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We're going to move today. Carl and I, first of all, if you thought that church was going to be canceled, forget it, man. I was with Carl in Alaska. We had one weekend in particular, 48 inches of snow over the course of a little more than 48 hours. Did we cancel church? No, we didn't cancel church. I mean, I had a snowbank against my garage door that I think was probably close to five or six feet tall. I had to bust through a two-wheel drive car, Ford Escort, busting through the snowbank to get to church. It's good to be here. And we're gonna, again, put on the seatbelt, put on your track shoes, because what we're gonna do is we're gonna recap two weeks ago as the starting point, our point of demarcation this morning. We're gonna take five minutes and just cover the vast majority from a 10,000 foot view of the material that we hit two weeks ago because we want to set a proper backdrop for finishing our conversation today. We started two weeks ago with this statement from Dallas Willard and it's this, that I'm an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God's great universe. The question that we've got to ask ourselves as we begin is why in the world is there this huge chasm between what we believe to be true about God and ourselves, by the way, and what we're experiencing daily? That we need to know that renewal as God's designed it to be experienced is something that closes the gap between what we believe and what we're experiencing. That more and more and more than what we're experiencing becomes what we're believing. about God and ourselves. We transitioned two weeks ago to this picture, this iceberg. We used it as a way of describing kind of some of the ways that we get off track in life. That 10% of an iceberg is in the public eye, 90% is below the surface. And when we as people invest the vast majority of our emotional resources in where we're seen, where we perform, where we gain approval, it leaves us very little to do the work necessary beneath the surface. And yet that's how God's designed life to be lived. It's supposed to be out of the deeper recesses of who we are, that we experience change and then bring that forward, that naturally comes forward to the surface. That's what David is talking about in Psalm 51, six, where he says, surely you desire truth in my innermost being. It's where James is going when he says that out of the heart the mouth speaks. It's where Jesus is going in Matthew 23 where he says, Woe to you Pharisees, woe to you religious leaders, for you are like a cup clean on the outside, but inside you're full of greed and self-indulgence. That Jesus was speaking to the disconnect between who we pretend to be on the outside and who we really are on the inside. He wasn't judgmental or critical. What he was doing was saying, hey man, there's a better way. Life is just not found this way. That I want you to understand that my desire for you is to experience me, God, on the inside. To experience overhaul. And that overhaul then will naturally make its way out into all that you do. That's the way he has designed life to be lived. Like our key passage two weeks ago was Romans 12, 2, where we learn from Paul that really God's desire for us, if you go one verse back, is that we would be living lives where we're living sacrifices. That we're offering ourselves over and over and over again to him. And that the one thing that gets in the way is living according to the pattern of this world. And then Paul unveils for us the route of escape. He says this, that the route of escape related to living according to the pattern of this world is metamorphosis or transformation through the renewal of life. of your minds. Now, it's really important. If there's one thing that you would hold onto from our conversation two weeks ago, it's this word mind. That in the Greek, the word mind is nous, and what it represents primarily is how I perceive, how I understand, feel, judge, and determine. It also represents how I interpret. Perceive and interpret might be the best way to look at nous. So what's Paul saying to us? He's saying that if you're going to experience transformation and we all long for it, look for it in how we, look for change in how we perceive and how we interpret life. That Stephen Covey said that we're not as objective as we'd like to believe. We don't see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. We're looking through all our past experiences and we're using it as a grid of interpretation or expectation regarding the here and now. That's what Paul's aimed at In Romans 12, 2. He continues the conversation on renewal in Philippians 3, 13 and 14. He gives us a snapshot of what renewal looks like for him. He says, I forget what's behind and I press on towards what's ahead. Anybody in the room have a hard time forgetting what's behind? Yeah. Now what Paul isn't saying is that renewal is all about somehow putting our memories in lockdown or erasing memories. No, he talks about his greatest gains and his greatest shame all through the New Testament. Acts 22, Acts 26, 1 Timothy 1, Philippians 3. What he is saying is this, that renewal will bring about this changed perspective that will no longer be controlled, will no longer be diminished, will no longer be defined, distracted by the past. And oh, by the way, that includes the present. They need to gain approval to be okay. They need to perform in order to gain value. what Paul is saying which is just such a huge encouragement that that life in Jesus a renewed life is a life that has nothing to prove nothing to gain beyond what God promises to give and nothing to lose I want that life and that's what we're going to head deeper into today Carl and I thought it'd be a great idea for us to kind of expand the sample pool we We focused on Paul two weeks ago. We want to bring two more New Testament authors into the conversation related to renewal. I'm going to do this really quickly. Three minutes or less. Set your stopwatch. James, the half-brother of Jesus, gives us this great invitation in James 1, verse 5. He says this. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should what? Ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault. The question that we've got to ask is, what is wisdom? Well, he gives us an understanding of one half of the equation, one half of what wisdom is in James 1, 2 through 4, where he says this. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, not lacking anything. So what are we asking for wisdom about? Trials and difficulty in life. We're asking God to give us his what? Perspective related to difficult things so that we can find joy in them. Again, God's intervention brings a massive shift in how we see life. The other side of the coin related to wisdom is found in James 3, verse 13, where it says this. If any of you claim to be wise, let him show it by his good life. So do you see it? If we've got two sides to this coin of wisdom, we have perspective shift leading to godly living. You can't divorce the two. You can't live a godly life without God shifting perspective. That is a crucial, a core aspect of what it means to experience transformation and renewal. And Peter argues, makes the same argument. 2 Peter 1 says this. Well, I'm not gonna read it. But 2 Peter 1, he gives us this whole laundry list of godly character. You can go back and meditate on this passage maybe over lunch today. I mean, it'd be a good one. And then he says this. If you have these godly characters, these characteristics, they'll keep you from what? Being unproductive and ineffective in life. But if you don't have them, you're nearsighted and blind and have forgotten what? That you've been cleansed from your former sins. That he's saying that godly character is in direct proportion or dependent on perspective. If we have perspective deviation, meaning that we forget that, my gosh, all of my sins, and let me tell you, if we had all day to talk about them, we could. Because my life was a mess outside of Jesus changing me and setting a captive free. If we are having a struggle living a godly life, in part, it's related to perspective. That we've forgotten that we've been forgiven. Man, it... When I read that recently, what I had in my heart was, Greg, begin praying. You need to begin praying that God keeps his forgiveness just fresh and in the front of your mind. Renewal includes perspective shift leading to godly living. We're just going as the Lord prompts here. We got a channel that's good here? Okay. I feel prompted to just stop and say this, that workbook one, journey one, that we're going to get out to you in a moment if you don't have it. If you were here two weeks ago or even last week, you got a copy of this. My bride and I spent an hour and a half yesterday morning going through this together as a couple again. It's hard to see yourself as you are. It's hard. It's hard. It's hard to see what drives you. It's hard to see... why you do what you do, why you don't do what you don't do. I'd never told Greg this before, but I had seven kind of experiences or emotions that created kind of aftermath for me and probably still do to this day if I'm not alert and sensitive to asking for wisdom, Lord, to set me free from that. But I had a, and God bless her, she's in the cloud of witnesses, but I had a mom who scared the bejeebies out of me around one thing, and that was my grades. And I did really well in college, but I did really poorly in high school. And I was really distracted on training for the Iditarod and doing all these different things. And even in junior high, my mom shamed me in front of a friend, something fierce. It was the day for report cards to come home. And I brought my buddy Jeff home with me for cover. And my mom greeted us when we walked in. She said, where's your report card? And I came up with this goofy story that I had checked out a book on elephants and hadn't returned it to the library and that They wouldn't let me have my report card. And she looks at me and she said, God rest her soul, you're lying to me. But you're lying to me because you did horribly. And the way she looked at me and snarled at me made me go into a cave of performance. that led me to believe if I ever get busted out not performing well, I will be shamed for the whole world to see. Because Jeff was my whole world. I felt so naked and alone standing there in the entry to our home. I didn't know what to do. So I broke down in a pile of tears. Why does that still come up as a memory for me? Because all those things, and I've shared with you how the 64 earthquake caused me, because my earliest memory in life was I'm three years old and the whole world's shaking under me for three and a half minutes. Good Friday earthquake, 9.3 on the Richter scale in Anchorage, Alaska. So I wet my bed for years in the shame of asking Dad, can you come help me again, Dad? You know, that would be funny if it wasn't so stinking tragic for a little guy with orange hair. But then you even look at a room like this, Greg, and we've got girls that got date raped. We got guys that were party to it. We've got addictions that became a emotional pacifier to fend off all those shameful things that happened. And a lot of us in evangelical world have thought, well, I just got a soldier on now. I've got to learn more Bible. I've got to do, I just, if I memorize more, if I lift my hands a little higher and God says, no, I'm such a good, good father. I want to go back there and I want to heal what was broken. That's so good. You know, does one event change a life? Sometimes it does. But more often than not, what ends up happening is that we begin to gain a perspective that's flawed. And as a result of days, weeks, months, and years looking through that flawed perspective, we begin to create what Dallas Willard calls governing ideas that are flawed. And some of the most successful men and women today are driven by distortion. They get to the top of the heap, and they realize they didn't ever get what was really driving them forward. They never got what they needed. Could you tell about the national championship quarterback who will remain unnamed? I don't know who it is that you were working with. I was working with a guy years ago. And we did the awareness work that you all have done. And in fact, if you didn't get one of those workbooks two weeks ago, we'll pass one out to you today. But he came in, we began, I listened to his story, we began to do some work. And actually, distortions can form through misinterpretations of both good events and negative events. His wasn't a wounding event. It was winning the national championship. He still has all the passing records in his D1 college. And when the game was on the line, he walked to the sideline to his coach and said, This ball is in my hands. If you put it in my hands, I will win this game and deliver you a championship. And he did. The problem was that when I was working with him, he had a multi-million dollar nonprofit that he was leading, and he couldn't keep any good talent around him because he micro-controlled everything. He had a hard time determining what was important enough for him to control and not control. And God began the process of shifting perspective for him and bringing change. That's a work of the Holy Spirit. And that's where we're going to go right now. That you guys have done the hard work of looking back or began the process of looking back. The next step forward is subjecting what we've learned, what we've discovered, to the working of the counsel of the Holy Spirit. In fact, Titus, actually I'll go to Titus next. Let me tell you a story. So, Ali, my wife and I, we've been married for, I think, 26 years. Can you believe that? 26 years? That's amazing, man. I can't believe it either. Seems like it was just yesterday. She's a great woman of God. My firstborn, we miscarried a number of times before we had our first child. His name is Elias. We named him after Mount St. Elias. A big mountain. Actually, in Alaska. He was born in Alaska. And The older he got, the more Allie and I really struggled with how to raise this guy. We just thought that we were bad parents. We just didn't know what to do. But he also had some signs that he was on the autism spectrum. He would wring his hands, and there were some really strong personality things that were coming out. Of course, that strong personality trait was from Allie, not me. I just wanted to make sure that you know that. But when he was three or four, we were both at Wits End. And I can remember driving around downtown Grand Rapids. And there was this ad on Christian radio, this James Lehman Total Transformation CD series that you could buy. I don't remember any of that CD series. And I listened multiple times to all ten of those CDs. But the one thing that I do remember changed my life. And he said this. I would recommend with a strong-willed child that you just find a picture of your daughter or son in his or her best moment. And before you have to correct them or discipline them, I just want you to take a break, look at that picture and remind yourself of the child, the quality of the child that you're disciplining. This was the picture that I used right here. That's Elias. Still brings tears to my eyes when I see him. Look at this picture today. That he's precious. He's just full of life. Wants to explore, wants to discover. See, it was James Lehman's counsel that led me to a perspective shift. And that's what we're going after today. Who does the shifting of perspective for us? The scripture tells us it's the third person of the Trinity. It's the Holy Spirit of God. Titus 3.5 says this, that salvation comes as we experience a regeneration. He saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration, he regenerates us, and then he gives us the Holy Spirit, and we experience daily renewal. We're supposed to experience a God counseling and guiding us daily. We need that. Without that all we're left with is just our own misconceptions in life. And let me tell you, unresolved issues don't resolve themselves. We need a God who will resolve the unresolved issues in our life and set us free. This is John Stott. I've got to give you this quote. that the Holy Spirit not only gives us new birth, but renews us daily, transforming us into Christ-likeness. John 16, seven says this, Jesus teaches us that the Holy Spirit is a counselor or a guide. John 16, 13 teaches us that of the many functions of the Holy Spirit, That he'll lead us into truth about all things. Last time I checked, all includes everything. It includes every way that you and I are distorted, broken, deceived. Prisoners. What God wants to do is he wants to be invited to speak specifically to our areas of brokenness. Which shifts our perspective. He dislodges distortion. He replaces it with himself. He takes away disruptive emotion. Replaces it with restorative emotion. Which propels, empowers us to live life unlike any life that we've lived up to this point. That's God's desire for renewal. What I want to do is I want to pass out these workbooks if we could right now. We're going to make this real practical if we could. So if you, first of all, if you didn't get a workbook from two weeks ago, just raise up your hand. We're going to get one into your hands this morning. Just raise your hand. Keep them up there. Looks like we've got enough for them. Okay. Workbook one, guys. Let's quickly get them into their hands. Workbook one. And then number two, everybody else is going to get workbook, the second workbook. Everyone will, even with hands up. Keep your hands up for workbook one. Summer, if we could get these into their hands. Workbook one or hands in the air, okay? As they're passing those out. Take one as a couple, if we could, to make sure we've got enough, and we're going to show you how to work that. Okay. Another thing, there's a QR code. You've been getting a lot of QR codes this morning. But there's a QR code at the back of the workbook. We're not charging for any of these resources. So if you've got a small group that you lead or you're just in a group, you've got a friend group that would benefit from doing some of this work, just take a snapshot of that QR code and download any of the resources that you need. We just really want to help. So I'm not going to, for the sake of time, I'm not going to walk you through things that are clearly laid out for you in this workbook already, okay? But what I want to do is I want to give us a taste. So if you'll turn to... This is workbook two, so we got to get everybody with workbook two. Everyone got workbook two in their hands? So if you'll turn to... Page three of workbook two, there's a list of distortions. Everybody gets one, not one per couple. Everybody gets one. Let's give them a second, get it in their hands here. Tell me your thoughts. Yeah, I did have one thought. I think as they're getting these workbooks into their hands, I think that Tyson quote. Yeah. I think is really important. I want you to listen to this because we don't have it on a screen today, but I want you to listen to this. It's a very short quote. Take it away. Yeah, John Tyson says this. Put that mic right in front of you. This about knocked me over the first time I heard this quote. He said, God cannot heal the person you pretend to be. But also, he doesn't expect you to figure yourself out. What he wants you to do is humble yourself before him and say, I've got no clue what drives me in life. But I need you. And I'm humbling myself before you. And I'm asking you, Jesus, to fill me, flood me with the Holy Spirit. And I'm willing for you, Lord. I'm willing and I'm open for you to take off every mask that I hide behind. Every need to perform well. every need to gain approval in order to be valuable, everything that defines me, controls me, or distracts me that comes from my past, I'm just offering it all to you. And he will. He'll bring insight that will break chains and bring freedom to all of us in this room, if you're willing to just go to him. One quick thought, Greg, and I have talked about this a lot, but I've been getting up early in the morning now. I've been saying for six months, for two years, so it's probably been two years getting up early in the morning, as I did this morning, praying the prayer out of 139 last two verses. God searched me, David said, know me, try me, see if there'd be any hurtful way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. And I have had, no kidding, a cup of coffee and me and God with those two verses for two years. And the amount of stuff, here's why I do this, because I can't see myself correctly, just like David. You can't see yourself correctly. You're looking through the lens of what moms and dads told you, what culture told you, what culture told you because what color you are, what color you aren't, what you name it, guys. There's messages coming at us steady. But the Lord through that time has graciously shown me, Carl, this is who you are. This is what needs to change. And it's bearing fruit in my marriage, in my pastoring, in my radio hosting, in my training a husky puppy. I mean, weird stuff. That's how practical God is. He's good. This is what I want you to do. Again, boy, I said we've got to put on our track shoes. We really need to race. But just to give us all a taste of where we're going, page three has a list of distortions. Remember, it's our uninterpreted or misinterpreted life experiences that over time form distorted perspectives. You know, we beat the tar out of ourselves. God says related to our sin that he's kind and compassionate, and his kindness leads us to a 180. I mean, really, that's the bottom line. I think God sees far clearer than we do, of course, and he sees that we just don't have a clue what's behind our sin patterns in life. Well, now we're going to discover some of the reasons why we live the way that we do. I want you to look at this list. Some of you have already done your work. You know what distortions belong to you. Some of you haven't started that yet. I want you to look down this list. We're going to give you 60 seconds. Look down, put your finger on one that you know that you know is true about your life. And while you're looking at that, I'll just tell you about some of what I've discovered in my own life. Number one, performance drove me, that my value is contingent on my performance. Number two, I'd have to honestly say that I believe that what I am or what I have is not enough. That would be another distortion. Number three would be directly related to if anyone really knew me or knew those deficiencies about me, they'd reject me. Those would be three distortions that God has been chipping away at, he's been working on, he's been changing my perspective on, and now I can say maybe more than ever before that I have a value that's not contingent on performance. I can sit up here and actually have fun connecting with you. Not believing in any, even an iota that my performance in any way causes my value to go up or down. Values gifted by God and not earned. So if you've got your distortion in mind, now I just want to walk you through what we would call a build out, a distortion build out, a framework for healing build out. You don't need to be focused on your manual or your workbook at all. All of these instructions are in there, but I want to just walk you through what you'll be doing this next week as you build out your top three distortions and begin to progress in your renewal process. There are three questions that we're asking that will help us gain or garner better perspective related to how distortions are impacting our lives. Here's the first question. When you're doing this work, you'll take your distortion, you'll move it over to the grid, the template that you have on page, I guess it's gonna be page six is your first template. Once that distortion's in play, you're gonna ask three questions. The first is this, the last time I left an event that reinforced this false belief or this distortion in my life, what disruptive emotion did it create? And I just want you to go to the list that's included in the book. I want you to find six distortions or disruptive emotion that come as a result of that distortion, that are fruit of that distortion, and I just want you to mark them in to the rectangle that's above the distortion rectangle. The second question that you're asking is, the last time I felt this way, how did I act out? And we have a list of all sorts of dysfunctional lifestyle choices. It's not a really encouraging list, but it's a helpful list. I want you to go then and choose six dysfunctional lifestyle choices from that list and mark it into your template. Again, you don't have to have this all figured out right now because all the instructions are in your manual. But you're going from distortion. You're asking the question, the last time I left an event that reinforced this distortion, how did it leave me feeling? Write your disruptive emotion into the third category. Then you're asking the question, the last time I felt this way, how did I act out? Dysfunctional lifestyle choices go into that top category. And then you're finally asking the last question. Where did it all begin? what happened early on that seems that lands a little bit too close to what I've written down here, how I feel when I'm triggered here, when I'm living out of this distortion, where did it begin? It might've been in your teenage years for you. It might've been early, early on. It's important to get real life experiences, historical events written into this template. Why? Because what we're doing here is we're summarizing the whole of your life. When you're moving towards healing and change regarding noose, your mind, perspective, and how we're interpreting life, it's really important to simplify what happened. It's important to be able to get to that distortion, get to the fruit of that distortion, so that you can bring that into the presence of the Holy Spirit and begin to ask God, him to make sense of it all that's how we move forward and experience healing it's the counseling work of the Holy Spirit who dislodges distortion and replaces it with himself okay we on the same page I know that we blasted through that but again I don't want you I don't want to be here for or keep you here for two hours my normal session times are 90 minutes we don't have 90 minutes to do this work today So can we shift gears? Okay, so what do we do now? What's the practical next step for us? And it's learning how to move out of our chaos into the presence of the true Jesus. And we do that by learning how to cast care and receive care. Anybody who has a Bible in the room, this is not a sword drill, but anybody who's got a Bible in the room, would you stand up and read Psalm 55, 22? Anybody? Who's got it? Bible on your phone? Psalm 55. I just saw a gal in the back row pointing. He'll do it. Come on. Here we go. Okay. Psalm 55. You got it. Preston. Shout it out, buddy. Preston, that's great. Read it one more time, would you? Loud and proud. Okay, so what's the exhortation in that verse? Can you tell me? What's God exhorting us to do? Cast care. What's the net result of casting care? We receive care. We learn to cast care. And the net result is that we receive care. Could it be for any of us in the room that feel like, man, my life has gone by and I'm not receiving the care that I feel like the God promises for us to experience. Could it be that the care has been waiting for you, but we're too busy and distracted by managing our own lives? That we've been controlling it. And what we've been doing is closing the spigot by managing our own lives to the very care, the very intervention of the Almighty. What God wants us to learn how to do is to be honest and open with what is broken and And we'll experience that become, like we talked about two weeks ago, Isaiah 61. That will become a place of meeting for us. God will meet us in our brokenness. Hebrews 4, starting in verse 14. We need somebody else to read. Preston, it could be you again, man. You did a great job. Or maybe you, John, in the front row. Hebrews 4, starting at 14, going through 16. 14 through 16 would be great. Thank you. So where are we supposed to boldly approach? Throne of grace. It's a real place. I didn't mean to rhyme that. The throne of grace is a real place. Now, I read that passage dozens of times. But it didn't bring radical change to me until I discovered a proper biblical passage. Definition of grace. As Dallas Willard, as Louis Burkoff in his systematics says this, that grace very simply is God doing something for me that I can't do for myself. That's grace. Grace is God doing something for me that I can't do for myself. So what is this throne that God's inviting us to approach? It's the throne of I will do it for you. That's the throne. It's the throne of I will do it for you. It's not a place where we power up to prove ourselves. It's a place where we bow down and surrender ourselves and say, I can't do it. I can't fix it. I can't even see the mask that I've got on or how many I've got on. I need you to do this for me. And when we come, when we approach him and confess that we need him, he's there to bring the help that we've always needed. So could we real quickly bring this all together? Again, it's all in your workbooks, so you don't need to grasp the concept perfectly today. You can take it with you. What do we do? Number one, we're gonna be, this is all about approaching God's throne of I will do it for you, approaching God to receive the help that we need to experience perspective, shift, transformation, In the deepest recesses of who we are. This isn't an exercise of striving. This is an exercise of surrendering. That's where life change takes place. So today, as you're driving home or you're finishing your Sunday or next week, when you're aware of disruptive emotion, like you're feeling anxious, afraid, stressed out, depressed, discouraged, this is what I want you to do. Step one, and these steps are in your workbook, so you don't have to write them down. When you're aware of disruptive emotion, I want you to make the connection to the distortion that's driving it. What distortion is creating this disruptive emotion? Well, guess what? A week from now, after you've done all your build-outs, you're gonna be way more aware of what's creating disruptive emotion in your lives. So step one is when I'm feeling, when I'm aware of disruptive emotion, I'm asking God to help me make the connection to the distortion that's creating it. Step two, now in prayer, I'm approaching the throne of I will do it for you. What am I doing there? I'm just being honest with the Almighty. I'm feeling stress, fear, I'm feeling anxiety because I know that my performance determines my value. I'm verbalizing in prayer the disruptive emotion and the distortion. Number two, the second thing that I'm doing before that throne is I'm saying, This is what I believe. What do you want me to hear, see, know, and experience? Holy Spirit, you promised John 16, 13 that you are a counselor. Would you lead me into all truth? This is the distortion I believe. What do you say? And I want us as a community to cultivate a relationship with God where he speaks and we hear and we can experience change. The scripture does say, promise that God's sheep shall hear his voice. If that's not something that you've experienced in the tradition that you've been raised in, then by all means, buy Dallas Willard's book, Hearing God. That would be a great primer maybe to begin to learn how to hear God's voice. But we need him counseling us. or else we're not gonna experience long-term change. So what do I do? I'm aware of disruptive emotion, attach it to the distortion. Approach the throne of I will do it for you in prayer. I'm confessing, I'm verbalizing disruptive emotion, distortion, and then I'm just saying flat out, what do you want me to hear, see, know, and experience? Would you reveal your perspective to me? Gaining, garnering God's perspective absolutely has power to uproot false perspectives that drive us in life. I need to keep track of, write down what he's speaking to me. And then step three is very simple. I'm utterly renouncing distortion and disruptive emotion. And in its place, in its stead, I'm asking for his person. Philippians 4 promises peace that passes all understanding to guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. I'm not asking for a feeling here. I'm asking for the Prince of Peace. I'm asking for Him to draw near and fill me with Himself. And in filling me with Himself, He'll fill me with all that He is. Peace, His graciousness, His kindness. Do you see how we can begin to move from brokenness and stuck? That was my life. A stuck with a capital S, maybe stuck in all caps was my life. We now have the opportunity by living into these biblical promises to move from stuck to a God who's willing to speak directly to my areas of distortion and set a captive free. I want to give you a couple things that are really important real quickly. God will give us grace, God will give us help or provisioning to practice. It's very, very important to keep what you're learning in front of you and begin to prime the pump of getting answers from God as soon as you're aware that you're living out a distortion. God wants to break that pattern in all of our lives, but practice, what my kids did, Elias used to tell me, Dad, practice makes permanent. And I was like, wow, that's really good. I need to apply that to my life. But practice is important. That we're not changed by good intentions. We're changed by action. And God is saying, if you'll apply this, you will find a God readily available to uproot distorted patterns that have been in play for 10, 20, 30, 40. I'm working with a man and a woman who are Christian ministers that are 78 and 76. And they're experiencing radical change in their lives as a result of moving their brokenness towards God. There's a piece of what's central to this. In fact, I had Sam Storms on air. And... I really say this with all humility, and I'm painting a broad brush here, but over a lot of the Bible preaching, seeker-sensitive plus kind of churches where, you know, I'm not diminishing anyone. I want you to hear my heart on this one. But what's come out of a lot of the evangelical Bible teaching slash seeker slash let's rock the house. And I love to rock the house and I love big events. But what has grown out of this is just a perpetuation of a bunch of people that wear masks. and feel the pressure of acting right, sounding right, so much so we don't even know how embedded we are in that lifestyle. Dude, I had a pastor who said to me, I can't bleed. I've been taught that if I bleed, the sharks will begin to circle. Well, here's the problem. He's right. Yeah. That's the problem. As much as there's bad pastors, there's bad parishioners. Yeah. Some of you guys are go-getters, and you don't need to practice this biblical model. You don't need to wait until you're aware of disruptive emotion in your life. Some of you are going to go home and do these build-outs, and you're going to be very aware of your distortions, and you're going to want to begin working, moving towards God with them right away. You can do that. You just call out a distortion and the disruptive emotion that are attached to it and bring it right into the presence of the Almighty. God, help me. And say, I know that this is in play. I don't have to wait for me to be triggered in this area of my life. This is true for me. I know it's a distortion, but it's how I'm living. What do you say? And let him speak. Let him just fill you with his wise counsel. That your distortions fit under the banner of all. He'll lead you into all truth. The only other thing that I would say is that it would be good for you to bring somebody along for the ride or a couple people who are trustworthy. You could just download as many of these workbooks as you can print and If you've got a women's group, if you've got guys that you go out and smoke cigars or you shoot pool or whatever you do here, you can just hand them out and say, hey, would you guys be, do you want to go on this journey with me? Just make sure they're trustworthy people who aren't going to be airing out your baggage. Community is important. If you don't have community, God understands and he's going to meet you powerfully today. as an individual. But if you can journey with people, that would be better. Yeah. So let me break this down really simply. I my bride and I, when we got done yesterday morning, we'd been through both of these workbooks before multiple times. It's a great journey to go through again. But we spent an hour and a half together and we swapped books and we were just totally honest with each other because there's we've been married 38 years. You're hiding stuff still. You don't even know some of the stuff we hide. I mean, you're just born unaware. And here's the crazy maker. We've committed to not doing that. And then when she was reading some of mine and I'm reading some of hers, she's looking at me going, I never knew that. Wow. And I'm looking at her and I go, I never knew that. Here's what's important. I need you to hear this. We do church at a level of small groups. Great. Bible reading, great. Worship, dynamite. But the real jazz and joy of doing those things is living true-faced before a holy God and others. Where there's no pretense. Where there's no sense of I need to protect myself because God's got my back. And that's what we want for you. You know, I've got to just say this. The dominant measuring stick for most pastors, and this is where we fail you, the dominant measuring stick is is how many butts are in seats on a weekend and how many bucks are in plates. And we are wholesale rejecting that tooth and nail hanging on to our primary metric here is are we making disciples of Jesus Christ? Come on, Matt. And I want to go to heaven hearing, well done, good and faithful servant. And the well-done portion is revolving around helping you grow and go in your identity in Christ. That's what we want for you. I'm going to do something right now. I'm going to ask the worship team to come on up. Tori, they've got a final song, but we're going to do something different with just a few minutes that we have left. I want you to close your eyes. Everyone in this room, close your eyes. And I'm going to do something different than we did two weeks ago. Greg and I are going to walk out here among you here. If you're watching online, you're going to hear us, but you might see us disappear from your line of sight. But I think what I want to do this morning, Greg, is with no one looking around and no one walking forward, I'm going to ask you a series of a couple of questions. Is there something that you've had a hunch about yourself that you know to be true that you want God to fix? You want him to repair that. If that's you, just quickly look up at Greg and me right now. Just, there we go. Okay, so it's all over here. My goodness, how awesome is that? Tremendous, tremendous. Okay, that's almost everyone. Is there something that you've thought this battle can never be won? I'm not going to have you look up at me. Because usually right on the heels of looking up at Greg and I with that thing that needs to change is this nagging demonic voice that says, you'll never win it. You'll never get over it. But Greg and I are going to pray about that right now. We're going to pray about that right now. As you feel prompted, we'll go back and forth here for just a moment. You break every chain. Even the thickest, the most impossible chains that have been there for so long. Yeah, you do. We can't imagine what it would be like to have them gone. And if you want to go with me in this moment, we just lay those down, the impossibility down, the imprisonment, all the secret shame, We're just laying it at your feet now, Jesus, and asking for you to break, break it, and set me free. Come, Lord. There's something that's on my heart, Greg, and I want you to pray about it. I'm going to speak it. You're going to pray about it. There are some people that have been hardwired for pride, that they've been taught that if I don't do it, it ain't going to happen. Suck it up. Don't let them see you cry. It's on me. I'm going to make this happen. And somebody here is having a hard time letting loose of good old fashioned self-will. Would you pray? Jesus, I'm asking for discernment. I'm just praying that you would clearly reveal what that life has brought them. The rip off. Yeah. The isolation. Yeah. All the pretending. And I'm asking for a great work of grace, Lord, all over this room. That you would just reveal what it is that we've surrendered ourselves to. And all of the lack of life and the bondage that's come as a result. And give us desire according to Philippians 2. You say that you're the one that causes us to desire you and then live according to your good purposes. I'm asking... out of your innermost being now. John 7, would you allow the spirit, the spring of living water, Lord, to spring up in these people and that you would convince them that to go your way and drop the mask is the route of freedom. Yes, we agree, Lord. And Lord, I thank you for a time of immunity here as we prayed where your spirit is free to move. And I know that we've been entertaining angels that have been here battling on our behalf. And I praise you. I thank you for the work that you do in my heart while Greg's talking and how you continue to say, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden. I'll give you rest. Some of you need rest today because you're exhausted. And in Jesus Christ, there is rest for your soul, for his yoke is easy and his burden is light. And you want that freedom. And I praise you. Lead us in song, guys.
