- Hi, welcome to the Gresh Farm. (gentle guitar music) - When God first made all of
his creation, he looked at it and he said, "It is good." Now, what did he mean by that? Well, when I pick a black
raspberry on my farm and plop it into my mouth and say, "Mmm,
that is good," what I'm really saying is I enjoy it. And when God looked at creation
and said, "It is good," he was saying I enjoy you. And I don't think anybody can
observe God's creation without thinking it is good. And we can use God's
Creation to enjoy God. I don't know about you, but I
enjoy God when I'm surrounded by critters. I enjoy God when I see my
horses running in the pasture. They show God's power
through their strength. It's incredible that those
1,500 pound bodies walk, let alone run, on four skinny legs. But God designed their
legs to work perfectly for their bodies. It is miraculous. And it is good. I enjoy God when one of my
mama llamas gives birth. It shows God's perfect
timing and plans for all of his Creation. You see, God created llamas
with the amazing ability to give birth at a very
specific time of day. Since the babies are born
wet, they need lots of time to dry off and get warm
before the cool night sets in. So God gave the mama llamas
a timer so that they always give birth in the morning
and the babies have all day in the sun to dry off and to be warmed up. It is miraculous. And it is good. I enjoy God when I see our
peacock strut his stuff. He definitely shows God's beauty. God planned every little
detail of that amazing tail. Each feather is made up of
three colors God intricately wove together, bronze and green and blue. It's not just by chance, for
each of the colors to meet to form that eye-shape it takes
over 200 complex algebraic equations detailing how the feather will form just perfectly. It is miraculous and it is good. I love my farm because it is
a place where I feel connected to my God. It's so easy to enjoy him when I see these miraculous animals. Maybe you feel that way on
the beach or in the mountains or when you're watching a sunset. Or maybe you have your very own farm. The next time you're enjoying
God's creation, take time wherever you are, to notice
just how miraculous everything around you truly is. And maybe even take time to
say out loud, "It is good." (cheering) Hello, good evening. What an honor to be here with you tonight. I am beside myself to get to
be in this great community, this fantastic church. You minister as a church,
how many of you are from this church? Awesome. You know, you as a church
minister to an entire country so beautifully so it's my
honor to come here tonight and just to kinda minister back to you. That video is, if it sounded
like it was simplistic, it's because it's a piece of my brand new Secret Keeper Girl Masterpiece World Tour. We do about a hundred events
across the country every year. We're coming to California
this September and October where we tell seven to 12
year old girls that they're perfect just the way God made them. (clapping) You know, how many of
you are grandmas or moms? Yah, you have no trouble lookin' at that seven to 12 year old and being
like, yes you are perfect just the way God made you, right? But how many of you thought
that when you were 12? (laughing) We need a constant reminder
and as I was praying about how God would have me approach this particular Secret Keeper Girl curriculum, you know, it's one thing to say hey, God made you just perfectly just the way you are. The way that your hair is. The way that your skin is. The color of your skin. The shape, the size that you
are it is just perfect and it was with precision. It's one thing to say that
and believe that, but you have to first believe that
there's a Creator, right? And as I was praying I
realized that the word theory has really fallen from
the cultural conversation when it comes to evolution. So we start the Secret Keeper
Girl World Tour by reading Genesis 1. It takes six minutes. In six minutes we can cover
six days of creation and remind our spirits that there is a
Creator that made this world and that is truth. And that's something that
all of our hearts need. And you know what, as I was
reading Genesis 1 and I was listening to, hearing it
every night in the first few weeks of tour, I heard these
words over and over again, it is good. It is good. It is good. It is good. That God made this world
and he sat back and he said, "It is good." You know, and I wanted to make
that a big theological thing so I started studying it and
I was like, what is the Hebrew word of good mean. It just was like it was good. It meant good. (laughing) And as I studied more it just
it like all I could get was that it was that awesome sense
after like you put an awesome piece of pizza in your mouth
and you're like, "Mmm, that "is good, right?" (laughing) Like that God was just
saying, I enjoy this. It's so awesome. And all through the scriptures
it says again and again that creation sings the
same song back to Him. God's world cries out to
him, "I enjoy you, God." This is the song you and I
were created to know, and sing, and experience. But girls, I'm afraid that there's a lot of static interference
with the communication. It's like we can't find
the Wifi, which everybody knows will set a girl to
twitching very quickly. (laughing) We can't hear the song of
God saying it is good through all the lies that this
world is telling us day in and day out. That's why I love to hear
the testimony of Madeline. I don't know about you as moms,
I'm like thank you, Jesus, that there is still someone,
one soul in Hollywood who still wants to preserve truth
so that we can hear truth and we can hear good messages
and we can hear good things. Is anybody else pretty excited about that? (clapping) So as I was pushing reset
on my own heart this year, trying to hear the it is good
sound of God looking at me as his creation and trying to
sing back to him it is good, I was like, where do I feel
that the most, you know? And I kinda wanted to feel
it like, in a really, like theological setting like my
modern day church, at least. But, surely it should be like
a sanctuary-type, but you know where I found it? Sitting in the backyard of my farm looking around at, every single piece of footage
that you saw in there, not one piece of stock
footage, every single piece of footage is amazing
footage and I can look around and see from, from, there's
this little forest right by my house and the fireflies come out at night. I am telling you Disney
could sell tickets. (laughing) It is good. I won't even bore you with the
details of the reproductive systems of the fireflies
because, well, I will. So, like, it's like he blinks. They have four little
chambers in their tiny little firefly butts and he blinks a blink with those four little chambers. It's like a code. It's like, hey baby do you dig me? (laughing) And if she copies the
signal, that is a good thing. There is some romance happening tonight in the firefly world. (laughing) It is so good. Right now the little teeny tiny
goat you saw in that video, his name is Horton. He is now a little grown up
and he is a daddy of two. Now, he's named after Dr.
Seuss Horton Hears a Who so his babies had to be named
Cindy Lou Who and Boo Who. (laughing) And I go out in the morning
and Cindy Lou Who lays on me and she just cuddles up to me and loves me and nestles into me. She's the sweet, calm one. And Boo Who bounces across
my head, messes up my hair every morning, gives me a bad hair day. And I love every single
second 'cause I think, wow, God is good. Is anybody else like that when
you're, like, maybe when that picture during worship of that
forest came up, you're like I wanna go right there, Jesus. I wanna go right there
and sit in that spot and feel your presence. Does anybody else feel the
presence of God when you're observing creation? - [Audience member] Yes. (clapping) - You know, not everybody feels
the same way about creation when they observe it. Somebody that didn't feel so
good about creation was a guy named Charles Darwin. Now, you know what he's kinda the Father of Evolution, right? You know that. But did you know that he wrote
a letter once to a colleague that said the sight of a peacock
feather when I look at it makes me to feel sick? Now what would that be? Because that peacock feather
that you saw on that video, it didn't fit with his
survival of the fittest theory. You see, that peacock's
tail makes survival harder, not more likely. It takes time to take that
tail feather down, those tail feathers down if a
predator comes into its presence and it makes running
more difficult and slower and it makes flying more
difficult and slower so when he looked at that
peacock and he thought of his theory, he felt
the sickness of a lie. His emotions were tryna
tell him something. You see, that's what our emotions do. They're messengers. They send us signals. They tell us something's not right here. Something in your belief system
in your mind, in your head, in your world is not right
and I'm sending you a message. His emotions were trying
to communicate to him because deep down in his
spirit that God-shaped hole was still crying out and
communicating truth to him. Even as he embraced and believed lies. Now I don't know about
you, I have believed lies about God's Creation. I've never doubted that God
created like Darwin did, but I have doubted that
what God created was good. I have felt the sickness
of a lie when I looked in the mirror and saw
something that God created and believed fully and
completely the opposite of what God said. It is not good. And I felt the sickness of
that lie, and I don't know if any of you girls, maybe you all
look in the mirror every day you're like that is good. (laughing) I think I'll look at that again. (laughing) Anybody? (laughing) I kinda thought so. You know, I don't know why
Satan lies to us in this way about our beauty. As I was praying about what
lies, we deal with 25 lies in the book Lies Young Women
Believe, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and myself, and I thought
which one of the ones will span the ages. I thought the beauty lies. I wonder if we ever really outgrow them. You know, and I don't know
why the guys don't struggle with it. To this day, I've been married
almost 30 years, my husband has never walked out and said,
"Honey, do these jeans make "me look fat?" (laughing) Hadn't happened yet. We are the ones that bare the burden. Here's the thing. I want to tell you something
before you even go any further. Guess what, Genesis 1:27
tells us about this lie about our beauty. Genesis 1:27 says that
you and I were created to look like God. We are created in His
image to reflect who He is. And I gotta tell you that
this beauty battle that you and I face, it has very little
to do with you and I at all. It is a fist fight between our
creator and the one who hates him so much that when he
looks at us and is reminded at the image of God the
best he can do is lie to us and tell us that what we see is not good. That doesn't change the
reality of you and I sittin' in front of the mirror and
fighting the battle, does it? So let's see if we can
sort through that tonight. I have two things, two gifts
I wanna give to you tonight. The first is I wanna give
you a tool that you need. It will help you identify any
lies you might be believing, whether they be about beauty
or guys, not that any of us have ever believed any of those lies. (laughing) Or your marriage, or your
career, or your purpose, or your school, or whatever it is that, this one tool will help you
identify if maybe, just maybe, there's a lie and if I could
figure out what the lie is and rip it up and plant
God's truth, I could be okay. You could be okay. And then I wanna take us
through four things that Eve did to cooperate with lies, just
so you can kinda just say am I helping these lies,
feeding these lies, fueling these lies? Now, as I go through this
tool and these four things, I'm gonna be using the content
from Lies Young Women Believe and I just want you to
know that I did write this with my friend Nancy DeMoss
Wolgemuth so some of the things I'm saying tonight are
just not from my heart, but they're from hers. And in each of the books
that she has written in this series Lies Women Believe for
those 17 plus, yes, tonight Kathy said how many of you
are 20 and under and you raised your hands. But I wanted to say how many
of you feel 20 and under, raise your hands. (laughing) So that book is for those
who feel 20 and under. This one, Lies Young Women
Believe is for teens and in February we're coming
out with Lies Girls Believe for seven to 12 year old
girls because Satan just keeps movin the line back, right? And you know what? We're gonna fight on the
front line every time. That's what we're gonna do
'cause that's what we're equipped to do. And so in each of these books
there's a test that helps you to figure out are you believing a lie? It doesn't matter what age group, Do you know what? The key, the core, the big
signal, the hint that you might believing a lie is your emotions. Girls, we are emotionally, what
I call emotionally wealthy. (laughing) We have the great riches of
emotion running through our hearts and our lives at any
age, at any point in our lives and emotions are good things. Three things I wanna
tell you about emotions. They're good. They're messengers that God gave to us. When God created them he said, what did he say when he created emotions? It is good. He said our emotions are good. You know what, he said that
about all of them, even the ones that we think are bad, like anger and sadness, and grief. In the right place and
time those are good tools, appropriate tools for our lives. Now, they're supposed to be messengers. That means they're supposed
to come and tell us hey, something's not right and
then we respond to them and they go away. That's how they're supposed to
work, in case ya didn't know. For example, stress. Anyone in here stressed out today? Came here a little stressed
out like the to-do list is a little long. Guess what. Stress is God's signal to us
that maybe, just maybe, there is too much going on in your
life and if you would obey Him and start to find some
rest in your life to push the reset button on your spirit,
or maybe just do less because, hey, there's some truth some of you need. You came for that tonight. That one's free. (laughing) That the stress would abate. The messenger would go away
'cause it's done its job. But the second thing you need
to know about emotions is that they were created to tell
us something and they were created to be quiet. They were created to shut
the up when they're done with their job, right? But that's not always how they work. You see, emotions are sorta like the skin of our soul, right? So when I touch a hot pot
with my bare hand, what am I gonna do? Hopefully I'm gonna pull away. I'm gonna react 'cause my skin
is saying that's not safe. But if it's my sweet Cindy
Lou, my furry little goat, on my lap and it feels really
nice, I'm gonna hold her closer, right, 'cause that feels good. My skin is telling me
what's safe and what's not. Your emotions are the skin of your spirit, the skin of your soul. And they say, when you have
a friend that makes you feel bad every single stinking
time you spend time with her, (laughing) hello, skin of your soul is
saying hot pot, back off. (laughing) Your skin of your soul is saying
no this isn't good for you. This is not healthy for you baby, girl. Find another friend. But, if your skin of your soul
is saying this feels safe, this feels good, you can move into that and know that it's true. And then your emotions
are supposed to be oh, I gave the signal, I'm done. Third thing you need to
know about emotions is this, sticky emotions, the ones that
don't go away, the chronic ones that become so powerful
in your life that they become labels, like you feel
like they define you. Grumpy Dannah. (laughing) Sad Dannah. Depressed Dannah. Stressed out of her mind every
time, everyone, she comes in the room she stresses
everybody out of her mind Dannah. See when they become chronic
and they stick to us, that's when you know that
there might be something wrong. That is possibly, most likely
evidence that deep down in your belief system there
is a lie that has been rooted inside of you so
deeply that your emotions no longer are signaling you,
they're controlling you. And that's when we have a problem. When our emotions start to become sticky and they control us. I want you to maybe think. Is there a sticky or
chronic emotion in your life right now? If someone were to say, oh, some of you are like, (laughing) I saw that over there. I want you to think like, is
there a sticky chronic emotion in your life and as we look
at this passage and scripture I want you to have that
sticky, chronic emotion in your mind. You know, is there something
that if people were to say what emotion most characterizes this girl and it's a negative
chronic, sticky emotion, and I gotta say somethin'. Somma y'all are too happy. (laughing) You ever meet someone who just
like, it's not real happy? It's chronic, sticky, fake happy. Like you know what I'm saying? Like God created us to
feel sad too sometimes, (laughing) and not to talk in the mornings. He did create us not to
talk in the mornings. (laughing) For the love of God, you morning people. (laughing) No, but I'm being honest when
I say sometimes we can even be controlled by what we think
are positive emotions, but we're still controlled by
them because we they're so chronic and so sticky. So I want you to think about
that as I ask you to stand and I'm gonna read to you this
passage of scripture where we see the first woman
believing the first lie. I'm gonna ask you to stand
just because, well, then you won't fall asleep and get bored. (laughing) No, because I love to
honor God's word that way. That's why I asked you to stand. So, let me read to you the
story of when the first lie came into the world. You know, Jesus said to,
we're gonna see a snake in this story. You know this story so
it's not like a new story to most of you. Who does the snake represent? - [Audience Members] Satan. - That's right, Satan. And Jesus himself said that
Satan is a liar and the Father of all Lies. This is the day he birthed lies. And it says this in Genesis 3:1. Now the serpent was more
crafty than any other beast of the field the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did
God actually say to you, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the
serpent, "We may eat of the fruit "of the trees in the garden,
but God said you shall not "eat of the fruit in the
tree that is in the midst of "the garden, neither shall
you touch it lest you die." But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. "For God know that when you
eat of it, your eyes will "be open. "You'll be like God,
knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that
the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to
the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make on
wise, she took of it and ate, and she also gave some to
her husband who was with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both were
opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed
fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths and then
they herd the sound of the Lord God walking in the cool
of the day and the man and his wife hid themselves from the
presence of the Lord God. But the Lord called to the
man and said, "Where are you?" And he said, "I heard the
sound of you in the garden "and I was afraid because I
was naked and I hid myself." He said, "Who told you
that you were naked? "Have you eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you "not to eat?" The man said, "The woman
whom you gave to me, she gave 'me the fruit and I ate it." (laughing) That sounds just like my house sometimes. (laughing) Then the Lord God said to
the woman, "What is this that "you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent
deceived me and I ate it." You can be seated. It is my hope that we can learn
a little bit from Eve today and take that sticky emotion
that we're feeling and kinda put it through a grid
of four things that Eve experienced in the garden. Just kinda ask ourselves, am
I responsible a little bit for this emotion that's ruling
and controlling my life? The firs thing we notice is
this, Eve listened to the lie. First one. What was she doing there by that tree? Do you ever think that? Like, what was she
doing there by the tree? There's this big garden and
God said, look how good it is. Look how awesome it is. Look how many trees you have. And she just moseys on to
the one, over to the one where she's supposed to
not eat that fruit, right? Anyone else like that? Like God gives you this big,
or your mom and dad give you this big, they're like you
can have this on the internet and you can have that on the internet. You can have this on
the internet, you can, but you cannot have this on the internet. You're like, I got to
have that on the internet. (laughing) Right? We obsess about the
thing that we can't have. The thing that has boundaries
on it becomes what, it's like that button. You know, you ever walk by
a fence and it's, there's a hole and it says, do not look
in this hole and you're like, I'm gonna look in that hole (laughing) for sure. Right? You cannot help it. It is human nature. We want to do that which we're not. And he doesn't even, he lies
to her so blatantly at first. He's like, didn't God say you
can't eat any of the trees? But here's the thing. Eve listened. And you and I listen. You and I watch the television
shows that Madeline won't star in. (laughing) (clapping) We read the books that we
kinda know we shouldn't read. I gotta tell you, this makes
me so sad but there's no statistical difference in the
percentage of Christian women versus non-Christian women
who read Fifty Shades of Gray. Do you know what? That makes me sick. And we get completely obsessed
with what we can't have, with what we're not supposed
to have and we hear all of the mocking voices, you see,
when we get close to the lie. When we hang out next to the
stuff instead of feeling like, I can look cute and modest at
the same time, which by the way is humanly possible, (clapping) yes, and when we start to look at
the wrong fashion magazines and shop at the wrong stores
and get obsessed with the things we can't have rather
than all the things we can have at the mall, then we start to
think, ugh, is it really good that I dress modestly? Maybe I am repressed. (laughing) What? It's, sometimes the lies
don't even make sense. Here's the thing, the serpent,
the snake, Satan has no power to make you sin unless we cooperate a bit. We have to listen to his lies. We have to hear what he is
saying, and if we come close enough to the things our parents,
our pastors, our ministry leaders, our youth pastors,
and our God has advised us to stay away from, but we
think, but I am so spiritual I can handle this. Listen, there's no one that
lived a more sheltered life than Eve did. No one. No one was exposed to less and
probably would have had less of an inclination and an
interest in sin than this woman. And we think that we can handle it? We can't handle it. You know what we can't handle? You know where our beauty
lies take a lot of, get a lot of fuel? Social media. Thank God I grew up as a
teenager and the only thing I had to compare myself to now and
then was a supermodel or two on the cover of a magazine. Think about that, okay. Because your daughters,
your granddaughters, and you have to compare yourself
to someone who's perfected every time you open social media every time you open social media. In 2006, that's like forever ago. Some of you were not even born yet. (laughing) Facebook, our first social
media, which is so antiquated some of you are way too
cool to be on it, was just coming out and in that year
2006, teenage girls scored as high on anxiety scales
about their appearance and fitting in than
those who were committed to psychological disorder
clinics for inpatient treatment in the 50's. - [Audience Members] Wow. - By 2016, now we have, well
MySpace which is gone, Twitter. Instagram, Tinder, oh Lord help us. (laughing) Snapchat, you know, all the stuff, right? 2016 they're saying that the
anxiety that girls feel over their appearance and how
they look is practically undefinable, that they
don't really know what to do with it in terms of
psychological measurement. But they have, the dictionary
has figured out what to do with it because they've added a word to the dictionary, FOMO. Do you know what that means? If you don't, you are so yesterday. (laughing) It means fear of missing out. It's an actual word that's
now in the dictionary. It's a psychological
condition that teenage girls experience when they're looking
at their social media feed and looking at everybody else's
very fake lives and thinking I don't have a life as great as that. Neither do they. (laughing) Truth, right there. (clapping) Truth. But here's the thing, Even though all I had to
compare myself to was social media, was supermodels, I still found myself feeling really ugly. Anybody else out there feel that? The kind that, the self-loathing kind. The kind I can't look
into the mirror kind. The kind, I'm never gonna
be okay, nobody's ever gonna want me kind of ugly. And here's the thing. I did exactly what Eve did in verse two. In verse two we see that
Eve dwelled on the lie. To dwell on something means
to live in a specific place or to think about, speak about,
write about it all the time every day. And what she did is she
stayed in this specific place. She should have heard the lie
and said this, I can't eat any trees in the garden,
whoo, outta here, right? But she doesn't. She stays there and she tries
to reason with the Devil. She tries to talk to him
and help him understand. You know what, even Jesus didn't do that. When he was tempted in the
garden, you know what he did? He quoted scripture and he was
done with the conversation. We don't, you don't see big
fat dialogue between Him and, you see a lot more dialogue
between Eve and the serpent than you do between Jesus and
the temptation he experienced in the desert. He quoted scripture and he said quiet. Dwelling is what we do
when we're on social media all the time every day. Listen to me, this thing
right here is really dangerous for me. Now maybe your 12 years old
and you don't have an addiction problem like I do to this thing. Or maybe you're a mom who
doesn't escape to the bathroom to look at it on the toilet
because your children aren't there. (laughing) Or maybe you're a grandmother,
maybe you're a grandmother who thinks I deserve
this, like I raised them. Thank God, they're gone. (laughing) I deserve this Facebook thing, (laughing) this Twitter thing, this
Instagram thing, right? Here's the thing, what do
you think about that tree the knowledge of good and evil? When God said to all of creation
it is good, do you think that he's like, except that tree? I don't think so. I think that tree had a good purpose. We may know what it is one
day when we're in Heaven. And I think social media
can have good purposes, but I think it's also very
dangerous and lethal for me if I am not in control of
it, because my emotions get in control of it really fast. You know, they have, they
actually have rehab for teenagers now who are addicted. The dopamine cycle in their
brains is being so controlled by the sounds that come from this thing. I don't know about you, but
when I get the likes it makes me feel really important. (laughing) Anybody else have that problem? When I get the shares, then
I feel like celebrity star status, right? (laughing) I got shares (laughs), oh my gosh. And then, like what happens
is I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is I'm
checkin' in to see who liked me and who shared me and
before I know it 30 minutes in it's too late and I don't
have time to open the Word and be in the Bible and talk to the Lord. Because I was so busy worried
about what you thought about me. Anybody? - [Audience Members] Yes. - So what I do is from time to
time, I take all social media off my phone until I can get
my appetite under control. Because I don't wanna be a
woman who dwells on that. I wanna be a woman who dwells
in the Word because here's the thing. You know, Jesus was able
to speak to Satan and quote scripture 'cause he knew it. How you gonna know scripture
to quote when you're feeling tempted if you're not in
the Word, learning the Word, knowing the Word? The third thing we know
that Eve did was this. Because her emotions began
to get control of her, now we don't really know
what emotions Eve felt. Maybe she felt afraid and she was thinking, oh,
what if God isn't good? Maybe she felt confused. Did Adam misunderstand? I know sometimes my husband
doesn't get it right. (laughing) Maybe she felt rebellious. Well if God wants to be
in control of my life. We don't know, but somehow
her emotions got in the driver's seat and the next
thing we know she was reaching for that piece of forbidden fruit. She believed in and acted on a lie. Girls, what we do proves
what we believe more than what we say. What we do proves what we
believe more than what we say. And I was praying about
this and thinking like, what are some ways that
we prove what we believe. Well you may say you believe in kindness, but when God prompts your heart
to help your little sibling with homework and you'd rather
watch Netflix so you do, you're proving what you
believe about kindness. You may say you believe
in marrying a Christian, but when you just happen,
you're dating this guy just now because maybe he needs
Jesus, you're proving what you believe. You're proving that it's
not really that important to be equally yolked. You may say you believe
God gives you peace in all circumstances, but
when you freak out every time somethin' goes wrong, you're proving what you really believe. You may say you believe in
sexual purity, but when you additively use pornography
as an outlet because that's, you need a sexual outlet as a
single woman, you're proving what you believe about purity. And Eve proved what she believed. You know how I proved what
I believed for five years? You know how I proved what I
believed about how it is not good was in the mirror
every time I saw it? I just didn't look in the mirror. Not for a day. Not for a week. Not for a month. Not for a year. But for five years. If I did look in the mirror I
ended up in the fetal position in my bed for days and if it was a good
one, maybe just hours. My mom an dad didn't know why
is this girl so depressed? What is wrong with her? I'll tell you what was wrong with her. She didn't like what she
saw in the mirror and she had dwelled on the lies so
much that she was beginning to believe that what she saw in the mirror was very, very bad. I don't know if any of
you have ever felt that. I know that some of you have. Some of you resorted to
cutting and binging and purging and all manner of cooperating
with Satan in self harm against yourself, against
your beautiful, precious perfectly-crafted body because
you have believed this lie so thoroughly and so thickly. And it has just, it has
controlled everything about you. What happens when we allow
our emotions to control how we act and prove what we believe? Well, it says the fourth
thing in here, Eve hid. But you know what? I love that that's not
the end of the story. The God came seeking. He said, "My children are hiding." Do you think that the God of
the Universe really didn't know the answer when he
said, "Where are you?" (laughing) He knew. And he knew why they were
hiding where they were hiding. And he came because he loves
his masterpiece creation, his it is good creation
because he enjoys and the Bible says delights in you. You know what he did? He came for me. He came seeking after my sad,
broken, I hate myself heart. Somebody said to me, "You know
what I think you should do? "I think you, I'm gonna start
reading the Bible with you. "Let's start reading the Bible together." And I was like, yah, that's gonna help. I started reading the Bible
and I started reading it and enjoying it and writing
in it and marking in it and finding there was stuff
in here, good stuff in here. Stuff that made me feel
good and happy and peaceful and I don't even know when it
happened, but one day I'm like walkin' by a mirror and I'm
checkin' myself out and I'm like, yah okay, what? (laughing) Did you just look at yourself? Now I didn't look in the
mirror and go, "Baby you are a hottie." Like, nah, to this day
that's never happened. But I remember stopping
that day and I was like, okay, okay, okay. I think in my heart I kinda
felt what I saw was good. You know what happened? I started dwelling on
something other than the lies. I started dwelling on truth. I started living in this
space, in this place and I found my creation
story in Psalm 139 that says God knit me together. Do any of you in here knit? I don't knit 'cause there's
math and I hate math. (laughing) But, like that's the
whole point is that it's with precision. If you don't count and do it just right, you're just as likely to make
a pancake as you are a cute little beanie hat, right? (laughing) God didn't make mistake when he made you. He knit you together with
precision and care and it gets even better than that. Like, that whole Genesis
1 thing that includes you. It is good. He knew you. God is without space and time. I believe he saw all of
his creation when he said it is good, including you. But just in case you didn't
get it, in Ephesians he wrote it down. In Ephesians 2:10 he's like
man, some of them aren't gonna get that it is good
thing, so let me see. What can I write? Ephesians 2:10 and he wrote
this for your heart and I think He wants you to hear it tonight
'cause it's seeking you. He's seeking after you and
whatever your brokenness is, whether it's what you see in
the mirror or how you've been rejected, maybe by those who
are supposed to love you most. For we are God's workmanship
created in Christ Jesus for good works. For we are God's workmanship
created for Christ Jesus for good works. That verse, like let me
unpack something for you. That verse, when it says
workmanship, that just doesn't mean he knit you together and
he worked hard to make you. It was a Greek word. The Greek word poema. What does that sound like to you? The word poem. It was the Greek word that
meant a master craftsman. Not just any craftsman could use the word. A master craftsman's highest
work of art, the best thing, the pinnacle of his creation,
the pinnacle of his ability, the best thing he could possibly create. When God said it is good
and he looked at the stars and the fireflies with the
flashing things, and the goats and the llamas and the peacocks
with the mathematically impossible tails. When he looked at all of
that, and said it is good, he's like, but she, she's the pinnacle. She's the best thing I've ever created. I didn't make any mistakes here. You know what? He didn't make any mistakes
in the steps of your life, either, and the disappointment
and the brokenness and the hurt things, he
didn't make any mistakes. Listen to me, you might say,
okay I might be a masterpiece but I feel like broken masterpiece. Well that's okay, 'cause I've
been there a time or two, in the pits of brokenness
as a teenager, in the pits of brokenness as a twenty year old. Even more recently in
the pits of brokenness in my marriage. Here's what I learned about
God's response to broken masterpieces, it's a lot like ours. A few years ago there was a
little boy, a 12 year old boy. He was in a museum and there
was this million dollar masterpiece, and you know, he
was kind of, you know, seventh grade awkward, lost his
balance, reached out, oops. Hole, fist-sized hole from
his fat little hand in a million dollar masterpiece. Would be a bad day if
you were his mama, right? (laughing) Now what do you think that
they did with that masterpiece? Do you think they threw it away? How many of you think they threw it away? Raise your hand. How many of you think that
maybe they were like, eh, we'll just, it's fine, leave it there. How many think they did that? How many of you think they
did absolutely everything they could within their human power
to restore that masterpiece back to its original condition? Yah, that's what they did. If we as humans do that with
human-made masterpieces, how much more do you think
God wants to, is willing to, and is able to restore
every broken piece of your masterpiece heart? (clapping) There is nobody in here more
broken than he could fix and restore. There is no mind in here
more broken than he can fix and restore. There is no relationship, no
mother daughter relationship in here that he is not
capable of restoring. There is no marriage represented,
no family represented in this room that he is
not capable and desirous of restoring. For Adam and Eve in their
brokenness, we see the first glimpse of the cross of Jesus
where, we don't know what, but something in his it is
perfect, it is good world died that day. Can you imagine? They'd never seen blood. They'd never seen death. And yet, God the Father says
my masterpiece is broken and so I will restore it
and he brings Adam and Eve garments of fur to comfort them. It was a foreshadowing of Jesus coming. And by his stripes, by his
brokenness, you my sweet masterpiece can be restored. As the band comes up, I
wanna ask you just close your eyes and I wanna pray over you. Lord Jesus, I know that there
are hearts in here today that are, there's girls in
here who are cutting. There's girls in here whose
hearts have been broken by Tinder over and over
again, by the rejection that they're facing and feeling on Tinder. And yet they still
subject themselves to it. There's girls in here,
God, whose hearts have been broken by guys. There's women in here whose
hearts have been broken by husbands. And you say that every single
one of these hearts, they're your masterpiece. And they're encased in a body
that is your masterpiece. And you wanna restore tonight, Lord. Would you give them a
desire to be restored? Would you give them Holy
Spirit, just enough faith to come let us pray with
them so that we can wrap our faith around them and they
can start to feel whole and they can start to
feel restored, Lord Jesus?
