Relate Community Church
Relate Community Church
Mind Games | Week 2 | Fix your thoughts
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Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Romans 12:2
Why do we behave irrationally?
Our strongest thoughts are steering our lives.
What comes into your mind—Comes out in your life.
Cannot have a positive life with a negative mind.
Don’t control what you think—Never control what you do.
And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your
thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Phil 4:8 NLT
meditate on these things. Phil 4:8 NKJV
Meditation: To engage in mental exercise; to
focus one’s thoughts.
I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. Ps 119:15
… I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done. Ps 143:5
What stronghold is holding you back?
What truth demolishes that stronghold?
Write it—Think it—Confess it—Until you believe it.
Here is a Daily Confession of Faith for you to use!
I am strong and mighty. I have the same power that raised Christ from the dead dwelling inside of me. I am a weapon of righteousness in a world of darkness.
I am not my past. I am not what I did. I am who God says I am. He says I am forgiven. He says I am redeemed. He says I am free.
I am not a hostage to unhealthy thoughts. The weapons I fight with are not the weapons of this world. I have divine power to demolish strongholds. I have the mind of Christ directing my thoughts. I have the Word of God guiding my steps. I demolish every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. I take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ.
My God has not given me a spirit of fear, but a Spirit of power, of love, and of a sound mind. The Lord is my helper. I will not be afraid!
Jesus is first in my life. I exist to serve and glorify Him.
I love my wife and will lay down my life to serve her.
My children will love God and serve Him with their whole hearts.
I will nurture, equip, train, and empower the people around me
to do more for His kingdom than they can imagine.
I love people and believe the best about others.
I am disciplined. Christ in me is stronger than the wrong desires in me.
I am growing closer to Jesus every day. Because of Christ, my family is closer, my body is stronger, my faith is deeper, and my leadership is sharper.
I am anointed, empowered, equipped and
called to reach people far from God.
I am creative, innovative, driven, focused, and blessed beyond measure—because the Holy Spirit dwells within me.
(*) My words, thoughts, and imaginations are under the power of Christ.
I take all thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ.
I wake up with purpose, direction, and meaning every day of my life.
Pain is my friend. I rejoice in suffering because Christ suffered for me.
I bring my best—and then some.
It’s what I bring after I do my best that makes the difference.
The world will be different and better because I served Jesus today.
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Discussion Questions:
Have you ever had a moment where you thought, “Why did I do that? I know better than this.” What do you think was happening underneath the behavior?
What experiences, messages, relationships, or repeated circumstances can create unhealthy “wiring” in the way we think?
Sometimes dysfunctional thinking becomes so familiar that it feels normal. What are some thoughts people commonly accept as “just the way I am” that may actually need to be challenged?
Why is taking control of our thoughts different from simply trying harder to behave better?
Which part of the daily confessions resonates with you most this week?
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Welcome And Series Setup
SPEAKER_01Let there be light. Here we go. All right. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to church. I'm glad you came today. It's week number two of a series called Mind Games. It's still hot outside, even though Pastor Susan said falls on its way. I'm not sure why that, why she said that. Still very hot. So today I want you to get your notes out. We're a note-taking church. And uh whether you are guest today or your home, this is uh this is gonna be uh an very, very important Sunday for us. I believe that somebody's gonna have their life changed today. I believe that somebody is going to maybe hear from the Holy Spirit something you've been needing to hear for a long time or trying to hear for a long time. So why don't you just elbow very gently elbow the person next to you and tell them, get ready. I'm gonna go ahead and dive right into it. And I will say, we're glad to have you online joining us if you're if you're watching online streaming or uh on demand. Thank you for for connecting with us and opening up God's word today and going on this journey with us. So we've been thinking about how we think this series Mind Games. Last week we talked about how our thoughts are the battlefield. You might think that your battlefield is at work, where you're employed, or at your home, or all the places where you have friction. But I promise you, when you really start to look at where your life is won or lost, or where the fights and the struggles and the uh the wins and losses happen around you, they really start and finish right here in your mind and in your thoughts and in the thoughts that you choose to think, the thoughts that you allow yourself to think. And so we're gonna dig into that a little bit more this week with week
Renew Your Mind Not Your Habits
SPEAKER_01number two. We're gonna start with Romans chapter 12. We uh I think we made it to this verse towards the end of the message last week. He says, do not be, Paul says, do not be conformed or do not conform to the pattern of this world. How many of you know that this world has a pattern? This world has a pattern of thinking. He says, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So the way that we don't conform to the world, the way that we don't conform to the pattern of this world is not necessarily, it doesn't start with what we do, it starts with what we think. Starts right here. Everybody point right at your own mind. Although I think a good case can be made for our thoughts to be right here, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. So inside of us, there's thoughts. Even right now, some of you, you are having a tough time getting your mind to slow down or to focus or to to even carry the right thoughts because our minds have a, they they tend to go off on their own. And for some reason, I don't know why this is. Well, I think we can we will dig into it, but for some reason, I think irrationally. You think, why do we think so irrationally? Why is it that, like Paul said, I want to do this, but I end up doing this? I don't want to do this, but I actually end up doing it anyway. That's the irrationality of our own thought. I don't want to think this, but what do my thoughts go to? As soon as I think about not doing it, that's where my thoughts go. It's almost like self-sabotage. We behave irrationally. If you made a list of the three things you definitely will not do this week that you did last week, how often is it that we just do those things? We gravitate toward the thing that is not good. We know it's not good for us. We'll tell you, I don't want to do this, but we still end up doing it. And I, as much as anybody else, I'm not giving you. And and Paul says, I'm not saying this because I've perfected it. I'm not telling you from the stage here today that, hey, if you could just be as good as me, then we can all think right, act right, do right, and be what we're supposed to be. No, this is something that it's the human condition, it's all of us. We wrestle with our own thoughts. I want to be nice, I'm not gonna yell, and then as soon as we get into an argument, Angela and I will be fighting over. I don't even know why we're arguing. And then I will say something like, I'm not mad, you're mad. I'm not yelling. And we'll argue about who's actually mad and why we're arguing. I don't know why. I decide that I'm gonna spend, I'm not gonna spend money, and then all of a sudden I have to, or I needed to, or I'll make an excuse for why I need to buy this. I'm not gonna eat wrong today, and then it's just gonna be one bite. Just one. I'm gonna trust God today. I'm gonna I'm gonna give the Lord all the worry, the anxiety, the stress, the things that have been just balled up inside of me, and then 10 minutes later I'm worrying again. And my mind's just that hamster wheel is going about the things, or it could be at one o'clock in the morning, I'm just sitting there trying to sleep, but I just can't let go of the one thing my mind is chewing on. I want to do one thing, but I end up doing another, and it seems very irrational. And I want us to I want us to camp out there for a little bit this morning and dig a little deeper into go beyond the battlefield.
Crossed Wires And Hidden Dysfunction
SPEAKER_01Um, this week I was reminded of a project that I did at my house about 12 or years or so ago, we moved into our house, and our house had not been re we bought a house that um had all the original uh carpet from the 1970, 1978 was when our house was built, and so the kitchen, everything was wood paneling, and I decided that we're gonna remodel this ourselves. So I've got two teenagers, and um we've got just enough money, and we just started tearing like one room at a time. We get to the kitchen, and I decide, you know what, I think we're gonna move that wall and that wall and that wall, and we're gonna move those lights, and we're gonna move the stove and the oven, and we're gonna move everything. So we started moving stuff around. It took a long, long, too long, it took too long. But finally, I was so proud we had everything totally remodeled and cabinets, and I had built in most of it myself, and so to me, it was beautiful. I'm not sure to a professional how it would be, but after a month or so, I had spent all my extra hours just I had to move the gas line, I had to move, I learned, I didn't know much about remodeling, so I'm not that guy until that moment where I know I've watched enough fixer upper, I've watched enough, I've seen them do this enough. Um I knew I wasn't gonna kill myself with the electricity, but we started moving electrical lines and plugs, and I get everything rewired back up in the right position. Looks amazing on the outside. I didn't put any of the walls back on, but I knew, okay, let's just see how everything works. We get it all back together, the kitchen, everything is working. And then I realized we have a problem because none of the stuff on the other side of the house, like the front yard, the front door, all the stuff around the fireplace, all the plugs, all the the other side of the house, not even not even connected. It seemed like it was totally disconnected. None of the other stuff was working. And I thought, I have made a mistake here. I literally spent another probably two or three weeks trying to figure out what did I go into everything, what did I do wrong here? And I realized all the stuff in the kitchen that I just did, it all works. But I have another big problem, and I realized I have some crossed wires somewhere. My wires are crossed. I've I've rewired it wrong. And the more I thought about it, I couldn't figure it out. And I thought, I'm gonna have to hire someone to come and fix my problem. I'm gonna have to hire someone who knows about this, uh, an actual electrician, to come and look at this. Yo, he was there for about 10 minutes and he said, Okay, here's your estimate. I said, Well, can you just tell me what the problem is? He says, Nope, I'm not gonna tell you what the problem is, or else you'll fix it and I won't get paid. So I said, Okay, I just stopped for a second and I thought, okay, you've only looked at a few things. I can figure this out. And so within the next five minutes, I said, Listen, if I can guess what's wrong, will you will you tell me if I'm right and then I'll pay you to fix it? We agreed and we shook hands on it, and then within five minutes, I figured out what the problem was based on his uh what he had looked at, and he said, Oh, you're exactly right. Are you gonna pay me? I said, Yes, I'm gonna pay him to fit. He fixed the problem and got everything working. But here's what I think happens because there's an exact, there is a perfect parallel between getting wires crossed in my house and getting wires crossed in the the thinking that when we're thinking wrong patterns of thought, it's like we're laying laying wires, we're laying neural uh pathways. And last week we talked about how if you walk a path in your front yard enough, then it starts to wear a track and it becomes easier to walk that path. The same thing happens in your thinking. Every time you think a thought, a good thought, a bad thought, then what happens is you're wiring your brain to think that way. But if you wire it and get your wires crossed, just like in my kitchen, all of a sudden, the result that you're getting and the the fruit that's coming out of your thoughts, the end result of your thoughts, is dysfunctional. Because listen, I can look at my kitchen and say, hey, the power works, nothing is on fire, but it's not working the way it was designed, and there are a few things that are just this is not supposed to happen this way. I flip this switch and the wrong thing happens, right? And so we justify that there's uh there's it's not that bad. It's not on fire. I don't need to go see a professional, I can deal with it this way. Another thing that I recognized was that when we get our wires crossed in our thoughts or in my kitchen, that the problems that pop up are not exactly where you might expect them to pop. If I get my wire crossed in the kitchen, I would think, well, the kitchen shouldn't work, but the kitchen worked fine. Everything around where I got the wires crossed, it worked perfect. The actual problem popped up somewhere across the on the other side of the house. That might look like in your life, it might look like this. Well, I've got my wires crossed in this thought process of I just gotta make everybody happy. It's my responsibility to make everybody happy. And I'm carrying that thought, and now I've got my wires crossed, but the problem doesn't come up there. Everybody else is happy. I've made everybody, and now something else starts going wrong, and the dysfunction of my anxiety or my stress or my worry starts popping up over here. It seems unrelated, but the actual problem is the wrong thinking. It's the thought that I've trained myself to think, and I've worn a path in my own mind and in my own neural pathway. Another thing that I recognized was this that if the problem's in the kitchen, I can spend but the source of the problem is in the kitchen where I cross the wires, and yet the problem is popping up in the front yard where nothing works. Like my lamp doesn't work, none of the switches on the front wall work, the front door. And so I could spend all day out at the front yard and around the lamps trying to figure out why is this not working? And yet the problem is over in the kitchen where I where I had the original problem. You could spend your life trying to figure out why am I so anxious? How do I fix, how do I address this anxiety? I need more sleep. I need, I have to, I have to get some zen going on in here. I have to start uh addressing my worry and my stress. And no, no, no, hold on. You got your wires crossed somewhere. Way back when you started thinking the wrong thought, and now every time you get to that thought, every time like the electricity gets to that, it just stops right there. Wires crossed. Another thing I learned is that bad wiring, it just becomes automatic. If I decide to leave it there, if I decide to live with it, well it's not that bad, then every day that I wake up and something doesn't work, that dysfunction becomes my normal function. But no, we don't do front door light, don't work. Oh, you can't use that plug because it doesn't work. That's just normal. We just deal with it. That's how that's how we function. And so now I start making adjustments around living not normally, not functionally. I'm not healthy, I'm functionally unhealthy. I'm still living, I still go to work every day. We still lock the door and come in and out. It's just dark on the uh at night. I can't, I can't see anything, but I have to deal with it. It's extra stress. And so I I I've I've allowed certain thoughts to to kind of set up residency. Last week we talked about strongholds, right? This is a thing that has it is established, it is rooted, and it's not moving. I've just kind of left it there long enough, and now it's normal. Last thing I think we can learn from my kitchen mistake was this that the only way we move on from this is to go back and track down the crossed wire. The only way to fix the problem, I can't cover it up with different thinking. As long as I have a foundation of wrong thinking or crossed wires, it doesn't matter how many more wires I put in, I still got a wire crossed. I have to go back, find the wire, which is what we did in my kitchen. We went back and he said, It's right here in this box. And he unwired the whole box, and there was probably, I don't know, too many wires in the box. And sure enough, I had twisted the wires, I had put all the right, it looked perfect. He said, just sometimes because I'm not a professional, I don't I didn't twist the wires right and make sure there was a strong connection. Today, some of you you don't even know that you've crushed your wires. You just know that you have some dysfunction, you have some bad thinking, you have some wrong, you have some wrong results, doing the things that you don't want to do. It's amazing when you read through Paul's writings in the New Testament from the beginning to you you're seeing him wrestle with this idea and learning how to deal with his own thoughts. And he's growing, he's developing in his ability to think right. And some of you even used we start learning neural pathways when we're babies. In fact, last week we we were right here at the back of the room, and I think it was two weeks ago, and I saw one of the babies in the church. We got so many uh beautiful babies in the church, and one of the babies was uh was every time the baby would clap, all the adults around the baby would clap with the baby. That's what we do, right? We're teaching them. Hey, whenever you clap, it's fun. Everybody laughs, everybody smiles, and you know what the baby learns to do? The baby learns to clap, the baby learns to make everybody happy because you clap and cheer when they do. The baby, we learn the same thing. Whenever we reach up to touch the stove, and then mom says, No, no, no, bad. Oh, that's not a good thing. I don't like that response. And so we do that enough times, it's that neural pathway. We learn to think around, oh, I don't touch that. Oh, I definitely want to clap and make everybody happy. I want, or here's another one whenever baby wants a sucker, and mom says no, and then baby cries, and then mom says, okay, here, fine. And then baby's happy with the sucker, and then mom becomes the sucker because she just created a pathway that for the rest of their life, I just know if I'll just cry, I can get what I want. And the more you think a thought, the easier it is to think it again. And if the here's whichever thoughts you think the most become your dominant thoughts, and those thoughts, those thoughts start leading your life. Those thoughts start being the ones that determine where you end up and what you do, and the results of your life, what your life looks like. The good thing is, if the thought you're thinking and the your dominant thoughts, the thoughts that have created um good pathways that you continue to use over and over, if that thought is true, then the result will be good. If the thought is not true and you've believed a lie and you have your wires crossed, all of a sudden you don't know they're crossed, you just know that that's the way I think. And your result is negative and toxic and dysfunctional and disrupt disruptive, and it's leading you towards the wrong things and leading the other people in your life toward the wrong things, and you don't understand why you keep landing in the same spot. Why do I why do I keep ending up here? I don't know. If you'll back up and retrace your thoughts, figure out where you crossed your wires because your mind is your biggest battlefield. Your mind. Your problem is not the people around you. It's not how much money you make, it's not the car that keeps breaking down, it's not the thing that keeps messing with you, it's not the thing that keeps irritating you, it's not the neighbor that you're having a feud with. Your problem is right here. It's your thought process and the crossed wires. The scripture we looked at last week talks about how we live in a world, a physical world, but the the war that we're waging, the battle that we're fighting is not of this world. The weapons that we fight with are not of this world, but they are they are divine and powerful, divine, powerful weapons to tear down the strongholds in our minds. Tear down the strongholds to destroy arguments and pretensions and every thought that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. What do those thoughts look like in your own mind? What does it look like to take captive every thought? To me, it looks like going back and retracing those crossed wires, those crossed thoughts, the things that they're tripping me up, and I don't even recognize where they are. The hard part is the work that we have to do. The work that you and I need to do this morning is going back and making sure that the thoughts that are leading my life, my strongest, most dominant thoughts, are true. They're not crossed wires. What comes into your mind, or what you allow into your mind, comes out in your life. Let me ask you this. What you're the gatekeeper of your own mind, of your own thoughts.
Take Rogue Thoughts Captive
SPEAKER_01We have uh uh in my neighborhood not long ago, we had someone posted a picture in the neighborhood app. How many of you guys follow your neighborhood app? You just there's a lot of drama going on in the neighborhood, usually, but there was some real drama. Two pit bulls were running just down the street, and someone snapped a picture of them driving behind them, I think, and then posted in the neighborhood app and said, Hey, whose dogs are these? Your dogs are out. That seemed like it wasn't that big of a deal, and everybody's posting, oh, we need to get the find the owner so they can go find it. It seemed like just a uh a normal maintenance type thing, and then it wasn't long that a lady uh an elder lady was walking in the neighborhood and she was attacked by the pit bull. Verrible, very scary, but it was that moment that changed our whole neighborhood because now when a dog gets out of the neighborhood, everybody in the neighborhood goes on the high alert and messages and text messages, and the app just explodes with. Hey, there's a dog loose in the neighborhood. We gotta find who this is. We gotta get. It's almost like we have to take these dogs captive before they do damage. And we've gotten to high alert. Like we're on duty to protect our neighborhood and to keep our neighborhood safe and to make sure that no one gets attacked. And the same thing should happen whenever a rogue thought starts running through my mind. I should be on high alert. Nope, you don't live here. You don't get to live, you don't get to exist in my own.
SPEAKER_00You don't have any kids here.
SPEAKER_01Some of us are living like there's a dangerous thought running through our minds, and we're just like, oh, that's just the way I think. They've been there for how long? That would be like letting a dangerous animal run through your your neighborhood and just let them be. No, they're fine. They're not gonna hurt anybody. They're they're just they're just looking for something to eat, they're just looking for some water, they're just looking for a good place to uh uh run and we can justify all of our negative, toxic, destructive thoughts. We can justify them, but the scripture says to take captive every thought, take captive every thought. You cannot have a positive life with a negative mind. You can't have a spiritual life, you can't have a holy life if you have toxic, evil, um, unrighteous thinking going on. That you just allow to, oh, that's just the way I think. That's the way my my whole family, we just talk like that, we act like that, we do these things, that's who we are. If I justify it and allow it to roam free in my mind, then what happens? That becomes the dominant thoughts in my mind because I think them more often and more often. If you don't control what you think, you'll never control what you do. Today I want to focus on what it looks like to train your mind. What does it look like to train your thoughts? If the more I think a certain thought, then the stronger it becomes and the better it leads my life, then how do I train myself to think a certain way? How do I take captive every thought? And so I want you to uh I want you to relate it to this, uh to how we train our bodies. Now, this is not something that we love to do, probably, although when you do it more often, you get used to it, and you get, hey, I love I love to to to go to training or to go to the gym, or there's some things that you can you can get used to, and the more you do it, it becomes part of your life. Same thing happens in in uh training your mind. But I can tell you this when I was 20 years old, I used to think that training my body was exercise, running, jumping, jumping jacks, and uh all the equipment at the gym and rowing and lifting, and I used to think that that was training my body, but now once I got over 40, I started realizing that it's so much more important what I put in my body than what I do with my body. Training starts with what I put in. A lot more than what I do with my thoughts. So let me ask you a question.
Train Your Mind With Truth
SPEAKER_01What are you putting into your mind? If the point is going to be that we're gonna train our minds, train our thoughts, then let's start with Philippians chapter 4, verse 8. And keep in mind here that Paul's chained in prison. He's he himself is captive. All of his plans dreamed about helping people, starting churches, traveling, all that's been shut down, and he's been put into a jail cell. He says, and now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. In other words, remember this. This is the main thing. He says, fix your thoughts. I think we can just stop right there. That's that is the title at the top of your message today. Fix your thoughts. It'd be easy if we could just okay, it's fixed. But he actually tells us how to fix our thoughts. He says, fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Think about these things. The New King James Version, instead of think about these things, he says, meditate. Everybody say meditate. He says, meditate on these things. Now we don't like to talk about meditation, or meditation typically brings about a certain thought or a certain image of like Eastern meditation, Eastern religion or uh sitting and maybe humming and clearing your mind, maybe Eastern meditation, the focus is clearing your mind, but Christian meditation, Christian meditation is less about clearing and emptying your mind and more about filling your mind with the truth. Filling your mind with what am I putting into my mind? David said in Psalm 119, verse 15, he says, I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. What's in his mind? What is he thinking about? What are his thoughts chewing on throughout the day? When he wakes up in the morning, my mind is set on you. I'm meditating on God's word, I'm taking it with me. Psalm 143, verse 5 says, I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done. He's not meditating on the scripture, he's just looking at creation. He's looking at the sunset and meditating on what God has made. Saying, Oh, well no, let my mind be empty and just enjoy this beautiful breeze and nature and all. No, I am connecting my thoughts to who made this and allowing my mind to be filled with his works and consider what his hands have done. If your mind is anything like mine, it drifts. I try to meditate on something, and then my mind is going in the background to something else. In fact, I can open up God, this is your time. I'm gonna focus on the Lord, I'm gonna read my Bible. I open up my Bible, and it could just be five minutes. It takes me a minute to turn my thoughts off of the other stuff because I'll be reading, and then my mind is thinking about what I'm doing next. You know that your mind almost never drifts towards the right things, it drifts towards the wrong things. Your mind will always drift in the wrong direction. That's why when I focus my mind, whenever I meditate on God's word, I'm gonna continue to bring it back. No, no, no. We're walking down this path, we're building this neural pathway. This is the kind of thing that my mind is gonna chew on all day. That's why it matters what you wake up with. If you wake up with, um I don't know what you wake up with. If you have a song that you like to wake up to and it doesn't put your mind on uh the things of the Lord, if you if you wake up and you have to say, Oh, I gotta go watch uh The Housewives real quick. I don't know what you watch, I'm just saying. If you wake up and I can't, I gotta turn my brain on, I gotta turn the news on. You are setting your mind on the I don't know what you're setting your mind on. But you're allowing the the tone to be set of your thoughts, and and it's crazy how your thoughts just keep going in that direction. It's crazy how our thoughts continue to go down that track. Oh, well, you know what? I listen to a podcast every day about how the world's gonna end, and you're so worried about everything, your thoughts are stuck in that direction. You keep walking down the path, your neural pathways are so carved and so established that it's hard for you to think a different thought. That's why meditation matters. That's why what you think about and what you're setting your mind on matters in the morning. I'll wake up and I will meditate on the Lord. I'm gonna take a step and I'm gonna make sure that that step is on the path that he wants me to be on. A wrong mindset will hold me hostage. But I if I can identify where the wires are crossed, maybe you continue to your mind just goes to, I will never get out of debt. I don't, uh what am I gonna do? Might as well just go do this. I might as well be now. Every thought after that thought is a thought that's broken because you are telling yourself, I'm never gonna get out of it. And this is never gonna change. I'm never gonna be able to fix my marriage, I'm never gonna be able to get close to God. I'll never be healthy, I'll never have the the kind of things that I know God wants me to have. I'll never be able to do this, or this is always gonna be this way, or I always do this. Those thoughts, you you have to go back and allow God to help you uncross those wires.
Strongholds And Truth That Demolishes
SPEAKER_01So here's my first question. I'm gonna give you two questions, two action steps, and then we're gonna close. What truth demolishes? No, no. First first question what stronghold is holding you back? What is that wire that's been crossed? And I can tell you that sometimes it's multiple wires. You got you got a handful of lies that you've been le believing and living based on and thinking based on, it can wreak havoc in your life. This is why our Freedom Small Group is so, so, so important. We're gonna spend 12 weeks looking at the things that identifying the things that are causing pain in our lives. And we don't even know that they're causing pain. We think it's this, we think it's the front yard, the light doesn't work. No, that's not the problem at all. The problem is across the house, on the other side of the house, the kitchen, you got a wire crossed. You've been believing a lie. So what stronghold, what lie have you believed for so long? What thought have you been thinking for so long, the same way that now you defend it and you think it's truth, but it is ruining every thought around it? I'm gonna invite the band to join me on stage. But when we discover what that stronghold is or what the what the lie is, then we're gonna think about what truth demolishes that stronghold. There's a scriptural truth that can be laid over the top. That is the mechanism by which we uncross our wires. That's why it matters that you're reading and processing and meditating on God's word, because when I do that, it starts to uncli. And sometimes it's slow because sometimes I read a scripture and then the wire gets uncrossed, and then I walk away, and then boom, I think it again. That's why I have to day every day I have to wake back up and have to continually remind myself this is why I read God's word. I have to uncross all the wires and create new neural pathways. Pastor Craig Rochelle says, says it this way that uh if we want to create new neural pathways and new ways of thinking, he says you got to write it, think it, confess it, until you believe it. That's what I want you to do this week. So in your notes, in your uh your notebook, not only did you get notes to fill in with your fill-in-the-blanks, but you also got another page. And that other page has some built-in, we've taken scriptures and adapted them to confessions, things that I can declare over my life that are Bible-based, God's word, they're full of truth, but they directly respond to some of the lies that we've believed. So that I can write it, I can think it, I can confess it and tell I believe it. Maybe the lie or the wires that are crossed in your mind, or you've been thinking, I'm just weak, I'm not, I'm not as good as uh I used to be, I'm not as good as them, I'm not as good as him or her. Maybe it's uh the lie of insecurity or insignificance, I don't even matter. I'm challenging you to write it, think it, and confess it. And so, right in that in that sheet, we've written a confession. I am strong and mighty, I have the same power that raised Christ from the dead dwelling inside of me. I am a weapon of righteousness in a world of darkness. But it doesn't just help me to, oh yeah, that's true, I know that. Oh, sure. I've heard that before. I've read that, I think I've read that scripture. No, I have to every day I'm gonna write it and think it and confess it and continue to make my thoughts walk down this path until that's the way I think, that's the way I believe, and then all my actions reflect it. Maybe you're that person that thinks, oh, I've messed up, Pastor. You just don't know what I did 10 years ago. I made a mistake and it has ruined my life. And now I'm unqualified. I I can't even, I'm so I feel so guilty, I feel so wrong, I feel so ashamed of myself that I can't take a step forward in my life. I'm just broken. Maybe you do think that, maybe you believe that lie. That's why you should be confessing. I am not my past. I am not my past. I'm not what I did, I am who God says I am. He says I'm forgiven, he says I'm redeemed, he says I am free. Would you read that out loud with me? Like you believe it. I am not my past, I am not what I did, I am who God says I am. He says I am redeemed, he says I am free. Anytime I'm thinking wrong thoughts, you need to pick up your confession. Maybe it's a confession that you write all by yourself, but I've just given you a bunch of them to be able to respond to whatever the lie may be. And if it's wrong thoughts, if my mind always goes to toxic things, the fo I'm always thinking unhealthy thoughts. Maybe it's about an unhealthy relationship. I'm filling my mind with things that are unholy and unrighteous, and I'm my mind and my life are gravitating and desiring the wrong appetites. What I need to do is start confessing and rebuilding a new pattern of thought that says, I am not a hostage to unhealthy things and unhealthy thoughts. The weapons I fight with are not the weapons of this world. I have divine power to demolish those strongholds. We have to start taking an aggressive, intentional. So you are too passive in your faith. You just, well, that's just the way things are right now. I'm gonna keep reading. I have the mind of Christ directing my thoughts, I have the word of God guiding my steps, I demolish every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and I take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. That's the kind of thoughts that we need to be thinking. Taking God's word and applying it and confessing it and declaring it and making sure that I'm thinking it over and over and over. Write it, think it, confess it, and you believe it. Because your strongest thoughts are steering your life, they're controlling, they're directing, they're leading your life. We're gonna fix our thoughts, amen.
Prayer And Daily Confession
SPEAKER_01We're gonna start meditating on God's word, picking up the scripture, knowing why I'm thinking the thoughts I'm thinking. I want us to close in prayer today, and I want you to, if you've never confessed, that's the first confession that matters is that I know I'm not good enough. My life is not good enough. My life is broken, it's full of sin, and the only way that I become any better, the only way I get the life that God wants me to have is by surrendering my life to Him. Lord, it's all yours. You can have my heart, I'm gonna follow you. So I just want us to close with that prayer. I want us to take a step of faith again. If you've never said that prayer, would you just bow your head and close your eyes right where you are? Would you say these words with me and take that step of faith? Dear Jesus, I admit that I am a sinner, and I give my life to you today. I choose to follow you with all of my might. You've got a heart. So forgive me of my sins, give me a new heart, make me in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. I'm glad you said that prayer today. From this moment, I think there has to be an intentional, not passive, but a renewing of our mind through God's word. So the last thing I want us to do, I want you to stand up on your feet, and I want us to confess out of our mouths. Uh I want you to fix your thoughts on the back of the second sheet that we gave you. I've written this, we've written this in your notes so that you can take it home this week. You can meditate on it. I want us to read it out loud, and I want you to read it with me. We're gonna read it together. It's a daily confession that will help me to fix my thoughts and set my mind on the things above. Here we go. Jesus is first in my life. I exist to serve and glorify him. I love my wife and I will lay down my life to serve her. Amen. We might not be able to read it together because Okay, very good. We can't leave it, we can't read it together. Well, y'all see a different thing. Here we go. My children, let's read it together, all together. Don't follow me, just read it together. My children will love God and serve him with their whole hearts. I will nurture, equip, train, and empower the people around me to do more for his kingdom than they can imagine. I love people and believe the best about others. I am disciplined. Christ in me is stronger than the wrong desires in me. I am growing closer to Jesus every day. Because of Christ, my family is closer, my body is stronger, my faith is deeper, and my leadership is sharper. I am anointed, empowered, equipped, and called to reach people far from God. I am creative, innovative, driven, focused, and blessed beyond measure because the Holy Spirit dwells in me. One more, here we go. My words, thoughts, and imaginations are under the power of Christ. I take all thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ. I wake up with purpose, direction, and meaning every day of my life. Pain is my friend. I rejoice in suffering because Christ suffered for me. I break my best and then suffer. It's what I break after I do my best that makes the difference. The world will be different and better because I serve Jesus today. Let's give Jesus a heck back today. I want you to walk out today confessing the good news of Jesus and what he's doing in you and think the right thoughts. Let's fix our minds on things above today. We're gonna walk out with worship. I'm gonna invite the prayer team to join me at the front. If you want to pray with someone before you go, then come forward. Otherwise, you are dismissed in Jesus' name. And let's confess who he is and who we are this whole week. God bless you guys.