Flip the Script: The Real Battle

well good morning man it is so good to be with you to our online family love having you north campus all my peeps at the south campus it's great to get together as we encourage each other and one thing we want to take our next life-giving steps with jesus and if you happen to be new with us a guest the natural thing probably for you to be asking right now is do i fit with this group of people do i really belong here so i'd ask you a question if you're new do you have your act all together i mean you have it all figured out and such if you do you don't belong here however if you still got room to grow things you need to improve upon a journey ahead of you you're in the exact right place we are a people who do not have it all together we like to say it's okay not to be okay at beltway park just not okay to stay not okay see we want to be a people who go step by step with jesus through life and we believe as we do that increasingly he gives us this thing called peace not what we mean by peace we mean absence of conflict act absence of difficulty that's not what the scripture means to the ancients peace was holding us in our body life in our spirit i'm health in our minds and if we've discovered anything in the last year and a half we need something that will bring wholeness that will bring peace that will bring life in our minds i was thinking this week about a moment in my life when i was young you know you have those things when you're a kid that stand out to you you never forget this was one of those moments i can't remember my exact age i was eight or nine years old and i had just learned that i could climb up onto the roof of our house using the fence i know that sounds like a big deal but for me that was huge i was vertically challenged as a kid i'd watch other people do it now don't be too impressed too scared we had a small house the eve of the roof was probably only 10 feet off the ground i mean the pitch wasn't very steep not like houses are today but i mean for me it was like i had conquered a mountain as an eight-year-old and so regularly i would go up there just to feel good about what i had conquered and one day i had this brilliant idea i just knew that i could parachute off the roof of that house the physics of it made sense in my mind i was going to get a towel i was going to grab an end two ends on each hand i was going to jump in i was going to float to the ground well even as an eight-year-old i had a decisive personality so i snuck in to get one of mama's towel now when you're sneaking in i know you should you're thinking you probably know you're doing something you shouldn't be doing i get that but i was eight years old who cares about so i snuck one of my mama's towels out i drug it up onto the roof which means i utterly ruined it i got there i looked over the edge and again i have a decisive personality and so i grabbed the ends of that thing and i jumped now as most of you have figured out by now not because you are so smart but because most of you did the exact same thing when you were young you know i said maybe you didn't use a towel as a parachute you went all mary poppins and you got an umbrella but you jumped off the roof seeing it happen you know by now that that towel parachute had no effect on my rate of descent i jumped expecting to have a two three four second lag before i hit the ground within a second pam i hit and i had a pain start in the bottom of my feet it shot up the back of my legs through my back to the top of my head tears formed in my already very masculine eyes and i sat down gingerly um waiting for the pain to subside you know when you're eight your parents always find out everything you do it's just the reality of it my parents found out about my adventure my mama was mad really mad but i didn't have to go to the hospital for this adventure so she was less mad but then she saw her towel and she got really mad again but my dad i remember this my dad wasn't mad i remember my mom looked away and my dad just kind of smirked and shook his head like he had done the exact same thing when he was a kid and he asked me a simple question son what were you thinking it's a question i found him asking me a lot over the next 10 years as i moved into adulthood interestingly it's still a question i get asked a lot but it's usually me asking myself the question you know i'll have a moment that i'm unnecessarily harsh with my wife or maybe somebody i work with and later on it'll hit me that i shouldn't have done that and i'll ask myself david what were you thinking or i'll have an opportunity to help someone like i could pray for them right there or i could serve them in some small way maybe even witness to them about the love and hope we have in jesus christ but i'll utterly miss the opportunity and hours later maybe even days laters i'll realize god was up to something and i wonder what was i thinking see i bet i'm not the only one that looks at their lives who have asked themselves the exact same question we all regularly ask ourselves the question what was i thinking you look back on your life and you started hanging out with a group of people they seemed decent enough but you found out pretty quick they did stupid and if you hang out with stupid long enough you know what you end up doing stupid because stupid is as stupid does you can look that up in the bible you will not find it by the way and then all of a sudden as always happens with stupid pain hits and you're in the midst of the pain and you begin to ask what am i thinking you know what i'm talking about right we can look back in our lives and see those moments but i bet it's not just even in the far past that we have done it i would bet the vast majority of us if not all of us somewhere in the last month have asked the question what was i thinking and i realized most of the time when we asked the question we've failed we've made a mistake we've messed up in some form or fashion but grab this even when we asked the question what was i thinking about a mistake we are making an assumption we are making the assumption that my mistake was tied to my thinking that my failure was somehow tied to faulty thoughts in my life we assume that poor thinking leads to poor choices now catch hold of this would that not mean the inverse is also true that right thinking enables right choices that good thinking empowers good choices that if we think rightly life will go better see we make this assumption we ask the question but reality is even though we ask the question most of us don't spend time trying to answer it most of us haven't really thought much about our thoughts let me dive in to this with me for a moment currently our nation our world is facing the greatest issue we have faced in this generation now i'm not saying there haven't been past issues that we face that were real this weekend we remember the 11th of september 2001. those of us who are a little bit older can remember exactly where we were i mean i was actually in the land of israel my first visit ever during the height of terrorism in israel so i expected terroristic acts to happen when i was in israel i just expected them to be in israel not in america i can remember all the feelings that were there i can remember on the 12th of september today i've got a picture of it i and don finto are the only two guys sitting at the western wall never been there where it was absolutely isolated and we were praying for our nation we learned that day and the days to follow about heroism and coming together as a nation we learned about terrorism and what it could do but even with that we haven't faced anything like the current covet pandemic that we're facing and as this thing has lingered longer than most of us have wanted we see other issues arising it's almost like the pandemic is a shaking and every weakness that we have is being seen and one that is talked about the most because i think most of us have experienced is this issue of mental health see at this juncture i was just going to throw out throw at you the statistics and the studies and all the things people are saying today and then it hit me i don't have to do it because we've all experienced it worry anxiety depression lack of peace absence of joy scarcity of security i mean i've had so many people say something like this like pastor i'm having such a struggle in my brain i have so many thoughts and feelings it's like there's a battle going on in my head listen to me there is your mind is a battlefield i go a step further it's not just a battlefield our minds are the battlefield let me show you what i mean because this is key to our journey i want everyone if you don't mind north campus south campus i want you to find the bible and turn to paul's second letter to the church in corinth second corinthians the tenth chapter at our physical campuses if you don't have a bible underneath your chair the chair in front of you as a black colored bible that bible is there for you to use if you own a lot of bibles it is your gift if you do not have a bible we're on page 969 there and if you're at our online campus man we love having you there's a bible icon you can click on just engage there or if you're on facebook or youtube you just push the pause button go find you a bible download the youversion app on your phone real quick push play will be right here and such i want you to open it because there are three verses right here that i want you not just to look at this morning but i actually want you to dive into them this week i don't think you need to read them a few nights these are verses that need to get deep deep inside of our being paul says in the third verse for though we walk in the flesh we are not waging war according to the flesh there is an assumption in this verse do you hear the assumption we are at war the assumption of the verse actually the assumption throughout the scripture is that you and i are in a world that is a war the war is in the unseen realm but it has effect on the physical realm have you ever wondered why with all the advancements of humanity in the last 100 120 years why does the world still have so many problems have you ever thought about all the things that have happened my grandad was born in 1914 i used to talk to him about all the things he had seen in life all the things that he had experienced i mean he would tell me stories of being a sharecropper in coleman county how they lived in a one-room home and how when it was snow he can remember it with snow and he and his brothers would be under a blanket and they'd be covered in snow i mean a different world at the time he can remember life without an automobile he could tell me about his first car and he could tell me about all these things and i'd show him a smartphone and he didn't think they were so smart to have a phone but that's a different story anyway he didn't do that in his latter years but all these things that he saw all these things that had changed in medicine and science and stuff like that and yet you look at the world and it is still as messed up as ever been the world we live in is a world at battle and i understand not everyone agrees with that all i would ask you to do is think about this what is your explanation for our world i mean our world is kind of like the old game of whack-a-mole remember that in the arcade i loved that game because i got to hit stuff and it was legal you'd have a mole pop up you had a hammer you whack it on the head and what happened right after that another one came and the better you got it whacking the mold guess what the faster they came and it feels like in humanity we're doing the same same thing we'll whack them all another one comes up well whack-a-mole will come up and the faster we whack them the more moles that show up see human ha advancement has not resolved the issues of our world why because we are a world at war the scripture tells us of one called the devil also known as satan also known as lucifer that he was an angel probably the chief among among the angels and he and the third of the angels rebelled against god there was a coup in heaven satan wanted the throne of god and he rebelled he lost that initial battle when when you know who god is falls into the dug category right but the war still wages jesus won the decisive battle when he went to the cross and then he went into the bowels of hell itself and he arose victorious over death hell in the grave it's like d-day in world war ii we know we won world war ii when the allied forces advanced on the beaches of normandy but the war wasn't over until v-day we are waiting for jesus to return and bring the victory and until then the enemy still battles i think the enemy battles because he has deceived himself into thinking he still has a chance to win so with everything he has he comes against god and the objects of god's affection which is you and i it's why the bible implores us put on the whole armor of god that you might be able to stand against the schemes of the devil for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood that's not where the real battle lies but against the rulers against the authorities against the cosmic powers of the present darkness against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places we live in a world at war and before we become overwhelmed by that look at the next verse in the passage verse 4 for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh they're not worldly but they have divine power somebody say power we want some power do we not they have divine power to demolish strongholds that word power in the original language is the same root word from which we get dynamite it's an explosive miraculous power to blow up the strong fortifications of the enemy what are the fortifications verse five we have to grab hold of first five it's key we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised up against the knowledge of god and we take captive every thought to the obedience of christ our mind is the battlefield but let's be honest we've thought very little about our thoughts when it comes to our thoughts most of us just know they're there they just show up and they do their thing they just happen see we we typically do the very opposite of taking every thought captive to obey christ we do nothing we're passive now put it together if you're in a fight if you are in a battle and you do nothing if you are passive what is the result you lack health why because you're getting the tar beat out of you why because you're not fighting listen to me the weapons of god that he has for us are powerful they'll tear down every destructive argument they'll destroy every damaging opinion they will annihilate every thought that is contrary to god's best in our lives that is reality but we must wield the weapons we as god's people can no longer be passive we must fight see here's what most of us want to have happen we want to go through a six-week journey and we want to have a prayer or a pill that will resolve the issue of mental health i'm just going to tell you right now up front do i believe in medication for things like anxiety and impression depression at times absolutely we need those but they don't resolve the issue they just get our minds at a place where we can then begin to fight the way we need to fight you still have to fight well i'm going to come get prayer prayer will often launch us forward but it's never resolved the battle we've got to be a people who are willing to engage the battle we can no longer be passive in this see the scripture says we have an enemy that is seeking to devour us roaring lion how do we stand against him your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour what do we do be sober minded be watchful our mind is a battlefield and the primary weapon of the enemy is not what we think it is jesus said of the devil so just in case you think i'm being too big on the devil thing jesus talked about him jesus said to a group of people you are of your father the devil that's not real politically correct by the way but jesus said it and your will is to do your father's desires he was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him when he lies he speaks of his own character he speaks his native language for he is a liar and the father of all lies satan's primary weapon against us is to lie and i know right there that sounds so innocuous it sounds like a letdown and i was like challenging us to go and fight an epic battle to stand up and fight an enemy and now you're saying i'm gonna go fight the enemy and we're gonna tear down lies it sounds like no big deal some of you are old enough to remember that jim carrey made a movie years ago called liar liar and basically said you can't live a decent life without having to lie quite a bit see we can think this is not that big a deal but before you tune out before you turn off stick with me here did you know in past generations cyclists in the tour de france the premier bike competition they would actually take a substance before they went um and bike because they felt like it helped their it would enhance their performance you know what they would do smoke a cigarette see it was believed at the time that the nicotine contained in a cigarette would open up the capillaries in the lungs and would make them have higher performances and what that causes us to do right now is chuckle we're like right i can feel it online i can feel you at the north campus we're all kind of chuckled at the absurdity of such a thought because we know that cigarettes do just the opposite to the lungs they don't help the lungs but they actually bring damage to the lungs now i completely understand that when those cyclists were smoking their jobs before the race they actually thought they were doing something to help themselves when they were bringing destruction in that interesting lie even when we believe it is true still brings destruction to us if you ask people to describe the epitome of evil in the world in the last hundred years almost without fail they'll mention the name adolf hitler will refer to the holocaust because i think we still are flabbergasted at the idea that a civilized people the germans part of the first world part of the western world a people who claim as their natural national religion protestant lutheranism you're born into germany you're born a christian how in the world could such a people do what they did how could they allow it how could it get there i have visited i believe all the holocaust memorial museums that i can find the one i visited the most is in jerusalem is called yad vashem and they start the journey in a different place than anyone else does it's really intriguing they don't start with the train cars they go way back they actually go back to world war one the defeat of germany under the kaiser and the difficulties that the defeat of world war one brought to germany and in the midst of the massive difficulties following world war one a party called the nazis began telling um the people again and again through lies and half truths very create creatively that all the issues facing germany were due to the jews they were so creative and they had a big old marketing campaign and in yad fashion they actually show you the different things they said and it's interesting if you tell a lie long enough and creatively enough it often becomes believed even when it is absurd at first thought i want you to think about that what we believe is the epitome of evil of the last hundred years began with had its roots in its foundations are in lies the greatest mistake you and i can make if we want to go on a journey of mental health the greatest mistake you and i can make is to minimize the power of a lie don't do do not minimize the power of a lie lies are at the heart the very foundation of all that is destructive years ago i ran across an interesting article in the most unlikely of places a pop magazine called psychology today the author was a medical doctor gave no indication that she was a jesus follower she also said in her byline that she was a happiness expert i have no idea where you get the certification of being a happiness expert okay she just said she was she may be self-proclaimed i don't know i just know whatever you have to do to become a happiness expert i still have work to do in that interesting she said there are all these wonderful capable people walking around out there who believe ridiculous things about themselves that somehow someone else planted in their heads and hearts i've got an idea who that someone is they believe these lies for so long that they don't question them and often never have these lies inevitably crippled them in some way often significantly the scripture has been telling us this for a long time for as a man or a woman thinks in his heart so is she so if this is reality that the essence of who we are is going to be based upon how we think does it not make sense that when the enemy attacks he is going to attack in our minds i mean come on there's not a one of us it doesn't matter if you're at the south campus north campus if you're online family there's not one of us who right now doesn't desire a strong mind we want fewer anxieties we want lesser depression we want less and less moments rarer and rarer moments of being overwhelmed what we want is we want to believe that we are truly loved we hunger to believe that our lives on this earth matter we crave to know who we really are we yearn to be rooted in something that is stable and solid and secure come on we want to be mentally strong we want to be mentally secure and healthy hear me that is god's destiny for your lives scripture says do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world don't do the things like everybody else does them but be transformed by what the renewing of your mind notice this is an ongoing thing it doesn't happen just once don't conform don't be normal be transformed by the renewing of your mind then say then then happens after we renew our minds when we are renewing our minds you will be able to test and improve what god's will is his good pleasing and perfect will god wants us to live more and more in what is good what is pleasing what is perfect and that happens as we renew our minds and that renewal process begins as we embrace a reality listen to me our mind is the battlefield if we want to be strong in our mind we want to be strong in our heart and by the way in the scripture heart and mind are often synonymous terms then we must not only fight but we must fight with the weapons that god gives us and that's what we want to do in the weeks to come we want to learn about these weapons we want to wield these weapons that are like dynamite against the strongholds of the enemy but they are no good to us unless we use them in the fight so that's why i'm encouraging you to be a part of every service see you're here right now so you've already made one you've got five more to go i want you to be part of a small group if you're not part of a small group you can still get online go to beltway.org hit flip the script and there'll be a way you can join a small group we will get you into one and then we start this week i know some of you are like i don't know that i can do it you can do it we're going to read in the book now listen to me you're not reading the whole book this week you're reading the introduction in chapter one okay it is not that long it's really good okay i want you to engage the introduction and chapter one and there's an exercise at the end of chapter one and some of you are going dude you did not tell me about the exercise i know because you wouldn't got the book you want me to do the exercise absolutely why because we got to start the battle we can't be passive so much of what we get information-wise is just passive information whether it's from social media whether it's from online sources whether it's the old school tv whatever it might be is it is passive all we want to start this week is real simple we just want to start thinking about our thoughts we want to go on our journey about thinking about our thoughts in fact i'm going to challenge you to do something when you do the exercise not if we are all going to do the exercise amen amen encourage yourself in the lord david they're there with you okay they're going you got to fight i want you to do something i don't want you to think about your thoughts i want you to pray about your thoughts when we we begin the battle for our mind by praying about our thoughts because reality is when we start thinking about our thoughts it overwhelms us a study was done decades ago by a guy named and i can't say his name pyoter and nooken i have no idea if that's right i just know he was a student of the famed psychologist ivan pavlov so if you've ever heard of pavlovian dogs and such like that anakin was his student anyway anakin we're just going to say anakin because it's just a reference to star wars there published research demonstrating that the minimum number of potential thoughts catch this the number of thought patterns that you can average brain can have in a lifetime he calculated that the number is one followed by 10.5 million kilometers of typewritten zeros now i had to convert kilometers into miles because well i'm an american and we don't do metric amen that equals a one followed by 6.5 million miles of zeros so when we start attempting to recognize our thought patterns the potential number of thought patterns that we have over the course of a lifetime is one followed by 6.5 million miles of zeros no is noting that the circumference of the earth if i remember is 25 000 miles that's a lot right there a lot of potential thoughts uh i'm telling you so that's why i think it is we're passive about our minds the number of thoughts i have can't have will have it's overwhelming to me but hear me it is not overwhelming to god his spirit if we ask will begin to highlight a stronghold he'll begin to highlight an area in our lives that are keeping us from the life that jesus wants us to have his spirit in the time that we need it to happen will identify the arguments the philosophies the ideologies the lies that are keeping us from strength and health in our mind he's going to show us where to wage war and then guess what he's going to do he's going to give us power to take that thought captive place it under the foot of the name of jesus our minds to be renewed and to be strong in the reality of who he is you see my daddy asked me a question as a young boy that i'm convinced our heavenly father is asking us right now what are you thinking he just wants us to begin to be aware i know some of you are thinking david okay i start recognizing what i'm thinking and stuff like that what do i do next you come back next week and we're going to talk about the next step and we're going to talk about the tools and all that but the first tool if i may the first weapons we just got to recognize that we're in a battle you can't be passive you got to be purposeful you can't do nothing and expect to have the health that is your destiny we begin a journey and as we partner with god taking steps with him in our thought life then he is going to do something in the renewing of our mind and then we're going to be able to walk in this thing called peace wholeness it'll affect our physical bodies it will affect our spirit it'll affect our emotions do you know typically your emotions follow your thought life healthy thought life healthy emotions unhealthy thought life unhealthy emotions you don't believe me do this watch the news for an hour and do a check on your feelings [Music] our feelings follow our thoughts whatever is noble whatever is pure whatever is righteous whatever's good whatever is lovely whatever is trustworthy paul said think on these things and the peace of god which transcends all understanding will guard your heart and your mind in christ jesus right thoughts right living right choices poor thoughts nobody intends to have poor thoughts poor thoughts usually come from passivity step number one is to embrace the battle are you ready you ready to embrace let's do this everyone bow their heads right now online north campus i want you to bow your heads we're going to respond to the scripture for though we walk in the flesh we do not wage war according to the flesh i implore you right now to tell god here i am god i'm ready to battle forgive me for my passivity in days gone by often it's just naivety we haven't thought about it it wasn't out rebellion we just had not thought about it but now is the day we know we live in a world at war and the mind is the battlefield tell god i will no longer be passive oh god give me grace give me grace to recognize the battle for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but they have divine power to destroy strongholds would you just ask god right now to start downloading his power to demolish the strongholds of in the enemy has built up in your mind he said david i don't know what they are yet that's okay god says yes to the power i believe before we ever start attacking these things would you just ask him for grace to let you know that you're not on your own listen to me you are not on your own he is there with you he is there battling for you if you are his follower his very spirit resides inside of you we have the mind of christ it can battle just ask him for the power we destroy arguments every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of god and we take every thought captive to obey christ so begin to ask the spirit right now to show us every argument and every thought that stands against god and his best in our lives just begin to ask him you're not going to get them all right now because this is a lifelong process this journey we're going on is a life skill not a temporary thing but just say spirit of god here i am here i am begin to show me every argument every philosophy every ideology everything that opposes you maybe you're not his follower yet this is all brand new to you then i think you could be honest with him and say god i don't even know if you're real i don't know if i believe you exist but if you do exist show me i'm just going to challenge you if you're not a follower jesus begin praying for like the next six weeks as if you are just begin to ask him to show you if he's real or not i bet he's big enough to show you that reality because the base thought that you have against god is that he is not real and then if you think he is real we often think he's not good both are major lies just begin to ask i say god i'm here to engage the battle that's it and i know you will show me how to engage in the days to come father we love you i declare over your people today however we are engaging people in our physical campuses in abilene people online all around the world i know we have people in israel we have people in greece we have people in eastern europe we have people in the far east and engaging it matters not your arm is not too short i declare over them right now that we are beginning a journey where you are going to give us grace to renew our minds i ask o god that none of us would shrink back from the journey right now awaken us to the reality of the battle many of us have mocked the idea that there's an enemy forgive us for doing that lord show us the reality of our enemy show us the reality of this world and let us engage with you in the battle we battle for our minds not just for ourselves but we do it for the sake of others the thought that came to my mind stay in this place of prayer right now even as i said that is that when you're on an airplane and every time we do the safety briefing they tell you to put your own mask on before you help somebody else put their mask on that's not so you're selfish it's so that you have air so you can help the people around you getting a strong mind is not selfish we want to be strong so that we can be strong on behalf of others you can't give what you do not have and so lord we lay a hold of what it is that you have given us the mind of christ right now and we want to walk in that so that we can help a world right now that is being shaken to the core of its being we want to be a people that can help we want to be a people who carry hope the reality of hope because there's a confidence inside of our minds so god we say yes we will wage war with you we embrace the reality oh god that the weapons we have are not of the flesh they are not normal they are divine and they are powerful and we say yes god we will take down every thought every argument every opinion that opposes you and we will see strength and health and peace increasingly become ours so that we can help others walk in the same we declared in jesus name amen

Channel: Beltway Park Church

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Length: 37min 53sec (2273 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021