SPEAKER_00: This podcast is the Ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information in our church, please visit grandparkway.org.
SPEAKER_00: If you've got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open it up to Romans chapter 8.
SPEAKER_00: Romans chapter 8.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have a Bible, there's one on your row there.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm on page 944.
SPEAKER_00: If you're our guest today, let me just tell you, we've been teaching through the book of Romans, and we're going to go through chapter 8, then we're going to stop, and then for the summer, we're going to do a series on the parables of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But uh in Romans chapter 8, I want to talk to you today about where do we find assurance?
SPEAKER_00: Where do we find assurance?
SPEAKER_00: We didn't plan this.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't think we would be at this point in chapter 8 on this day, after the week that we have had in our nation, in our state, in our own congregation, but under the providence of God we find ourselves here.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a great question.
SPEAKER_00: You may have realized this week that we live in a world where uh a 19-year-old with a pressure cooker can shut down a major city uh in America and lock it down.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's kind of easy to come out of a week like this and think, now, I mean, if this is how uncertain and unstable things are, are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_00: Uh and let me just say, there's assurance that's available for us.
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to read from the Bible, Romans chapter 8, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says this.
SPEAKER_00: It says, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
SPEAKER_00: For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin.
SPEAKER_00: He condemns sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: For those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: But those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace.
SPEAKER_00: For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law.
SPEAKER_00: Indeed it cannot.
SPEAKER_00: Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
SPEAKER_00: You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if in fact the spirit of God dwells in you.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
SPEAKER_00: But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you.
SPEAKER_00: He said, What do you mean with the question?
SPEAKER_00: Where do we find assurance?
SPEAKER_00: Well, basically there's five things the text tells us about assurance, and where do we find assurance?
SPEAKER_00: We find assurance, first of all, in the fact that everything has changed.
SPEAKER_00: Everything has changed.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Paul's talking about when he says, now remember, we ended chapter 7 with Paul saying, the good that I want to do, I don't do the evil things, the wrong things that I don't want to do, that's the thing that I do.
SPEAKER_00: Oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of sin?
SPEAKER_00: Who is gonna help me to become because I'm religious, I know the rules, and I can't keep them, and I just hate myself.
SPEAKER_00: I wish I didn't know what the what the law said, but I do, but I can't stop doing the wrong thing.
SPEAKER_00: Who will deliver me from the body of sin?
SPEAKER_00: And then chapter 8 begins with, there is now, therefore.
SPEAKER_00: Excuse me.
SPEAKER_00: I got there is therefore now.
SPEAKER_00: There is that's a weird way to say something.
SPEAKER_00: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now hear it again.
SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna go to lunch today and your waiter's gonna come out and say, There is therefore now lunch.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, oh, oh, okay, we've done this before.
SPEAKER_00: We don't we don't need so much fanfare, just put the fajitas down and back away, dude.
SPEAKER_00: There is therefore now, what see, see, Paul's kind of using in a regular way to say, hey, I want to capture your attention because there's something that is in existence now that did not exist before because you're in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And what is that?
SPEAKER_00: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just ask you a question.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you could think about it in your community groups tonight.
SPEAKER_00: And it's simply this can you ever fathom your life with no condemnation?
SPEAKER_00: See, the reason Paul says, there is therefore now, I want to make sure I got your attention by the way I word this, because there's something that didn't exist before that is now available for the person that is in Christ, for the Christian, for not for the person that just believes there is a God.
SPEAKER_00: That's just like I believe there's a library, but I can't read.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so what?
SPEAKER_00: But the person that's in Christ, there is therefore now, there exists this reality that did not exist before.
SPEAKER_00: What is it?
SPEAKER_00: That you could never, ever, ever, ever have this sense of condemnation on you that Paul wrote about in Romans chapter 7.
SPEAKER_00: This oh wretched man that I am.
SPEAKER_00: I hate myself.
SPEAKER_00: I go to church, and the more I go to church, I just realize what a screw up I am, and I hate myself.
SPEAKER_00: There is therefore now no condemnation.
SPEAKER_00: You say, Why are you making a big deal out of this?
SPEAKER_00: Because some of you women saw this this week.
SPEAKER_00: It got passed around on Facebook.
SPEAKER_00: The news picked up the story.
SPEAKER_00: Some news channels picked up the story.
SPEAKER_00: There's a soap called Dove.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you knew that man.
SPEAKER_00: There's a soap called Dove.
SPEAKER_00: And Dove is one quarter moisturizing cream.
SPEAKER_00: That is their claim to fame.
SPEAKER_00: You say, what do you mean there's a soap called Dove?
SPEAKER_00: I know men, we like stuff that we pump out of a bottle and get all soaked up and lathered up.
SPEAKER_00: Men don't really get clean.
SPEAKER_00: They just make a lot of suds.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you know that, ladies.
SPEAKER_00: We don't really get clean.
SPEAKER_00: We don't scrub our bodies everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: We just make a lot of suds and count on the water just to wash it all down over us.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a soap called dove, and it's one quart of moisturizing cream.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason I know this is because one day I got in the shower and before we didn't have any pump soap.
SPEAKER_00: My wife had a bar of white soap and it said dove on it.
SPEAKER_00: I thought, oh, dove.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00: Probably got it at the Christian bookstore.
SPEAKER_00: And so I got it, and I got it all lathered up, and I covered my whole body in suds, and I might as well have poured wesson oil on my body, okay?
SPEAKER_00: They shouldn't sell dove in a city that's as human as ours because dove is one quarter moisturizing cream.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know what that meant until I got out of the shower and dried off, and I was all shiny.
SPEAKER_00: And I called my wife and I said, I think I'm allergic to this.
SPEAKER_00: Look at me.
SPEAKER_00: And she goes, Oh, it's one quarter moisturizing cream.
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: She goes, Well, it it your skin, if your skin is dry, my skin's not dry.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it moisturizes your skin.
SPEAKER_00: Or in my case, it makes you real shiny.
SPEAKER_00: I laid in bed that night and slipped out.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, whoa, easy.
SPEAKER_00: I gotta get some man soap so my skin can get dry again, so I get some traction on these sheets right here.
SPEAKER_00: I've never I've never used dove since.
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, there's a bar of dove in our shower right now, and I'm like, I ain't touching that.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the dove people, how many of y'all saw what I'm fixing to talk about, ladies?
SPEAKER_00: Did you see this?
SPEAKER_00: Some of you, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: There's a man over here securing his manhood that said, Yes, I saw it.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Tommy Hammer.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Fascinating thing that went around.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody passed it to my wife on Facebook, and I looked over and she was looking at it.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, Yeah, I saw a story on the news.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's the way a man looks at that.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I saw a story on the news.
SPEAKER_00: Next.
SPEAKER_00: I look over and my wife is weeping.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh Lord, here's a conversation coming that I didn't want to have today.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the experiment.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what Dove Soap did.
SPEAKER_00: They got these sketch artists, and they had women come in.
SPEAKER_00: And the women, there was like a partition, the sketch artist couldn't see her.
SPEAKER_00: She had to describe herself, and he sketched what she described.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all are like, okay, good so far.
SPEAKER_00: And then they brought in somebody that didn't know the woman, who just seen her, and they set her down, and she said, to she described that person, the same woman, to the sketch artist.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelievable the way women describe themselves.
SPEAKER_00: One woman said, My earlobes, and she's describing to the artist, and he's kind of he kind of looked there like, okay, she said, My earlobes are really fat.
SPEAKER_00: I've never had that thought in my life.
SPEAKER_00: So I went and looked in the mirror.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, nah, I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: Got some hair growing in there, but I can trim that right up.
SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: One lady said, my chin's kind of big.
SPEAKER_00: One lady said, well, my neck is kind of, I don't know, I don't like my neck, my nose is long, all these little things.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, nitpicking themselves to death.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what would happen: the women that described themselves, the picture that the guy drew, looked nothing like them.
SPEAKER_00: The total strangers who just looked at them and then described them got closer to what they actually look like.
SPEAKER_00: And you say, how could that be?
SPEAKER_00: And I'm looking over my wife's weaver like, that's just the way women view themselves.
SPEAKER_00: You can put a man over there, weighs 500 pounds, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And he's got like four chins and everything.
SPEAKER_00: What do you look like?
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, you got a combination of Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in you, buddy?
SPEAKER_00: Can you can your can your pencil capture that image?
SPEAKER_00: You say, so why can women sit over here and say, well, my earlobes are fat, and my chin kind of sticks out, and my nose, I hate my nose, it's real wide.
SPEAKER_00: Here's why.
SPEAKER_00: Because women look at themselves through the lens of condemnation.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible says to you today, ladies, good news.
SPEAKER_00: There is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus didn't come to point the big long finger and go, um.
SPEAKER_00: See, that's where we find assurance that everything has changed.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, we find assurance because all this rests on God alone.
SPEAKER_00: Look in verse 3 of Romans 8.
SPEAKER_00: All of this rests on God alone, not on me and how I feel and the kind of week I had.
SPEAKER_00: It all rests on God.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 3, for God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, the reason the law is weakened by the flesh, then when it says weakened by the flesh, that's talking about you and me.
SPEAKER_00: Anything that depends on you and I getting it right, for it to be true, is it is on thin ice.
SPEAKER_00: That's a dicey proposition.
SPEAKER_00: The law is only as strong as the people it depends on for fulfillment.
SPEAKER_00: Say that real fast.
SPEAKER_00: But let me say, don't miss this.
SPEAKER_00: The law is only as strong.
SPEAKER_00: The rules, remember a couple weeks ago while the rules don't work?
SPEAKER_00: The rules are only as effective as the people that it's counted on to keep the rules.
SPEAKER_00: We by nature cannot keep the rules.
SPEAKER_00: So the law was weakened by the flesh, and it could not do what only Christ could do by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin.
SPEAKER_00: You hear that?
SPEAKER_00: Sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he took on humanity, but he didn't have sin.
SPEAKER_00: That's the incarnation Jesus who left heaven, became a person, born of a virgin in a manger, but the Bible says he was in the likeness of sinful flesh.
SPEAKER_00: It's not like Jesus was an apparition like the Docetics thought.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: He just didn't have sin.
SPEAKER_00: They don't want you to look at Jesus and go, He's like all these other men.
SPEAKER_00: No, he's not.
SPEAKER_00: And for sin.
SPEAKER_00: I told you when I first became your pastor, I told you that there's a list of Christmas words, a list of words you only use at Christmas, like Noel.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody said that this week.
SPEAKER_00: Eggnog, you didn't have no eggnog this week.
SPEAKER_00: Probably can't even get eggnog.
SPEAKER_00: One of the words I told you to put on your Christmas list, remember, six, seven years ago was destruction.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says in 1 John, the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he means when he says, hey, he came in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin.
SPEAKER_00: He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.
SPEAKER_00: Who walk not according to the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: See, if Jesus by coming had not met all righteous requirements of the law, you and I would still be in the flesh, trying to live up to the rules.
SPEAKER_00: But because he fulfilled all that, we don't have to walk in the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: We can live according to the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Hear it again.
SPEAKER_00: He says, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: When he says who walk not according to the flesh, when he says, here's the great news about all of this, rest on what God has done.
SPEAKER_00: God has done everything necessary for you to not live at the mercy of your appetites and what is natural.
SPEAKER_00: To get up tomorrow and go, let me make this try to look a little more satisfying than I know it wasn't yesterday.
SPEAKER_00: That's just living according to the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: That's just grinding it out and hoping one day it's all gonna end.
SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself this simple question.
SPEAKER_00: You think that's what Jesus came for?
SPEAKER_00: You think that's as good as it gets?
SPEAKER_00: You think that's all God's capable of?
SPEAKER_00: Is you and I just doing our best?
SPEAKER_00: Where does assurance come from?
SPEAKER_00: Well, thirdly, you get assurance comes from this truth that your mind follows your life.
SPEAKER_00: You say, Well, I don't know what you mean.
SPEAKER_00: Your mind follows your life.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of people these days that talk about, you know, mind over matter.
SPEAKER_00: If you set your mind on something, get a clear mental image of this, and you do this, and whatever you put your mind to, you can do.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says that's backwards.
SPEAKER_00: It's not like I put my mind on that and then I'm gonna do this.
SPEAKER_00: You say, What do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have ever started a diet and never finished it?
SPEAKER_00: Don't raise your hands.
SPEAKER_00: We ain't got time for that much.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want you, I don't want you to get depressed on me.
SPEAKER_00: Because if I was gonna ask you to raise your hand, I would say, how many of you have started more than one diet and not finished it?
SPEAKER_00: And somebody'd raise your hand, and I'd say, how many of you have started more than two diets?
SPEAKER_00: And we'd have to eventually get up to it.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have tried every fad diet that's ever come out?
SPEAKER_00: And somebody like, let's just go eat chocolate.
SPEAKER_00: I'm depressed now.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because that depends on your flesh.
SPEAKER_00: That that that's just that that's just you.
SPEAKER_00: But when the Bible says, hey, your mind follows your life, what does he mean?
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what he says.
SPEAKER_00: He says, for those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: See, your mind follows the pattern of your life.
SPEAKER_00: Read it again, verse five.
SPEAKER_00: For those who live according to the flesh, your mind takes its cues from your life.
SPEAKER_00: You can't just think positive, Norman Vincent Peel.
SPEAKER_00: You can't just say, Ah, I think I can, I think I can.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta make some choices.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta live who you are.
SPEAKER_00: For those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: But those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 6 says, To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace.
SPEAKER_00: For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law.
SPEAKER_00: It cannot.
SPEAKER_00: For those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
SPEAKER_00: End of story, no questions asked.
SPEAKER_00: And you say, Well, what do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: When I say your mind follows your life, how you live determines how you think.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like addiction.
SPEAKER_00: It kind of wears this neurological path in the brain so that the slightest thing can kind of trigger.
SPEAKER_00: An addict can be going long and can be thinking, having a great day, thinking, okay, I got my sobriety chip.
SPEAKER_00: I'm doing good.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna say no to that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna talk to my sponsor, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_00: They can go in a grocery store, see something, hear something, smell something, it triggers something in their brain, and all of a sudden, it's like addiction wears a path in your brain, and something happens that kind of triggers or causes you to feel something or think something, and boom, you're down that path of stimulation, participation, satisfaction, destruction.
SPEAKER_00: You say, Well, where did that come from?
SPEAKER_00: From my eye doctor.
SPEAKER_00: You say, Well, hello, are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_00: What's this person doing their spare time?
SPEAKER_00: No, my eye doctor, her husband is a uh is an addiction.
SPEAKER_00: He he's he's like like the guru of the psychology of addiction.
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, she is leaving, they're moving to Virginia because he's taken uh a job or a position with like the University of Virginia or something, and he studies the psychology of addiction.
SPEAKER_00: And she told me, she said, Yeah, once we were gonna open up uh uh an office together, and it was gonna be called Out of Sight, Out of Mind.
SPEAKER_00: He's a psychologist, I'm an eye doctor.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, You're my kind of eye doctor.
SPEAKER_00: So I went and saw her last week, with my last appointment for Shalise.
SPEAKER_00: We talked for 30 minutes about the psychology of addiction.
SPEAKER_00: And she said, Yeah, it's pretty fascinating.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Hey, can I get your husband's like name?
SPEAKER_00: Because I want to know.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Is he printing anything?
SPEAKER_00: She was like, Oh my gosh, he's printed papers and articles, and sure enough, I Googled him, bam, that sucker's everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: I can't wait to go to a party and drop his name.
SPEAKER_00: Just because you sound smart.
SPEAKER_00: And he's he doesn't have a first name, he's got initials.
SPEAKER_00: That's even better.
SPEAKER_00: And his initials are FG.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm just like, hey man, yeah, I was reading FG Mower the other day, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_00: But one of the things he says is that the people that live with a person that struggles with addiction cannot understand how they keep going back because the person that lives with it is kind of like it's black and white, and for the addict, it's all gray.
SPEAKER_00: Now, am I excusing that?
SPEAKER_00: Not at all.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are leaning over to your wife going, that's why I eat Tootchi rolls right there.
SPEAKER_00: My brain just starts down that path.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: It's not an excuse.
SPEAKER_00: And he would tell you it's not an excuse.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a, hey, you can train yourself to think differently about it.
SPEAKER_00: But the point is that your mind follows your life.
SPEAKER_00: You can't just think yourself out of it.
SPEAKER_00: Because some of you in this room have sat in therapy sessions or in group therapy or addiction counseling, and people say to you, think differently, this, that, and the other, and your whole life has just been wired up, and you're like, man, listen, if I could get my my my life to follow my thoughts, that would be great.
SPEAKER_00: But my life goes this way and my mind comes with me, just like the Bible says.
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_00: So then we gotta start thinking and asking ourselves, what if you want to figure yourself out and have greater self-awareness, then you should be asking yourself, or maybe we could get at it this way.
SPEAKER_00: When's the last time someone asks you, when you come home from work, you probably get asked the same three questions.
SPEAKER_00: One of them is, how was your day?
SPEAKER_00: Or what'd you do today?
SPEAKER_00: When's the last time someone asks you, what'd your mind do today?
SPEAKER_00: You're like, what?
SPEAKER_00: Because your mind follows what your life, how you live, what you did that day.
SPEAKER_00: So ask yourself, hey, what'd you ask each other, what'd your mind do today?
SPEAKER_00: When your husband comes home from work tomorrow, ask him, What'd your mind do today?
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to know.
SPEAKER_00: Sure I do.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you four questions to get you thinking about how your mind works and what it does.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, what naturally comes to mind when I'm not thinking about anything in particular?
SPEAKER_00: What naturally comes to mind when you're not thinking about anything in particular?
SPEAKER_00: For me, I don't know what this means about me, but it's country music.
SPEAKER_00: Like I walk up and down the halls here during the week singing country music.
SPEAKER_00: The other day I didn't even realize it.
SPEAKER_00: It's like my wife's like, do you realize you sing a lot and it's not good singing?
SPEAKER_00: And it's like country songs no one's heard before because they're like from the 70s.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't know, I just get stuck in there.
SPEAKER_00: Like the other day, I was walking down the hallway and it dawned on me, and I was like, I probably shouldn't be singing that.
SPEAKER_00: I was singing Trying to Love Two Women is like a ball and chain.
SPEAKER_00: Trying to love two women is like a ball and chain.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the pleasure ain't worth the pain.
SPEAKER_00: It's a long old grind and it tires your mind.
SPEAKER_00: And I sang it from here in the foyer all the way down to my office, and I thought, I just walked by the office of all the staff singing, trying to love two women is because when I'm thinking about something else, my mind just naturally goes to 1970s, 1980s country music.
SPEAKER_00: Like the other day, I was walking here on the back of our property singing, You're the reason God made Oklahoma.
SPEAKER_00: I've never lived in Oklahoma.
SPEAKER_00: I know every verse to the entire song.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: I worked 10 hours on a John Deere tractor, just thinking about you all day.
SPEAKER_00: And she sings, I got a calico cat in a two-room flat on a street in East LA.
SPEAKER_00: You're the reason God made.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just singing away.
SPEAKER_00: The landscape walked up on me and said, Uh, excuse me, I didn't want to interrupt you.
SPEAKER_00: You were singing.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Oh, yeah, I don't even know.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00: I need to go see Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Muller and figure out what that means about my mind.
SPEAKER_00: What naturally comes to mind when I'm not thinking about anything in particular?
SPEAKER_00: Second question: are the majority of my thoughts positive or negative?
SPEAKER_00: Are the majority of my thoughts positive or negative?
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, do I think mostly of myself or others?
SPEAKER_00: Do I think mostly of myself or others?
SPEAKER_00: Somebody tried to convince me the other day, they said, you're one of the most thoughtful, generous people I know.
SPEAKER_00: And I just blurted out, not really, you're probably just selfish.
SPEAKER_00: Because we naturally think about ourselves a whole lot.
SPEAKER_00: We naturally kind of think, man, I kind of got this sorted and figured out.
SPEAKER_00: Fourth question: do I default to spiritual or worldly thoughts?
SPEAKER_00: When my mind just is in neutral, does it go to things above or things below?
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible says, set your mind on things above.
SPEAKER_00: Set your heart on things above.
SPEAKER_00: Set your attention and your affection on things above.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because, see, your your mind's gonna follow your life.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to see how you're living, ask yourself what you think about.
SPEAKER_00: Where do we find assurance?
SPEAKER_00: Fourth thing the Bible tells us, we find assurance in this new standard of Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 9 of Romans chapter 8.
SPEAKER_00: You still with me?
SPEAKER_00: Look and see what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_00: You, however, are not, after he says, those who are in the flesh cannot please God, he says in verse 9, you, however, are not in the flesh, but in the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: If in fact the spirit of God dwells in you.
SPEAKER_00: Now stop just for a second.
SPEAKER_00: Look at me.
SPEAKER_00: Read that again.
SPEAKER_00: You, however, are not in the flesh if the Spirit of God is in you.
SPEAKER_00: If in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.
SPEAKER_00: Now you're tempted to read that and kind of go, well, is the Spirit of God in me?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: I prayed the prayer.
SPEAKER_00: I became a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: 1981.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, whoa, whoa.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the next sentence.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what he says.
SPEAKER_00: This is what I mean by a new standard of Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: He says, anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
SPEAKER_00: But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Here, verse 9 again.
SPEAKER_00: You, however, are not in the flesh, but you're in the spirit, if in fact the spirit of God dwells in you.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ, let's just settle the matter, does not belong to him.
SPEAKER_00: See, we got to get a new standard of Christianity, a new way by which we evaluate or we we reckon if someone has a relationship with God or not.
SPEAKER_00: And you say, what do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: We got these standards like, well, this person, they joined the church, or they they said they gave their life to Christ, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_00: And I get that, but maybe we should be asking.
SPEAKER_00: See, the thing about that is it's so subjective, no one can evaluate it.
SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed that?
SPEAKER_00: You can become a Christian, quote unquote, in America, and no one ever knows.
SPEAKER_00: But yet the Bible is always defined Christianity in terms of the Holy Spirit inside of you.
SPEAKER_00: Don't turn there, but in John chapter 7, Jesus, there's this big Jewish feast going on, big festival, and it's kind of like a chili cook-off on steroids, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus stands up on the last and greatest day of the feast, and he says, If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink, and out of his inmost being will flow rivers of living water.
SPEAKER_00: And by that he meant the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: See, the Bible's always defined Christianity in terms of the Holy Spirit and what the Holy Spirit does in us, what the Holy Spirit is like inside of us.
SPEAKER_00: So when we say we have this new standard of Christianity, that means you have a great week or a great day or a horrible day or a horrible week or a horrible month.
SPEAKER_00: You got you every sales call you went on, they just slam the door in your face and said, We're gonna hold on to our money until the economy improves.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, hello?
SPEAKER_00: That could be another 10 years.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what kind of excuse is that?
SPEAKER_00: And you walk to your car and think, I hate my job, I hate my life, I hate my wife, I hate my kids, I'm gonna kick the cat when I get home.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says, hey, this is not the subjective standard of Christianity that, well, it's just, you know, you can't judge me because my relationship with God is very private.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you something.
SPEAKER_00: If your relationship with God never expresses itself in a tangible public way, you don't know God.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus said, hey, if anyone thirsts, let them come to me and drink.
SPEAKER_00: And when you come and you get a load of me, guess what?
SPEAKER_00: Me in you comes out of you.
SPEAKER_00: Paul said it like this: we have this treasure in earthen pot, in these clay, earthen vessels, these clay pots.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: So that the surpassing worth of the treasure can get out.
SPEAKER_00: Think about it this way.
SPEAKER_00: Have you, when's the last time?
SPEAKER_00: Have you had the experience of explaining to somebody that you're doing what you're doing because you have a person living inside of you?
SPEAKER_00: You're like, well, now you put it that way, I don't think I ever have.
SPEAKER_00: The other day, some panhandler guy rolled up on me and goes, Hey buddy, you got a couple dollars?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I do.
SPEAKER_00: And I just stared at him.
SPEAKER_00: He asked me a question.
SPEAKER_00: I gave you an answer.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just staring at him.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, Why are you looking at me all funny?
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm asking the Holy Spirit if you're a con man or not.
SPEAKER_00: Keep talking.
SPEAKER_00: I think I'll find my answer in your words.
SPEAKER_00: And he just backed up.
SPEAKER_00: Never mind.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, never mind.
SPEAKER_00: Come here.
SPEAKER_00: You ain't getting off that easy.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: It's good as good.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, let's talk.
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
SPEAKER_00: I like to talk.
SPEAKER_00: You may be only up and up.
SPEAKER_00: You may not be out here just looking for enough money to buy another pint of mad dog.
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden he was just stuck.
SPEAKER_00: He was slow dancing with the tar baby.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, eh, eh, get me out of here.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you something.
SPEAKER_00: One of the things about the Holy Spirit is people like to be around the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of you people confuse, a lot of people in the church confuse personality with the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that person's just got a personality.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody likes to be around.
SPEAKER_00: No, everybody likes to be around the Holy Spirit regardless of what your personality is like.
SPEAKER_00: You should have moments in your life where you look at people and all the only thing he explains it is you saying, I have a person inside of me.
SPEAKER_00: And the more the little panhandler guy talked, I said, Yeah, I think you're a con man.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, Well, you can't be judging me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not judging you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, When the Holy Spirit comes, he'll lead you into all truth.
SPEAKER_00: And I think the Holy Spirit has led me into the truth about you.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to hold on to my two dollars that you were asking for.
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean, the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: How do you know that's what the Holy Spirit is?
SPEAKER_00: Because he lives inside of me.
SPEAKER_00: And he was like, For real?
SPEAKER_00: For real.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_00: And it was just this awkward moment.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, that's alright.
SPEAKER_00: It's more than alright.
SPEAKER_00: Go to for real and alright and hang alright and it just gets better.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says crazy things like walk in the spirit and you will not fulfill the desires of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: It says, since we live in the spirit, since we live with this conscious awareness of what the Spirit of God is doing, how God is involving us and what he's doing to reach and touch the world, since we live in the spirit, let us keep in step with the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just ask yourself tonight when you get to your community group, instead of, hey, what'd you think about today, or hey, how you feeling about this week?
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you look each other in the eye and say, hey, are you in sync with the Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: Are you in step with the Spirit?
SPEAKER_00: Are you just living out of sync and waiting on the Holy Spirit to come get in on your life because the Spirit of God is waiting for you to come and submit to his life?
SPEAKER_00: He says, hey, here's how you know people that know God.
SPEAKER_00: He says, anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because He doesn't just set you free out there and say, hey, just go do what you want.
SPEAKER_00: No, freedom for the Christian is now you're free to do what God's want.
SPEAKER_00: God wants.
SPEAKER_00: God's will is realized in your life.
SPEAKER_00: His law is fulfilled in your life.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a thought, it's just a thoughtless process.
SPEAKER_00: It just happens out of reflex, not effort.
SPEAKER_00: So there's this new standard by which you evaluate your Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: There's a spirit of God inside of you.
SPEAKER_00: Fifthly and finally is simply this there's the ultimate goal.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 11, and we'll be done.
SPEAKER_00: You still awake?
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: He says, now by the way, the Bible's really subtle when it says in verse 10, but if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_00: You're smart people.
SPEAKER_00: He says the body is dead because of sin.
SPEAKER_00: And he should say, but the spirit is alive.
SPEAKER_00: But he says, the spirit is life.
SPEAKER_00: Huh.
SPEAKER_00: Why does it say that?
SPEAKER_00: Because of the ultimate goal?
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean when he says the spirit is life?
SPEAKER_00: Not the spirit is alive.
SPEAKER_00: Because look at me, beloved.
SPEAKER_00: There's going to come a point where you're going to be dead and I'm going to be dead.
SPEAKER_00: Look what the spirit's going to do.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 11 if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you.
SPEAKER_00: Since the spirit is life, then his presence cannot help but result in life for the body in which it inhabits.
SPEAKER_00: You say, What do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: When I became a Christian, God came to live inside of me by his Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's been in me.
SPEAKER_00: And we've had this relationship where I kind of walk in the Spirit and I pray and ask the Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, what is going on?
SPEAKER_00: I need to know what's going on here because this is not about intellect.
SPEAKER_00: This is about intimacy, okay?
SPEAKER_00: See, we've kind of abdicated the Holy Spirit to the quote-unquote charismatics because, well, that's just crazy.
SPEAKER_00: That's just kind of, ooh, I don't know, but the Bible says, no, if you're a Christian, the Spirit of God lives inside of you.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit of God resides inside of you.
SPEAKER_00: And even when you get to the end of your life and there's no more life left in you, the Spirit of God, the same Spirit, verse 11 says, that raised Jesus from the grave.
SPEAKER_00: Remember when you sang this about 30 minutes ago?
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit that raised Jesus up from the grave is in us.
SPEAKER_00: Is in us.
SPEAKER_00: He says, the same spirit that raised Jesus up from the grave will give life to your mortal bodies, even when it has no life left in it.
SPEAKER_00: So you can stand there at the grave of a 17-year-old girl who went way too early.
SPEAKER_00: And you can walk away with a deep assurance that the spirit that raised Jesus from the grave is going to raise her body up on this great getting up morning that's coming.
SPEAKER_00: And people look and say, How do you?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how can you?
SPEAKER_00: This is where we find assurance.
SPEAKER_00: Because this is what the Bible teaches.
SPEAKER_00: There's this ultimate goal, it's not just presence.
SPEAKER_00: The ultimate goal of the Holy Spirit is not just being in you, it's taking you to be with God for all eternity where you're going to get a new body.
SPEAKER_00: We won't need a dove commercial, ladies.
SPEAKER_00: That already'll sit down with you in glory.
SPEAKER_00: When you get a new glorified body, I had to explain that to a little girl yesterday who said, Is she in there?
SPEAKER_00: And I said, No, that's just the tent she lived in.
SPEAKER_00: You ever go camping?
SPEAKER_00: And she said, Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: I said, when you're done camping, you strike the tent.
SPEAKER_00: That's the word for it.
SPEAKER_00: You take the stakes and the pegs out and you fold it up and you've stored away for the next time you go camping.
SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
SPEAKER_00: So she camped in that body for 17 years.
SPEAKER_00: And now that that tent is folded up.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5, we strike this earthly tent and we move into our permanent dwelling.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible says, when the Spirit of God comes to live inside of you, his ultimate goal is not presence, it is resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: So that's where we find assurance.
SPEAKER_00: And I just wonder today, as you think through all that this little section in Romans 8 says, do you know this assurance that the Bible talks about?
SPEAKER_00: Do me a favor if you wouldn't stand to your feet.
SPEAKER_00: Hold your hands out.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to speak a blessing over you.
SPEAKER_00: Your God not only does not condemn you, he so accepts you because of what Jesus has done, that he came to live inside of you.
SPEAKER_00: What more do you need him to do before you believe that you're no longer condemned?
SPEAKER_00: Depart now and live as accepted people in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Bless you.
SPEAKER_00: You're dismissed.