Jamie Winship | Discover Your True Identity + Walk in Rest

patterns you've learned about yourself from a world that could care less about you. Broken, wounded world telling you who you are and you going, "I agree." Death. Death to all of us.

The way out is to believe about yourself what God says about you. That. And so when I was thinking about when Derek asked me to, um, speak on this Sunday, and he said, "We're going to do a series on walk," I thought, "Wow, that's an amazing word, walk." I love that word. And to just look through scripture with where that word "walk" is. And I, I, I didn't know what to do. I was just thinking about it and praying about it. And then, um, I was thinking about Galatians 5:1 where it talks about "walk in the spirit."

But then what really struck me, I guess, was because we, we traveled around a lot and we talked to all kinds of different people. Some of them are here this morning, public school officials and police and marketplace people and professional athletes and all that stuff. And, and I would say that one thing I've observed about a lot of the people that we talk to is that they're, they deal with a lot of unrest. They deal with a lot of unrest. And you know, when we look at our country and the world today, this was a lot of unrest. So I was thinking about that word "rest" and actually in scripture it talks about walking in rest, walking in rest. That's an interesting idea. Can you walk in rest? Can you, can you journey through life in rest? Or is it always this conflict and fear and nothing's ever good enough and all? Is it ever just walk in rest? And so then I thought, "That's, that's, that's some interesting thing to talk about."

And so, um, started praying about that and then again to what I put together that I thought would be something appropriate to talk about. And then listening to the Ascend people who are going to leave here. They came here, they went through the process, which that process in Ascend is a lot of like unlearning things that you've learned that are wrong. And that's hard. That is hard to get rid of stuff that we've held to so hard. And then to realize, "Maybe that's not exactly right. Maybe we need to let that go."

There's times when you're praying for things in your life and you, you know, you, it might be hard and you might be saying to God, "Breakthrough, we need breakthrough." People say that, "I need breakthrough." Um, but when you, like, read scripture, there's no, it's not breakthrough that's happening. It's people letting go of things. God's not like, "Breakthrough, what? Let go of what you're holding on to that is stopping you from moving." That's different. Breakthrough is like some supernatural whatever. That's not common in scripture. Much more common is just, "Let go." Just let go of your fear. Let go of your wrong view of yourself, your wrong view of God. Let go of it and walk.

And so you get a passage like Galatians 5 that says, "If you walk in the spirit, you won't do these things over here." We're always trying to not. Charlie said this up here. We're always trying to not do this stuff. "Don't do this stuff." But when we turn this way, we don't do anything. So the scripture, Paul's like, "No, if you're doing this, you don't have time for this. This is because you don't have anything to do or you've lost your way." So I was thinking a lot about that.

And so when the, when the scriptures talk about "walk in rest," there's, there's like a particular passage and book that really talks about that. And the word "rest" there that's, that we're going to look at right here is not the word "rest" like Sabbath, like shalom. Not, not that kind of rest. It's different than that. This word "rest" is only used in two places in the New Testament. Once in Acts, and all the other times are in the book of Hebrews. And the "rest" idea here is not like Sabbath, but it's more like actually lying down. It's like you're in a position of just like you're just relaxed. Kind of like Jesus in the boat during the hurricane, you know, where the disciples are freaking out because they're going to die and nobody cares. And Jesus is sleeping. That rest right there. It's not Jesus isn't taking a Sabbath there. He's actually in a condition of rest in the middle of the turmoil, counter to how the disciples are running around, you know, "God doesn't care, God doesn't love us, he's asleep," that kind of thing. So, this is a different word "rest." It's almost, it means to be in repose, to be like flat out, just you're chill no matter what's going around you.

Um, then I, I, I found this. I was, someone actually sent this to me from Mere Christianity. Uh, this the chapter it's called "God Wants You to Be a Saint." God wants you to be a saint. C.S. Lewis writes this, the first paragraph of in his book Mere Christianity. "Of course, we never wanted and never asked to be made into the sort of creatures He, God, is going to make us into." Isn't that interesting? "We never wanted and never asked to be made into the sort of creatures He is going to make us into. But the question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what He intended us to be when He made us." Like, that's interesting. What it's not what I intended to be. What did He intend me to be when He made me? That's what you want to know. He is the inventor and we are only the machine. He is the painter and we are only the picture. How should we know what He means us to be like? We may be content to remain what we call ordinary people. "I'm just an ordinary person. I'm just me." We may be content to be just that. But He is determined to carry out quite a different plan.

This is the God. This is the God of the scriptures. He's not content to let you just be average or below average. He's not content with that. He's committed. He's determined to carry out quite a different plan. He's coming to us saying, "I'm pretty determined to make you into who you really are. You're not determined, but I'm determined to shrink back from that plan." His plan is not humility. It's laziness and cowardice. Wow. To submit to it. His plan is not conceit or megalomania. It's obedience. Wow. So to say, "Lord, you know, yeah, you may want me to be that and all that, but you don't know me and you don't understand," and all that is is cowardice. Actually, it's fear.

And then for God to say, "Let's go. Let's go do this together." Together. And you're like, "Let's go." That's not megalomania. That's not pride. That is obedience because He's the one calling you to be it. That's the difference of someone that just says, "I'm going to make myself into whatever."

So, so what go, what is God determined to help you become? Even though we're not in, we're not going to do it, we don't believe it, or we think. Again, Charlie said it, these Ascend people are saying it, "We came here believing something about ourselves." What we discovered is that what we believed about ourselves, based on all the evidence we have, that it wasn't true. And it's the greatest discovery of their life. Now they can ascend. When you know that, when you understand that, it puts you at a place of rest here and allows you to walk forward in your life at, at rest. At rest because your spirit, the real you, the deep you, the true you, is finally at peace in the journey to become who you truly are. That, that's what this is all about. That the Bible is an invitation to humanity to understand God and walk with God in the truth of who God is and the truth of who you are and the truth of who your neighbor is. So I thought, "Wow, that's what walking at rest is then." The rest is here and then it comes here. It's, you don't find it there and get it here. It's here and then you walk into it. Starts here and then you, everywhere you walk is into rest because you already have it.

So when I think about the Bible, the scriptures, and I think about, I was thinking Genesis, the book of Genesis, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, all of those, the Torah is all scripture that's being spoken to people while they're walking. It's a, the Torah is a book that there is the narrative that Moses is telling them while they're walking through from bondage into who they're supposed to be. That's what, that's what it's about. And so Genesis is Moses answering the question to the Israelites. The question, their question is, "We don't even know who we are." Like, all we know about ourselves is based on the history that we know about ourselves. And in that history that we know about ourselves, what we know about ourselves is that one, we make bricks. That's what we do. We're brick makers. Um, and the more bricks we make, the better our life goes. And if we don't make a lot of bricks, our life gets worse. And if we make no bricks, they kill us. We know that about ourselves. We don't love brick making. But what's the option? It's not, "We're going to live our best life ever." We make bricks and we make bricks in an empire. And the empire is the one that determines whether our bricks are worth it or not. We don't even decide that. So the Israelites are slaves in a system where your only identity is what you can produce that's of value for the empire that you serve in, which is our whole world right now. That's what it is. And so what we want to do or want to be is more controlled by, "Yeah, but does the empire allow you to do that?" And so we say no to anything different than this thing.

So Moses comes along. And Moses, who grew up in the empire, he has a very different perspective of God than the average Hebrew slave because of how he grew up. Because his parents weren't cowards. His parents said, "We don't care what the empire says. We're not killing our kid." And the midwives, whose small business didn't succumb to the pressure of the empire of Egypt, said, "We don't care what they do to our small business. We believe that if we follow God, our business will grow." And it did. And their specialty was delivering Hebrew male children, which were outlawed by the government. That was their specialty in the market. And because of it, they prospered. That takes a lot of courage to do that. Otherwise, you just submit to the whole thing. You hate it, but you just do it.

So Moses has grown up going, "Wow, there's a way out of this whole thing." Like, the enemy doesn't determine your future. God determines your future. And God has determined that you be a saint. Whether you want to or not, He wants you to be that. And He will pursue you in it. So you know the story of Moses. So Moses grows up in the empire. If you read his history, the history of Moses outside of the biblical text, he's a super interesting guy. Incredibly talented military strategist, uh, leader, political leader, brilliant, just brilliant. And you know, he then he's got all that going for him. And then one day he comes out and he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. He feels his identity jump, like he's a deliverer of the oppressed is his his real identity. And it jumps. It pops in. I'm like, "I can't stand to see them beat my people or any people, actually." And instead of holding back on that and letting God develop it, because realistically, I just wrote about this as if you want to see the research on this. He, Moses was probably going to become the next Pharaoh because of who pulled him out of the Nile. Um, so if he had not lost his temper right then, if he would have just stayed with God and how God was opening, you know, unveiling the plan to him, he would have probably had the capacity to stand up one day and go, "All Hebrew slaves are free," just by a word out of his mouth because of the position he was in. He didn't wait for that. He's like, "No, I'm going to beat this thing right now because I'm mad and this is an injustice," and he kills the guy and, bam, he's out. Out of the game. The enemy is like, "Got you. Ha, you fell for that, didn't you? You got worked up. You got mad and you're out now." And so he's out in the desert.

And when he gets go out into the wilderness and now he's afraid. He's never been afraid before. Now he's afraid. He's operating in fear. And so he goes from being this high-level position to a, uh, shepherd in a region that the Bible says is the backside of the backside of nowhere where they don't even play "Smoky Mountain Rain" in this place. There's nobody there. It's from here to here. Does he love it? He probably hates it. But he doesn't know the way out. And then one day he encounters the burning bush, which in scripture, anytime, anytime a human being from Genesis all the way through, anytime in the Old Testament, they encounter God in a way that they can see God, a burning bush, a pillar of cloud, someone walking with them in the garden, any of it, it's always Christ. It's the incarnate one of the Trinity. It's, it's not God the Father because no one can see God and live. So, they're looking and you can tell because they fall down in worship. That's what they, that's how they, it's not an angel. They don't worship angels, but they will worship the Christ, the incarnate God.

So, Jesus has been showing up on the scene the whole time. Jesus wasn't God's idea of, "Well, man, Eve sinned. Wow, she blew it. Wow, that was my whole plan. All right, now we got to have Jesus show up as plan B and fix this mistake that Eve made." Ne, none of that's true. That is not what happened. The scripture says that Christ died for the world before the foundations of the earth. I mean, it was already done even when Eve was deceived. Already done, but they didn't know it because they hadn't seen it acted out in their time frame. As if God is limited to your time frame. He's not. He's not. And because we keep putting Him in our time frame, He keeps letting us down. He's never been in your time frame. That's the thing that gives us rest. He's not a victim of our time. So, He's, His plan has been in play the whole time. And when Eve makes the mistake that she makes, and when her and Adam start to believe the lie that they're somehow not worth God and that they're unworthy and they're not good enough and all that stuff, and they move away from God because that's what you do because God's now mad at them. He didn't say He was mad, but we know He's mad. Why? Because we're not worth it anymore. And so we got to cover ourselves and we're ashamed of what He did when He made us and all. They go to live this way. God comes to them. He doesn't go, "Well, there's a big chasm now. You guys have created a chasm. It's going to be great for the track industry later because every track's going to be about the chasm." But there is no chasm. How do we know? He just walked right up to him. He didn't fall in the chasm, jump over the chasm. He walked right to him and said, "What are you guys doing? Why are you guys hiding? Why are you ashamed of yourselves?" Like, "Why are you saying things that I never said? I never said this about you. Who are you listening to now?"

Right? Moses is telling this story to these people because that's what they also believe. And he's telling them the story while they're walking through from bondage into freedom. The hard thing for them is the freedom scares them to death. They're afraid of it. "Where are we going? We're going out there. What's out there?" "Oh, you'll be amazed." That's not an answer. That's not an answer. "I need to know how much money is out there. I mean, who's going to pay the bills? I mean, what, you know, I need to know everything that's going to happen out there or I'm not stepping out there." And the Lord's like, "Who do you think you are? Are you the god now? Are you the god?" That's called idolatry when you're the god. You're the one that knows everything. Yeah, I know what's going to happen. No, no, you actually, you don't have any idea what's going to happen. But like C.S. Lewis is saying, cowardice, fear will cause you to back up. And they're looking back at Egypt going, "Man, slavery, we hated it, but it's better than not knowing what's going to happen." That's, that's how they think.

So Moses has had this interaction with Christ. He comes back. He's walked him out. He's walking him out. He's walking him through the wilderness. And always in scripture, when you go from bondage and you're heading towards total redemption, you go through the wilderness. Always. Everyone. Jesus does it all because you have to leave, like Ascend is saying, you have to leave all the lies that you learned here, that it takes time to be purged of all the false views you have of God, yourself, and others before you can inherit what God has for you ahead. You can't take all that lie-based thinking into what God has for you. You won't go.

So here's the one. If you remember one thing from this morning, remember this. Numbers 13:33. Like Numbers 13:33. Numbers 13:33 is where the whole thing went down the drain for Israel in that one passage. One passage. All they watched all this happen. I'm going to show you in just a second. They watched all this happen and then Numbers 13:33 and it all ended. So, if you're going to get, if you're going to read a verse, read that one because that verse will tell you what never to do with God. And it's not about sin. Has nothing to do with sin, the way we think of sin.

So, they're walking through, they're seeing all this stuff going on. And when I think about walking in rest, I'm reading these stories, Genesis, Exodus. In, in Genesis, Genesis story, especially in Numbers, it looks like when you're reading the story, well, it says that they're walking along, they kind of screw up. What does God do? He kills them. That's what it says. Like, He just kills them. And then you're like, "I'm reading that story. I'm like, do I want to walk with that God?" He killed like thousands of them because they believed the wrong way on this and they made this idol and they went this way and He's just slaughtering them. Like, then you're so, you're reading the Old Testament, you're going, "Why would I go take a risk with that God? Like, what if I mess up? What is He gonna do?" So you're reading those stories and that's like a ch, that's a real challenge, I think. How, how trusting can you be of a God that might just turn around and regret He ever made you and kill you? That's the one I grew up with. I remember the Sunday school teacher with the flannel graph. Oh yeah, you guys know flannel. You don't know "Smoky Mountain Rain," but you know flannel graph. So there's, yeah, the flannel graph, you know, and then the Sunday school teacher like showing the people sin and she throws the little group of people off the flannel graph and you're like, in fourth grade, and you're like, "What did you learn in church today?" God will throw you off the flannel graph if you screw up. Like, you're over there. And this goes into your head like, "Is God mad at me? Is He?" Because if He is, how much can I trust the, how much can I trust and love a God that I'm afraid is going to kill me or ruin me or destroy me?

Fortunately, we have the whole Bible. And this, it doesn't stop in those passages. And so what you want to do is when you're thinking about all that, this is why you want to know all the scriptures and not just certain parts. You want to know the whole thing because if you read the whole thing, it's like, "Oh my goodness, that, okay, now I see. Oh, that makes sense." But if you just read sections to try and prove a point that you're trying to make, you're going to come up with the wrong thing. Because what happens is people just pull out of scripture and they invent a God that they want. So, "Let me find verses that make God do what I would do if I was God, which is kill you." So, I need those verses, right? Because I need the, I need the God to do what I want the God to do. And to do that, I got to find whatever works for me. But I don't want to read the whole thing because the whole thing may not be what you think. And it's not.

So the way we look at scripture is the best way we can do it is when we're reading the scriptures, we have to read the scriptures the way Jesus reads the Old Testament, the way the Apostle Paul talks about the Old Testament, and how the writer of Hebrews talks about the Old Testament. The Bible, the scriptures are teaching you how to read the scriptures. That's the beauty of it. All right. So, let me just give you an example of that and then, uh, we'll read this passage. So, this is Hebrews chapter 1. I don't have a slide of it. Sorry. Um, this is what it says. Just listen what it says. Hebrews chapter 1. "Long ago, back in the Old Testament days, long ago, at many times, and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets Moses and these ones. But but in these last days, the, these are the writers after the death and resurrection of Christ. But in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world." How did God create the world? Through Christ. Christ is the heir of all things and the creator of all things. "He is the radiance, Jesus. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of God's nature. And He, Christ, upholds the universe by the word of His power. After making purifications for sin, the cross, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name He has inherited is more excellent than theirs." The angels, the name above all names, that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess of every created thing that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God. That's who's speaking to us today. And so when we read anything in the scriptures, it has to go through the person of Christ. So Paul and the writer of Hebrews are going to talk about the Old Testament in by looking at the Old Testament through the death and resurrection of Jesus, who is in all and above all. And it, it alters the way you read the Old Testament.

Here, here's an example. Okay. Can you put that slide up there? Okay. So, yeah. Okay. Um, so what you're, what we're going to do here quick so we can get to rest, um, is I want, Paul is talking to the Corinthians. Okay? The Greek. He's talking to a Greek audience. And the Corinthians are super smart intellectuals and they're ve, they were very much into the gifts and tongues and demonic worship and, um, idol worship and temple prostitution. That was their whole culture. The, the gospel has come into them. They're being transformed by it. They're a tough group. They're hard to talk to. Paul has a really hard time with them. Um, but so he's talking to them and he's talking to them in relation to what they're going through. So when a person is in bondage and they meet Jesus and they're transformed, it's not like magic and you're over here. It's like you got to go through all the wilderness of unlearning all the nonsense that you learned as a lost person, which is, "God doesn't throw people off a flannel graph." One of the big things I had to unlearn. And so, so you go into the wilderness sort of, and that sacred belief of yours is not, is incorrect. That thing you hold on to, let it go. And that's the wilderness. So that you can walk into what God has for you. And during this process, you're learning to walk at rest, not in fear, in rest. In order that in rest, you can walk to the place of rest.

So he's talking to the Corinthians and he's telling them the, the Old Testament story, right? Because he's telling, talking about when they, the people did wrong and how they died. But look how he tells it. Look how this translation here. If you want to know what translation I'm using here, you can ask me afterwards. This is a pretty dense translation. It's very carefully translated down into the Greek. It'll look nothing like what you probably are reading. So look up here. So it says, "Now remember how the people of Israel were all delivered from slavery. The cloud of God's presence, protection, and provision included everyone equally." So he's talking about the pillar, you know, that you, that they know from the Torah story or the Greeks have learned from the Torah. And he's talking about it and he's saying that that the cloud of God's presence. Okay? So if it's a cloud and it's God's actual presence in a place that they can see, that means it's Christ. So the cloud that's going before and behind the pillar of fire leading Israel is Christ. Now, do the people of the Old Testament know that? They don't, but we do. And Paul does. So, and it's the provision included everyone equally. "They were all miraculously led through the Red Sea and on dry land and witnessed how their oppressors were completely defeated." Okay, notice here he's not saying God killed the Egyptians. He's not saying that. Why? Because of Christ, because of what Jesus represents and says about God. That's why. Two, "The cloud and sea was a type of baptism and they underwent to identify with the leadership of Moses." So Paul is saying when they went down into the Red Sea and came out, that was baptism. That is why we do baptism. That is the beginning of baptism which will lead to the death and resurrection, like this. And then, "Do this in remembrance of me," and how I've been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me and the life I live in the flesh is no, no, is no longer I, but Christ in me. Like it's this death and resurrection. The Red Sea story is, is the beginning picture of that resurre, of that baptism. So Paul is putting the meaning in the story that we didn't know before. He's saying, "Don't stay in that way you think about that story because you guys know Christ. You have to read it. It's all different now. It's all much more meaningful than just what you were taught literally before you understood Christ." "All of them daily partook of the same miraculous food." That's mana. He's calling it miraculous food. "They drank the same supernatural water from the rock." The word when he says "the rock" here, he's talking about a person. "They drank the same supernatural water from the rock that accompanied them in all of their travels." The story that they, that Moses touched a rock and they drank water is, is this much of what was happening there. Paul's saying, "You know what was really happening there? You know who that rock? It was a person. It was Christ." And that rock followed him and gave them water the whole way. Like, "We didn't know that by reading that story." That's right. Because you didn't know the whole thing. I'm telling you the whole thing. Christ was with them all the way through the desert, the wilderness, leading them out of bondage, into baptism, into the promised land. Who was? Jesus was. Christ was. The Messiah was already with them. They just didn't know it yet. The rock was the Messiah. Five. "The vast majority of them completely disappointed or displeased God and died in the desert." They died in the desert. He doesn't say God is slaughtering human beings in the desert because they're bad. He doesn't have that tone. "The vast majority of them displeased and disappointed God in the desert." The question is, how, what did they do that caused God to lack joy with them? God's not mad at them. He's not killing them. He's disappointed. It's like, "What? Numbers 13:33." That's what they did. Six, "We are clearly reminded not to follow their example of what?" What did they do wrong? "Instead of feasting on God's merciful provision, they had a craving appetite for evil." What, what was evil that they did? Numbers 13:33 is what they did. That was evil. "Their idolatry snared them further." Listen. Listen. Here it is. Here, He's going to zero in on it. "They were infatuated with a distorted, distorted pattern of who?" Themselves. This is the evil. They have a distorted view of themselves. That's what's wrong. It's not what they did over here. It's the reason they did what over here is because they lost track of who they really are. And God wants you to be a saint with Him, but we're afraid of it because we can't control and it, it may not go the way we want. And so they get a wrong view of themselves. They became completely disoriented. It's like they don't even know what they're doing now and indulge in sexual sins." Remember, he's talking to the Corinthian believers who are still mixing temple prostitution with their view, their new understanding of God. So, he's warning them that they're indulging in this, this, it's because they don't understand themselves. They're indulging sexual sin, which killed thousands of them, not God. Last year, 4.2.5 million people in this world died of sexually transmitted disease. Did God kill them? Your wrong view of yourself, your wrong view of God causes you to move into things and do things that destroy yourself. God is not doing it. We are doing it. That's what Paul is trying to say here. "Remember also how Israel spoke against God and Moses and were snared by their own unbelief, suspiciously scrutinizing the Messiah, who is the promise of God." They're like, "We don't think this stuff really works." That's what they were saying. Like, "Who's Moses? Like, we follow Moses for a little while, but this guy's a nutcase. He's gone half the time up a mountain. We need a god that we can control and know exactly what to do. And then we can tell other people what to do. And if we can't have that, we'll make our own." And then they make their own. And their own god can't do anything for them. And so they just fall deeper and deeper into conflict and fear and no rest. No, everything is a conflict now. Everything is a fight.

I, I was listening to this podcast by this guy. He, he's a Jewish atheist. Um, and he was talking about the founding of the United States of America. He's an American guy, super smart, really fantastic believer. And he said, "As an atheist Jewish person who's very left-wing, all of that stuff, he said, 'The founding of the United States of America has to be based in the Christian scriptures to survive.'" That's what he said. "Whether you, he said, whether I agree with evangelicals on politics doesn't matter. The fact of the Christian scriptures are the only foundation for any liberal democracy ever in the world." Which is shocking for him to say. And then he said, "There are three principles from the Christian scriptures, not the Christian religion, the Christian scriptures, that are essential for a healthy country. Number one, do not fear." He said, "Any country built on fear will fall apart." What runs our country? What runs any country? Fear. He said, "When, when the Christians started becoming afraid of each other and the world, the country starts to divide." Do not fear. Principle number two from the Christian scriptures. Live the life that Jesus lived. Not the Christian religion, lived Jesus. He has to be the model of life. And three, forgiveness. He said, "Look at our, look at our country. Look at our world. Everyone's afraid all the time. Everyone's self-protecting, self-promoting. Everyone's threatening everyone." Jesus as a model is, "Forget it. We don't even try." And three, forgiveness. Laughable. Who forgives? Who forgives? It's just, man, "When I get into power, you're going to pay." And he said, "That's why the US is crumbling is because of that." This is exactly what Israel is doing. "Remember how Israel spoke against God and were snared by their own unbelief, suspiciously scrutinizing the Messiah, who is the promise of God." Grumbling is a killer. In one translation, it says they were destroyed by the destroyer, not by God. The destroyer destroyed them. In the scripture, it says Jesus came to destroy the destroyer. Jesus doesn't come to kill people. He comes to destroy the destroyer. The destroyer is destroying us. What is it? Complaining, fear, wrong view of ourselves, wrong view of God. That's what's destroy. This is what Paul's trying to say. Verse 11. "Now, these prophetic pictures were written to alert us to the fact that they pointed to what we are now witnessing in the gospel." We, we are confronted with the completeness of everything that was promised. Paul's saying, "We have everything that you've ever wanted that's been promised to us. We have it. It's right in front of us." Just like Israel standing right there looking into the land and God's going, "There it is. There it is." And what do they say? Numbers 13:33. "We can't. We can't do it." Why? They, this is what they say. "We are grasshoppers in our own eyes." That's what they say. And we cannot go in and we will die in the desert before we try and do that. Who kills them? They kill themselves. God's like, "You're kidding. After everything you've seen," Paul's saying, "Don't use them as an example. Don't, don't get rescued in Christ." And then he starts to move you into this future and you stop and go, "I can't do it. Why? I'm not smart enough. I'm not, I can't, I don't have enough money. I'm not, I can't do it. I've got to do this instead." Yeah. Do you love this? No. Well, I, we can't, we can't do it. Who's stopping you? Not God. We're stopping ourselves. 12. "If you reckon that you have it all together, make sure that you are standing strong in your true identity. In your true identity when temptation strikes." How foolish it would be for us to fall in the same unbelief. Who killed them? The same unbelief that killed Israel. Not God. Not God. He came to rescue us. The thief comes to kill, steal, and destroy. I came that you might have life. Don't fall into the same unbelief that killed Israel. 13. "Your situation is not unique. Every human life faces contradictions." Here is the good news. "God believes in your freedom." God believes in your freedom. He has made it possible for you to triumph in every situation that you will ever encounter. It's there. It's there. Yeah.

My dearly loved friends, here is this. There's His begging. Paul is begging the Corinthians, "Escape into His image and likeness in you." Is when temptation comes, this is the verse. When temptation comes, God provides a way of escape. The escape is into the image and likeness of God in you. That's the way out. To believe what God believes about you. That's the way out of every temptation that you'll ever face. Escape into the image and likeness in you where the distorted image of yourself loses its attraction. We're addicted to this wrong view of ourselves. We've used it for so long. "I can't. God's not going to help me." We've used it for so long. We're addicted to these lies. They're like recordings that we're just saying. And, and, and Paul's saying, "When you are tempted to believe this nonsense, escape into His image and likeness that is in you already." 15. "I appeal to your common sense. Do not underestimate what I am saying to you." Don't, don't underestimate this. Don't think you're going to make it through because the temptation not to like do some bad thing. The temptation is to believe about yourself things that are not true. Because as soon as you stop believing what God says about you, you will begin to dislike yourself and the unrest will grow inside of you because your spirit is saying, "This, what we're saying about ourselves is not true." Stop saying that we can't do this stuff. Stop saying it's somebody else's fault or it's China's problem. Stop saying that the land is yours. Walk into it.

In Hebrews 4, I don't even have time to read it. Hebrews 4 just goes, it's the Hebrews writer, the writer of Hebrews saying the exact same story. He's going through the exact same issues in Israel. And he keeps saying, "It's because you lost your identity." Numbers 13:33. God is standing in front of you this morning. I don't care who you are. He is standing in front of you this. And it doesn't matter what situation you're in. Doesn't matter. That's the point of this. The way out is to believe about yourself what God says about you. That. And stop conforming to the coping mechanism patterns you've learned about yourself from a world that could care less about you. Broken, wounded world telling you who you are and you going, "I agree." Death to all of us. And, and God is saying, "I'm inviting you into the land in rest to come and rest." And the writer of Hebrews finishes. He finishes with this. He goes through the whole same thing. He calls it a dwarf. "You have a dwarfed image of yourself." That's what the writer of Hebrews. Stop believing the dwarfed image of yourself. The minimized little image of yourself that you have that the world's giving you. Stop it. Because when, when Israel looks into the land, all they see is all the things they can't do. And they're giants to them. And they say it, "We are only grasshoppers compared to the challenges ahead of us. We can't do it. We just have to take what we can get right here, right now, and that's all we'll ever be." Do you love it? No, we hate it. But it's all we have. Not true. Let go of that. Let go.

And the writer of Hebrews says, "Listen, listen. We have a High Priest in Jesus who's been tempted in every way just like we are, but He did it without separating from God. And His invitation is, 'Come boldly to the throne of grace in time of need.'" Why? So you can learn what God really thinks about you. And it takes faith to believe what He says about you. And in that place, in that throne of grace, is rest. Is rest through any circumstance. Through, we're all going to, it's all going to be messy and nasty. And so what? Stop blaming all that and walk in the truth of who you are and walk with Jesus who's in front of you and behind you. He's the water you drink. He's the protection that you have. He's always with you. He's always been there with you. Follow Him. Yeah.

Let's just pray for a second. Lord, this is hard to believe. This is hard to believe. We look at the circumstances around us and it's like it's just too much. It just can't be done. We'll never be at rest. And we're trying to force things to go this way or that way and we just can't get it to go, or we're afraid. We're afraid to be free. We're just afraid to be free because we feel like we got to control everything and know everything and have everything and we just can't go with You. So like Hebrews says, like we can come boldly to You, Lord, and we can say to You, "This is what I think about myself. This is what I believe about myself." And just tell them the truth. "I don't think I'm smart. I don't think I'm worth it. I don't think I'm worthy. I, I, I just don't think any of this can happen. I don't believe You." That's confession. And then, and then let Him have it. And then ask Him to tell you what He thinks about you. Stop worrying about anybody else. Don't worry about anybody else. Lord, what do You say about me? How do You see me? And let Him speak that identity. So you get rid of the distorted view of yourself that just condemns and criticizes that produces so much unrest in us. What do You say about me? What do You see in me? And then, then when He tells you that, when He shows you that, then walk forward with Him at rest. Stop trying to control stuff. Stop being afraid of stuff. Stop trying to tell God who you are. Ask Him who you are and move with what He says. Otherwise, it's cowardice. It's just trying to hold everything together yourself because you're afraid to let it go. Let it go. Lord, guide us. We pray. Come. You're the one who comes into our bondage and You break open the gates and You walk us out into freedom. You're the one. And You say, "Follow Me, and I will make you to become who I've always wanted you to be." And we can walk together at rest, the rest that only comes in relationship with You. We thank You for it in Jesus name. Amen.