1-18-13 You Are Not Who You Think You Are

welcome to program three and becoming the person you want to be I love this series I love this message because this is the heart of what it means to be a disciple a follower of Jesus it's more than obeying a bunch of rules it is putting on a new identity and letting the new you that's on the inside transform to the outside you say you're not who you think you are we have this idea of who we think we are based on everything that's ever happened in our life and I don't about you but other thing out my life is good and my sense of self was not that good when I first came to Jesus so we think it's our job to fix our problems so that we can make ourselves a more acceptable to God well let me tell you something Jesus made us acceptable to God any problems that you solve they will help you they will help your relationships but they will not make you more acceptable to God but they will make your journey in this life easier in Jesus we are accepted he also made us to be a new creation we don't need to fix ourselves we don't need to fix the old man we just need to let that person with all of his problems die you see you can't put on your new identity in Christ as long as you're clinging to who you think you are as long as you're holding on to that person that you once were see we're all identity thieves don't be an identity thing stop pretending that you are the old you stop pretending you're the old you that needs to be fixed and counseled and and reworked and all that kind of stuff let that person die and discover who you really are in Christ and put off the old man and put on the new man your life will be phenomenal listen be sure and stick around all the way to the end of the program because I have a mentoring moment where I want to share with you things that will help you make this journey in Jesus well here we are in program number three and becoming the person you want to be now you know I hope that you've got your book I hope you got the series I hope you're supplementing this stuff with the other tools that we have because I'm telling you what this is some this is a mind-bending stuff really if you if you go into the the depths of it start will start thinking about yourself so totally different and realizing that I am not who I think I am and I fit you know I've spent my whole life and sadly I've spent my whole Christian life thinking that I'm kind of a I'm just kind of a fixed version of who I used to be well I got new three you're not a fixed version who used to be you are a new creation your old man is dead in Christ your old man has been crucified with Christ and you see that's not just that's not just religious double-talk that is God's reality and we learned last week God's got a reality and you know what when we connect with his reality when we embrace it accept it fully convince ourselves that it is ours then that becomes the reality that we experience I'm telling you God you know God created he wired us in a way that that faith changes everything about us I mean on a natural level on a supernatural level the things that we believe whether the the Word of God or whether they're the lives of the devil or whether the lives of our friends and enemies or whether they're negative things that people send us when we believe these things it works in our heart and that's an amazing thing he said your heart the Bible teaches us this and we now understand this medically and biologically scientifically we now understand that the cells in your heart basically hold a program that says or that defines who you think you are and every time your heart beat a signal goes out from your heart that goes through your entire body and really goes to the world around you but it goes to your entire body updating the information at every cell in your body saying this is who I am my life has to look like this my life can't be any better than this I and at the end of the day we might occasionally live above the boundaries of our heart we might occasionally sink beneath the boundaries of our heart but we always come back to who we really believe we are in our heart what we really believe about ourselves we talked about this in previous program how did I get this way yeah when you first came into the world actually when you were first conceived before you came in the world your your heart actually came into existence before your brain you had a heart before you are brain it's not your brain that determines if you're alive or a human being it's your heart and you began taking information in from the world around you and the way you're initially designed and even after your brain was formed and up until a couple of years old your brain function at a very very deep state that called the Delta state everybody everybody spends time in the Delta state when they're asleep and some people even when they're awake some people learn how they go to a relaxed mode and get there deliberately in the Delta state you take in information by the if you will by the energetic impression if you will that it creates in other words if your mother and father are having conflict those words and words have life they have a life of their own they have a frequency of their own their own energy and that imprints upon you and so you're taking in information around you that basically is a nonverbal non intellectual information it's all just based on what's going on in the world around you and that world is not just confined to your mother's womb and it's the world that she lives in it so it's a it's the man that she's married to it's the pressures at life are exerting upon her and then and then you you go into the next level of what they call theta state where your brain waves speed up a little bit at the theta state you're still being impressed by what's going on around you by the nonverbal information but now you're getting a little bit of intellect mixed with that you're now you're now you're interpreting that data on some level and but you're still being influenced and then then when you get a little older you go your brain waves go into what's called the alpha state and at the alpha state you stay in the alpha state really for quite a long time and this is where this is where you're highly impressionable but you have a lot of analytic intellectual information and you have a lot of judgments you know from about age nine up until your teenage years or up till you go into puberty you're in the Alpha State and you're judging everything around you based on all of these thoughts and feelings and beliefs that you developed your whole life from this input that has has gone on around you and you know who you think you are actually it's been it's been determined by the environment you were in by your parents by by everything of the world around you and then ultimately it began to be shaped and formed by your judgments and the way you the way you interpreted the world around you so you store memories in your heart we know that the heart has the capability to store memories just like the brain based on really up-to-date scientific research based on years of empirical observation based on based on years of biblical research we understand that in your heart you store the memories specifically that relate to how you interpret yourself who you believe yourself to be so basically you reach a place to where you've had all of these life experiences you've had success you've had failure you've got good things happen that bad things happen and now you're interpreting the world around you based on your life experiences you see we think that we are the sum total of our life experiences and that's not who we are that's what we've experienced that's not who we are and that's why when we come to Jesus if we believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead and I will tell you what that's that's a progressive experience you don't you don't believe all the true about Jesus at one time you don't you don't come to realize you don't even you don't even know all the truth about Jesus one time but the point is at every step of discovering a new truth about Jesus you want to make sure that you influence yourself so that you believe this at a heart level not just at an intellectual level now so you've reached this place in life you determine who you are by your might you know by your life experiences and as such you establish boundaries now the Bible tells us to guard our heart above all else because out of it flows all the issues of life and that word issues as I've said so many times could just as well have been translated as the word boundaries so the Bible is telling us that all the boundaries of our life are determined by the beliefs of the heart see how I see myself determines how far I'm gonna go in relationships in terms of how far I'll let myself go in success it determines how far I will let myself go into happiness how I see myself the beliefs of my heart determine everything about where I will place the boundaries in my life and it's not God it's not the devil it's not the world's not the circumstances that stopped me when I reached those boundaries yet it's my beliefs now if I move past those boundaries and you can I move past those boundaries without changing my beliefs it's going to cause stress I talked about this in in my book a wire for success program for failure now when you begin to feel that stress you can if you know how to do hard work if you know how to influence your heart you can begin to influence your the beliefs of your heart in such a way that you can expand your boundaries and suddenly this stress goes away see that stress that you feel would be sort of like if things aren't going good in your life and suddenly you start feeling oh something's bad gonna happen something Bad's gonna happen to anything see that means you've gone beyond the boundaries of of your heart beyond the boundaries of how good you believe that your life should be now eventually something will go wrong and you'll go see that confirms my belief well no that didn't confirm your beliefs that's the fruit of your beliefs but if you hadn't said no you know what let me I'm gonna go look at some scriptures about the promises of God I'm gonna get back in the peace of God I'm gonna connect with Who I am in Jesus I got news for you if you knew how to influence your heart you would move your boundaries and suddenly you'll have peace with a better life and you can stop expecting things to go bad you didn't stop expecting things to fall apart and you know what things would stop falling apart all of this is the product of who you believe you are in your heart so when we get saved see we can say we think our task is to get saved and then become something or someone that pleases God I have news for you the fact that you trust it on Jesus is pleasing to God the fact that you trust it on Jesus makes you uh makes golly what day he dances over you with Joy's what the Bible says he celebrates that that's what faith is faces I trust the finished work of Jesus more than I trust anything else more than I trust my past my success is my failures I am trusting Jesus faith and remember the word faith means to really to trust in an immovable sense I have an immovable trust for who God is what God says you know what God's Word says so faith says this is absolute I can trust God and I realize coming to trust God with an immovable faith it is a journey and the Bible calls it persuade in your heart so you say when we got saved we became a new creation we don't need to waste our life trying to fix who we used to be we don't need to spend our faith I said we spend our faith on things that aren't even real we spend our faith trying to fix the old man in reality old man died you see the day I gave my life to Jesus the old man got everything that I used to be died it stopped existing other than in my memories and now what I've got to do I've got to create new beliefs in my heart so that I stop memories of who I used to be so I stopped defining myself by who I used to be and I start defining myself by who I'm in Jesus you know the truth is Christians are the number one perpetrators of identity theft in the world yeah let me say it again and you know identity theft is the number one or number two crime probably in the world today Christians are the number one perpetrators of identity theft see identity theft is when you take on the identity of another person and you pretend like you're that other person and you live out of their identity so you you open up credit card accounts and their names you run up bills and their names you you do all these things pretending to be someone else that's what we do after we get side I'm just ever think about you get saved and even though you didn't know all this when you first you know when you first came to Jesus and I promise you and I if you read my book becoming the person you want to be you you will have exercises at every chapter that tell you how to walk this out and if you get the if you get the teaching series that goes along with this you're gonna have tools to move ahead and your identity I'm telling you and very few people in the world however sit down and said and discover what you're going to discover and have the tools and resources you're going to have because you see you're not gonna go okay I am a forgiving version of who I used to be you don't most Christians let's say of themselves I am I am a sinner saved by grace well it's really not true you were a sinner because you had a sin nature and you were saved by grace but if in fact you were saved by grace then that means that person died and you you didn't know this theologically but that person died on the cross with Jesus and when you invited Jesus into your life I knew you was raised up from the dead and that's that that's your new identity but the problem is nobody told you you had a new identity nobody even told you how to figure out who that new identity was so even though when you got born again you got a new spirit you got a new heart and and really initially if you got born again you remember what it was like where you knew you were different I mean everything in you was everything in you you felt different you saw yourself differently but unfortunately we went to churches that totalus now listen now you got it now you your sins are forgiven but now you got to get right you got it you got to get righteous you've got to start pleasing God and immediately we started wasting our faith trying to become someone that we already were and we started pretending like that we were the same person that we used to be okay that's kind of mind-bending in him I'm not really who I used to be my problem is I think I am you know it's like it'd be like waking up from amnesia and you're simply I don't know who I am but it walks it in and hands your driver's license with a name on it and your picture on it and they come up and give you a list of all kinds of information about who you are and you go okay well if this is who is this who I am so you start trying to live out of this identity how this is life yes that's what we did religion Totalus you're a sinner saved by grace you're still a sinner and they define Grace's just God just being good to you but but you're still sinner no you're not you were sinner now you're the righteousness of God in Christ now keeping my a sinner somebody who has a sin nature well what is the sin nature a sin nature is that in nature that never sees yourself as reaching the goal never sees yourself as as having the prize always feed yourself as less than you really are to God you don't believe your identity in Jesus you don't believe you're a new creation you don't believe your love and accept it in God and because you don't believe that the reality that you seem to be experiencing is based on all of these false beliefs all of these things about you that absolutely are not true you are an identity thief and then you go to counseling why to fix the problems that the oh you used to have and because you haven't you're not renewing your mind to see yourself as you really are in Christ then you bring all of the habits and problems they start reviving and you know usually what happens you know you do real good when you first get saved you're like man I'm a new person things are going good my life is great you and then somewhere along the way you know you kind of maybe have some struggles and and you'll go you'll go talk to a pastor or go talk to somebody there's religious and say listen this was easy when I first got saved this is getting hard what's the problem and they'll say you see when you were just born again you were a little baby and now God want you to grow up and stand up on your own two feet man that's a dumbest thing I've ever heard but you know what I've had hundreds of thousands of people that have heard me say that and contact me and say Jim that's exactly what happened to me I went and talked to my mother or my father or my pastor or my art beacon in my church and that's exactly what they said when you got saved you were a little baby now you gotta grow up sit on your own two feet let me tell you something when you got saved you were a new creation and for a little period of time you are living out of that sense of that and somebody starts saying no you're not a new creation you're just kind of a washed up cleaned up version of who you used to be and now you got to start trying to be who you're supposed to be or you got to become who you're supposed to be man I'm telling you what that is totally destructive yeah the book of James which is such a practical book the book of James talks about the person who looks into what the Bible calls the perfect law of Liberty oh man I could spend a month talking about the long Liberty look into the perfect law of Liberty and it says he looks into this him he walks away and he forgets what he saw he's like a person that looks into the mirror and kind of gets this sense of what he looks like but when he when he walks away he forgets what he looks like that's why Christians are you know we first get saved for a little while we have a sense of what we look like who we are so to speak or maybe we go to church or maybe we read a Bible or maybe we maybe we you hear a sermon like this right and you're out of here and you're going oh okay okay I get it I get I get it but then tomorrow something happens pressure comes conflict comes something goes wrong in your life and and and and you you forget that's your righteous you have something that happens that reminds you of something that used to happen and you start thinking oh no here comes this problem again oh no here's this situation again oh no things are gonna be like they used to be well you know what if you believe in your heart they're gonna be like they used to be not only will things be like they used to be but you'll be lucky used to me and before long you'll have the same problems you had before you got saved but you're only having those problems because of what you've chosen to believe in your heart see some really interesting about this person that never forgets what he looks like James says that that person is a forgetful hearer of the word and he explains that we shouldn't be hearers only of the word but we should be doers of the word now some people read that passage of Scripture and I think oh he's talking about work series okay so so how much you do for God know you know you have to look up these words in the original language because the Bible Bible wasn't written in English it was written in the New Testament written in Greek Old Testament written in Hebrew and Aramaic and unfortunately we interpret a lot of things wrongly because of how they're written in the English the term doer of the word is a poetic performer of the word now poetic performer is a person who would recite poetry but they would do it in such a way that it creates emotion and the people that are hearing it and I'll tell you you know I because I grew up in the 50s and and and I can remember the era of radio oh man and as a little kid I can remember sitting around the radio with my grandmother sitting around the radio with some of my family members and we would listen to radio broadcasts of and there was a I'm trying to remember there was some some westerns that were on there I think Hopalong Cassidy might have been one of them the little rascals were one of them Amos and Andy it was a comedy that there was there were police I don't have dragnet one but there are all of these different stories that came on and they would read their lines and see you didn't have a television you couldn't see him and there wasn't you know there wasn't all the extra music and all the orchestration I was going these people would read these lines will read these stories but they'd have to do it in a way that sounded very come back in other words they would they would perform these lines in such a way that it would cause you to create a picture and you would you would create a picture of one all of these characters would like yo lash Laroux man died last year was my invisible friend growing up he was a he was a cowboy radio performer and you know you never saw him you never saw a picture of him you never saw him in a movie but you created this mental image of what he looked like because when you heard this story read it created these emotions in you listen that's what we're supposed to be doing with the work we're not supposed to just be reading the word because it's our obligation we're supposed to be taking the word and let me tell you specifically take that word he can you see the phrase in Jesus or in him or through him or by him or with him anytime you see anything that has to do with who we are what we have what we can do in Jesus you take that and you need to become a poetic performer of that word in other words you need to take that word and you need to use it in such a way that that you're saying it with emotion and with feeling and it's strong enough that it's actually you're creating a picture or an image or deep feeling or a concept of what you would really be like if that's really really true I mean just just just imagine if you started going I am I have big muscles I have incredible strength I'm like the Hulk you know if you did that and you really did that emphatically in your mind you would start seeing a picture of the Hulk or some some super strength character and you'd start actually associating yourself with that character with that type of strength well that would just be amazingly you know God creates you in such a way that even if you do that it's not real it can it can become your reality but you see we're not just doing positive thinking here we're taking the Word of God the promise of who we are in Jesus and we're saying it and are singing it or however you do it we're doing it in such a way that we that we feel it I'm telling you it it touches us as stirs up the creeps pictures in us you know years ago I create a tool called the prayer organizers hundreds of identity scriptures in there and you're welcome to get one of those if you choose but you don't have to have one of those you can just do what I did man I took I took every identity scripture and the Bible and I highlighted it in a certain color because it doesn't matter if it's the Old Testament or the New Testament all the promises of God are yes in Jesus everything that said anything about what a person can do what they have you're the head you're not the tail somebody wrote me one time said get the context right he said that to the children of Israel he's not saying that to you it's like oh wait a minute buddy you need to get the context right I'm in Jesus and if I'm in Jesus all the promises of God are for me it doesn't matter if you said him to Abraham it doesn't matter if he said them to Jacob it doesn't matter if you said them to David if it's a promise to anybody it's true to Jesus because Jesus inherited and because I'm in him that promises man man you can highlight scriptures about your identity you can use our heart physics program you can download the free ion poster right now by going to our website and start there but I'm telling you somehow you got to start and I recommend doing it on a daily basis for you where you sing pray worship meditate confess however you're going to do it these scriptures to tell you who you are in Jesus and and and you do it but the Bible says that that I'd made him who knew no sin to be sin that we might be made the righteousness of God I'll tell you when I say that you always make it first person you always make it present tense and you always make it personal so father I thought and you always direct it personally in conversation to God your brain works differently when your intention is to connect with God I mean scientific studies so show that your brain works differently when you're personally connecting with God then when you're just quoting scriptures are just saying what you think you're supposed to that's where you take us Chris father I think that I am who I think that I am who you say that I thank you Father that I am the righteousness of God because I'm in Jesus I think that Jesus became my son I think that I am washing the blood I am free from the sin of the past I am I am Who I am supposed to be and I tell you what see here's the deal I'm just saying that right now I saw a picture of every one of those things I saw a picture of Jesus becoming my sin I saw a picture of what I look like righteous house I saw the images and felt the experiences and that's what you want to do you want to be a poetic performer of the word so that you impress upon yourself images and pictures and feelings that are associated with the truth of God's Word that are so deep and so powerful that they cause you to forget who you used to be and create an entirely new image of who you really are now that you're in Jesus doesn't stick around I'm gonna be sharing my personal mentoring program with you in just a few minutes don't go away now I hope you're enjoying the broadcast today this broadcast is based on my book and CD series becoming the person you want to be I don't know if any truth in the Bible that is more important in your life if you're planning on following Jesus if you want to live a life that's powerful and healthy listen get the CD set and the book and go beyond where we're going these programs you know we want to put all these programs out here so people can have them for free we want everybody to benefit from this message but every month we want to run a special for those of you who sell on a dive deeper I want more knowledge I want to invest in my life I want to invest in my heart so we got a special this month for you for the book and the CD all month long it's going to be a blessing to you it's going to take you where you never believed that you could go listen I'm gonna give you a real simple little exercise because we've got to put the past behind you you can't go forward with a future if you're holding on to the past I want you to sit down I want you to write out a piece of paper I want you to write out every single thing about your past h-hate ashamed of every personality trait ever tendency ever habit write out everything that you can think of about about your past once you get all this written down I want you to I want you to take this and I want you to go somewhere I'm gonna be sure and do all this alone because you're not gonna share this with anybody and I want you to build a fire I want you to take that don't you fold it up want you to hold in your hand I want you to create in your mind as much as you can a clear mental picture or just an awareness or concept or a feeling about the fact that when Jesus was on that cross that all of these things that you don't like about you and all these things of your past that Jesus became all of those sins and if create however you can figure that see it experience it all of this is leaving you and going to him then just acknowledge the Godfather I am a new creation and all of this really really is gone and tonight I sever the past because this person that I used to be with all that I was is dead I want you to take that just drop it in the fire just watch it burn and while that's burning at some point just acknowledge all that I used to be is gone I'm a new creation and now I am putting on my new identity in Jesus and walk away from it you

Channel: Dr. Jim Richards

Views: 15,609

Rating: 4.8914728 out of 5

Keywords: Dr. James B. Richards, Jim Richards, Dr. Jim Richards, Impact Ministries

Id: S27iurouzf8

Length: 30min 41sec (1841 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 18 2013