Beliefs

Well, good morning. Hey, uh, welcome. My name is Jeffrey. I'm one of the pastors on the team, and I'm excited and honored to get to jump into our spiritual growth campaign again. Uh, we are in week seven of "Made for More," uh, which is fun. It's been a really fun series talking about freedom. If you're a guest, I just want you to know you can scan the QR code on the chair that's in front of you, and it'll take you to our website, and you can go listen to all the past messages if you want to. We're going through a book, uh, right now, and so you can, you can see that book. It's all on there. So we'd love for you to continue to partner with us. We got a few more weeks left, and it's been a powerful series.

Um, for, for the 483 people who talked about me not wearing glasses today, I just want to say thank you. I recognize that I'm not wearing them. Um, they are, uh, and here's a treat for you. I'm going to just give you a behind-the-scenes of the life of Jeffrey Turner. This week, I, this is the first time I've ever preached and not worn my glasses, which is weird. And it made me do something, and this is an image that you get to keep with you forever and ever, okay? I had to pluck my eyebrows this week to wear my contacts. Okay? This eyebrow loves this eyebrow too much, and they were trying to meet in the middle, and I had to pluck my eyebrows just to preach a sermon. It's insane.

But I am wearing my contacts because without them, I am just so blind. I, my vision, I just went to the optometrist a few weeks ago. I go to the Walmart optometrist. Anyone else a Walmart optometrist person? He's awesome. Northside Walmart, can't recommend him enough. Um, we, my vision is 20/400. So 20/400, if you're curious, is not great. And so without my glasses or my contacts, like, I need to view the world through a lens. If I don't, I can see nothing. I cannot drive a car. It is a crime if I drive a car without my contacts. Not a little, not like, haha, it's a crime. No, it's a crime. I can't see. Like, sometimes to amuse my children, Sarah will be driving, and we'll have, we'll like, be at a where there's a billboard, and I'll take off my glasses, and I cannot read billboards. And that's how blind I am. I'm at the point of my life in my vision that when I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, which happens far more frequently than it used to, I, I have to wear my glasses in my own house to make sure that I get from my bed to the bathroom, which is like 15 feet. But that's how blind I am.

I view the whole world, everything in my life, is viewed through these lenses that I wear. You want to know something? So is yours. And you might be one of those people like my wife, who goes, "I have 20/20 vision. I'm basically perfect. I've never sinned." Like, that's what you 20/20 people are like. It's just, it's exhausting. Even you people view the world through a lens. You don't know it because it's not something you put on. Like, I consciously am putting on my contacts or my glasses. You might not know that you're viewing the world through the lens, but we are all viewing the world through lenses that shape how we make decisions, that how we see the world. Every single one of us. We just don't call them glasses or contacts. They're our beliefs. Our beliefs shape how we view and see the world. And our beliefs are learned. See, we, uh, for me, I was born with bad eyes, so we can blame genetics. But we learn our beliefs, and we learn them in a bunch of different ways. And when we do that, it shapes how we see the world. It's like this. So you might have a belief that you learned that is like a lens that you wear from a life experience. So you're an elementary school kid, and something happens on the playground, and you might think, "Well, that's something from elementary school." Like, that's a long time ago. It can still instill a belief that shapes how you view the world. Or maybe you made a decision in college, and it's this life experience that helps shape how you view and see the world. Maybe it's your family history. Maybe you look at your family and you have this specific belief about marriage or this specific belief about whatever, and it's determined by your family history. Your, your beliefs can be something that you were told by a position person in a position of authority. So maybe a coach screamed something at you while you were on the court, and it can be a belief that you then see the world through. Or maybe something that your dad said to you, and it instills this belief that helps shape how you see the world. Hurt, trauma. Those can be ways that we see the world. If, when you are growing up, you have a friend that passes away tragically, that hurt actually can instill a belief in you that then you view the world through that lens. The trauma you might experience in a car accident or in a fire at your house. Those can be beliefs which, which helps shape how we see the world. Might be stuff that you've said about yourself. Just a belief you've had when you look in the proverbial mirror. And we all have all these beliefs that are shaping how we view the world. There are all these lenses that affect the way we see things. And for many of us, this is the way we're living life right now. Chaotic. I'm not even sure how I put this last one on my head, but we're living life like this, viewing it through one lens after another after another. And maybe we don't even realize we're doing it.

This week, I was taken back to a moment whenever I was in sixth grade. I was going, it was the summer of my sixth grade year, and I, uh, I was diagnosed with, uh, which is middle school where in LEC where I was from. And I was diagnosed with a blood disorder called idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura. If you can spell that, you're a doctor, so you can write it down. And none of us can read it anyway, okay? It doesn't matter. It's called ITP. Basically, my body, for some reason, stopped producing platelets. So a normal person has between 150,000 and 450,000 platelets in their body, which helps the blood clot. I had 8,000. Not single platelets, 8,000 platelets, which meant that if I got hit hard enough in the head, blood would just pool, and I would die as a sixth grader. So, you know what I did? Nothing. All summer long, while my friends went to their first youth camp, which, I mean, I was so excited. When you're in elementary school and you get to go to youth camp, that is like the best thing in the world. Except I didn't get to go. While all my friends went, I didn't get to the first basketball camp that you got to go with the big kids, right? You were in elementary school, so you're doing like little dribblers, and they're, they're giving you like, uh, cupcakes at the end of this thing. When you got to go to the big kid one, and you're really excited about it. All my friends went, and I didn't get to go. All the pool parties and the sleepovers and all the fun things that you do all summer long, I didn't get to do. So, you know what happened? I put on a lens. I was going to be the kid that missed out. I just was. What it was. I was going to be the one that didn't get to experience all the same things as everybody else.

And then it got worse. I went back to school that fall, and it was so, in elementary school, you have to sit, you know, with your class and everything. It's prison rules for lunch. Don't speak, don't breathe, just sit right here. That's elementary school. Middle school lunch, you can sit wherever you want. It's the best. So the first lunch, I was walking to a group of my friends. They were the cool kids, the athletes. So all summer long, while they had been doing all the fun stuff and I'd been missing out, I ate and I ate and I ate and I ate. I threw back Doritos like they were going out of style, and I put on some weight. We'll say I was chunky. So I was walking to lunch that first day, and I heard one of my friends make a comment under their breath, and then another one, and then another one. And like, middle schoolers can be one to do. They started piling on, talking about my weight and how fat I'd gotten over the summer. And I put on a lens. I didn't even realize I was doing it. I didn't realize how much it hurt for those kids to talk about me, but all of a sudden, I started viewing the world as if I'm never going to fit in with that kind of crowd. I'm always going to be the unattractive one that has to go just do other things over here. And it was a lens with which I began to view the world, and it affected me for years. I walked through those feelings and those beliefs because they shape how I was viewing the world.

And we all put on lenses really fast. We don't even recognize we're doing it. But we have this experience, and then we start, what's called the belief cycle. It goes like this: you, you have an experience. Another one. For me, the very first time I ever communicated from stage, I was in high school, and my youth ministry, my youth pastor said, "Hey, will you do announcements?" I was like, "Yes, I'll do announcements." So I got up on stage, and for two minutes, all I talked about is how bright the lights were. For two solid minutes. I want you to think about the train wreck that that is in front of all of my peers. Man, these lights are bright. For two minutes, until my youth pastor came up and rescued me and walked me off the stage. Experience led to belief: "I can't do that. I can't stand up on front on stage and preach. I can't stand up on stage and talk at all." Which led to an expectation: "I will always fail when I stand on a stage in front of people." Which then led to behavior: "I will just choose to never do it again." So I got hired at Beltway as one of the youth pastors, and I did not speak from stage from a moment that happened whenever I was in high school because this experience led me to a belief, which shaped my expectations, which then led to behavior. And that is how we all go through this cycle. And it causes us to do things differently. I parent differently based on the lens I'm wearing, based on my beliefs. I'm a different, I'm a different spouse. I'm a different friend. I choose different hobbies. All of these are shaped by the lenses that we're wearing, by the beliefs that we have. Beliefs shape how we live. And the reality for so many of us is that we're walking through life exactly like I was, covered in all these different lenses, and it feels overwhelming, and it feels chaotic, and things don't feel secure. And the question for us is this: Do, do we want to stay in that place? Do we want to stay in the place that everything feels like chaos, where we're not totally sure why we're doing some of the things that we're doing? Have you ever asked yourself that? "Why did I do that? Why did I respond that way?" I can guarantee you, it is tied to a belief that you have that you're viewing the world through.

So we have this choice today. We can have chaos, or we can have peace and freedom that comes with godly beliefs, with not having all these different lenses, but one lens, the lens that He gives us. And we see that in a passage in the Book of Romans. So if you will, if you'll grab a Bible, we're going to be in Romans chapter 12. If you don't have a Bible and you're at one of our physical campuses, there's a Bible right around you, underneath your chair, the chair in front of you. If you're at our online campus, I love that you're there. Right there on the screen, there is a Bible icon. You can click it, it'll open right up to Romans 12. And Romans is a book that the Apostle Paul writes, and he writes it to the church in Rome. So he, he has never visited Rome at the time he writes this letter. He's never visited Rome, but he writes them this letter. And this letter is a foundational letter for them, for all of us, because what it is, is it, it's this breakdown of what it looks like to be a Jesus follower. It is this very simplistic understanding of what it looks like to be a Jesus follower. And he said, he writes this in Romans 12:1, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Paul says in Romans 12:1-2, that we have two options. We can be conformed to the world, or we can be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Those are the options. A different way to say it would be this: we can be conformed to the world, which is ungodly beliefs, which is an ungodly lens. Or we can be transformed and renewed in our mind, and we can have godly beliefs and a godly lens. Those are the options for us.

And when he writes that, that we don't be conformed to the world, he, he uses this word that we know, "conformed." It's a word that we understand. It, it means to just be similar in form and type. We, I've seen this over this last season. Last year, my daughter decided she was going to become a theater kid. If you have a theater kid, you know exactly what I mean when I say you have a theater kid. Because what happens is they get in theater, and all of a sudden they conform to what it means to be a theater kid. Which means that when Berkeley asks, "What are we having for dinner?" and I tell her pasta, she doesn't go, "Oh, good. I love pasta." She goes, "Oh, good! I love pasta!" Like, everything is big and pizzazz and flashy, and it's, it's all the time. Everything. There's nothing just normal in the Turner household. It's big, flashy, crazy. Theater kids just are that way. They live life on a stage, even when they're not on a stage. We see this with Aggies too. Yeah, we're going there. I'm going to view this through my LEC, Texas lens. A perfectly normal high school kid can graduate high school and move to wherever College Station, Texas is, and all of a sudden they conform to what it means to be an Aggie. We'll get there. They lose every color shirt that they've ever owned. This, that's not maroon. Maroon is an ugly color, anyway. One of my best friends, hey, I'm going to step on your toes more, just get ready. One of my best friends in the world went to A&M. He wears these maroon shoes that are hideous, but he's conforming to what it meant to be an Aggie. They get there, and they buy Wranglers, even though they've never lived on a ranch before, and they're like acting all cowboy. Is they whoop at inappropriate times. Heard it. Wedding, funeral, church. We're gonna whoop. And then they graduate college, and they put on the one ring to rule them all, and they can walk in anywhere at, like, they don't even show resumes. They just flash an Aggie Ring to another Aggie, and they could be completely incompetent, and they hire that person. Why? Because Aggies conform to being Aggies. It's just what they do. And Paul writes in here, "Don't be conformed to the world. Don't look like, like the world. Don't start to do some of the things that the world does." It's easy for us to look at theater kids and Aggies and go, "Oh, I can see how that's conforming to those subcultures." But it's a little bit harder for us when we look at our own life to go, "Well, how have I conformed to the world? How am I being similar in form and type to the world?" And whenever we've done that, whenever we're conforming to the world, it's because we're putting on ungodly beliefs. And whenever our beliefs begin to conform to the world, that leads us to behavior that conforms to the world.

So let's say that you have an ungodly belief about marriage, that you believe that because everyone in your life has been divorced, that you are going to get divorced at some point. You put on that belief, and you know what happens? The very first time that your marriage gets in a difficult spot, you don't have any fight in you. Why? Because it was going to end anyway, so why fight? And we have this belief that's affecting our behavior. If you grew up and you had a dad that, that maybe didn't know how to, to encourage you, or maybe he just did the opposite, and he spoke death over you, and, and you got to the point that he felt like he always said you didn't amount to much, and that you never would, and you put on the belief that maybe I'm just never going to amount to much. You know what happens? As you grow up, you believe that you're not going to amount to much, and then you start to do things like, "Why try that hard in school? Because I'm not going to amount to much anyway. Why date that girl? I'm not going to amount to much anyway. Why do this? I'm not going to amount to much anyway." Your ungodly belief might be something that you've said about you, and then you've said, "Wow, look how ugly I am." And then it affects you. It might be the rejection. You got rejected by somebody that you cared about, and that rejection makes you feel like, "I'm always going to get rejected." And we, our behavior begins to be affected by what we believe. Maybe you had that promotion test at work, and you failed it, so you believe, "I'm a failure. That's just who I am." So then, you know how we act at home like we're a failure? You know how we act at our job the next day like we're a failure? Because our beliefs are being affected by, I mean, our behavior is being affected by what we believe. And when we do that, that's okay. They were from Walmart. When we do that, when we do that, when we let our actions be affected by ungodly belief, they have consequences, such as: it sets us up for unhappy relationships. It causes distortion so that we make mountains out of molehills. We take everything personally. It causes us to be a prisoner of put-downs or sarcasms. We wrestle with anger. We hurt those we love. Our faith is eroded. Relationship with God is undermined. God's blessings are hindered. We feel trapped so we can't fulfill our own destiny. We're stuck in anxiety, and we get to the place that we distrust anyone and everything. That's just some of the consequences of ungodly belief.

And this week, I was going, as I was preparing to preach, I was going, "I see some of these in my life right now." And I recognize there are lenses that I've put on without even meaning to that are affecting me and my behavior, which is leading to those kind of consequences. But what I love, though, is that Paul, when he wrote Romans 12:1 and 2, he didn't end it with, "Don't be conformed any longer to the patterns of this world." He gave us another option. He says, "But be transformed by the renewal of your mind." If we don't want all the ungodly lenses, all the ungodly beliefs that we so often walk into, we have to realize that a transformed life happens with a renewed mind. And renewing our mind is about changing our beliefs. It is here with a renewed mind and a transformed life that we begin to find peace. It is here that we begin to put on God's lenses. It is there when we decide we're going to have a transformed life and a renewed mind that we begin to find the freedom that God offers us.

Here's what it can look like. I was first introduced to pornography at about five years old. I remember just this feeling coming over me whenever I saw those images. It didn't really manifest more until about high school. We went to church as a little kid, but we didn't, I didn't really have a relationship with the Lord at that point. I remember being in Sunday school about eight or nine years old, sitting there, and one of the teachers said, or was talking to, uh, to the group, and she said, "Oh, look at Leonard over here. He just got baptized and spoken tongues. He's now saved." And I, I took it upon myself like, "I need to be saved." At that point, I mean, I had to speak in tongues to be saved, which is, you know, totally bogus. At that time, I didn't know. So I would try to pursue the Lord, and that wouldn't happen, and it would start to create this like, um, shame cycle that started going through high school. And to cope with that, I found, found it women and partying. Get to college, and I'm no longer, uh, a big fish in a little pond. I'm a little fish in a big pond. So I'm just lost at that point. A couple years after college, I met, I met a girl, and we dated for two, three years, decided to get married. That's whenever I kind of got introduced to the Beltway crowd. We started going to church here. I always played guitar, and that was another thing that I really identified with was music and stuff like that. So I started playing up here at church, and I still was looking at pornography all the time. As the years started going on in a marriage, we started like, kind of falling farther and farther apart, and I just started turning more and more into my coping mechanism of pornography. When you're just left alone with your thoughts and your addictions, they just start to spiral out of control. And, and they started, and it did. And it led to an affair. I remember, there's one day, um, she had caught me in the act of looking at some stuff, and she had gone to her parents' house. I was kind of just sitting there alone, just thinking of what, what to do. And that's whenever I came across James 5:15, and it says, "To confess your sins to be healed." Right then and there, this Holy Spirit just hit me like a ton of bricks, and I had this burning in my chest that wouldn't go away. And just something in me knew that I was going to come clean. And so I did. I confessed everything. A couple days later, on June 18th, I gave my life to the Lord. I'd reached rock bottom. I was staying with, um, our life group leaders at the time. It didn't change any of my circumstances at that moment. In fact, um, shortly thereafter, wound up getting divorced. I remember going to, like, my first thing, it was called this Crucible Project thing. I remember that was about the first time that I heard the Lord speak to me. And in that, I heard Him say, "You're son, and you're worthy, and you're loved." I was heading to McKenna to buy a new guitar, and I was with one of my best friends, and the Lord just spoke to me right then, and He said, "You haven't forgiven yourself." And I remember just releasing that to the Lord, and this peace coming over me. At that time, when I got home, I knew that I needed to start pursuing Bri. So we started dating, and it wasn't, wasn't very long into it that I just knew that she was going to be my wife. June 18th was also the day that me and Bri got married, three years to the day. How have I? I felt free. I feel the most free when I'm completely surrendered. The pressure is off because the Lord did everything. I didn't do anything, but I just put my faith in Him, and He's done the rest. That's the good news is we don't have to earn our way into heaven. We sing the song all the time, it's like, "No longer I who live, but Christ in me." And that's truth. I mean, if you want freedom, die to yourself and let the Lord lead you. That's powerful.

And I love John's story. I love his testimony. Um, I love that even in the midst of, he, he had, he had things of faith and still had lenses on that he didn't need to have on by his addiction and sin in his life, and that caused his behavior to be one thing. And then he found freedom, and he found Jesus, found really and truly. And then got to see what life might look like with a godly lens and godly beliefs. So the question is, how do we get those? How do I get godly beliefs? We first go back to the words of Paul. He says, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." The first place, before we talk about anything else, the very first place that we get to an ability to have a godly belief is by becoming a living sacrifice. And that's a, that's a weird phrase. It's not one that we use here a lot. It's not one we talk about as, as just people that often. In the letter that he's writing to the church in Rome, they're going to understand sacrifice at a deeper level than probably we even do. They, they are polytheistic in their culture at that point, meaning they believed in different gods, lots of different gods. So they might have given a sacrifice on Monday to one God, and on Tuesday to a different God, and then on Wednesday to a different God. They were used to giving sacrifice, giving a living thing and exchanging it for something else. They were used to that. We're not as used to it. So when Paul says we have to become a, "Do not be conformed to patterns, be renewed with our mind," "I appeal to you," before all that, "I appeal to you by the mercy of God to be a living sacrifice." You know what that means? We got to die to who we are and be only new in Him. It's the testimony that we got to give in baptism. It's where we go under the water, and we're dying to ourselves, and then we're being raised new in Him. That is this expectation of a living sacrifice, that all of me goes away, and it's just Him.

And if you're not a Jesus follower here, and you came this morning, and you're at our North Campus or you're online, first of all, I want you to know how excited I am that you're here. I hope you feel loved and welcomed because you are. But I know this: if your life feels like it's me with all those glasses on, it doesn't have to be that way. There is another option, and His name is Jesus. And for any of us, if we ever want to get to the place, I mean, I would love to tell you that you could will yourself to do it. I'd love to tell you you could figure out how to take off those lenses and put on God's lenses without Him. But we can't. We are wholly and completely reliant on Him and us being a living sacrifice to Him.

But it doesn't end there. He said, "Or a transformed life requires a renewed mind by changing our beliefs." Go back to that verse: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Here's the reality: we're all wearing lenses, but we might not be sure if the lens I'm wearing is godly or ungodly, if it's a godly belief or it's an ungodly belief. And if you're not sure, what Paul tells us to do is this: test it. Test what kind of belief it is. Test it with scripture. Test our beliefs with the Bible. Look at the things you think and ask if they align with, let's just take Philippians 4: "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable. If there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." So I want you to think about your beliefs. The belief you have about you, and ask this question: Is it true? Is it honorable? To you, is it just the belief you're carrying because of something your dad said? Is it pure? Is it lovely? Is it commendable? The belief you might have about marriage, is it excellent? Is it worthy of praise? We get to use scripture as a grid to help us determine, are my lenses godly or ungodly? If they don't align with Philippians 4, not a godly lens. We can also test it against the character of God. 1 John 4 says, "God is love." We like to quote John 3:16, "For God so loved..." That's an action that God did in sending Jesus. But first John says, "At His very core, His very nature is love." So ask yourself the question: Is the lens I'm viewing the world through, is it loving? Does it align with God's character? If it's not loving, it's not God, because God is love. And if we're going to have godly beliefs, we can test them against the very character of God.

So once we've determined that we have the wrong lens, once we've gotten to the place that, no, it doesn't align with scripture, no, it doesn't align with God's character, what do we do then? How do we remove it and put on His? Let me give you some tools. The first is this: take captive your thoughts. Second Corinthians says, "We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ." You know the reality? We have the ability to control our thoughts. We are different than the rest of beings on this Earth in that we can control what we think. Animals, they can't. Anyone that has a golden doodle understands what I mean, okay? They're great, they're cute, they're fluffy, but they're dumb and smart, which I don't understand. But you know what my two golden doodles can't do? Control what they think. They're going to think whatever they think, often nothing at all, and then they're going to have the zoomies, and then we're going to move on. We control what we think. I can grab hold of a thought, recognize that it is not a godly thought, and replace it with a godly thought. Replace it with truth. The best example I can give you happened Thursday. Day. I, so I love Pastor David. Let me just get that in front of everybody. Love him. He's amazing. In 99.9% of the ways that he lives his life, the 0.1% is in the way he texts. I got a text from David on Thursday morning: "Come to my office." Right? So what do I think? I mean, I immediately go, "What did I do? Guess I'm getting fired. Gonna have to move. Gonna kids are going to have to get." I mean, it went immediately there, right? But I have the ability to grab hold of this thought, recognize that it is not a godly thought, and replace it with truth. What do I know about David? If he was firing me, it wouldn't begin with "Come to my office." But I also know David believes in me. I know that I, for the season, am where I feel like I'm called to be, doing what I feel like I'm called to do. So I can take this thought and I can replace it with truth, and then I can walk into David's office, and he can say what he did on Thursday, "Hey, what about us doing this next week?" No big deal. For us, as we have thoughts that are not in alignment with His character and His word, we can grab hold of them and replace them with truth. If you want more info on thoughts, David preached on it last week. Go listen to the sermon. It's a powerful sermon on thoughts. So that's one tool.

The second tool is this: confess our beliefs. Sometimes we just need to go to, to God. We need to go, "Hey, God, this is what I'm believing about me. This is something that I believe, and I know it's not true, but I'm believing it right now." But the confession doesn't just end by going to Him. James says, "Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working." James ties confession to healing, but not just confession to the Father, but confession to one another. He says, "Confess to one another, pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." I have some guys in my life that whenever I've grabbed hold of an ungodly belief, that I go to and I go, "Fellas, this season's been rough. Maybe I'm not supposed to be doing this. Maybe somebody else would be better for this role. Maybe I just need to start looking for something else." And I could take a belief that in my head I know is wrong, but in my heart I'm wrestling with, and I confess it to them, and I go, "Hey, will you just pray?" And you would be shocked that what James says at the end of this is true, that there, the prayers of a righteous person have great power. So grab hold of a spouse or a life group leader, a friend that loves Jesus, and then just go, "Hey, this is a lens that I'm viewing the world through, and it's not godly, and I don't want it. Will you pray for me?"

The last tool I'll give you is maybe the hardest, and it's forgiveness. Lots of the lenses we're wearing are by things that have been done to us, and that's hard because we didn't do them. Somebody did it to us. But we get the choice. We can continue to drink the poison of unforgiveness, expecting it to hurt that other person, or we can recognize that that lens is not a lens I want to view the world through, and just forgive them. They might not even ask for forgiveness, and you can still forgive them and go, "God, I don't want to hold this anymore. I forgive that person. I bless that person." That is a great tool for us to use as we're trying to put on God's lenses.

If you want to know something crazy? I still sometimes have to do this with that moment from sixth grade. Isn't that silly? You know what one of the greatest tools of the enemy with our thoughts, with our beliefs, is to convince us that it's just not that big a deal. And to be frank, for a long, long, long time, I looked at this moment and I go, "They're just middle school boys. That's what middle school boys do. Why am I making this such a big deal? Just get over it, Jeffrey." That's a great lie that the enemy uses to convince us to not replace our ungodly beliefs with godly beliefs. The lie of, "It's just not that big a deal." Listen, if it's shaping how you view the world, it's a big deal. So I still, at times, have to go through these tools that I just gave you and begin to walk through what it might look like to confess that, to take captive that thought whenever something comes at a word that from 25 years ago begins to creep back in my mind, to grab hold of it and replace it with truth, to confess those thoughts to somebody else, and then forgive them and bless them. These are not tools you just use once and then you get over them. They are tools that we continue to use.

So if every person in your life has gotten a divorce, and you've grabbed hold of the ungodly belief that you are going to get a divorce too, does that align with His character and His scripture? No. Take captive that thought and replace it with truth. Like, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." You know what that scripture says? Is that you're not them. Yeah, they might have gone through that. That does not mean that that has to be your destiny. And you can take off that lens. If you're living this life, if you're living this life based on the belief of something your dad said about you in a negative way and about your design, you know what you could do? You can take off that lens and replace it with this: "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it well." And you can replace that lens with God's lens for you. Do you still have to forgive that person? Yeah, because otherwise, you just throw the lens right back on. Society says you're an outsider. Maybe that's been the way you've lived life. God says you're a son and a daughter and an heir. You faced rejection in your life, and it's made you feel like, "I'm always going to get rejected." The Father loved you enough that He sent Jesus to die for you so that you might have life and be brought into His family. That is the opposite of rejection. And we can take off that lens. Failed that promotion test at work. He says, "All the days ordained for you were written before one of them came to be." Faced abuse, and it's made you feel dirty and unworthy. He says, "He makes you worthy, and He brings healing." I mean, the list could go on and on and on and on and on. And we could talk about every single ungodly belief we've grabbed hold of, and understand that God's beliefs are so much better, so much clearer. And the option today is this: Do we want to continue staying in the place where everything is chaotic, or do we want to dive into what it might look like to have a transformed life with a renewed mind by having beliefs that are set in Him? Because it's in that place that we begin to find freedom. It is in that place, viewing the, the world through God's lenses, that we begin to see all that He has for us, and not maybe the things that we've settled for.

So for a few moments, I want us to just do this. If you will, if you'll put all your stuff down, band's going to start playing behind me. You can close your eyes, do whatever you need to do to focus. But the whole, this whole week, as I've been getting ready to preach, my prayer has been this moment, that the Lord would begin to highlight to you some of the things that you've been believing that are not His lenses. He would bring to mind. You might have to go far back. I mean, I was sixth grade, that He would remind you of these moments that you've had an experience that shaped what you believe that's affecting your behavior. Maybe it's something that somebody said to you, something that somebody said about you. Maybe it is a life experience or trauma or hurt you faced. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you. If you don't know what to pray, you can pray this: "God, show me my lenses." And then you get to use one of those tools. Maybe you just got to take captive that thought and replace it with truth. And if you don't know truth, one of the few redeeming qualities about the internet is you can go to Google, and you can search, "What does God say about..." and you fill in the blank, and you'll find a scripture. Maybe what the Lord is calling you to do is here this afternoon is confess that belief. Share it with someone else. Maybe this morning is just about forgiving. That could be hard. We have to remember that we forgive just like Christ forgave us, which is He gave Himself for us even though we didn't deserve it. Maybe this week, as you're going through your "Purify" book, we're in week seven, we're going to be talking about fears. Every fear, pretty much, is tied to an ungodly belief. Maybe this week He's going to begin to reveal them more to you. Then, here in a few moments, we're going to take communion together. Both campuses, online. We're going to take communion together because the only way we can have godly beliefs, the only way we have the opportunity to view the world through God's lenses, is because Jesus came and died on the cross for our sins. Need to remember that. Holy Spirit, I just ask you would give us discerning ears to hear Your voice. Would you show us, God? Would you show us beliefs that we have that are not Yours? I don't want to view the world through any other way than what You have. Would You give me the grace to see the ungodly beliefs that I have and take those lenses off? I don't want it anymore. God, would You allow us to do the hard work of taking captive our thoughts and confession, forgiveness? We thank You, God, for all the ways that You let us view the world through Your lens, for the peace that brings, and the freedom it brings. It's in Your name we pray. Amen.