SPEAKER_00: If you're just coming into part four of a series, you might feel lost.
SPEAKER_00: So let me catch you up very quickly.
SPEAKER_00: In the book of 2 Corinthians, Paul writes this letter to a church in a city called Corinth.
SPEAKER_00: This city was, um, I think the most correct way to say it is soups jacked up.
SPEAKER_00: They were really messed up people.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of chapter two, he he says this, and I love what he says.
SPEAKER_00: He says, For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.
SPEAKER_00: The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.
SPEAKER_00: On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.
SPEAKER_00: We said week one, strongholds are those lies that we build walls around and we protect them as true.
SPEAKER_00: And when it comes to your strongholds, you have two options.
SPEAKER_00: You can protect them or you can do it by the Bible says, and demolish them.
SPEAKER_00: And he says we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.
SPEAKER_00: And then here's the line that really formed the series.
SPEAKER_00: And we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Pause here for just a moment.
SPEAKER_00: You need to understand the reason your thought life matters is our lives are always moving in the direction of our strongest thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: So essentially, what you need to do is you need to start thinking about the stuff you think about because the stuff you think about is ultimately shaping you.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, if your life isn't going the way you're hoping it's going, in the book of Romans, Paul gives us this beautiful picture of what to do.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 12, verse 2, he says, all of our lives are being formed.
SPEAKER_00: But I want you to see what he means.
SPEAKER_00: He says, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but instead be transformed.
SPEAKER_00: How?
SPEAKER_00: By the renewing of your mind.
SPEAKER_00: Then and only then will we be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will.
SPEAKER_00: Essentially, Paul says that all of our lives are being formed by something.
SPEAKER_00: It's either being conformed, which is like using a cookie cutter to be formed into the shape of this world, or it's being transformed by saying, God, I want your word and your voice to completely change me and make me new from the inside out.
SPEAKER_00: Well, for the last few weeks, we've spent a lot of time talking about how we can protect our minds, how we can block negative thoughts, how we need to pay attention.
SPEAKER_00: So many of you have told me you took a social media fast or a news fast and how it's just been so refreshing to you.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about how you can protect your mind, block your mind from negative thoughts getting in.
SPEAKER_00: But today, I want to do the difficult challenge of talking about what do you do when those thoughts are already in there?
SPEAKER_00: What do you do when your mind feels completely overrun by negative, toxic, defeating, uh depressed kinds of thought?
SPEAKER_00: What do you do when that stuff is already in there?
SPEAKER_00: Some years ago, I went to a counselor and he used this illustration that helped me so much.
SPEAKER_00: He said, our minds are a lot like a filing cabinet.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't tend to think of it this way, but our our lives and our minds, over time, all these thoughts, they kind of get filed away in our minds.
SPEAKER_00: The older you get, the harder it can be to access some of those thoughts, but they're all in there in some capacity.
SPEAKER_00: And the truth about many of us is that we've got some negative experiences, some negative thoughts, and every once in a while something will happen and it'll cause us to open up the drawer and we'll just reach in and we'll just pull out a folder.
SPEAKER_00: It might be a folder like rejection.
SPEAKER_00: And we didn't we didn't mean to trigger that thought.
SPEAKER_00: But for whatever reason, something happens and you feel passed over, something happens and you don't get chosen, and it reminds you of that sixth grade uh soccer team, and they were the last one picked, and they said they didn't even want you, but they had to pick you.
SPEAKER_00: Or you you asked that girl out and she said no, and it just over time it does something to you, it weighs on you, or we we reach into the the old drawer of thoughts and and then shame comes in.
SPEAKER_00: And shame is, in my opinion, one of the great works of the enemy.
SPEAKER_00: If you had to read the book, The Scarlet Letter in high school, maybe you remember it, the the scarlet letter of A for adultery.
SPEAKER_00: I I think this is actually the scarlet letter S, the scarlet letter of shame.
SPEAKER_00: Because if the devil can't defeat you, he'll distract you.
SPEAKER_00: And so we wear shame as if it's the truest thing about us.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us, something happens, and then we reach into the filing cabin of our minds, and the the picture that comes out is the picture of fear.
SPEAKER_00: And what happens is there was a moment in your life when you choked in the moment, when you didn't step into the moment with authority, and every time after that, that you have a moment of opportunity, you you you stop yourself because you know that you're not gonna make it.
SPEAKER_00: Fear wins the day.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us, it's like something happens and we reach into the filing cabinet of our life.
SPEAKER_00: And again, I could come up with a thousand of these guilt because of something you did, and it just overtakes you.
SPEAKER_00: For some of us, it's trauma, and something happened to you.
SPEAKER_00: Something was said about you, you were touched inappropriately, you trusted someone and they abused you.
SPEAKER_00: And what can happen with trauma that's interesting is it can actually become the identity that we live from.
SPEAKER_00: And so we start acting as victims in every one of our relationships.
SPEAKER_00: You are not the trauma that happened to you, you are not the worst moment of your life.
SPEAKER_00: That's a moment, but it's not the end of your story, it's just a part of your story.
SPEAKER_00: For some of us, it's a it's betrayal.
SPEAKER_00: Betrayal hurts, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because the truth about betrayal is it was someone you trusted.
SPEAKER_00: It was someone you thought had your back.
SPEAKER_00: And what you found with betrayal is the person you thought had your back was the one who just stabbed you in it because they were close enough.
SPEAKER_00: For some of us, our minds, the files that we pull out all the time is lost.
SPEAKER_00: And it's like we're scared to trust anybody, we're scared to give our heart to anybody because everyone we love tends to leave us or die, and it just hurts.
SPEAKER_00: And for a lot of us, if we could just be honest, there's been seasons of our life where one of those or countless other examples in our minds they cause us to feel stuck, unable to step into tomorrow with a sense of holy confidence, unable to dream about a preferred kind of future because we're just somehow stuck.
SPEAKER_00: Truth is, a lot of churches spend a lot of time talking about the extremes.
SPEAKER_00: We talk about the person who is depressed and anxious all the time and suicidal, or we talk about the moments of joy and unmitigated happiness.
SPEAKER_00: But but most of us, if we could just be honest, we live somewhere in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: Where it's like somewhere along the way, the pain of the filing cabinet of our mind has kind of dimmed a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: We're just kind of in the middle where where God has helped us, where the friendships and the counsel of others has blessed us, and it's moved us a little bit away from the blunt force trauma of the moments, but we still deal with it because it's still there, it's still in our minds.
SPEAKER_00: It's like the healing has started, but if you could just get real for a moment, you're still just kind of stuck in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: If that's where you feel today, today's message is for you, because I want to talk to you about what do you do with that stuff that's in there, and how can we trust God to completely heal us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, to understand how this happens and why this happens, you need to first of all understand how God made you.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: The Bible teaches us that God Himself is what we would call a tri-une God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a really hard thing to explain, but God is one God in three distinct persons God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And if you if you listen to people, they'll try to explain this mystery in a way that almost dumbs it down.
SPEAKER_00: They'll say, like, well, God is like Neapolitan ice cream, three distinct flavors.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, that's good in that ice cream is good, but that illustration breaks down.
SPEAKER_00: They'll say, God is like an apple, there's three parts there's the the seed, the meat, and the skin.
SPEAKER_00: And like, it doesn't all work.
SPEAKER_00: This is the divine mystery of who God is.
SPEAKER_00: He's one God in three distinct personalities, and we are created in the same way as a triune being, but we are created in the image of God, Genesis 1.27 says, and we have three unique parts that make us us.
SPEAKER_00: There's our spirit, there's our soul, and there's our body.
SPEAKER_00: There's our spirit, that's the part that's connected to God.
SPEAKER_00: There's our soul, that's kind of our emotions, our thoughts, that that is the inner man of us.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's our body, which is the part that all of us can see, touch, and feel with.
SPEAKER_00: And the mistake a lot of us make is we tend to think that what we are is a body that has experiences in life.
SPEAKER_00: We're just a body, this is all we are.
SPEAKER_00: This is why, by the way, that when you go to a funeral for someone who passes away who wasn't a follower of Jesus, it feels so shallow and empty.
SPEAKER_00: Because all we're doing is we're saying goodbye to a body, is what it feels like.
SPEAKER_00: The truth about you, you need to understand, is you're not just a body that has other things.
SPEAKER_00: You are a spirit with the soul that lives in a body.
SPEAKER_00: You're a spirit with the soul that lives in a body.
SPEAKER_00: And when you start to understand this, you start to understand how God tends to work in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: When you start to understand that God made you as a triune being, and there's parts of God's nature that will heal our body, parts of his nature that will heal our soul, parts that will heal our spirit, you start to understand this process with God.
SPEAKER_00: Let me show it to you like this, okay?
SPEAKER_00: You need to understand that when God changes us and saves us, salvation is instant.
SPEAKER_00: When you make this decision to say, Jesus, I give you my life, change me and make my heart new.
SPEAKER_00: When this happens and you follow Jesus, instantly you are saved.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture uses the word justified, which means you are in legal right standing with God.
SPEAKER_00: It is a miracle that happens in an instant.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: But the process of sanctification is different because it's a process.
SPEAKER_00: Salvation is when God saves us.
SPEAKER_00: Sanctification is a churchy fancy word that means the process of becoming more and more like Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to understand this.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that the sanctification process is actually two things.
SPEAKER_00: It is number one, positional.
SPEAKER_00: Positional means that the moment you make this decision to follow Jesus, he forgives you of your sins.
SPEAKER_00: It's a, it's a sit it's a it's a moment, it happens, but then there's also the process of becoming more and more like Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is the reason some people get frustrated.
SPEAKER_00: They'll say, Well, I made the decision to follow Jesus and I prayed the prayer, but I still struggle with something.
SPEAKER_00: Lustful thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: I still struggle with my addiction, I still struggle with my pain.
SPEAKER_00: It's because the process of becoming like Jesus is just that, it's a it's a process.
SPEAKER_00: It takes time.
SPEAKER_00: And just in the same way that we become more and more like him, and it takes time.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to see this.
SPEAKER_00: The process of God healing your mind of all the years, of all the files you've accumulated in the file cabinet of your life, it takes time.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to show it to you this way.
SPEAKER_00: In the book of Mark, there's this interesting story.
SPEAKER_00: What's interesting is a lot of people think that this story is the same story that's found in John chapter 9.
SPEAKER_00: It's a similar miracle, but it's an entirely different story.
SPEAKER_00: And I love Mark's account of this unique miracle that Jesus does.
SPEAKER_00: Mark chapter 8.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna read the whole thing all the way through quickly, okay?
SPEAKER_00: It says they came to Bethsaida, and some people, I'm gonna come back to that phrase in a moment, some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him.
SPEAKER_00: He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside of the village.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus does this weird thing.
SPEAKER_00: It says, when when he, Jesus had spit on the man's eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we'll talk about that maybe, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, he put his hands on him, Jesus asked this question.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Do you see anything?
SPEAKER_00: And certainly this man, this blind man has heard the stories of Jesus' miracles.
SPEAKER_00: He certainly heard that Jesus was healing people, and he got excited.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't think he was excited about Jesus going, I don't think that was exciting, but he couldn't see it.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't know what was going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus does this thing, and he does what feels like the beginning of a miracle, and Jesus said, Do you see anything?
SPEAKER_00: And the man looked up and he said, I see people.
SPEAKER_00: They look like trees walking around.
SPEAKER_00: It's like he could kind of see a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he moved from being fully blind to what we'd call legally blind, whereas a person can, they have some a little bit of sight, they can see shapes and colors a little bit, but maybe not with clarity.
SPEAKER_00: But he's not fully healed, he can just kind of see.
SPEAKER_00: And the story goes on and it says, once more, Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: I want you to take just a moment and I want you to identify in your heart where is the part in your life, in your mind, your thoughts, your emotions, maybe it's made its way to your heart, where you feel like that offense, that hurt, that betrayal, that depressive episode, that anxiety, it's there, but you find yourself like the man Jesus healed, and he's touched you, he's helped you, you've gotten better, but you're just not all the way there.
SPEAKER_00: It's like that pain has this way of fogging up the glasses through which you see the world around you.
SPEAKER_00: And you can see a little bit, but you're in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: You can see more than you used to see.
SPEAKER_00: That pain that used to, it used to uh stagnate you, that pain that used to cause you to be unable to step into tomorrow, that pain, it's not as much as it was, and you can see a little bit, but you're not seeing clearly.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to hold on to that for just a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go back to the story.
SPEAKER_00: The first verse we read, Mark chapter 8, verse 22, it says they came to Beth Seda, and I want you to see this.
SPEAKER_00: It says, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just pause here for just a moment.
SPEAKER_00: I find this interesting because a lot of times in Mark's gospel specifically, he'll reference people who were involved in a story, a healing, or a miracle, but we don't know their names.
SPEAKER_00: History doesn't record their names, history doesn't record anything about them.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know what they did for work, we don't know what they did for fun.
SPEAKER_00: We don't even know how many they were.
SPEAKER_00: There was just some people, and the people aren't identified by name, title, or position.
SPEAKER_00: They're identified by what they did.
SPEAKER_00: There's some people who had the courage to bring a blind man to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to understand this thing.
SPEAKER_00: The blind man is healed.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's a process, but he's healed because some people had the courage to just get him to a place where Jesus was.
SPEAKER_00: We live in this unique culture that has made our faith, what we believe about God, we've been forced to believe that it was intended to be private.
SPEAKER_00: Like you become a Christian, awesome, good for you.
SPEAKER_00: Just don't talk about it, right?
SPEAKER_00: And at the Thanksgiving table with your family, there's two things you don't talk about.
SPEAKER_00: You don't talk about religion and don't talk about politics.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're forced to believe that our faith was intended to be quiet and private, and it's just it's sacred.
SPEAKER_00: It's just it's just for me, but I want you to see this.
SPEAKER_00: It's not true.
SPEAKER_00: We are designed by God to experience God in community.
SPEAKER_00: Like, like this man doesn't get the healing if not for his community.
SPEAKER_00: This man doesn't get to Jesus without his community.
SPEAKER_00: This man doesn't experience a miracle without some people bringing him to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I need you to understand.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you're walking through, whatever pain has lodged itself into your mind and it feels like you'll never get past it, you need some people in your life that walk with you through this.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you my story, then let me explain how we do it here at Access.
SPEAKER_00: My story is uh five years ago, our church, our board of overseers, blessed me and my family with what's called a sabbatical.
SPEAKER_00: It was just an intentional break.
SPEAKER_00: It took about two and a half months off just to rest and recover.
SPEAKER_00: And the first month that I took this sabbatical, I'll be honest and tell you, I was angry all month.
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know why.
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't angry at my wife, she's perfect.
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't angry at my kids, they're almost perfect.
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't angry at them.
SPEAKER_00: It was like something in my identity got taken away from me and I was just angry.
SPEAKER_00: The second month, I actually felt like I rested.
SPEAKER_00: And going into the third month is when my dreams started coming back, started dreaming again for the future.
SPEAKER_00: So, as a part of the process of sabbatical, my overseers asked me to go to a counseling center designed for pastors, and so I just did it to honor them.
SPEAKER_00: And I went up to Ohio, the beautiful state of Ohio.
SPEAKER_00: I go there and I meet with this counselor, and I'm gonna be honest with you, my attitude wasn't right.
SPEAKER_00: I went to this meeting and I thought, I do what you do.
SPEAKER_00: Like I counsel people.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the one people come to when they've got issues.
SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't say it to anybody like this, but I kind of thought it in my heart, like, I don't need this.
SPEAKER_00: This is just me checking a box.
SPEAKER_00: On day two of my counseling, my counselor identified something I kept saying over and over and over again, and he goes, You you see, you seem to have a lot of hurt in there.
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about it.
SPEAKER_00: And that's when he told me about the filing cabinets of our mind.
SPEAKER_00: What he said is things happen to us and they just get in there.
SPEAKER_00: And you'll think it's fine, you'll think you've moved past it, and then all of a sudden something happens, a song happens, you see someone in the grocery store that you haven't seen in a long time, you hear a story, you see someone on social media, and all of a sudden, all of that pain, all of those emotions come running back to the surface again, and you feel it in your soul.
SPEAKER_00: And we got to talking, and I started talking out loud, and I opened a drawer.
SPEAKER_00: I pulled out one of my files.
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't realize I had this.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I helped hundreds of people with it.
SPEAKER_00: Church hurt.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a very real thing.
SPEAKER_00: If you've got church hurt in your past, I'm sorry you walked through it.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just gonna say something weird.
SPEAKER_00: This would be easier for me to say if I was a guest preacher somewhere else, but this is my church, and I'm still gonna say it anyways.
SPEAKER_00: No one has more church hurt than pastors.
SPEAKER_00: I read a report recently that said the average American has seven significant betrayals in their lifetime.
SPEAKER_00: The average senior pastor has seven every single year.
SPEAKER_00: So I started talking, and I just I just kept going about this.
SPEAKER_00: Church, hurt, church, hurt.
SPEAKER_00: I showed up for these people and they used me and they left me.
SPEAKER_00: I I married them, buried their parents, and they left and rolled a grenade at me on the way out and called me woke or whatever that season of 2020 was.
SPEAKER_00: And I was just like, our church has grown.
SPEAKER_00: At that point, I think we were about 2,000 people a week that came to our church.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, and there's hundreds, hundreds of people who've hurt me.
SPEAKER_00: I told the counselor, I said, I don't like doing things that people like to do.
SPEAKER_00: Like in Lakeland every weekend, there's the farmers market.
SPEAKER_00: I don't like going to that because I love seeing you, but there's always people there who hurt me.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm talking, I I get emotional, I start crying.
SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't cry, especially in front of other dudes, and I'm crying.
SPEAKER_00: And he goes, I have homework for you.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I'm already crying, don't make it worse.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, I want you to go back to your hotel tonight, and I want you to write a list of every person who's hurt you.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, You better get a big old notepad for me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm about to do some work.
SPEAKER_00: Went back to the hotel and pulled the file out.
SPEAKER_00: And I got one of those, like, those notepads from the hotel with the pen.
SPEAKER_00: I said, here we go, let's do this.
SPEAKER_00: And I started writing, and the first few came pretty fast.
SPEAKER_00: I knew who they were.
SPEAKER_00: I got to seven.
SPEAKER_00: Number seven.
SPEAKER_00: And I wrote number seven.
SPEAKER_00: And then I wrote number eight.
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't think of a name for number eight.
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't.
SPEAKER_00: I got to seven.
SPEAKER_00: I wrote seven names of people who had hurt me and who I just you get it.
SPEAKER_00: But I got to eight and I couldn't write number eight.
SPEAKER_00: And I came back to the counselor and I said, Hey, before you even talk, I have this realization like God healed me when I was writing these names down.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, What do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Because when I pulled it out of the drawer, what I realized is I had wildly overgeneralized the number of names in the list.
SPEAKER_00: There's only seven.
SPEAKER_00: Seven people who had significantly betrayed or hurt me.
SPEAKER_00: That was my whole list, was seven.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, I could make a list of thousands of people who I know who love me, who support me, who champion me.
SPEAKER_00: And what was funny in the moment was by pulling out that folder, revealing it to the light in community, God healed me.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, now I want you to hear this.
SPEAKER_00: You need to do this.
SPEAKER_00: This is the reason we make a big deal about you being in an access group.
SPEAKER_00: I don't, I don't need you to be in an access group to give up one more night on your busy calendar.
SPEAKER_00: I need it because I want you to pull the files out of the filing cabinet of your.
SPEAKER_00: Mind and I want you to bring them into the light to experience the healing power of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing I need you to get.
SPEAKER_00: For some people, there's so many files in the cabinet that they need help with.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you, you have matured and you've gotten to the point where God has touched you and healed you and you've walked through it, and you need to be the community that someone else needs.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say it to you like this: never underestimate what God can do when you simply bring someone to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The story tells us about some people, we don't know who they were.
SPEAKER_00: What if you and I just made this decision that sometimes I'm going to be the blind man who needs to get to Jesus, and sometimes I'm I'm just going to be some people, and I'm going to make my life about helping people open up the filing cabinet of their life to get those things to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Back to the story.
SPEAKER_00: It says this Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the billow.
SPEAKER_00: Just a casual observation.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus gets him out of his normal environment.
SPEAKER_00: This is important for you to hear.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you live in a cycle of negativity, a cycle of depression, a cycle of anxiety.
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to say to you, what do you expect?
SPEAKER_00: Like if you don't change anything, what do you expect to change?
SPEAKER_00: Get out of your environment, get out of the places that are causing you to live in that toxic cycle over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: So he goes on and says, When he had spit on the man's eyes and put his hands on them.
SPEAKER_00: And look, I'm gonna be honest with you, people ask me to pray for them every single week.
SPEAKER_00: I have never spit on anybody.
SPEAKER_00: This is weird.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, are we are we good with that?
SPEAKER_00: And and here's an observation about it.
SPEAKER_00: God sometimes works in ways we can't even begin to predict or understand.
SPEAKER_00: How's that?
SPEAKER_00: Like this to me is gross.
SPEAKER_00: But if but if I couldn't see, and Jesus said, we have two options.
SPEAKER_00: Option A is you live the way you want to live, the way you're already stuck forever and ever and ever again, or I can spit on your eyes, and then you'll be healed.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, hawk it up, brother, spit it up right now, do whatever you gotta do, right?
SPEAKER_00: So sometimes God does things in ways we don't understand, and then Jesus does it and he touches him.
SPEAKER_00: And again, we live in this weird culture that the word touch has gone in to mean this like dirty, disgusting kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: I need you to let go of that for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says that there is an inference of spiritual authority that happens when you when you lay your hands on someone and touch them, and Jesus, he puts his hands on the man and says, Do you see anything?
SPEAKER_00: And he looked up, the man looks up, and he said, I see people that they look like trees walking around.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what this says to me as you read it slowly.
SPEAKER_00: It says to me that this man wasn't always blind because he knew what trees and people look like.
SPEAKER_00: Like somewhere along the way he had lost his vision, and Jesus touches him, and a miracle almost happens.
SPEAKER_00: Like, are you with me?
SPEAKER_00: Like it doesn't fully happen.
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying, oh, I see perfect 2020, I see with clarity.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I I kind of, kind of see.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to hear this.
SPEAKER_00: If you find yourself in the middle of that, like if you find yourself, you pull out those drawers of your mind and you look into them and you see, like, I used to be so hurt, but now it's like it still stings a little bit, but I'm I'm not where I once was, but I'm not where I want to be.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just kind of in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say this to you.
SPEAKER_00: Partial healing is not failed healing, it's healing in progress.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus wants to continue the process of healing you, and I need you to get this.
SPEAKER_00: It's not over until Jesus says it is over.
SPEAKER_00: Years ago, I had a friend who had a baby born with like the most uh unimaginable special needs I've ever seen with a kid.
SPEAKER_00: He had everything that you can imagine wrong, and one of the many things on the list was his eyes were bad.
SPEAKER_00: But as a baby, it's like, how do you how do you know?
SPEAKER_00: And I'll never forget when they figured this out, uh, I was with them the first time they got glasses for him.
SPEAKER_00: And they put the glasses on him, and this boy, he was again, he had all kinds of medical challenges, but he would just kind of like look around.
SPEAKER_00: And when they put the little tiny, cute baby glasses on him, his eyes opened as big as the state of Texas, and he looked at his mom and dad and smiled.
SPEAKER_00: I'll never forget that moment.
SPEAKER_00: There's a man who's blind, not from birth, he probably could see at one point.
SPEAKER_00: Somewhere along the way, he lost his sight, and now he's partially able to see, but the story goes on, and it uses two words.
SPEAKER_00: It says this once more.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, somebody say once more.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes, and instantly he was able to see again.
SPEAKER_00: It's like that moment that I saw my friend's son go.
SPEAKER_00: I can imagine that moment of clarity because we serve the God of once more.
SPEAKER_00: That if you find yourself in the middle of your story, if you find yourself not where you once were, but not where you want to be, if you find yourself in the messy middle, let me say this to you we serve the God of once more, who is willing and able to touch, heal, and change you.
SPEAKER_00: In a moment, we're gonna pray for you.
SPEAKER_00: In a moment, if you find yourself just completely overrun by the thoughts of your mind and you're somewhere in the middle, we're gonna pray that the God of once more will once more touch you.
SPEAKER_00: The next verse, we skipped it earlier, but this is what Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus sent him home and he said, Don't even go back to where you once came from.
SPEAKER_00: Like, maybe that's a word for somebody today.
SPEAKER_00: Like, once Jesus heals you, stop going back to that place of pain.
SPEAKER_00: Once you find freedom once and for all, once you get clarity of thought again.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe stop going back to that place that constantly drags you down.
SPEAKER_00: We serve the God of mirror.
SPEAKER_00: For some of you, somewhere along the way you've given up hope that God can fully heal your mind.
SPEAKER_00: Somewhere along the way, it's like you know you're better than you once were, but you're like, I'm just gonna live with like I've just settled into living like this.
SPEAKER_00: This is how I am.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say this to you.
SPEAKER_00: We serve the God of the once more, and I know that he can do it.
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you why.
SPEAKER_00: The book of Philippians, Paul says this says, being confident of this, he who began a good work in you.
SPEAKER_00: He started the healing process, he began a good work in you, he will carry it on to what completion.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to finish what he starts until the day of Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Here's how we're gonna end today.
SPEAKER_00: We're just gonna touch, I ask God to touch our hearts, our minds.
SPEAKER_00: Once more, I want to invite you all across all locations.
SPEAKER_00: Would you stand up with me?
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna do something.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be honest, I'm a little bit nervous about this because we never do this at access, but but I need you to understand this church, church has gotten big.
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
SPEAKER_00: But we've never stopped being a family.
SPEAKER_00: What is a family?
SPEAKER_00: It's people who love each other, who care for each other, who would go to battle for each other.
SPEAKER_00: Look around.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, look that this is your church family.
SPEAKER_00: And if you find yourself today, like the person who's in the middle of a story, feels messy, incomplete, not completely healed, but you can kind of see.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna ask you to have a moment of courage.
SPEAKER_00: I'm asking nobody to close your eyes.
SPEAKER_00: This is I need you to have a moment of courage.
SPEAKER_00: If you want God to touch you once more, would you just raise your hand right now?
SPEAKER_00: Just have some courage.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, this is all of us.
SPEAKER_00: This is my hands up.
SPEAKER_00: Your hands up, here's what we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_00: In a moment, we're gonna pray.
SPEAKER_00: But because you had courage, I want to invite your church family.
SPEAKER_00: Leave your hands up for me for just a moment.
SPEAKER_00: If it's you, I want to invite your church family.
SPEAKER_00: Would you just take your hands and put it on the shoulder of the person around you?
SPEAKER_00: We don't normally do this.
SPEAKER_00: I admit that it's a little bit weird, but you know what?
SPEAKER_00: We're family.
SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna pray.
SPEAKER_00: And as I pray, I want you to just, if you're praying, I want you to pray for this person.
SPEAKER_00: If you're the person receiving this prayer, just say, God, I'm open to whatever you have for me.
SPEAKER_00: And let's do this in this place.
SPEAKER_00: God, in this place, we trust you.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that you're the God of once more.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us have found ourselves in the middle of our story, more healed than we used to be, but still a ways to go.
SPEAKER_00: God, would you give the second touch of complete healing?
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for community.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for lives that can help us.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the voices that speak life into us.
SPEAKER_00: May we have the courage to leave familiarity, leave the place we once were.
SPEAKER_00: We invite you to touch us once more.
SPEAKER_00: May our minds be at rest and at peace.
SPEAKER_00: May we walk in healing and wholeness in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that you're the God of once more, and may tomorrow look different because you've touched us once more.
SPEAKER_00: We give you praise for it in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.