SPEAKER_00: Hey, I'm Steve Holt, the senior pastor of the Road at Chapel Hills.
SPEAKER_00: This is the Road Podcast.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: My heart is to empower you to change the world.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this message impacts you.
SPEAKER_00: Here now is our guest speaker.
SPEAKER_01: So I believe with all of my heart that humanity is amazing.
SPEAKER_01: Literally, humanity blows my mind.
SPEAKER_01: People literally spend their entire life just studying one aspect of humanity.
SPEAKER_01: Doctors spend an entire lifetime studying the human body just to understand how it works and how God has knit that together.
SPEAKER_01: Humanity has incredible potential.
SPEAKER_01: However, humanity is not meeting that potential.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, we look at our world and we look at death and destruction and we look at, you know, so many people who are unmotivated, people who don't want to go get jobs, who are content to sit on their couch and receive a paycheck from who knows where and just do nothing.
SPEAKER_01: But God is calling us to great potential.
SPEAKER_01: And the thing is, I believe that this also translates into the church, where we as Christians can actually not reach our full potential in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So that's what I want to talk to you guys about today.
SPEAKER_01: And to start off, I'd love for you to turn your Bibles to Mark chapter 12, verses 28 through 30.
SPEAKER_01: And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked, Which commandment is most important of all?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus answered, The most important is, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
SPEAKER_01: And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
SPEAKER_01: This is one of the most well-known verses throughout Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, in the church, it's probably considered a little cliche because we've heard it so much.
SPEAKER_01: And we know that the overall meaning of this passage is saying that God wants us to love him with every part of us, with every part of our being.
SPEAKER_01: But in the last two years, God has shown me that there is a lot of value, there's a lot of power in breaking up these different attributes of humanity to see what it really means to love God with every part of who we are.
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's interesting that when God is telling us, He didn't just say, Love me with everything you are.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Love me with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength.
SPEAKER_01: He builds distinction between that.
SPEAKER_01: And we see that back in Deuteronomy as well, that he says, Love me with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind.
SPEAKER_01: So what I'd love to do is I'd like to break some of these down for us today.
SPEAKER_01: And I'd love to just look at what the Bible says about each of these attributes.
SPEAKER_01: Now, when we're approaching the attributes of humankind, you can't really approach them as individuals.
SPEAKER_01: Now, because they're all so interwoven.
SPEAKER_01: And what helps me is when I think about these different attributes, heart, soul, mind, and strength, I think of them as more of a Venn diagram.
SPEAKER_01: Some areas are unique to each area, but other areas are shared.
SPEAKER_01: So in approaching that, that kind of helps me.
SPEAKER_01: Another visual element that helps me think about the separate uh um parts of our being is um a actually comes from a movie.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if I were to say this in kids, all the kids would be like, oh, whoa, because it comes from a Marvel movie.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, there we go, this is good, this is good.
SPEAKER_01: Right, okay.
SPEAKER_01: Well, anyway, it comes from Doctor Strange, and you'll you might remember this part in the movie where the wizardess woman, I don't remember if she was a good guy or a bad guy, but anyway, she like stripes this epic pose with Doctor Strange, and it goes into this awesome slow-motion effect where Doctor Strange's body moves, but then his soul or his spirit exits the body as well, and you're able to see the division.
SPEAKER_01: Now his soul is represented by a transparent uh replica of himself.
SPEAKER_01: And so this helps me, believe it or not, think about us as more than just a physical person.
SPEAKER_01: We have a soul.
SPEAKER_01: We have invisible attributes about us that make us made in God's image, that make us unique from all of other creation.
SPEAKER_01: And when we look at the Bible, we see that we are continually referred to as souls.
SPEAKER_01: So now one thing that is not necessarily in Scripture, but kind of what I attribute to the soul because it helps me to kind of categorize things, is I add talents and personalities in there with our soul.
SPEAKER_01: Just as our physical body has attributes, whether it be our hair or our freckles or whatever facial or body features that we have, our spirit or our soul has these features as well.
SPEAKER_01: And I believe these features are our talents and our personalities, the parts of us, the invisible parts of us, that make us unique, that make us who we are.
SPEAKER_01: So the word soul is mentioned 459 times in the Bible, and we're continually referred to as souls.
SPEAKER_01: Genesis 2, verse 7 is the first time we hear about this, and it says, And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
SPEAKER_01: This is really cool, and we're gonna come back to that.
SPEAKER_01: But that's the first mention that we have of soul in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: And then through Leviticus, through Numbers, we continually see people referred to as souls with phrases such as, if a soul sins, this will happen, or a soul will be cut off, time and time again throughout those two books.
SPEAKER_01: In the book of Acts, uh, chapter 2, verse 41, when it talks about people being added to the church, it refers to them as souls.
SPEAKER_01: And 3,000 souls were added to the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, after we die, our souls are what live on.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew 10, verse 28 says, And do not fear those who can kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.
SPEAKER_01: Rather, fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
SPEAKER_01: This is our soul.
SPEAKER_01: It's our invisible man.
SPEAKER_01: It's the part of us that nobody sees, but it's responsible for what God breathed into us.
SPEAKER_01: That's what God breathes into us.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, the word soul actually means breath, which I think is really interesting.
SPEAKER_01: The soul is the breath of God within us.
SPEAKER_01: So now let's move on to heart.
SPEAKER_01: Now, um, once again, moving back to that Doctor Strange analogy, we see that invisible man exported out of the physical man.
SPEAKER_01: So when we talk about heart in the Bible, it continually gives the heart attributes within the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: And um, but it's not talking about our physical heart.
SPEAKER_01: We know that our physical heart is what pumps blood to every single cell in our body, which is super fascinating.
SPEAKER_01: Every part of us is is receiving life from our heart.
SPEAKER_01: So when we think about that invisible body, that invisible part of us, when I when talking about the heart in Scripture, I think of the heart as that life flow of our soul.
SPEAKER_01: It is what gives every part of, every fiber of our soul life and breath, and it's what provides the life flow to our souls.
SPEAKER_01: So, heart is mentioned a thousand times throughout the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's really interesting because we know that the heart is so important to our physical bodies, it's also emphasized, our spiritual heart is emphasized, that importance in throughout Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: So, reading through Scripture, we see that our heart has moral capacity.
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah 17, 9 says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.
SPEAKER_01: Who can know it?
SPEAKER_01: So our heart has moral capacity, and of course, we know that we're saved by believing in our heart.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 10 10.
SPEAKER_01: For if it is with your heart that you believe and are justified.
SPEAKER_01: Our heart has dreams, our heart has desires.
SPEAKER_01: Uh Psalms 37, verse 4.
SPEAKER_01: Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
SPEAKER_01: Our heart has desires.
SPEAKER_01: David continues, it's in fact it's all throughout the Psalms.
SPEAKER_01: My heart yearns for you, my heart cries out for you.
SPEAKER_01: Our heart, the life flow of our soul, has desires, it has emotions.
SPEAKER_01: We can read through the Bible, sorrow of the heart, gladness of the heart, my heart rejoices, fear of the heart, discouragement of the heart.
SPEAKER_01: And then lastly, reasoning.
SPEAKER_01: Our heart has the ability, our life flow of our soul has the ability to reason.
SPEAKER_01: The fool has said in his heart, he's reasoned in his heart, there is no God.
SPEAKER_01: Psalms 14, 1.
SPEAKER_01: And we see this continually throughout scripture.
SPEAKER_01: So the heart, which is the life flow of our souls.
SPEAKER_01: Now we're moving into mind.
SPEAKER_01: The mind needs a lot less explanation because we know that it's the center focus of all of our reasoning and all of our cognitive abilities.
SPEAKER_01: And it's really interesting that in uh secular psychology, the all of the focus is on the mind.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, they believe that everything comes from the mind.
SPEAKER_01: Um, there was a movement several years ago that believed that our conscience was based out of our mind, that everything could be broken down to the neurological connections within our mind.
SPEAKER_01: So, however, your mind, whatever mind you were born with as a child, would determine what sports you like and what preferences you have in gender and what preferences you have in everything.
SPEAKER_01: And they tried to boil it all down to neurological things.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the mind is so amazing.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, we only use a fraction of the mind that God has given us, but our mind is not the centerplace of all of the action.
SPEAKER_01: God has given us other attributes as he breathed life into us that it's important to recognize.
SPEAKER_01: And God, but God does have a lot of things to say about our mind, and we'll go into some of those in a moment.
SPEAKER_01: Lastly, is strength.
SPEAKER_01: You know, our physical bodies don't receive a lot of attention in the church today, which I think is really, really sad because God gave us a physical body, and there's been so many times throughout like my history in church where I'll just hear people, and it does not even old people like I'm just so excited to be gone with this body, to be in my glorified body in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: And believe me, I'm young and I cannot wait for that day.
SPEAKER_01: But God has given us a physical body for a reason.
SPEAKER_01: In creation, he didn't create souls that walk around, he created physical bodies that he breathed life into.
SPEAKER_01: So our body is important to God.
SPEAKER_01: Furthermore, when Jesus came, he didn't come in his glorified body or in his spirit, but he actually wrapped himself in a physical body to come here to earth because he found that extremely necessary.
SPEAKER_01: Our bodies are very important, and scripture gives us instructions on our bodies, which we will go to in a minute.
SPEAKER_01: So, in review, we have the soul, which is the invisible part of ourselves, talents, giftings, our personality.
SPEAKER_01: We have the heart, which is the life flow of our souls, desires, dreams, emotions, and passions.
SPEAKER_01: We have our mind, which is the thoughts, reasoning, learning, intellect, imagination.
SPEAKER_01: Side note on imagination.
SPEAKER_01: We don't really know where it resides, heart, mind, soul, or whatever, but that is an incredible philosophical argument for the existence of God.
SPEAKER_01: Because the imagination has absolutely no value in an evolutionary standpoint.
SPEAKER_01: You don't need an imagination, but we actually have the ability to imagine things and create things that have never existed before.
SPEAKER_01: Which to me is so fascinating.
SPEAKER_01: When I was teaching art, I was like, guys, you have an incredible ability.
SPEAKER_01: You have the ability to imagine things and to think up things that have never existed before.
SPEAKER_01: It's so fascinating to me.
SPEAKER_01: Um, so our minds and then our strength, which is our physical bodies, muscle and physical abilities.
SPEAKER_01: Humanity is amazing.
SPEAKER_01: I am not humanistic by any stretch of the imagination, but when we examine humanity and we examine our entire being as a whole, it's easy to see that humanistic mindset because when they just compare them to just all of the other creatures in the animal kingdom, it's like, whoa, they're amazing.
SPEAKER_01: We must be gods.
SPEAKER_01: And obviously, there's a part of that because God literally breathed into us.
SPEAKER_01: So they're kind of getting somewhat close to the truth.
SPEAKER_01: But that's the thing, is humanity is amazing.
SPEAKER_01: We have the ability within our souls to actually connect with the spiritual world.
SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit comes and indwells our soul, and we can connect to all of the resources of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: This is so powerful.
SPEAKER_01: We have a heart.
SPEAKER_01: We can have strong passions and desires that drive us either down a dark road or can drive us down a really uh good road.
SPEAKER_01: But it there's strong, there's strength within our heart.
SPEAKER_01: And then we have a mind.
SPEAKER_01: People can dedicate their their self and discipline themselves to use their mind and and utilize every single part of it to learn.
SPEAKER_01: They can come up with new scientific advancements, and so many things are possible if just for people using their mind.
SPEAKER_01: You could literally sit in a wheelchair, not do anything in your life, only focus on just using your mind, and you could do incredible things because your mind has such potential to learn and think.
SPEAKER_01: And then we have our strength.
SPEAKER_01: Athletes will train and will dedicate themselves to disciplining their body, and they will do amazing things.
SPEAKER_01: I love looking at the Olympics, and you see these athletes who are just top-notch, top of the game, who have disciplined their bodies and used their bodies to accomplish unthinkable things.
SPEAKER_01: Like I watch it and I'm just like, that is really amazing.
SPEAKER_01: But this is a quote from James Peterson, who is a Christian psychologist.
SPEAKER_01: He says, human beings have enough caring for people, concern for the environment, curiosity to learn, desire for justice, worry over the way things are, and broad interest to right the wrongs in the world that we could take on everything that needs creating, organizing, or beautifying.
SPEAKER_01: We have incredible potential.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason we know this is because we were created in God's image.
SPEAKER_01: You know, so many people wonder, the humanists wonder, like, why?
SPEAKER_01: How?
SPEAKER_01: How do we become so amazing?
SPEAKER_01: It's because we were literally made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_01: Genesis chapter 1, verse 26 to 28 says, And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, over the cattle, and over the earth uh over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.
SPEAKER_01: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.
SPEAKER_01: Male and female created he them.
SPEAKER_01: I think it's interesting that in this passage he mentions it four times.
SPEAKER_01: Technically, one of them is the likeness of God, but he says four times in three verses or two verses, that we were made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_01: When we were just this lump of clay on the ground, just a physical body just laying there on the ground, God breathed his soul, he breathed life into us, and now we have access to these incredible attributes that make us like God.
SPEAKER_01: We have an imagination, we have creativity, we have a mind like God, we have a soul, we have a heart, and we know looking in scripture how it describes each of these things of God having it, God's heart.
SPEAKER_01: David described as a man after God's own heart, or that we get to have the mind of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: We know that God has the these attributes as well.
SPEAKER_01: And we know that we were created to be in communion with God.
SPEAKER_01: He gave us a soul to be in uh fellowship with him, he gave us a heart to allow us to experience excitement and all in his presence.
SPEAKER_01: He gave us a mind to continually be baffled by his complexity, and he gave us a body to work and strive for him, which is another side note.
SPEAKER_01: We were designed to work.
SPEAKER_01: We're like, oh well, before the fall, everything was beautiful and awesome.
SPEAKER_01: It's like actually, God put Adam in the garden to work it.
SPEAKER_01: Work it.
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, side note.
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, um the problem is that our heads, hearts, another quote, our heads, hearts, and souls of this world have become short-circuited somehow and are not working well together.
SPEAKER_01: We are broken.
SPEAKER_01: There's a problem with humanity.
SPEAKER_01: The reason that we're not fulfilling our full potential is because we were designed to be in communion with God, to be in fellowship with God, and now there's a wall dividing us from God, and we are cut off from the life flow of our souls, which is God Almighty, because of sin.
SPEAKER_01: Because sin came into the world and completely ruined our being, completely unaligned our being.
SPEAKER_01: The same author talks about this in uh a concept that he calls being flat-brained, which has probably been on the screen for the last 15 minutes, and everyone's like, what on earth is flat-brained?
SPEAKER_01: I love this concept because it is so like it's it literally is what happened to me.
SPEAKER_01: But the the author talks about being flat-brained, and he paints this picture that it's just a picture for analogy or for understanding purposes.
SPEAKER_01: It's there is not necessarily any truth to where these things reside.
SPEAKER_01: But for the sake of the analogy, he puts your soul in your stomach, your heart in your chest, and your mind in your head.
SPEAKER_01: And he says that when your soul becomes sick, whether from emotional trauma that's never been dealt with, from sin, from bitterness, from a number of different things, it swells and it inflates.
SPEAKER_01: And what happens is it puts pressure on your heart, which is restricting your heart flow, and then it therefore puts pressure on your head.
SPEAKER_01: Now, with the with the heart as the life flow of our soul, you could say that the heart gets sick, and that would even appear more biblical because there's so much context about the heart.
SPEAKER_01: So, either way, if your heart inflames, it's putting pressure on your mind.
SPEAKER_01: And what he does is he says that what happens is your brain gets flattened against the top of your head, and it's putting pressure in all the wrong places.
SPEAKER_01: And that's where he gets the term flat brained.
SPEAKER_01: And he says it puts pressure on your eyes, so you're not able to see with perfect clarity.
SPEAKER_01: It puts pressure on your ears and you're not able to hear with perfect clarity.
SPEAKER_01: With a compressed brain, you're not able to think clearly or reason clearly.
SPEAKER_01: And so you become flat brained.
SPEAKER_01: Now, an example of short there's short-term flat braining and there's long-term flat braining.
SPEAKER_01: And an example of short-term would be, you know, the dentist's dad is working on people's stinky mouths all day.
SPEAKER_01: He's super frustrated, but he has to be calm and collected for the customer.
SPEAKER_01: Then he gets home after having all of these emotions inflaming within his stomach, and he gets home and his wife's like, honey, how was work?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, it was awful.
SPEAKER_01: And he like blows up at his wife, is like, Whoa, chill, what was happening?
SPEAKER_01: Well, according to the psychologist, he was flat braining.
SPEAKER_01: There was pressure built up that he couldn't see, couldn't even hear, or think clearly, because he had so many emotions that hadn't been dealt with.
SPEAKER_01: So, um, but the the problem, so everyone can relate to that one.
SPEAKER_01: But there's also long-term flat braining, which is a a lifetime of not dealing with certain emotions, of not dealing with certain sins, and allowing them to fester and to grow.
SPEAKER_01: And it expands your stomach, putting pressure on your heart.
SPEAKER_01: You're not dreaming like you used to, you don't have the desires like you used to, or maybe you never did, and then you're not thinking clearly the way you used to.
SPEAKER_01: And what's really ironic about putting the pressure in this visual analogy on the top of your head is that it leaves plenty of room for your mouth.
SPEAKER_01: So he says that our mouth never has a problem with saying things, and yet our brains somehow are not thinking clearly.
SPEAKER_01: But does this not describe the state of our world?
SPEAKER_01: Like we look around and we're like, you watch the news, and you're like, what is wrong with them?
SPEAKER_01: I don't understand.
SPEAKER_01: It's not logical.
SPEAKER_01: You know what?
SPEAKER_01: It's not logical because their brain is flattened against the top of their head and they can't think clearly anymore, but they're saying a bunch of things that they can't control.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, this can this can help us.
SPEAKER_01: This can help us a lot, even in just having compassion.
SPEAKER_01: At least it helps me, because when I see someone acting out like that, maybe they're in a supermarket just like yelling at the cashier or or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, you know, that person is probably flat braining right now, and they need to unload the emotional baggage that they have bottled up inside so that they can find healing.
SPEAKER_01: So, what is the answer?
SPEAKER_01: What is the answer to our flat braining?
SPEAKER_01: Now, before I get into the answer, I think it is important to note that you know, we look around the world and we see people with drive, we see people with vision, we see people with the desires of their heart passionately pursuing.
SPEAKER_01: After things in a bad way.
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's worth mentioning that when Satan gets a hold of our soul and he gets a hold of our heart and he gets a hold of our mind and he aligns those things for his purposes, it is scary what can be accomplished through that.
SPEAKER_01: But we know that God is stronger, and that's what we're going to be talking about today.
SPEAKER_01: So what is the answer?
SPEAKER_01: Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1 through 6 says, You were dead in your trespasses and sin, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience.
SPEAKER_01: Does that not sound like a spiritual flat braining where Satan has taken a hold of these different aspects, aligned them for his purposes, and they are completely blind, completely blind to the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: And obviously, you can read tons of passages talking about spiritual blindness, disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.
SPEAKER_01: And we were put, we were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.
SPEAKER_01: But God, praise Jesus, but God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, even when we were flat-brained and couldn't understand, even when we were blinded by our own situations, he stepped in and raised us up.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm sorry, rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: By grace you have been saved and raised up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the answer to the humanity issue that we see in our world.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus came to realign our heart, will, our emotions, our minds for his purpose, for his glory, and he can give us life that is worth living and life everlasting if we will align ourselves to him.
SPEAKER_01: So salvation is when that happens.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said he will give us a new heart, he will save our souls, he will renew our minds, and he will renew our strength.
SPEAKER_01: Praise God that even when we were flat-braining, he loved us.
SPEAKER_01: And he came to save us.
SPEAKER_01: But we know that it's not the end.
SPEAKER_01: We know that Jesus came to save us so that we can be aligned with his will for our lives.
SPEAKER_01: And the thing is, is that we can get into a place where we become flat-brained as Christians.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the reason I'm talking about this specifically is because this has so much to do with my personal testimony.
SPEAKER_01: I was raised in a Christian home.
SPEAKER_01: I would my parents were pastors of a small church, a small country church, and um I gave my heart to the Lord when I was like six years old.
SPEAKER_01: It was um devotions, family devotions, and my dad was reading about hell, and me as a little six-year-old, excuse me, daddy, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: Well, it means if you die and you don't have Jesus, then you're going to hell.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what's hell?
SPEAKER_01: Well, hell is a place full of fire where you're burned forever.
SPEAKER_01: Daddy, I don't want to do that.
SPEAKER_01: So right then and there, I gave my heart to Jesus as a little six-year-old.
SPEAKER_01: But it was when I turned 12 that I gained this understanding where I was like, you know, I've been doing this thing and I have this knowledge, but God, I want to be all in.
SPEAKER_01: I want to live for you.
SPEAKER_01: And um, and that started a journey for me to where my heart was for Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: But who knows, as we grow and mature, things happen.
SPEAKER_01: But God calls us to continue to align ourselves with Him.
SPEAKER_01: He says in Proverbs, to guard your heart, for out of it are the issues of life.
SPEAKER_01: He tells us to renew our mind in Romans 12, verse 2, and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
SPEAKER_01: He commands us to submit our bodies to him.
SPEAKER_01: I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.
SPEAKER_01: Here's our bodies again.
SPEAKER_01: Holy and acceptable to God.
SPEAKER_01: Your body is holy and acceptable to God when you are offering it to him for his purposes.
SPEAKER_01: God loves your body.
SPEAKER_01: And this is um so important in my story.
SPEAKER_01: So um, as I was growing up, um, there was uh, you know, my heart was always for God.
SPEAKER_01: It was always for God.
SPEAKER_01: I would pray for an hour every morning saying, God, I want your will for my life.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to do incredible things for me through me.
SPEAKER_01: I want to be Apostle Paul, I want to do these things.
SPEAKER_01: But as life progressed, there was emotional trauma that happened in my life that I did not deal with.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I didn't want anyone to know about it.
SPEAKER_01: So what happened is it festered in my soul, and it led to then sin becoming to get a foothold in my soul.
SPEAKER_01: Now I was living for God, and I was like, God, I want to live my entire life for you.
SPEAKER_01: And my heart was still, from what I thought, on fire for God.
SPEAKER_01: But I was beginning to lose focus.
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't hearing quite correctly, and I wasn't thinking in terms of how God wanted me to think.
SPEAKER_01: And so my wife and I got to a place where we knew we needed help.
SPEAKER_01: So we went to counseling and we started to unpackage some of this emotional trauma that each of us had in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: We unpacked some of the sins that had taken a foothold in our lives, and we started to see God do something amazing.
SPEAKER_01: And it started slowly, but we saw a progression, and it was so awesome for my wife and I to experience it together because God was lighting a fire in our souls together.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, there was one night, and it was the first time I really remember this saying, we were both lying in bed, and my heart was racing, beating out of my chest.
SPEAKER_01: God was filling me with an excitement, and how I describe it is it was like God gave me a rocket that was already starting to fire off, and it just had a little less velocity as my body weight.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm like trying to figure out what God wants me to do with this, and it was so awesome and exciting.
SPEAKER_01: But I thought I was like, oh, well, maybe this is for this.
SPEAKER_01: So I would pray it into that and be like, God, I pray that this VBS will be the most amazing VBS on the planet.
SPEAKER_01: I pray that you would do, and this is a worthy prayer.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, this is a worthy prayer.
SPEAKER_01: But I thought that that was what it was going to be for, or I thought it was going to be for that.
SPEAKER_01: But God continued to open doors, he continued to renew my mind and give me his thoughts and his heart and his soul, and he began to show me a direction for my life.
SPEAKER_01: For the first time in 24 years at the time, I had a direction for where my life as an entirety was going to go.
SPEAKER_01: I was just kind of chugging along, doing my Christian thing, serving in the church.
SPEAKER_01: I was uh working in full-time children's ministry at the time, but God was like, This is great, but this isn't what I have for you.
SPEAKER_01: I have something more for you in context to your life.
SPEAKER_01: And so He showed me a goal that I could work towards.
SPEAKER_01: I had no idea how I was gonna get there, but I was like, God, now I have something to work towards.
SPEAKER_01: So I started to see the renewing of these different areas.
SPEAKER_01: My mind.
SPEAKER_01: I was like, God, I need to surrender my entire mind to you.
SPEAKER_01: If I'm gonna get there, I'm gonna have to discipline my mind.
SPEAKER_01: So I started a master's program in family psychology because I was like, God, you want me to use my mind for your kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: Don't let me be lazy on this earth and just use my mind to think about the next TV series.
SPEAKER_01: That's, I don't know, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: Bad example.
SPEAKER_01: But then he started to, I saw a transformation in my heart.
SPEAKER_01: I began to receive dreams and desires, but I had no idea where they were coming from.
SPEAKER_01: They definitely weren't coming from me because they were so beyond me that I had no idea how it would happen.
SPEAKER_01: I saw him start to transform my body.
SPEAKER_01: I was like, God, this body needs to be ready to be deployed in anywhere in the world and act on your will and your passion for my life.
SPEAKER_01: So I got in a gym and I started exercising and I started disciplining my body.
SPEAKER_01: I saw God begin to transform these different things and it gave me such an excitement.
SPEAKER_01: Church, it gave me such an uh energy to live that I hadn't had before.
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't even know I was missing it because I was flat-brained.
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't think or see God's purposes clearly.
SPEAKER_01: But when God started to align these different areas in my life, he began to give me a vision beyond myself, he began to give me a passion that didn't come from me.
SPEAKER_01: He began to give me all of these different areas, and it was so very exciting.
SPEAKER_01: And God gave me a vision.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Matt, imagine a generation being raised up that's experiencing what you're experiencing, where they are dedicating their body to the service of my kingdom, when they are dedicating their mind to the disciplined study for my kingdom, when their heart is burning with passionate desires that I have put in there.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine what can happen.
SPEAKER_01: And so that is what the goal of my entire life is going to be is going to be raising up a generation that has these areas in line.
SPEAKER_01: And I believe with all of my heart that it begins right downstairs in the basement with the children.
SPEAKER_01: If they can align their hearts, minds, and souls with God, who can stand against it?
SPEAKER_01: Humanity has incredible potential with God.
SPEAKER_01: So I urge you, and I ask you this question: are you flat braining right now?
SPEAKER_01: I want you to ask God that question.
SPEAKER_01: I don't care how old you are, I don't care how young you are, there can be emotional trauma, there can be sin that's getting a foothold in our lives, which is restricting our vision and hearing for what God has for us.
SPEAKER_01: So I encourage you, what do you do when you begin flat braining?
SPEAKER_01: As I close, we psychologically, something unlocks when you begin to vocalize your struggles, your shame.
SPEAKER_01: That's why uh counseling is so valuable.
SPEAKER_01: But I think it's also interesting that God says, if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that I am Lord, you will be saved.
SPEAKER_01: There's something about that, speaking it out, taking it out of the shadows and exposing it to the light.
SPEAKER_01: And then it's in Christian communion, taking it to other people.
SPEAKER_01: James 5, 16, confess your sins one with another and be healed.
SPEAKER_01: That's why I love the culture of the road.
SPEAKER_01: In your women's groups, in men's group on Tuesday mornings or at the advance, encouraging vulnerability, encouraging getting blood-stained allies.
SPEAKER_01: It's so valuable.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to live flat-brained.
SPEAKER_01: If you confess your sins to God, confess it to others and get in that place.
SPEAKER_01: I've resolved with my heart for this to be my prayer.
SPEAKER_01: God, take all of me.
SPEAKER_01: Take my soul, every part that connects to you.
SPEAKER_01: Would you use it for your glory?
SPEAKER_01: Take my talents and my personality.
SPEAKER_01: Every part of me, God, I want it to be used for you.
SPEAKER_01: God, take my heart, take every dream, every desire, purify my heart and give me your dreams and your desires that I would be passionately pursuing the plan you have for me.
SPEAKER_01: God, take my mind.
SPEAKER_01: Let me study to show myself approved and continually renew my mind in you.
SPEAKER_01: And lastly, God, take my body.
SPEAKER_01: This frail lump of clay, God, use it.
SPEAKER_01: Let me be ready to be activated in any location, any place.
SPEAKER_01: Let me be ready to run towards the plan that you have for my life.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks for listening to the Road Podcast.
SPEAKER_00: It's been my joy to be a part of your life today.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, that's part of what we do here at The Road, and this is what I do in having this Road Podcast is to empower people to change their world.
SPEAKER_00: My passion and desire is that you would take God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit and make that relevant for your life.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the reality is that God has placed your life here on this earth to make a difference.
SPEAKER_00: And if you'd like more information about how to grow in Christ, if you need prayer, if you want more equipping in different areas of your life, go to theroad.org.
SPEAKER_00: God bless you.