Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] So we had our awesome awaken conference this week, you guys. I am just blown away and excited to see what God is doing in our next generation, what he has started, what has been this awesome spark is, like, on fire. And what this next generation is going to do. Our church doesn't even know how good it's going to be.
[00:00:28] Everybody who helped, everybody who was here, thank you so much. I'm so excited to see what God is doing and to be a part of it all. Let me pray for us. Dear father, thank you for this day. Thank you that you are a God who is good. Thank you that you are a God who invites us to draw closer to you. I pray that this morning we just open our hearts, open our thoughts, open our minds to you. I pray that we would connect with you in the kind of way that would encourage us and strengthen us. That you would call out what is very, very best in each and every one of us. I pray this all in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:01:06] So in greek mythology, there's this famous story about a huntress named Atlanta. The story goes that Atlanta had completely sworn off marriage and love. She was committed to being a hunter, and she was committed to the goddess Artemis. And that was how she lived her life. And one day, her father comes along and says, it's time for you to get married. She reluctantly agrees, but only under one condition. Anybody that she would consider marrying has to beat her in a racing competition. And so that's how it gets set up. And race after race, all these guys step up to the line, fully convinced they can beat her. They can't. She wins. Some of the stories go. They die if they don't beat her. That's a little extreme. So she keeps winning. Life goes on as it will until a guy named hippomenes comes along. He is desperately in love with Atlanta, wants to marry her. He's fast, but knows he's not fast enough to beat her in this race. So he goes to the goddess Aphrodite, and he asks her for help, and she gives him these three beautiful golden apples. And so he shows up on the day of his race. He's got his golden apples stashed away. He's ready. They take off their neck and neck, but she's fast. And she gets ready to, like, take the lead. And he just rolls out a golden apple.
[00:02:31] She gets distracted by the golden apple. It's shiny, it's gold. She swoops down. She's fast. She thinks she's got enough time. She can pick it up.
[00:02:40] But he starts to take the lead. She's still fast. She goes again. He rolls out another apple. Three times. He does this, which gives him just enough of a lead, just enough of an edge to beat her. Win the race, she loses. There's all kinds of different ways the story goes, some romantic, some not so much, but we'll leave it there.
[00:03:00] They love to tell these kind of stories because it would use illustrations to teach life lessons. And when we read stories like this, there's illustrations that are just as true for us today. See, like Atlanta, we're all running this race of life, and we've got this prize and we're running there and we're going in a certain direction, but life gets distracting. Life has all of these things coming at us and we think, well, I'm just going to look at this for a second, or I'm just going to take my eye off this for a minute. And all of a sudden we find ourselves way off course from where we really ever wanted to be. We get distracted and we wander off the direction of what we had set off, farther than we wanted to be. And we live in a time. Let's just be honest, we do not lack for distractions in this world, do we? I love how the author Ryan holiday says it. He says there's way too much coming at us in order to think clearly. It's essential that each of us figures out how to filter out the inconsequential from the essential. It's not enough to be inclined towards deep thought and sober analysis. We have to create time and space for it. It says each of us has access to more information than we could ever reasonably use. We tell ourselves it's part of the job. We have to be on top of things. So we use precious time for news reports, meetings, other forms of feedback. And he said, even if we're not glued to a television, we're still surrounded by gossip and drama and all other kinds of distractions. Says it's difficult to think or act clearly when we're drowning in information. See, we don't lack for information. We don't lack for distractions. What we do lack for is a process to say, what should I think about and what shouldn't I think about.
[00:04:51] We lack the time and energy to ever say, there's some things I should absolutely put my focus on and my energy on, and there's other things I should completely ignore.
[00:05:01] See if we aren't careful. There's so much coming at us all day, every day. We get lost in the distraction and we just coast our way through life and we lose the purpose, we lose the intention, the path that we had originally set out on. So I want to help us with that today. I want to help us create a process for what do we pay attention to in life? Where do we look? What do we think about? And what are we supposed to just let go and start ignoring? To help us, we're going to look at the psalms again in psalm 119. This is what it says in verse 37.
[00:05:37] Turn my eyes from worthless things and give me life through your word. I love how the psalmist says this. Turn my eyes from worthless things. Here's what he's saying. There are things that we can look at, things that we can think about that are absolutely worthless. They don't matter. It's kind of like junk food, right? I can eat it, don't feel great afterwards.
[00:06:03] I do the same thing with my attention. I think about things that are garbage.
[00:06:10] And when I spend my time there thinking about these things, looking at these things, I don't feel great afterwards. There are things we spend our times looking at. They're not healthy for our minds. They're not healthy for our souls or our hearts. And we get lost there, we get distracted there. And they're worthless. They never add up to anything valuable. They never contribute to making us better human beings. They don't help us add any kind of value to our lives, our families or the world that we live in. They're empty, they're junk, they're worthless.
[00:06:52] But it's not just bad things. Sometimes it's easy to identify. Oh yeah, that's bad. I can rationalize it. Why? I don't think it's so bad, but it's pretty easy to know. It's harder to know what are the things that aren't necessarily bad, but they're still worthless. They don't really add up to anything over time, their filler. Right? I've wasted a lot of my time doing stuff, but it was wasted. I don't really have anything to show for it afterwards. And again, we live in a world where there's no lack of distractions, right? Whoever fell down the YouTube rabbit hole. I'm just going to watch this video and then there's another video and then like an hour and a half later you're like, what happened? Right? And we do it on watching shows that we're binging, like, don't shame me. Yes, I'm still watching 5 hours later. It's fine, right? Social media, all of this stuff, it's so easy to get distracted by. And it's not even on the surface bad things. But at the end of it, they were filler, but they weren't good. And we get distracted and lost there. Here's why this matters. Whatever is preoccupying our mind sets the course and the direction for our life. What I spend time thinking about determines where I go in the direction we take. And here's the truth. We're all thinking about something, right? All the time, whether it's on purpose or your mind just wanders somewhere. How many times does your mind just wander? You don't even know how you got on that thought. But, like 15 steps later, there you are. And our minds become preoccupied. So what goes in is what we think about. And here's the truth. If you put garbage in, garbage comes out, right?
[00:08:37] I know that's true physically. But sometimes I forget that when it comes to my thought life. Which means I have to pay attention to what I'm thinking about. I have to pay attention to where I let my mind wander to. I gotta pay attention to the things that I'm looking at and spending. Spending my time about. So let me give us a place to start. Let's make this really tactile.
[00:09:03] The first one, I want you to stay with me because I'm going to challenge us a little bit. Okay, deal.
[00:09:08] Sometimes we got to challenge the way we think.
[00:09:11] We got to challenge. We never spend time thinking about what we think about. And we can get so used to thinking certain ways that we never stop to say, hey, is this right? Should I be thinking this way? Is thinking this way actually working?
[00:09:27] Is it healthy to think this way? Is it productive to think this way? Because it turns out not everything that we think is right. I'll give you an easy example.
[00:09:39] I have no talent for singing. Zero. Very aware of this. But my mind is filled with song lyrics. I have so many song lyrics up in my head, I want to sing them all of the time. It doesn't come out good, but in my head. So my daughter Savannah and I were singing, ajr. Anybody? Ajr. And we're having this argument over the lyrics because I'm like, no, I'm 100% right. And I'm like, you have to say, pretend you love this song, everybody. And she's like, no, no, mom, it's pretend. You know this song, everybody. I'm like, song lyrics in my head. I would die on this hill, guys, I was right. So we put money on it. We bet like $10. Whoever was right got $10. I was totally wrong.
[00:10:19] We pulled up the song, we pulled up the lyrics. 100% wrong. But I literally would have died on that hill of being right because I was so convinced of my own way of thinking that I was right. Okay. It's easy to admit that, right? Sometimes we have conflicting thoughts in our head. Let me give you another easy example. I have one thought in my head that says it is a great idea to go get Taco Bell at 930 at night.
[00:10:44] Genius, right? Long day, coming home taco bell. Great. Then I have this other thought in my head that's like stomach's not going to really like you for eating taco Bell at 930 at night.
[00:10:58] So my thought that said, this is a genius idea. One guess who regretted their decision? This girl, right? Because there's a part of me that knows it's not a great idea. We have conflicting thoughts and we choose one over the other. So there are some areas of our life it's totally easy to admit, yeah, I got that wrong, right? I didn't think the right thing there. Didn't make the right decision based on that thought there.
[00:11:20] But there's other parts of our life that we are way less willing to admit that we're wrong.
[00:11:27] We're way less willing to say, yeah, no, I'm still going to die on that hill. Like, I'm fully committed to this way of thinking.
[00:11:34] But if we're going to think healthy thoughts, if we're going to do what the psalmist says and turn our eyes away from worthless things, we have to start challenging our own thoughts by admitting, not every thought I have is right.
[00:11:50] Not every thought I have is true.
[00:11:55] Not every thought I have turns out is actually worth following and doesn't get me to a good place. Because here's the truth. We all make assumptions about how the world works, right? Life works a certain way. My life, your life, the world looks a certain way. We make assumptions about people, right? Quick snap judgments about who they are based on whatever little information that we have. And we all make these assumptions. And not only do we make these assumptions, we have this thing called confirmation bias. And here's how confirmation bias works. I'm only looking for information to support me being right. If I come across anything that challenges my rightness, disregard it, ignore it, don't pay attention to it, I'm only going to stay in the lane that just feeds into what I already think is true. And it confirms my bias. It confirms my assumption, and I can live there happily. My opinions are right. My assumptions are right. I've got resources to back up me being right.
[00:12:58] But what if we never challenge that?
[00:13:01] What if we actually aren't right there, even though we're confident? What if? How we're thinking, the assumptions we're making, they're not only not right, they're not helpful. They're not helpful to our quality of soul or helpful to the people who are around us.
[00:13:19] We can go our whole life without ever challenging one thought that we have. We can live a whole life without ever really challenging assumptions that we've made or opinions that we've set up our camp on. And we are going to live there and die there. And it's right, so help me.
[00:13:36] But we have thousands and thousands and thousands of thoughts running through our heads day after day after day.
[00:13:44] Do we ever just stop to ask how many are true?
[00:13:48] How many of these thoughts are worthless?
[00:13:52] How many of these thoughts are hurtful?
[00:13:56] Are any of them helpful? See, it turns out it's actually thought less to go. My whole life never checking how I think or what I think about.
[00:14:09] It's actually thoughtless to never stop and question, why do I think this way? How did I get with this thought, this opinion, this assumption?
[00:14:21] So I'm going to give you guys a little bit of a tool to help you kind of think through your thinking today. It's not the most comfortable thing that you're going to ever do, but it is really, really helpful. And you're going to be surprised how many thoughts run through your head that you've never even considered. That's a stupid thought and you don't belong there. But if you never think about it, you let it run through unchecked. We're going to use this tool from Craig Rochelle. He gives us. It's called a thought audit, and it's a process to really spend time thinking about what we think about, he says, whether it's self doubt or worrying or responding poorly to a bad day or a tough season in life, we all wrestle with negative thoughts that try to hijack our emotions and our decisions. So the first thing he encourages us to do is take inventory of your thoughts. See, here's the part that's not comfortable. Most of the time, we either don't want to think about what we thought about, or we just want to ignore it or we don't pay attention to it. But he says, write it all down. Every thought that you have, take a notebook with you, get a little note on your iPhone, your smartphone, whatever you do, text it to yourself, email it, keep it open. And from the beginning of the day, until the end of the day, write down everything, okay? This is not anything that needs to be shared with anybody else. Nobody's grading you on this. You are allowed to delete it when you're done, but you have to take an inventory and think about what you're thinking about on a regular basis. And he says, be honest. See, we also want to filter for ourselves because we think very highly sometimes of ourselves, like, oh, no, I didn't think that. But we thought it. Be honest, capture it all. And then once you've done that, I'm going to give you some questions to help audit your inventory thought. These are from Craig Groeschel.
[00:16:06] They're going to be up on the screen if you want to write them. They're also in your notes app, in the Christchurch app, in the notes section of the sermons. All of these are there for you if you want to take them home with you this week. Okay? Here's the audit questions he gives us. Number one, are my thoughts tearing me down?
[00:16:22] You guys, nobody's meaner to you than you are to yourself. Do you know that? And some of us never check the absolutely mean things that we say to ourselves on a regular basis. We say mean, horrible stuff, and we would never let anybody talk to the people we love that way. But we never check how we talk to ourselves. Are my thoughts tearing me down? Do I think worried thoughts, right? How many of my thoughts are something bad is going to happen?
[00:16:50] Does my self talk cause me to shrink back in fear?
[00:16:56] Are my thoughts negative, toxic, or self deprecating?
[00:17:02] Here's one. Are my unhealthy thoughts keeping me from the life God wants for me?
[00:17:10] On the other side? He says, do I think peaceful thoughts?
[00:17:13] Does my self talk inspire me to take faith risks? Do my thoughts reflect my faith?
[00:17:22] Are any of my thoughts God honoring?
[00:17:25] Are any of the thoughts running through my head, the thoughts God really wants me to have because they're good and they're true and they're right?
[00:17:33] Do my thoughts reflect my hope in Jesus Christ?
[00:17:37] See, until we take time to think about how we think, it's a free for all up there. And I don't know about you, but, guys, sometimes my head is a crazy place to be.
[00:17:48] Sometimes the more busy I get, the more spazzed out I get. And it's crazy, crazy up there, but I gotta check it because that doesn't mean because it happens in my head, I have to let it. It doesn't mean I have no control about the direction of what I think. And what I do with those thoughts. See, here's the misconception a lot of us have. We think. How I think and how I feel determines how I act. And what I do. And how I act and what I do determines who I am. But you guys, the reverse is 100% the exact truth. I determine who I am first. If I am a child of God, a son, or a daughter of Jesus Christ, I get to choose my identity in him first. And my identity drives my actions. Who I am in Christ determines what I do. And once I have my actions course, guess what? I can act my way into thinking or feeling a different way. Turns out I can't feel my way into doing something. Do you ever feel your way into exercising? I don't want to exercise. I don't feel like exercising. I've never felt my way into doing something hard. I have felt my way out of doing something hard. My mind has a lot of suggestions about why I don't have to do it today. And they're good and they're reasonable, but I have acted my way into feeling better. I'm a person who wants to be healthy and strong, so I have to exercise. And if I exercise, I might not want to, but I will feel better for doing it. You determine who you are. Who you are determines what you do, and then what you do lines you up for a healthier thought. Life with Jesus Christ.
[00:19:28] So we have to challenge the way that we think. Could it just be possible, guys, there are areas that are so easy to admit. Right? I got song lyrics wrong. I hate it, but I did it. It's true. Could it be possible that I've ever. I've had other wrong thoughts about myself?
[00:19:45] Maybe I said, it's too hard, I shouldn't do it, and I didn't need to.
[00:19:50] Maybe I said, I'm too old for that, or I'm too young for that. I could never be that. Maybe my thoughts told me I've only ever been this. I could never be anything like that.
[00:20:02] Maybe my thoughts have convinced me that it hurt too much last time, I should never try again.
[00:20:09] Maybe we've given into the thought that said, gosh, man, you don't really know me. If you did, you could never love me, you could never accept me.
[00:20:18] Maybe we've believed the lie that says I'm worthless, I'm a failure. I could never be better than this.
[00:20:26] Could it be possible that you thought wrong about yourself and you have a better future in store? That you could just have a better thought? Thought about who you are that is valuable and good.
[00:20:41] Could it also be true that maybe we've had wrong thoughts about God?
[00:20:46] Maybe God really isn't mean.
[00:20:48] Maybe God really isn't out to get me. Maybe God isn't waiting for me just to mess up so we could say, aha, I knew it. I caught you. Now I'm done.
[00:20:59] Maybe God is actually for me.
[00:21:02] Maybe God actually loves me and wants what's best for me.
[00:21:08] Maybe God does actually get me because he created me and he knows me better than anybody else could. He knows who he created me to be. He knows the desires of my heart, the longings of my soul. He knows the lies that I've believed. And he wants to give me a better hope and a better future.
[00:21:32] Maybe for some of us. What if just the first step that we take is just admitting I don't always get it right in my thinking. Just a simple admission. You don't even have to say it to me. You don't even have to say it to your spouse. Promise I'll let you off the hook. If they're elbowing you right now, I will ignore it. But maybe just between you and goddess, you say, I admit I haven't always got it right in my thinking. And we just start challenging our thoughts. We audit what we're actually thinking about. We take inventory, we ask ourselves questions about it, and we challenge the thoughts we have about ourselves, the thoughts we have about this world, the thoughts that we have about people, the thoughts that we have about God.
[00:22:20] And maybe in that space where we start challenging our thoughts and our assumptions and our opinions, there's some space for God to show up and do a new work. Give me some new thoughts, give me some new understandings, new eyes to see who he is and who he has created us to be. So I got to start with challenging my thoughts, challenging my opinions and my assumptions and looking for what's right and what's true. But then the psalmist goes on and he says, you gotta spend some time with God. He says, turn my eyes from worthless things and give me life through your word. See, here's what we find through God's word. We actually find life. We find direction. We find that spending time with God, it's not dull, it's not boring, it's not a dreaded task that we have to add to an already busy calendar. It's actually the exact thing that brings us joy and makes our hearts and our minds and our souls healthier because it.
[00:23:25] See, here's the truth, guys. God gave us these incredible minds, your mind, your brain is an incredible work of craftsmanship. I mean, I won't geek out on you, but if you've ever looked at the science of how your brain works, we don't even understand 100% of how your brain works. It's that intricate. But with these minds, we have the capacity to think and grow and learn. We have the ability to ask hard questions and develop understanding. We can hold competing ideas in our head even though it feels uncomfortable. They're competing. I don't understand it. There's some tension there, but I can hold both of these ideas. See, loving God isn't supposed to be a suspension of belief. Loving God isn't a mindless activity that you just gotta close your eyes to reality and hope for the best.
[00:24:16] It's actually just the opposite. God calls us to love him with our minds. He gave us these tools to use. God gave us these brains to ask. Tough stuff to say. I do have doubts. I'm not sure how everything works. Doubt isn't a dirty word, guys. Doubt isn't the opposite of faith. Have doubts, ask questions. In fact, apathy is the opposite of faith. Apathy is. I don't care. Doesn't matter either way. Doubt is. I'm not sure how this works, but I want to figure it out. Ask questions. Spend time with God. Think through what makes sense, what doesn't make sense. So we start with admitting, yeah, I don't always get it right in my thinking. Sometimes my thoughts aren't right. They're not helpful, they're not healthy. Sometimes I get distracted by the worthless things, right? The golden apples are just as shiny and appealing today as they were in the story.
[00:25:11] But then from there, I start actively spending some time with God. I think about who he is, I think about what he's done, what his promises are for today, for the future. Remember? Right? We have these awesome ideas about who God is, and we hide his word in our hearts heart so that we have things that are true about God to think about when we need a healthy direction to go. And the best way that we spend time with God is going to this incredible tool that he's given us, the Bible.
[00:25:43] We read the Bible, and here's the truth, guys. Sometimes you're going to read the Bible and be like, yeah, I love that. That's amazing. Sometimes you're going to read the Bible and be like, a little uncomfortable here, guys.
[00:25:56] Sometimes you're going to read the Bible and be like, I have no idea what that means.
[00:25:59] I've never even heard of that word before.
[00:26:03] Look that up in the dictionary.
[00:26:05] Okay, but that's okay. Keep reading it. Keep asking questions. Go through those things. See, here's the truth about God. If I only have a God that I agree with everything that he says and never challenges me, I don't actually have a real goddess. I have a God that I made up on my own, that I'm comfortable with. Only if I have a God who is bigger than I can understand and challenges how I think and challenges what's right and what's wrong in my mind and in my heart, do I have a God who's actually greater and bigger than who I am. And that's a God worth following.
[00:26:40] So we gotta spend some time with God in the bible. But here's what we don't do. We don't take our confirmation bias into how we read the bible.
[00:26:49] We don't say, okay, I'm right. I'm just going to look for the bible for where I'm right. So now I got, like, ammunition in my pocket. I'm just going to pull it out at the right time, show you how right I am, right. We don't go to the bible reading it in the kind of way, like, I only want to read the things that I agree with and I'm just going to ignore the things that I don't agree with. I'm just going to spend some time in the places that I like and I'm not going to read the places I don't like. Cause I don't understand it. Right? We don't read the bible that way. We have to read the bible all encompassing. It's one story, guys, from beginning to end. It's one story of God revealing to us who he is and how he works and that he's got a plan. In all of time, in all of history, God has a plan, and he's never not been in control of this plan.
[00:27:36] So we read the bible so that God can examine our hearts, so that God can examine our thoughts, our minds and who we are. And we find that when we do, yeah, God is going to challenge us. Whether you have all the belief or no belief, whether you had faith your whole life or you've never had faith or you're new to faith, you are going to be challenged when you read the Bible and you're going to be comforted and you're going to be called and you're going to be confirmed and you're going to be confronted. But all of these things are going to work together for good because God wants to meet you there and show you something true and good that you've never known about him and you've never known about yourself.
[00:28:20] So we go to spend time with God in the Bible. See, if I don't spend time with God in the Bible, I only know God through what other people have told me.
[00:28:31] And sometimes people tell me great things about God. But, guys, sometimes people don't. Sometimes people don't have great thoughts about God or don't tell me good thoughts about God. But how do I know what's true?
[00:28:42] How do I know what's accurate? How do I know what's actually right or healthy if I never do the work to look for myself or ask for myself? How can I actually know God's truth if I never spend any time with it? So we have this great tool that God has given us in the Bible. Here's a great place to start. The very best word of God finds its expression in Jesus Christ.
[00:29:09] Here's what the apostle John told us. Jesus Christ is the word. He was with God in the beginning. He's this wonderful, logical expression of God. And the word became human and made his home among us. He came and was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. John told us that the word Jesus Christ gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone. See, knowing Christ, I know God.
[00:29:39] When I spend time getting to know Jesus Christ, I know his heart, his compassion for humanity. I know the faithfulness of God. Guys, I've messed up so many times in my life, but God's never turned his back on me.
[00:29:57] I've had a lot of moments where I was faithless, but God was faithful. Still, when I spend time with Christ, I know life. A life of meaning and purpose and value. Guys, not one of you is here by accident. You're not here in this world. You're not here in this room by accident or a random chance. You were created on purpose, with love and intention. God didn't just create us human beings. He put within us the image of himself.
[00:30:34] See, we don't get to look down or treat people bad. I don't care if you believe with them or don't believe with them. If you agree with them, if you vote like them, if you look like them, we treat nobody bad. Because every human being was created in the image of God, which means they carry dignity and value within them, whether I like them or not.
[00:30:55] If I'm looking to damage another person, I'm damaging that person which God created. And it is not who he called us to be. See, you never see Christ oppressing people. You only find him lifting people up.
[00:31:09] You never see Christ shaming people. You see him sharing compassion for those who are around him.
[00:31:17] Christ didn't injure anybody. He took injury on himself so that he could add life to all who believe in him.
[00:31:29] And here's the truth. The light I need in the darkness. The world feels dark. Sometimes it feels overwhelming, it feels scary, it feels hard, it feels too much. And the very light we need is found in the presence of Jesus Christ. We were not created to live in the dark. My friend Emily reminded us that we were created to be children of light.
[00:31:52] The light of Jesus Christ, when we spend time with him, brings hope, brings peace, gives me strength, gives me courage when I feel too afraid.
[00:32:04] Creates a standard for how I do life, creates a path for me to follow in who I aspire to be. Creates a standard for me in how I treat people around me. If I'm treating people hatefully, it's not because of Christ. It's my own brokenness, because Christ has never treated me hatefully. See, when I know Christ, it gives me a standard for the promises that I make, the commitments I make and the ones that I keep. It gives me a path to live with integrity and loyalty and generosity. It gives me direction for what do I say yes to in life? What do I say no to? What am I going to do? What am I not going to do?
[00:32:44] What am I going to think about?
[00:32:46] What am I going to focus on? What am I going to ignore and let go because it's worthless, it's empty, and it will never add value to my life.
[00:32:57] Can I just challenge you guys this week? Spend some time with Jesus Christ.
[00:33:01] There's four beautiful gospels that you get to spend some time with him, get to see who he is, see what he said, see how he treated people, see what he did while he was here on earth. See what his promises for the future were. Think through the big ideas of faith and life through Jesus Christ.
[00:33:25] Here's what you're going to find. Everywhere you read about Christ in the gospels, people just flocked to be where he was. They wanted to be around him. They wanted to hear what he was going to say. They wanted to see what he was going to do. They were constantly amazed at his teaching and how he helped and how he cared for people. And they would walk away and say, everything he does is wonderful because Jesus Christ is altogether wonderful.
[00:33:51] Guys, you get to choose what you think about. You get to choose what you pay attention to and what you focus on. And when we spend time remembering the goodness of God, the greatness of who he is and what he's done, it will always change the trajectory of our thoughts for good. Your mind is a gift. It's a holy, wonderful place.
[00:34:14] Maybe you could start treating it like it is.
[00:34:17] Maybe you could have a higher standard for what's allowed to go in your head and what you absolutely refuse to spend time with. Clean out the junk.
[00:34:28] There's a lot of junk bumping around in there. Clean it out. Clear away the nonsense and start opening up space to spend some time thinking about Jesus Christ, that life he's created you for, the hope he wants you to have, no matter how hard the circumstance, the joy that he wants you to experience in this world, in this life, the future that he is preparing for you right now. See, I love. I'm a dork. I love reading. I love learning. Like you put me in a self help chat section of the bookstore I'm in, guys. I've probably read half of the books, but I will read all the ones that I haven't read because I want to know more. Tell me I want to learn. Show me how to do something differently. Tell me what's my fault that I can do better at, right? I love it. I want to learn all of the things that I can learn. I love reading authors that I agree with, and I basically don't have a line that's not underlined in the book. I should just not underline the pieces that are really important. And I like reading authors that I actually don't agree with because it challenges how I think and it makes me think from a different perspective.
[00:35:33] I like reading authors I've read before. I like reading authors I've never heard before, and I have no idea what they're talking about. And I need to have lots of dictionaries helping me look up their big words. I love all of that.
[00:35:45] But here's the reality. I can do all of this work. I read the books, I listen to the podcast. I can do all of these things and still feel empty and lacking.
[00:35:54] I can put all of the self help work into feeling better and the strategies, but here's the tension that we all feel at one point or another in our lives. If I'm the problem, I can't also be the solution.
[00:36:07] And guys, I'm the problem.
[00:36:09] In my life. I'm the problem. And I need a solution that's greater than myself. And there is no greater solution to be found than in Jesus Christ, please remember, there's just nothing that can satisfy your soul like Jesus Christ can. There's nothing that can give you the quality of life, the quality of contentment that we are desperate for like Jesus Christ. And when you put your eyes on him, when you look to Christ for direction and health and hope and good thinking and right thoughts and what's true and the standards we need for life, we find the purpose that we can't find in any other place. We find the hope and the courage and the forgiveness and the love and the compassion. That is exactly what our hungry, tired minds need.
[00:36:59] What if we all agree with the psalmist today? Hey, God, please, could you turn my eyes from worthless things? Could you please give me life through your word? I'm done wasting my time on worthless things. I'm done wasting that precious space up in my mind on things that don't matter and will never add up to anything else. Help me to know you better. Help me to know Christ better that by the power of the Holy Spirit, I might grow into the full potential that he's created me for.
[00:37:34] Right now, guys, your life is moving in the direction of your thoughts. What you thought about yesterday got you right where you are today and who you want to become tomorrow will all be determined about what you start thinking about today.
[00:37:49] What might God do in your life, in your family, in this church, in our community? If we agreed together to start letting him direct our thoughts, our minds and our hearts in a healthier way, imagine how this world might look if the people of God spent time with God and let him give us a healthier source of hope and purpose and direction for who we are and what we do. Wouldn't the world be a better place?
[00:38:24] Dear Father, I pray that you would help us. I recognize that within all of us, Father, are thoughts that don't belong, thoughts that we believed a long time ago and just never asked questions about. So I pray that today you would turn our mind from worthless things. I pray that we would start challenging our assumptions and our opinions. I pray that the lies we've believed about ourselves, you would speak your voice louder than every one of them and call us by name, reminding us of who you've created us to be. I pray, Father, that we would get to know Christ better and that by spending time with Christ, you would raise up in us a compassion, a courage and a faith that cannot be shaken. And I pray that the world would be blessed because of what you do in our minds and in our hearts and in our thoughts. I pray this all in Jesus name, amen.
[00:39:16] I.
