out.

pointed you clearly to Jesus. That is our only goal, is to point you to Jesus. It is. And until next time, keep investing faithfully, because when you do, he brings the increase. And don't forget to keep believing for it. Amen. God bless you and your families. Bye-bye.