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8-Minute MindShift Wk 15 · Mental Health and the Mission of the Church

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everybody.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Just to let you know, I'm up in uh over in Atlanta, kind of uh let's see, northeast of Atlanta, and uh working with some friends and uh uh just old friends and new friends.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: But uh wanted kind of, you know, last week we talked about the lizard brain, and if you weren't here, you might want to go check it out.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: But um I just as I was preparing for this morning, I just thought, you know, I want to talk a little bit about why we're doing this and why why we're talking about some of the subjects that we're talking about.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: So let me let me read a passage of scripture that we talked about a couple weeks back.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Romans 7, but here's what it says I find then a principle that evil is present in me.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the way I interpret that is just, you know, there's things going on in me that don't pull me in the right direction, that don't um kind of facilitate me acting in the way that I think I really want to and should.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I find then a principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: For I joyfully concur with the law of God and the inner man.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, I agree with God's opinion of what's the correct behavior, how I should love someone, how I should react to someone, the kind of choices I should make.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: I agree with that.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it says, I joyfully concur with the law of God and the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, why is there something in me that pulls me, pushes me, pokes me, or prods me in directions different that are different from what I know to be right and true and healthy and good?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And they're waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin, which is in my members.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in other words, again, there's this like, what in the world?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Remember in the same chapter Paul talked about, uh, you know, I want to do this, but I do that, I don't want to do this, but I do it, and all that.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So listen to what he says Wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of this death?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, it feels like a death.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Who will set me free from?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is a death in a spiritual sense that we don't have time to talk about.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: 25, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So then, on the one hand, I myself, with my mind, am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh, the law of sin.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, there's a part of me, in fact, the message actually says that, that there's parts of me that covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that last thought was, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then you jump into verse one of chapter eight, and here's what it says.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus set you free from the law of sin and death.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then it goes on to say some wow, such, such cool stuff.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, what am I trying to talk about?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: The reason I love to talk about stuff that maybe is a little bit off the beaten path is I've been doing this a while, and um you or someone you know and love might have an anger problem.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: They might have a battle with depression, they might, they might just be caught in a cycle of making really bad choices in their relationships and their uh maybe what they turn to for comfort.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: It might be pornography, it might be food, it might be some kind of medication of one kind or another.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um so what you know, we we we we preach at them, we share the scripture with them, we pray over them, uh, my goodness, we cast devils out of them, whatever.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes what ends up really happening is uh they they they're they're they're still in the trenches battling.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're not careful, we create this cycle of they feel they've disappointed us because we're making it sound easier to change.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And why isn't it working for you?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, man, I'm you know, and and it just creates a process where one of two things can frequently happen.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: One, they pretend it's working, and they stay around you and all your friends and church and everything, but they they have to they have to start hiding the fact that they're really not winning the battle as much as they're saying.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Or two, they just disappear.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're just like, you know, I can't, I'm so I'm so fundamentally and terribly flawed that I I can't just run with you guys.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: You guys are living in such victory, and uh it's working for you and it's not working for me.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And um that's kind of my deal.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I I just number one, a lot of us are pretending things are working better than they really are.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't mean that there isn't real victory.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: There is, but it's harder than we make it sound, and it probably takes a bit longer than we make it sound.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh one of the things I want you to do on on when we're together, anytime, whether it's in this context or I'm preaching a message or whatever, and Lord willing, eventually you're gonna be reading a book that I wrote.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Pray for me in that area.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: But um, what I'm getting at is um when whenever we're engaged, I want you to be listening for yourself, but I also want you to be listening for other people in your world that are gonna need you in ways that uh you need others now.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it no matter what we're talking about, there's benefit in it for you, for me, for everybody, because uh it's either something we need right this moment, or it's somebody something somebody around us needs from us right this moment.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: John chapter four, uh John chapter one, verse 14.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, Jesus, uh the only begotten Son of the Father, we beheld his glory.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's a phrase that, gosh, it's it's it's really, really important to all of my thinking and everything that I do, my the way I posture my heart and my approach to myself and other people.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it says this, uh, we beheld his glory, and it says, Jesus was full of grace and truth.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Grace and truth, grace and truth.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I read a book years ago called uh Changes That Heal, I think is where this was found by uh I can't remember if it was Cloud or Townsend, but it was one of the two that wrote the boundaries book.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And um they had this little formula in there, and they called it like, I don't know, a formula for change or something.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what it was grace plus truth plus time.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Grace plus truth plus time.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I've come to kind of build my uh my life, my thinking, my ministry, my approach to people um inside that formula.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think the words are important, I think the order is important.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think you could almost say it this way with grace and truth in John 1.14, Jesus was full of grace and truth.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I think you could even say that the um the amount of each is different.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And um I think on the front end, more grace, less truth, as the relationship to progresses, uh keep grace up there.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Grace doesn't drop, but more truth, and eventually maybe grace and truth become equal, but not because grace drops, but because truth comes up.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because the goal is I believe the goal is just to create an environment around us for ourselves and others that we're literally swimming in grace and truth.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's over our head, we're immersed in it, saturated in it.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um what what's the big deal?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why, you know, why do I try to push that kind of a mindset?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because here's the deal think about this.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Why why do I struggle with one thing and you struggle with another?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I struggle less or more with something than you do?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Why why do you battle something I've never had an issue with in my life?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're not careful, what we tend to do is like, dude, what's the big deal?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why is that hard?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what an insanely selfish and judgmental thing to say.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it and it and it reveals how little we understand how we become the way we are.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: And um, the reason we're so different, the reason we struggle with different things, is because of the uh more complicated process than we care to admit sometimes, process of how we've become the way we are.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna take a lot of time to talk about that down the road, but you could almost kind of quickly say it this way the three things I love to talk about are um bottom line is the family you were born into.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Did you pick your parents?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So what does that mean?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Genetically, environmentally, etc., etc., you were put into a situation where you were programmed genetically, but also behaviorally, experientially, uh, in ways that were not your choice.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um and um it it created a lot of what's going on inside of you.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: So part of part of what I'm after in this thing is just getting the grace level up where we just realize, you know, I deal with stuff, you deal with stuff, we all deal with stuff.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the issue.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: The issue is how do I approach myself and others with a sense of grace, with a sense of mercy, with a sense of compassion, and not be so quick to bring truth into it, not bring so quick to say, well, you know, you should be blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um how about let's just be like Jesus?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think he he made he made people feel valued, uh, important, loved, and yes, he spoke the truth.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: But the only people I'm aware of that he got angry with uh were people that thought they had their act together.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: So part of why we talk about all this stuff that we talk about is we want to create an environment of grace, truth, and give people the time to work through what they need to work through.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I just want to throw that at you this morning.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Love you guys.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so honored to be able to do this every week and uh have a great week.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.