Framed: Defeating Thoughts

In this message from the “Winning the War in Your Mind” series, we’re reminded that the biggest battles we face happen in our thoughts. Drawing from 2 Corinthians 10:3–5, this sermon challenges us to take every thought captive and reframe the way we see our circumstances.

We explore how cognitive bias shapes our thinking, why negative thought patterns can control our lives, and how to develop a “thought filter” rooted in truth. Through powerful stories and biblical insight, we learn that while we can’t control what happens to us, we can control how we frame it.

Real transformation comes when we replace lies with God’s truth—found in His Word—and walk in the victory we already have in Jesus.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm so excited to be a part of this series. I'm going to stop saying this is my favorite series because I say that every time, but I really feel like the Lord is always just so real and how he leads our church into what we should be teaching and studying, not just as individuals, but as a whole. But I really think this is a really practical series. And if you haven't been with us, we're in a series called Winning the War in Your Mind because we believe, just like Jesus taught, just like Paul taught, that the biggest battles that we fight are right here between our ears. And so we are constantly at battle in our minds. And it's just been super practical. Pastor Steve has done an incredible job the past two weeks just teaching about neuropathways and all that incredible stuff and just really blending the science of the mind with the truth of the word of God. And man, I'm just I'm just excited that I get to be a part of that. I'm nowhere near as articulate or intelligent as Steve, but I'm going to try my best today. Like I said, this is such a practical sermon series. I was actually I wasn't here last week. I got to watch online, and I was at me and Merritt Turner, our financial administrator, we were at a continuing education conference. And so Wednesday I was actually on a plane on the way back, and I was sitting in the middle seat just because it was Merritt's second plane ride. And on the way down there, nobody opened the window for him. And he was like, Can we just open the window? I was like, you know what? I am a brother that loves you, and you can have the window seat. And it was the most adorable thing I've ever seen. Just him gazing out the window the entire flight. It was a beautiful thing. But I ended up sitting next to this guy who I later found out was the retired CEO of a multi-hospital conglomerate. And so he talked about Porsches, I talked about pews, and we had a great conversation. But I'm sitting there working on my sermon, and so I'm sitting there working, and I was reading, I was actually reading a Christian psychologist article, and as I was reading this, I was reading about something called cognitive bias, and I was taking notes and reading and writing sermon stuff and had my ear pods in, and he tapped me on my shoulder, and uh I took my earpods out and he said, What do you do for work? And I was like, Boy, you're nosy. I told him, I said, I'm a pastor. And he was like, What? I thought you were some kind of like psychologist. And I was like, Boy, you are fooled. You know, psychologists don't sit in the middle seat. And uh, and so I asked him, I said, Are you a believer? And he said, Yeah, I'm a follower of Jesus. I surrendered my life to Christ when I was 17. And so we talked about the Lord, but he said, My church doesn't do that. Like, my church doesn't teach practical Christianity. He's like, This is so intriguing to me. Like, like I've never seen pastors that teach like how to do what the Bible tells us to do. He's like, This is so great. Tell me more about this talk. And so I told him, I was like, man, it's incredible. Like, Jesus is always talking about the battle of the mind and how you know Paul was talking about taking thoughts captive. And so we've just been teaching our people and talking to our people about what it looks like to really take control of your mind. If this is the battleground, then we, through the power of Jesus, can take control of our minds. And he was so intrigued. But I enjoyed having this conversation with him, and and it really just reminded me, man, that God is so timely and leading our because initially when we were thinking about this series, it's like, is this really where we want to go? What we want to do? Is this the way the Lord's leading us? And and so just I've just learned that this is God's will and so practical. So if you haven't been a part of this series, I really encourage you to go back and watch the first two messages. It is so good. Um, but this is what the word of God says. In 2 Corinthians chapter 10, verses 3 through 5, it says this, it says, For we live in the world, for though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with, listen to this, Christian, are not weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. You have divine power to demolish strongholds. This is what he says in verse 5. It says, We demolish arguments and every pretension that has set itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought, we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. In the same breath, Paul says, Hey, we are in the world, but we don't fight like the world. We don't have worldly weapons. Instead, we have godly weapons, we have this divine power to really win the battle. And so the bad news is that every single one of us is in a fight. We're in a war. But the good news is that we have the tools, we have the weapons we need to win that war. The even better news is that, you know, like I've read the whole book at the end, King Jesus kind of wins the whole shebang. And so we fight out of a place of victory. And so here, Paul is letting us know, like, we fight this battle. We are in spiritual warfare, but that battle happens here. And so, if I were to title my message, I would call it framed, defeating thoughts. And what I want you to see, believer, is that you have the power to defeat your thoughts. Your thoughts don't have to defeat you. Like, you have the power over this. And this is super serious stuff. I know that, like, if this is your first time with our church or your first time in church at all, you're probably thinking, seriously, this is what we're gonna talk about? We're gonna talk about thoughts. Well, thoughts that they they are not harmless. I want you to understand this. Thoughts are not harmless. They're actual spiritual battlegrounds. This is serious business, the the matter of the mind and thoughts, and every single one of us, we are not immune to this. It doesn't matter if you are old or young or healthy or strong or weak, if you are married, divorced, widowed, you have three kids, you have no kids. It doesn't matter where you stand on the spectrum, whether you're rich or poor, it doesn't matter. Every single one of us in here are subject to the battle of the mind, and it is a very, very serious matter. Um, I've been reading and studying a lot about AI just because I don't want to get you know caught off guard. I believe that a lot of times when new technology comes along, uh people, especially churches and pastors, are really slow to understand certain things, and they usually get caught sideways. And so I just want to be uh the best pastor I could be and understand what's coming down the pipeline to be able to help people deal with it and understand it. So I've been reading a lot about AI, and there's listen, here's what I've learned. I'm not trying to make anybody scared of AI. I I've learned that it's just an algorithm written by man, and so it's basically an algorithm that takes information and you know kind of compiles it together with what it already knows and spits something out. I know there's some people in here smarter than me going, oh, it's so much more complex than that. I realize that. But for those of us that are, you know, on my brain level, it's basically what it does. And here's what I will say: the more I use it and the more you use it, you'll realize that it's probably just best to go to Google. Like, please do not go to Chat GPT and ask it if a berry is poisonous. Um, just don't make major life decisions based on ChatGPT because there's a lot of times that I I have asked it, I'm just gonna admit, I have asked it stuff before, and it's come back and told me something, and I'm like, that is not like I know that's not true. Like, I and I realized that day I am smarter than Chat GPT. So, not smarter than Steve, but smarter than ChatGPT. But here's the sad truth about it. I I was reading this article about AI, and it gave the three top ways or the three top questions that people have been using AI, using artificial intelligence. Uh, these are some of the main three prompts that have been put into multiple AI platforms, and they should blow your mind. They should devastate you the same way they devastated me. The number one thing, without a doubt, that people are putting into Chat GBT and other AI chatbots is how to commit suicide painlessly. The number one thing that people are using AI for is to learn how to commit suicide painlessly. Number two is how to end a relationship. How to end a relationship. These are two, like these are two very dark, drastic pieces of human psyche that people are going to artificial intelligence for. The other one is they're using it for personal communication, a personal relationship. They're actually so desperate and so lonely that they're having an interaction, a communication with artificial intelligence and asking it questions. They are actually fleshing out their thoughts and having a dialogue with someone here in this moment. Here's the crazy thing, church. The questions that the entire world is asking, not just these three prompts that people are using Chat GPT for, but why am I created? What's my purpose to do? Am I worth anything? Like, am I loved? All of these major questions that that humans ask inerrantly, they listen, they're all answered in Scripture. They're all answered in the person of Jesus. And church, we have the answer. We have to understand that there is a hurting, dying, lost world out there that is searching for truth, that are battling their thoughts. Listen, the same thing that we're learning about how to be a Christian and have our thoughts and our minds renewed to be able to follow Jesus, we also get to take this information and equip and help other people that are so desperate for this. So listen, thoughts are not just some harmless casual conversation. This is a spiritual battleground with serious complications. So here's what I want to teach you about. Pastor Steve has done an incredible job. He has sounded like a neuroscientist up here teaching us stuff about neuropathways, and I'm not going to try to do that, but I do want to teach you something a little clever. So I walk out of here and you're like, man, he he should wear that collar shirt more often because he's smart in it. But here's what I learned about reading about cognitive bias. Cognitive bias, and listen, I had this whole definition of what cognitive bias is. It was about three pages. I plugged it into Chat GPT and got, I'm just kidding. I took this whole definition and just kind of whittled it down to the most simple explanation. Some of you are psychology majors and you're gonna be like, it's more complex than that. I get it. But basically, a cognitive bias is a mistake in reasoning based on personal experiences or preferences. It's really a mental filter. And so what happens is your mind is constantly creating neuropathways to make decision-making a faster process. And so, in making it a faster process, it takes previous things that have happened to you, experiences or preferences, and what happens is cognitive bias is created and you end up making bad decisions, poor judgment based on something that has skewed your mental filter. It's the reason why when someone is wounded or harmed by the opposite sex, they create a cognitive bias that that opposite sex is violent and not trustworthy. It's the same reason why when someone has been abandoned by one person, they automatically assume that the entire world is going to abandon them at some point or another. The other reason that we see cognitive bias is in church hurt. And we've either experienced church hurt or know somebody that has, and um, man, and I'll just say that church hurt is real, but what happens is someone who claims the name of Christ, or someone that was at your church, when they did something wrong to you, your brain rewired a cognitive bias that made you think that the entire church is against you, and that is not true. And cognitive bias is the reason that so many people walk out of the church and never come back. And let me say this, some of you probably came in here today for the very first Sunday, and you've been out of church for a long time because of church hurt. And let me just say this: I am so sorry on behalf of the church, and I and I hope you're saying, well, it wasn't this church. Listen, if you're at this church long enough, you can experience church hurt because we're all human. Every single person in this room is human. But I just want to say sorry for what someone has done to you that has created the neuropathway that has caused you to label this place or this group of people or Christianity in a negative light, because I want you to know the enemy takes that and will use that to separate you and isolate you from what you need most. So this is what happens. It happens to everybody. Like no one is immune to cognitive bias. I I've had this, I had this uh when I first went into ministry. When I first went into ministry, I just had this like sunshine and rainbow, rolls-colored glasses, like everything is gonna be okay. I thought that when you surrendered your life to ministry and you stepped into serving the church, everybody patted you on the back and they were like, as proud as your grandmother is of you. Like I just thought everybody's gonna love me. I'm going in ministry, everybody's gonna love me. And I found out that is not true at all. And so y'all are good. Y'all are a good church. I'm not talking about you right now, but even when you're an executive pastor, like pastors, we just don't have normal conversations, do we, Steve? There are no normal conversations on Sunday morning, like beforehand, especially as an executive pastor, somebody wants to say, it's too hot or it's too cold, it's too loud, it's too quiet, it's too dark, it's too light, the carpet's too purple or not purple enough, or is this purple? I don't even know if this is purple anymore. But like this is the conversations that I get to have. And then after church, I see y'all. Y'all I'll have y'all have normal conversations after church, and I'm so jealous. As soon as this is over, y'all are gonna go up to each other and be like, you want Mexican or Asianos, right? Taco Bell or Zaxby's, right? I just listed all four restaurants other than the great Hawassi Brew that's in town. I had to say that because John's my friend and he's in the room. Um but but right that's the conversations y'all have. I don't have those people walk up to me and they're like, hey, Pastor, I'm smoking crack and beat my wife. What should I do about it? I'm like, can we go to Mexican? Hey, what number one? Okay, step one, stop doing that. Step two, schedule an appointment with Pastor Austin. Um you know, like this is just what happens in ministry, and so I had this unrealistic expectation, as hilarious as that is, like we do that a lot of times. We have an unrealistic expectation based on a preference or based on a past experience, and we step into life with that decision-making process already made up for us. But here's what I want to teach you. I want to teach you a tool called reframing. And reframing is creating a different way of looking at a situation or a relationship by changing its meaning. Y'all remember when you were taught to do this as a child? Okay, apparently no one in here knows how to do that. Can y'all? That's not right either. All right, make a diamond, everybody. I'm gonna teach y'all this right quick. Can y'all do that right there? Okay, and then rotate one hand so they go together like this. If you're not doing it, I'm gonna stand up here until we all get to do it. Okay, now you can look through that, okay, and you can frame what you want to do. You have the ability to frame your life, to frame situations, to frame circumstances, and to be able to carve out and focus on what you need to focus on. You have the ability to frame these things. You can't control what happens to you, but you can control how you frame it. Here's what I want you to know. I am not saying that bad stuff will not happen to you, and I'm not saying that the bad stuff that happened to you is not important or not real. It is true. Like bad things happen to you, and you do not get to control that. Many of us in this room, we have been harmed by some of the people that are closest to us. And we can't control that. But what we can control is how we frame it. We can begin to look at stuff like inconvenience and see it as an opportunity. Like when we went through the whole table series and we talked about the eight to fifteen people that God has placed in our life for us to reach, as we were doing that, God began to bring to your mind people in your life that are consistently there, and you were like, oh, they are so inconvenient. Like they are so consistent in my life, but they're just a drag. What if you were to see that, reframe that as that inconvenience is an opportunity? Usually the messiest people are the ones that are most opportune to share the gospel with. And so, what if we reframe the way we think about everything in our life and about our situations and how we can move forward? So, take every thought captive. You get to choose your frame, take every single thought captive. Now, when we went flying, um, that was awesome with merit. Uh, it was incredible. When we got to TSA, I just had a ball. It was so much fun. If you've ever been to TSA and went through airport security, it is like already one of the most stressful situations. But if you've never been in it before, like it is you just have no idea what's going on. Okay, because they put you in a line and you don't know. Like, do I give them my boarding pass? Do I give them my ID? Do my passport? Like, do they need a blood sample? And then you get in, you shoe, like, do my shoes stay on? Did my belt come off? Like, what do I do? Like, I mean, and I feel like a criminal. Every time I go in there, I have flashbacks to being booked. And so, like, I'm going through this line. Some of y'all just found out I was in jail. Um, and so, like, we're going through this line, and I'm just like watching Merritt. And you know the routine when you get in there, they're like, laptops and cell phones out of the bag if you got a hoodie on pick it off. You know, like, oh gosh, and Merritt's just like shaking, you know, and he goes through and he puts all the stuff on there, and the guy gets him in, and he's like, put your feet right here and put your hands like this, no, like this. And Merritt's like this right here, and he's like trembling. And then he walks out, and the guy goes, You have something in your pockets? And he was like, It's just my wallet. And he goes, I told you to take it out of your pockets. And it's like, oh my gosh, and Merritt's like, here you can have my wallet and all my money. And then they finally go through. And so then we go to get our bags, and there's two belts in TSA. Y'all know what about I'm about to say. There's the good belt, and then there's the uh-oh belt. Merritt's bag went on the uh-oh belt. I just walked away. They're like, Whose backpack is this? I was like, I saw that gentleman with it right there. He's like, it's my bag. It's my bag. And he goes, Okay, come over here, sir. Is there anything in this pocket that I need to know about? And Merritt's like, I he doesn't even know what's real anymore. You know, he's like, I have no idea. And the guy reaches in and pulls out a water bottle. You can't have this. Chunks in the trash. He goes, here you go, have a nice day. We walk out of there. Now, after I consoled my friend and brought him back to reality, I got to thinking, I was like, man, what if we treated our thoughts like TSA? What if we had a thought TSA, and every single thought that came into our mind, we just scanned it, we interrogated it, and decided whether or not it fit, and we threw it out. If TSA is so concerned about keeping a water bottle off the plane, why are we not concerned about keeping negative thoughts out of our mind? You cannot have a positive life with negative thinking. So why are we not serious about the thoughts that come into mind, what we put into our mind, what we see, what we hear, what we listen to, and then what we think and what we let live in our mind. Just because every thought enters your mind does not mean it deserves to stay. I watch so many students when I was doing youth ministry be defined by their thoughts. They would say things to me like, I'm just a worry, I'm just a worrisome person, like I'm just a worrier. Or they would say, I'm just angry. I get violent sometimes. Or the one thing I hated to hear more than anything is I have an addictive personality. And they begin to let that thought pattern, that cognitive bias, dictate the way they make decisions, and it ended up controlling them. So Paul said, take every thought captive. Have a thought TSA or a TSA. And I think Paul gets the authority to be able to say this because as you read through the New Testament, like Paul actually lived out this principle in his life because Paul, listen, Paul had the worst story in the New Testament. Like the things that that we don't want to happen to anybody, they ended up happening to Paul. But he always reframed it and he used it for the glory of God. And in Philippians 1:12, he he addresses this. Like I feel like Paul, Paul had this dream. He knew if he got to Rome, he could preach the gospel to one of the most influential civilizations in the world, and it would spread like wildfire. He knew this. And so he thought, if I could just get to Rome, I would be a preacher. And by the time he got to Rome, he was a prisoner. And he could have been very negative about it. He listened he had every right to just be like, man, I'm throwing in the towel. This is not for me. Like, this did not turn out like I thought it was gonna turn out. I'm done with it. And actually, this is what, before I read the scripture that he actually wrote, I want to read you what he could have wrote. And so this is gonna be what I'd like to call the new whiner's version. Um, it's gonna be on the screen. Now, this is not a real Bible verse. Okay, if this is your first time in church, this is not a real Bible verse, okay? I am a clown, and so this is just the way my mind works, and so this is what Paul could have wrote, and this is what I think a lot of us end up saying sometime. Paul could have wrote this as he's sitting in jail. He could have said, Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me is really awful. As a result of what people have done to me, I will no longer be servant and I'm never going back to the church. That's what, listen, that's what many of us have said before. And this is what Paul could have said. He had every right to do this because he's sitting in this terrible situation. But instead, what most people think is bad, he began to frame it as good. And this is what he actually said. Is so powerful. He says, and I want you to know, my brothers and sisters, that everything that has happened to me here has helped spread the good news. Now that's perspective. That's a filter. He said, for everyone here, including the whole palace guards, knows that I am in chains because of Christ. And because of my imprisonment, most of the believers here have gained confidence and boldly speaks God's message without fear. He said, listen, while I'm locked up in here, the brothers and sisters out there, they're encouraged. They're preaching more than I could ever preach. And this is what he said too. He says, for including the whole palace guards, this is what you need to know about Paul. In this moment, he is chained to a guard, and he is chained to a new guard every eight hours. Every eight hours. And there are they're the most uh influential guards because he's a high priority. So every eight hours, Paul gets a new guard. Who's in prison now, right? I mean, y'all barely let me preach 35 minutes. That brother gets eight hours with a new person. I'm giving y'all a whole series. Lock me down. I'm gonna tell you the gospel. We're gonna start with Genesis 1.1, and I'm gonna take you to Revelation. Like, you just get the whole gospel. And so what he ended up realizing is man, this is not an inconvenience. This is actually an opportunity for the glory of God. You cannot, you cannot allow your thoughts to control your life. Here's what I want you to hear, everybody in the room to hear this, that you can control control your thoughts. Your thoughts do not have to control you. You don't, we don't have to listen to ourselves. Instead, we can talk back to ourselves. We're taught at an early age, especially as southerners, like you just don't talk back. But let me give you permission. You can talk back to yourself because yourself says some dumb stuff. And sometimes you just need to be like, that's dumb. Get the thought, TSA police in here, and let's just throw that thought out the window because this is crazy. That's what we need to do sometimes. We need to realize that our thoughts don't have to control us, that we can actually control our thoughts, that we have power to be able to do this, and we're actually empowered through divine weapons to be able to make this happen. What if, and we all do this, right? I don't think anybody is immune to this. We all do this, right? We've all had these dumb thoughts that come into our head. Like we're walking somewhere and someone looks at the ground and we're like, they hate me. They hate me with all their guts. Like they they've never loved me. And that thought gets into our, and then we're like, everyone in here hates me. What if the thought TSA would just come up and say, hey, that's a lie. They're looking at the ground. Maybe they were having a bad day. Maybe their shoe was untied. Who? What? You're crazy, Jeremy. They love you. It's crazy. Like, let's just throw that thought out. Like, you need to talk back. You have the power to talk back to yourself. But here's what I do want to tell you: this is not Christian optimism. I'm not telling you to ignore your situations. I'm not telling you, situations are not real, circumstances are not real. Bad things happen to good people. Okay? Like, I'm not saying that. This is not like just ignoring reality. Faith does not ignore reality, it actually reframes it through the lens of who Jesus is and who he says he is. Like, this is not let's just ignore what's going on. Let's let's let's reframe the opportunity that we have. And so, man, yesterday we celebrated the life of Caleb, our brother, and uh I almost forgot this morning that he wasn't here because man, that brother's spirit has impacted so many people, um, including yours. And and I told you this yesterday. The fight goes on through you, sister, um, and through so many of us that were impacted by him. But Caleb had this filter. He had this more than anybody I know. Let me tell you about Caleb just a little bit if you don't know who I'm talking about. But Caleb was a um he was a Navy corpsman, he was a medic in the Navy, and uh he was on a ship and there was a nuclear incident and there was a plasma ball that was burst out in the engine room. And when that happens, the engine room is automatically filled with water and chemicals to prevent that radiation from getting out. And when this happened, uh there were some young men in this room that were injured and possibly dying in that moment. And as a corpsman, he got the call to respond. And as everybody was suiting up in their equipment to prevent radiation, um, he knew that those guys didn't have enough time for him to put his stuff on, so he went in and he did what a hero does and saved these men, and they're still alive today. But because of that exposure to radiation, he had a brain tumor, and on Tuesday, that brain tumor took my brother's life, um, and he died a hero's death. But Caleb had more struggles, and I'm not exaggerating, more struggles than anybody in this room. He hurt all the time. I knew it. You could see it. He never said it. He had more struggles than anybody in this room, but he had more joy. I'm telling you right now, he had more joy than any of y'all put together times 10. That brother was so full of the Holy Spirit, and he was so full of happiness and joy, he was the goofiest thing, and man, he would just he just loved on everybody. If you ever had the honor of taking him either to a doctor's appointment in the waiting room or to Walmart for four and a half days, um then you got to see that man with love on everybody and pray on every he would pray over the entire waiting room at a doctor's office, and he was probably in the worse situation than anybody in that room. He had a filter, he had a frame that he saw life. Here's what I've I've learned from my brother Caleb, and here's what I want to honor in this moment. And let me tell you this: he was not ignorant, he wasn't dumb. He he didn't like he he knew he was sick, he knew he was hurting, he knew he was dying, but this is what he knew. Here's Caleb's frame. He knew that life was a blessing, every second of it was a blessing, no matter how bad it hurt. He knew that the love of Christ was the cure for all, all things and all people. He just wanted to sprinkle Jesus on every single person that he came along with. You will still see little rubber Jesuses throughout our entire community. I don't know how he got those things out, but they were just everywhere. And so he also knew this. He knew that time was short and the harvest was plentiful. He had a sense of urgency to do what God had called him to do. Many of us walk past people that we need to have conversations with or we need to love on. We walk past them because we don't have enough time. And Caleb's filter, he couldn't walk past them because he didn't have enough time. So listen, I want Caleb's filter. I want to look at life. I want to be in a place where when life throws its hardest, nastiest challenges at me, I can see it as not an inconvenience, but an opportunity to do something. I want to see that God is in the middle of everything, that God is working all things together for the good of those that love the Lord. Like I want to live like the Apostle Paul, and I want to live like my brother Caleb. This is what Jesus said in John 17. In John 17, Jesus is praying for you. He's praying for the believers. He says this, he says, I'm not asking you to take them out of the world, but to keep them safe from the evil one. He said, They do not belong to this world any more than I do. Make them holy by your truth. Teach them your word, which is truth. Just as you sent me into the world, I'm sending them into the world, and I give myself as a holy sacrifice for them so that they can be made holy by your truth. If cognitive bias is built on a lie, the only way to combat it, the only way to replace it is with truth. You have to have truth. As Jesus is getting ready to go to the Father, he's like, man, I'm leaving these guys here. This is my family, these are the ones you gave to me. They're gonna stay in the world. I know how nasty the world is, I know how hard this is gonna be, I know the challenges they're gonna face. You know, most of them are gonna be killed because of me. And so as I'm leaving, I just need you to strengthen them, Father, with your truth. You have to have truth. I I got this stack of Bibles over here. And let me ask you something. Who in here has like at least five Bibles in their house? At least five. Okay. I have a stack of Bibles that just mean the world to me. Some of them are just so sentimental, some of them have just taught me so much, some of them have come from special people in my life. But let me tell you something about these Bibles. They are absolutely useless in this stack. They're useless, closed. And I know, like, I know what you're thinking right now. Like, I love the Word of God. Even as I said that, you're like, they're not useless. And most of us in here, listen, we would fight somebody that ever did anything to a physical copy of God's word. Like, you will not dishonor the word of God. But here's the thing we refuse to open it. Some of you, the words on the screen is the most scripture that you've read this entire week. Some of it's the most scripture you've read in this entire month. And I'm not saying that to beat you up. I'm just saying that if you want to saturate yourself in God's truth, you have to open his word. It must be open. You have to, and I know, listen, I'm right there with you. I know how hard it is. It is a discipline to get in the word, to study God's word. It is a discipline. It is so hard to do this, but you have to force yourself to do it because this is where the truth is. You want to know the truth. We are saturated in so much of the world. We have to be intentional about saturating ourselves and the truth of God. I want to show you two Bibles. This right here, um, this is my dad's Bible. And my dad's Bible was given to me at his funeral. They gave it to me. And at my dad's funeral, neither one of us, me nor him, were a follower of Jesus. So I don't know why I held on to this because I really didn't care about the word of God at my dad's funeral. My dad dried of a drug overdose, and let me tell you something about my dad's Bible. It was never read. I'd love to sit up here and tell you that my dad is in a better place, but my dad never trusted Jesus as his savior. My dad's life was not transformed by the word of God. That's why when my dad died of a drug overdose, I was already two years into my own addiction. It wasn't until I was 25 that I met Jesus and He transformed my life. He delivered me from an opioid addiction and he set me on new ground and gave me a ministry instead of an addiction and completely transformed my life. And let me tell you something about my life. My life has been transformed and it's constantly being transformed by the Word of God. My kids' lives, my two young boys. They know, they see Daddy study the Word of God, they see him read the Word of God. I read it to them, I pray it over them. Their lives are being transformed. Must be open. The other Bible I want to show you is this one right here. It's in the pew pocket in front of you. And we say this just about every week. If you do not have, and listen to me, if you do not have a physical copy of God's word, please take the one in front of you. We have cases of them in the back. We pray over them. They come in here after every service and they fill these pockets back up, and we have about 10 to 15 go out of this church every day. I hope all of them, listen to me, I hope all of them go out of here today because we believe in the physical copy of God's word. But if you take this Bible and you take it home and you put it in a stack, or better yet, you put it somewhere like this right here. We're gonna put it on a slot display like this. This house believes in the word of God. We value the word of God, but you never crack it open. There is no transformational truth in there for you. If you want to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, you need to replace every lie that has been put in there by the world with every truth that wants to be put in there by the Holy Spirit through the power of God. The psalmist said it this way in Psalm 119. He says, How sweet your words taste to me. They are sweeter than honey. Your commandments give me understanding. No wonder I hate every false way of life. Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light to my path. He says, No wonder I hate every false way of life. The only way that you're gonna hate the false ways of life and be able to identify them as the false ways of life is to be able to know the true way of life, which is Jesus. He says, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. And no man comes through the Father yet by me. And so if you're not a follower of Jesus, if you're not a believer, I want you to know this that the very first thing you need to do is to not open up the word of God. That's gonna come, but to trust in the word of God, to trust who Jesus is. Jesus came here to die on a cross so that everything could be made right. He literally said in John that he was gonna give himself as a sacrifice so that you could be made righteous through his truth. So the first step you need to do is to surrender your life to Christ, to trust him as your Lord and Savior. Like many of the people that we celebrated in baptism, like the 14 brothers that gave their life to Jesus at the men's conference, and like many of us in the room, to surrender your life to the Lord Jesus.