Jennie Allen - March 10, 2021 - OBU Chapel Message

amen it is good to be with you guys at obu and i didn't even know i was repping so well the bison green so it is great to be here um let me just start with this is you know it's always fun showing up at something that's required you know like everybody had to come so i just want to say thank you for coming and i'm really grateful you're here and and what i know is this hopefully this morning what it'll be is a huge encouragement and a wind in your sail as you are already likely following god unless your parents made you come here you probably came somewhat because you want to be equipped to serve god with your life right talk back to me here all right so here's what we're going to do you are so used to watching screens i mean this has been we have been locked down for a year this is real life and i want to hear from you and you you know if you i just want to see your eyeballs and and know you're alive out there in the world because i've been in my robe watching way too much netflix for a year so it's good to be out and i'm probably a little hyper about it so let me introduce you to the people i was stuck in my robe with these are my kids i actually have a couple college students as well my oldest connor is single and he's 21 he's at a m my daughter in the blue shirt is also a freshman at a m and she is um you know loves jesus both of them do my my other daughter 15 is amazing and then our youngest son who apparently is adopted he is amazing as well he actually was adopted from rwanda and so that's my my crew and i start here because i want to tell you a little story about them so we have has anybody heard of the porch in dallas it's kind of a young adult thing so i was speaking there that's my home church and i was speaking there and i was on the front rows about to go up and my husband leaned over and said hey caroline is locked in the bathroom and i was like well that's not good but i go up i figured they'll he's like i got it i got it so so i go upstairs or up to speech and what what happened next is i speak for 30 40 minutes and towards the end i bring up earlier tonight my daughter was locked in the bathroom and i can tell from my husband's posture over here that that my daughter was still in the bathroom i can just tell he's like yeah she's kind of still there and so i stop you know the 3 000 people are out there and all of a sudden i'm just a mom and i'm like are daughters still in the bathroom he's like yeah i'm like this is bad like go get her out of the bathroom anyway let me show you what went down with my daughter in the bathroom so this is the tech stream our family texturing hey you guys go rescue caroline who's locked in the bathroom caroline are you out my son who's in college at the time he went to smu around the corner okay this is bad mom is on stage can i break the door there is no other solution right now and i got to go back to school next slide i'm coming home in a second okay well i can break it now just know that we live in a really old house like a 90 year old house and so my husband's like i really don't want you to break the door down like this is going to go badly because the wood's really thick and the brass doorknobs are really expensive and he just doesn't want it to happen no give caroline a phone caroline just wait till mom and i are finished now i want you to think about how long that would be she's locked in the bathroom before i even start i'm going to speak for 30 to 45 minutes we're going to say hi to all of our friends basically he wants her to wait over an hour and he calls her and says you're always in the bathroom 15 year old just do what you do when you're in the bathroom that's his answer and so anyway connor allen is in charge now in the house and he says i got my pads on dad can i just get her out this is not working next slide now i post this on instagram and i get all kinds of questions the first question i get was well did he did he bust down the door you guys any boy in here will know that if you suit out top to bottom with your helmet on the door and your your little sister's in there the door is going down the next question i got was were you mad and i was like are you kidding me my son from college comes home to rescue his little sister suits out in his high school pads including his helmet and busts a door down to get her out i have never been so proud and the door the door is still broken we still can't close or lock that door but guys i tell this story because this is how i feel coming in here i feel like my son my helmet is on my pads are on i'm a little pumped because i've been stuck at home for so long and i'm watching the world go crazy y'all it's just spinning out of control and i'm a bible teacher better than that i'm a christian i'm a christian and i'm thinking to myself y'all why is the church spinning out like we don't know this was gonna get bad before it got better why are we scared why are we spinning why is there this this spirit of fear over the church right now i'm not excited about how we've behaved for the last year but i am very excited about what's to come and the reason i'm excited about what's to come is i think you know god like put us in our time out right like he was like okay time out and like you need to figure out your your junk and so now we're going to go see what it is that we're supposed to do and how it is we're supposed to live and the truth is he just wants us to come back to how it was we were always supposed to live and what it was we were always supposed to do and we're going to talk about that today but there is an enemy now i know y'all don't talk back in baptist places but i think you should today okay there is an enemy that's right do y'all know that i was in i was in middle school and my middle school youth pastor said something i remember this from like sixth grade jenny allen sitting there in the seat like you and my middle school youth pastor says something like don't talk about the devil too much so i was like okay okay let's not talk about him and of course he didn't and so then we fast forward and i'm reading ephesians as an adult and it says there are dark cosmic forces coming against us as christians there's dark i'm like this sounds like star wars like this is bad we should talk about it enough to figure out how to you know war this thing right if there's a dark cosmic force coming for you i think it's good to just give a heads up you know so i'm going to get a little you know crazy here we're going to talk about the devil you ready but it's all in the bible i'm actually just going to tell you what jesus said about him because i think we need to know if there's a dark cosmic force coming for us what's his strategy how is he coming for you how is he coming for you because the truth is if i were to ask you and i'm gonna let me just ask you you can talk back to me here if i were to ask you what do you believe is the greatest oppression around you like what is what do you just see as the thing that is just kind of making everything hard i mean let's just let's just first find out is it hard would you say in general people are anxious raise your hand okay that was everybody for people online we're glad you're here we're so glad you're here and we wish you in the room and and honestly i would love to hear your thoughts as well so find me on instagram and come tell me in my dms um so so anxious the whole room raised their hand by the way people online how many of you would say that that in general people are discouraged about the state of the world in the state of the church whole room how many of you would say personally you are discouraged most of the room all right so here's what we're going to do is we're going to assume that that plays well not into the people of god and the future of the church okay let's assume in fact let's just quote scripture ii timothy says that that for god did not give you a spirit of fear but a spirit of power love and self-control so let's just go with that verse and go is fear from god just that verse so the fact that the people of god are shut down and discouraged and afraid and anxious does that sound like a good plan for god do you think god is like sitting up there going to you know that's cool it's okay they can just skip this generation you know like let's just let's let the church just sit down ignore their sin ignore their struggle and just you know just sit this one out because it got too hard i don't think he's saying that i think he's saying hey are you ready to actually go cause some trouble now maybe the idols have died maybe your goals are messed up maybe you lost the future plan for your life you lost the future plan for your day like we just we can't even plan a day without some crazy new thing coming our way right and maybe that's an awesome place for the people of god to be because our hands are kind of freed up and we're going okay god what do you want now what next because it feels like chaos see jesus said really clearly in this world you will have trouble but take heart i have overcome the world he made two promises i promise you'll have trouble and i promise i'm taking care of it so we aren't those that are afraid not if we believe this book back to the enemy there is an enemy and that is why we're all discouraged shut down and afraid john 8. this is jesus talking about this enemy he says you are the father your devil the devil and your will is to do your father's desires he was a murderer from the beginning and he does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him when he lies he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies okay what do you hear about the enemy he lies he says it in a few ways he says it he doesn't know the truth he doesn't say the truth and then he says he lies he's a liar he's making one thing really clear this is jesus first person talking about the devil you think he knows something about him more than me and he wants us to know what about the devil that he is a everybody talk back liar he wants us to know he lies now i want you to think about any lies that you believe now the problem is most of you don't even know you are believing lies so let's just point some out in fact if you can go to that one of the last slides i'm going to give you those up front i'm going to tell you what those lies are i i did a lot of work for this project called get out of your head i did a lot of study of research and i talked to a lot of psychiatrists i moved outside of the christian scope and biblical i really left my training which was seminary and theology and the bible and i went and said okay what does the world have to say about this because we've learned a lot about the brain in the last 20 years and you know what was crazy i thought there would be some confusion or or it would not line up with this book it lined up perfectly with the book this book that that god built our brains and what scientists are uncovering about the brains is that god always knew that we had power over our thoughts he gave us power over our thoughts now if i were to tell you quit feeling sad just don't feel it does that work not at all that is a crazy thing if anybody ever says that to you tell them they need to go to counseling that is not okay okay that's not okay it's not possible but if i tell you to quit thinking about something you actually can in fact the bible says that over and over and over us to us again in fact in the most important passages in scripture romans 8 he says it this way he says there's a choice you can live two ways every day of your life christians and unbelievers there are two ways to live one is the flesh and your sin and the other is for the spirit and the defining characteristic he says in romans 8 that is going to to decide which one you live for is if you set your mind on this world and the flesh then you will follow it if you set your mind on the spirit then you'll be full of life and peace one road leads to sin and death one road leads to life and peace and what is the the personal responsibility that we have in us for that which road we end up on what we set our minds on that's what romans 8 says but we never think about what we think about you have six thousand or nine thousand to sixty thousand thoughts in a day and the boys are like i have twelve you know like that's how many i have girls food i have a sons i know girls food well actually it's just two i think and and all the girls are like oh no i have more than sixty thousand [Laughter] and that's me zac my husband said this is the only qualifying thing you have to write this book it is that that you have more thoughts than any human that has ever lived you know that that's your one qualification to write this book and and it's true i have so many thoughts and i walked through a season of 18 months where where i would wake up at 3am and i would spin i would i would worry and i would spin and what i would worry and spin about was actually something pretty heavy it was the existence of god now i love him with all my heart i've built my whole life on him i've given my whole life to him this is what my husband and i our family does with our lives is we live for the gospel of jesus christ god willing in every decision we make and everything we do i've built my whole existence on him and for 18 months at 3 a.m in the morning i questioned if he was even real and i never told anybody guys there is a war but it is not happening on the in the media in the government it is not happening out there somewhere with with broken systems that is happening in us first not saying all that isn't broken i'm just saying it is happening in us first and the way the enemy is going for the church right now it is in your mind it is the least suspecting place where nobody can tell you the truth for 18 months i questioned the existence of god is this real should we be giving our life to this does it fade to black it wasn't another religion it was just is this i mean is there god you know and after 18 months that bled into my daytime life that bled into my preaching that bled into my my confidence and and my honestly what it did is it made me apathetic and i laid there and i let the devil beat me up and tell me whatever the heck he wanted for 18 months i never fought back and he was stealing my faith and the second i said it out loud guys to two friends they rose up literally they physically were ready to fight they were like no you are not this is the devil and you are not taking jenny allen out and we are going to fight and we are going to pray and we are going to fast for you and this is not going to be your story you're not losing your faith they fought for me and y'all almost the second i admitted what i've been fighting for 18 months almost the second i said it out loud i formed the words out loud and guess what happened all the power left them i said it out loud and i almost giggled right at first because i was like i believe in god i believe in god i believe in god i can't believe i've been questioning this and then and then i was like i think i've been under spiritual attack and my friends are like you think 18 months guys some of you have been fighting the devil alone in your brain for longer than that some of you have been fighting him since you were five years old and something happened to you and you cannot quit thinking about it and he has defined everything in your life since then some of you have been in a relationship where that person spoke lies over you and you have believed them some of you have have just created your own insecurities in your head or maybe it came from a father relationship that that he never saw you or he was never present or he never ever seemed pleased with you i don't know where your lies come from but the enemy's good he'll stick him anywhere he can get him do you understand if you are a lover of jesus christ and he has a purpose and a plan for you and has gifted you and equipped you for good works that he prepared in advance for you to do that's all scripture it's true of you if you're one of those if you are a christian a christ follower then guess who hates you the enemy hates you he doesn't just think oh let's trip him like stick a foot out no he's trying to kill steal and destroy you and your faith now the cool thing is he has very little power over a christ follower over a christian he has very little power but guys we've given him the game we've set back we've not used the weapons god's given us and we're going to talk about that we've not used the weapons god's given us and he's given us divine weapons to destroy strongholds and instead of using them we have believed the enemy laid there and let him beat us up however he wills now to the lies we believe three lies we believe i am worthless i am helpless and i am unlovable now somewhere you know when i was doing the study my friend that's a counselor she said now jenny these are the three lies everybody believes not just women guys i know some of you guys are like i don't relate to those words i know it looks different for you but but those words are the human longing in fact it's it's the eternity that god set into our hearts it's it's the you some of you have heard the god-shaped vacuum this is it like we want to be loved we want to be worthy and we want to be in control there's a desire for this to all be going somewhere for this not to be meaningless for for our lives to count for somebody to see us and love us and know us it's the deepest longing in our soul and so i asked i asked my friend the psychiatrist so i was like now i have more than three you know i i just got more than three like in the last minute you know this is just no i have like a 100 in a day so that's not true and she was like give me an example of one of your lies and it was my son going to college i was worried he was going to make bad decisions and she was like okay so so what happens then he makes bad decisions he's like yeah he meets a girl and i don't like her and then he marries her and he was like okay okay so what what else and i'm just worried he's gonna you know drink and and and then she kept asking me questions at the end of the day she was like what are you really afraid of i was like he's gonna go to prison now this is my son who's a good kid that loves god it wasn't even making bad decisions at the time it's not reasonable some of you are like that is my mother she is not reasonable it's not reasonable but you know what my friend said is oh so you feel helpless i was like oh yeah dude that's good well done there is a war and the enemy likes to cut at our deepest places at the things that will make us most fragile at the things that will take away our confidence and our strong firm stand on who we are who god is and what he's called us to do you take those three things out of a christian's life and guess what they are impotent worse they are distraction to others for our god minimum they're impotent they're causing no damage to hell i said hell um here's what i want you to know is there is a different way to live but it is going to change everything about you like this message today what i'm telling you right now it will cost you something if you want to live you can stay stuck in fact i minister to a lot of people that stayed stuck since college they were they'll come up to me 60 years later and they'll be crying tears and for the first time they will say the things out loud that they have been believing the lies they've been believing since they were five years old you can stay stuck for you know 50 more years that's how you can live you can literally let it define your life or you can get free today you don't have to stay stuck for 18 months you can get free in 18 minutes you can get free this second and here's how paul knew it there was a war there's an enemy we're not warring against flesh this is what he says in second corinthians 10 verse 3 for we for though we walk in the flesh we're not waging war against the flesh so he starts this whole thing it's going to be very graphic it's going to be war language and he starts it by saying hey let me remind you what we're fighting we're not fighting these circumstances we're not fighting the fact that you don't have a boyfriend or a girlfriend we're not fighting the fact that there are difficulties in the world he's like we're fighting a spiritual dark cosmic force like that's what you're fighting we got to give it a little more credit and so paul starts that way hey you're not waging war against the fledge we for the weapons of our warfare verse 4 are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds so paul's going to make the case that hey you're not fighting on with what you see you're not fighting what you see but you're also not fighting with weapons that you see either because god has given you spiritual weapons to fight dark cosmic forces guys i look ahead at heaven and i look ahead at you know the end of my life and and our generation passing and i think what are we going to be defined by are we going to be defined by our fear are we going to be defined church by our power our love and our self-control because right now we are defined by our fear and our anger and our hate and our lack of discipline and church i believe especially in fact i said yes to this event specifically because i believe gen z you're going to be the ones to change it i absolutely believe it it's happening i speak to college students all the time and and they come up to me and they have more zeal and more fire in their belly than i've seen in a decade of ministry to older people you guys here though you've got a new enemy it's it's religiosity it is it is this is what it looks like to be a christian let's go through the motions the problem is how convenient that the motions are moral and the motions are being a good girl when the war is happening in your brain and if you say it out loud that's a huge risk that's a huge risk because then they won't think i'm so christian guess what everybody in this room and everybody watching this is just as screwed up as you are if that's the one thing you hear me say obu you're all jacked up all of you and that's just from romans you all sinned and fell short of the glory of god and you're all at war with an enemy that hates you and trying to kill steal and destroy you but instead of accepting that naming it and fighting it we sit alone in our rooms and we think we're the only one the greatest revival that could happen on this campus is every person names their sin and their stronghold and the thing that is holding them back and not the cute one like people pleasing but the dark one like addiction to sex that would change this campus i don't doubt it and it's chapel and it's 10 45 and i don't know if this is time for a revival and confession but i don't think it would hurt it's 10 38. six minutes to confess and let's do it um we destroy arguments in every lofty opinion against the knowledge of god and we take every thought captive to obey christ we fight this we fight what's up here guys it's affecting everything about you proverbs says as a man thinketh so he is what do you think about and i'll tell you who you are that you might be able to hide all the things you think about but you don't hide the bondage that it has over you that verse said i'll give you divine weapons to destroy strongholds if you can't see the stronghold in yourself do you see it in your friends do you see a lack of joy do you see a lack of confidence do you see a sincere zeal for the lord because if it's all true what else exactly is there to live for like if we're here for like a breath and i know y'all feel like you're young and invincible but my sister or my daughter one of her best friends just left a m they were together and she drove off and 15 minutes later was hit by an 18-wheeler so i'm telling you even for you guys you don't know how long you have you don't know how long you have and if this book is true and heaven is coming and i think you think that it is if it's true then why are we just letting the devil beat us up why are we not on the offensive with the weapons that he gave us now what are those weapons you ready i'll say it real fast the word of god the people of god and the spirit of god and you need all three you need the spirit to equip you to empower you to convict you to encourage you that's what it says he will do to walk with you to show you where to go and what to say and what to do who to love and how to love and you need the word of god to make sure it's not what you ate that morning for breakfast because people say things that are the spirit of god all the time and it's like that's not in the word of god because the word of god shows us exactly what obedience looks like and we got to know it generation if there's one piece of advice i would give you it would be to know this book now the cool thing is you're in the place where you're learning the book so you got that obu where's he gonna trip you up the people of god that you would feel alone that you would think you were the only one i have three minutes four minutes i want you i know this is crazy i want you to yell something out i and i want you to do it all together because we don't have more than three minutes i want you to yell out the thing that you are afraid to say i want you to just yell it out and the bad part is if you leave it for one person to yell it out that is a sad state of affairs for that person but if you say it together if you all say here's my thing this is what i'm struggling with you're like man i wish i watched online today there's power in that you raised your hand you said you were you understood that you were centered you understood that you were at war you ready are y'all in with me because i'm not gonna let that one person some people are like yes i'm saying it okay you're not gonna be alone you ready we're gonna say it out loud what's the thing on your mark get set go okay i couldn't hear them all i'ma trust that somebody said something good because i know for a fact that there's a pretty word for every sin and there's one you don't want to say now i won't make you say it here but i will say if you want your life to count for absolutely anything on earth you will say it somewhere james says you confess your sin you bring it to the light when i brought my doubt and fear and i'm not saying doubt is a sin i think it's something that is in a little bit of a different category but i believe absolutely i was in sin sitting in the dark with the devil and not telling anybody about it for 18 months but for some of you it is bondage beyond anything i can imagine is suicidal thoughts for some of you it is addiction to sex for some of you it is addiction to fear over over what you've been thinking about for so long and and i would just make this plea to every single one of you obu my prayer is i'll go home and i'll see my kids and i'll have a great meal and i'll move on but my prayer is that y'all won't my prayer is that on this campus for the next 24 hours you're meeting with one two three other people and you're saying out loud the thing you have not been brave enough to say in this christian beautiful school and in my mind it's every single person probably needs to say something and if the person you know in your room that has never shared a struggle in their life you fight for them you sit them down and you fight for them we're gonna fight for each other because there's a dark cosmic force coming for us god i pray for this campus i pray for these students i pray for every single one here got all 2000 plus of them god i pray that your spirit would fall on them right now that they would feel conviction in their bones that they would not move until god there is there is a word spoken that needs to be said and god you are the great convicter all i did today was expose the war they already knew about and read words they've already heard but your spirit can fall and pierce and set a blaze a heart would we be courageous would we not miss the work that you have to do because we're in strongholds and bondage that we can literally stand up and walk out of thank you thank you god that you fought for us in the biggest possible way in the most visible way you sent jesus to die on a cross to bleed in front of us so we would know you loved us and you want to fight for our freedom god will we not just enjoy it in heaven would we enjoy it right now in jesus name amen

Channel: Oklahoma Baptist University

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Id: zU7aRC95X9U

Length: 29min 44sec (1784 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 10 2021