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Andy Stanley - How Not To Be Your Own Worst Enemy Part 2 Pay Attention to Your Narratives · Andy Stanley Sermons

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Speaker 1: Isn't it strange? I don't know if you ever think
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about this, But because I have to talk all the time,
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I have to think of things people aren't thinking about,
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so I can make you think about it, so I'll
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have something to talk about. That's kind of my life basically.
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But isn't it? Isn't it strange how we talk to
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ourselves because we all do this, right, We have conversations
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with ourselves. So like there's two of us in there,
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sometimes three, if you have four, I don't really want
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to meet you, But anyway, we have these conversations with ourselves,
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and so minutes of the time the conversation is, well,
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I really should, but I don't want to. I really should,
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but I don't want to. I ought to, but I
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ought not. You know, now, if you're a materialist, and
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I don't mean I don't mean materialistic, that's something different.
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If you're a materialist, if you just believe all there
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is is matter, you don't believe in God, and you
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just you know, that's just your world for your materialists,
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then for you, explaining this is different than the way
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I would explain it, because for you, there is no self.
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There aren't there aren't two selves and they're talking to
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each other because self self, having a self or an
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eye or a me, that that's just that's a myth.
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You don't really have that. The late Christopher Hitchin said
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it best, and I read his books and he passed
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away some years ago, but he says, you don't have
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a body. You don't have a body, You are a body.
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And the first time I read this, you don't have
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a body, you are a body, I thought, that's an
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interesting thought. And if you're a materialist, that is, if
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you just if you're an atheist or agnostic, then this
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is your worldview. He may not have thought of it
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this way, but he's a super smart guy. This is
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your worldview that you don't have a body because there's
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no you. So when I read this, I thought, I'm
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going to try to live a whole day as if
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I am nothing but a body. There's no andy, there's
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no eye, there's no me. I'm just all biology. And
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it worked pretty well till I got home with all
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the other little biologies running around it, and then I
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shut down. It didn't work. I just couldn't do it. Okay,
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But if it's just material, if it's if you're a materialist.
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If you don't believe there's anything other than just biology
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and matter, then that you have a different explanation about
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what's going on inside of you. But the truth is
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somebody's in there talking right, however you explain it, And
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you know, the other theory is, well, we're just imagining it,
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And I'm like, well, who's imagining it? I am there,
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I am again anyway. I can't get past that fact anyway.
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So these conversations that we have with ourselves, eventually we
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get down to this really really big question that we
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all wrestle with. And the question, this question is why.
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And here's what we do. Something happens and we think,
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why did that happen? Then we go to work trying
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to figure out what happened and why did this happen?
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Why did that happen? Why did this happen? Rather than that?
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And this is what I thought would happened, but this happened,
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and you can't help it. This is such so human nature.
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We have this extraordinary habit, this inclination to impose a
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reason on randomness. We impose a reason on it. Something
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happens that doesn't make sense, and our minds just go
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to work trying to make sense out of randomness. And
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what we do is we create a narrative. We create
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our own narrative to basically to make sense of things. Right,
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we create a narrative to make sense of things. Now again,
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I don't want to get off on this again. I
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don't know why pure biology. I don't know why just matter,
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if we're just mattering biology, I don't know why matter
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in biology would feel compelled to make sense out of
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senselessness and purposelessness, out of a senseless and purposeless world.
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Because if we're just matter, if we're just biology, there
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is no purpose. You can't have purpose if there's just biology.
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But there's something in you. No matter what you believe,
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where you find yourself, you can't even help yourself. You
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find yourself trying to make sense and find purpose in
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whatever happens. In fact, the worse the incident and the
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more personal the incident, the harder you work, and the
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harder I work to make sense out of that. Because
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what's undeniable, regardless of your worldview, what's undeniable is that
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we create and often abide by our self imposed narratives,
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whether they are accurate or not, whether they reflect reality
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or not. And this can be a problem. This can
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be a problem. In fact, this can lead you, as
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you have already experienced in your life. This isn't gonna
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be new. I'm just gonna put words around something you've
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already experienced. This can lead you to become your own
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worst enemy. So today we are in part two of
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our series. If you're here last time, you already know
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this how not to be your own worst enemy. Now
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we've all been our own worst enemy. And in many
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cases we can laugh about that season or that time
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in our life where we were a own worst enemy.
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But it's not always funny. Right. In fact, you've seen people,
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you've had friends or family members who kind of did
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it at big like they were their own worst enemy
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in their marriage and blew up a marriage, blew up
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a career, blew up their health, blew up their financial stability.
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And if you've seen this happen, and we've all seen
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to happen that we've seen it happen with some famous
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people you know, and we watch it happen and you
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think it's like watching a tragedy in slow motion, and
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you think, just stop, just stop, just stop, and it's
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like they can't stop, and they undermine their own future,
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and they become their own worst enemy. And here's what
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we think, here's what I think. I know, this is
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what you think. You think I would never do that.
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I mean, watching it happen, you think I would never
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let that happen to me. But you have the potential
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to do whatever you've watched anybody else do. We said
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this last week because the reason we know you have
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the potential is because you have participated in all of
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your bad decisions, one hundred percent of your bad decisions.
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You were there for all of them. In fact, you
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masterminded most of them. You were the mastermind behind most
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of them. And as we said last time, a single
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bad decision, right, A single bad decision is always the
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first step toward becoming your own worst enemy. A single
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bad decision is always the first step toward becoming your
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own worst enemy. Every habit begins with the first time,
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Every pattern begins with a first line, Every journey begins
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with a first step. So in this series, I'm going
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to give you, I'm giving you three preemptive habits, three
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things we can all begin doing every day or every
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week to preempt or to keep ourselves from becoming our
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own worst enemy. To ensure that you don't become your
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own worst enemy. So last week I gave you habit
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number one. Habit one number one was pay attention to
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the tension. Pay attention to the tension. Whenever you're considering
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an option or a choice, or an invitation or a
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date or a business deal or whatever it might be.
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If there's something on the inside of you that's kind
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of like m pay attention if something dings your conscience.
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You to pay attention if something seems a little bit
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not right or a little bit off, even if everybody
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else is doing it, even if everybody else you know
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conducts business that way, pay attention to the attention. Ask
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the question, is there attention that deserves my attention. This
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week we're going to talk about preemptive habit number two
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and preemptive Have it number two is simply this, pay
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attention to your narratives. Pay attention to your narrative. Now,
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I just want to make sure we're all on the
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same page when it comes to narrative. So I need
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to take you back in time. Most of you, some
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of you are there. Now. I want you to think
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back to high school, And I want you to think
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about your narrative, your internal narrative as it related to
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your parents. Remember how dumb they were, Remember how uncool
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they were, Remember how they just didn't get it. And
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then in your you look back and thought, huh, they
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were smarter than I thought they were. In fact, you
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didn't even wait till you were in your thirties. You
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got to your twenties, they were Suddenly they got smarter,
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and suddenly it didn't matter that they weren't so uncool.
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Well what happened, Well, you had a narrative, and in
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high school you lived by that narrative, and that narrative
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got you into trouble. Right, remember your high school narrative
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about school? For many of you, such a waste of time.
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It's such a waste of time, such a waste of time.
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You know. So maybe you're young enough to where it
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was such a waste of time that you got your
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mobile device, your multi hundred dollars mobile device that your
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loser parents bought for you. That never occurred to you,
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did it right? And you start texting your friends on
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this multi hundred dollars you know, mobile device to your friends.
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School is such a waste of time. School is such
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a waste of time on a device created by people
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who went to school. All right, But that never occurred
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to you, right, because you had this internal narrative and
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you believed it and you lived it out. And we
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still have those. We still have those. Here are some
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of the things that drift through our mind that shape
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our decisions. I'm just gonna go through a bunch of
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them real quick. They're trying to, you know, make sure
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we're all moving in the same direction today. I deserve better.
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I'm entitled to. I should be further along. I'm not happy,
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you know, he should be if she love me. They
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don't care. They don't care. It doesn't matter. It doesn't
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matter how hard I try, it doesn't matter. If I
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have an idea. I'm not gonna tell him. It doesn't matter.
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It won't make any difference, and I won't make any difference.
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I don't do exercise. Don't you should exercise, But I
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don't do that. I know, but you need to, But
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I don't do that. What does that even mean? It
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means I don't do that. You mean you can't do it? No,
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I don't do it like you can. But you don't know. No, no, no,
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I don't do it. That doesn't make sense. I know,
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it's my story. I'm sticking with it, right, I can't.
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I'm better than that. I'm better than them. They're losers.
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They're just losers. The whole category of whoever they there's
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losers are. They don't have to consider them. They don't
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deserve they don't deserve that if they would just try harder.
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You know what their problem is. They don't try hard enough.
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They don't work hard enough. That's their problem. They just
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don't work hard enough. They just don't try hard enough.
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I can't resist now, I know. I just can't resist.
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Why I just can't risk? Why do you do this?
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I can't resist? Why do I just can't resist? Something's
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wrong with me. God, something's wrong with me. Now that
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actually may be true, but anyway, something's wrong with me.
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I can't live without. Republicans are all Democrats are just men.
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Women are all Baptists, the Catholics. If my dad had, only,
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if my mom hadn't Southerners ignorant redneck you know guns? Uh?
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What's up with the Southerners? You know, northern nurse? Just
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go back to the north, then Okay, if you don't,
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I get down here, right, a bunch of Northerners. Right,
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what are you laughing at? Right? Isn't it amazing? And again,
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when you look at it, none of this is rational,
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None of this makes sense. But I'm telling you this
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kind of stuff, and I could go on and on
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and on. It informs our narratives. It informs how we
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view and interpret the world. When it comes down to,
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I wonder why, I wonder why it goes to stuff
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like that. Narratives create excuses, Narratives create justifications. They empower
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us to avoid things we should not avoid, and they
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empower us to embrace things we should stay away from.
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Narratives our internal narratives. It fuels our pride, It fuels
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our racism, it fuels our prejudice, it fuels our fear,
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and may be worst of all, it blinds us to
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our interdependency on others. False narratives are difficult to overcome.
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They're very, very, very difficul to overcome. And here's why.
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Because our narratives are shaped by things that we have
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no control over. Our narratives are shaped by where we
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are in the world. This is why you watch the
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news and you see something happening in some other part
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of the world, and you say to yourself, why can't
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they just get along, just knock it off. Why do
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they act that way? It doesn't make sense. I don't
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act that way, honey. Do you act that way? I mean,
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the kids act that way sometimes, but we're gonna get
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that out of them. But I mean, why can't they
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be more like Americans? Also by the way we experience
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the world, because you experience the world different than the
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person sitting behind you by the way, and in some
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cases the person that you see at work every day
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and the person that you pass on the highway. You're
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in the same world, you're in the same city, but
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you experience the world differently, and this shapes the narrative
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that we think about that we live, our lives in
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the context of and obviously the way that we were raised.
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The way we were raised influences our narrative. So with success, failure,
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family upbringing, the way we've been treated, the way we've
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been mistreated, where we live in the world, where we
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live in the city, what part of the city, our education,
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all of these things impact the things that we tell ourselves.
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Our internal narrative Now, a whole lot has been written
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on this topic. But here's what you already know. I'm
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gonna illustrate it at the end. Again, here's what you
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should know that your internal narrative, the thing that you
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just confirm and affirm and tell yourself over and over,
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it shapes your decisions, and it has the potential, as
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you've already seen, when you think back to some of
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your decisions you made in childhood or high school or college,
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it has the potential to cause you to become your
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own worst enemy. Now here's a really interesting, kind of
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cool thing. The Apostle Paul, who, as you know, as
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if you are new to church or new to Bible studies,
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you know, the Apostle Paul steps into the pages of
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history of somebody who hates Christians, hates Christians. If you
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hate Christians, he's your guy. Except then he became a
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Jesus follower. Okay, he never saw Jesus personally before the resurrection,
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but he became a Jesus follower, and he met Peter
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and Andrew and James and John and James the brother
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of Jesus. So he becomes a Jesus follower. And he
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decides that God's call on his life is to not
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stay within the Jewish part of the world, but to
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go into the gentile parts of the world and explain
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to them that God has done something for the whole world.
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But part of his challenge is he's going into a
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pay to these pagan cultures around the Mediterranean Rim, these
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major port cities, and he's trying to explain to them
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that God has done something in the world, which means
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that they are to embrace a completely different value system,
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the value system introduced by Jesus. They are to embrace
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a completely different worldview, which means they have to let
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go of their old worldview. I mean, his challenge is
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just it's amazing that he had any traction in the pagan,
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polytheistic world. And he writes a letter. One of his
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letters is written to Christians, Gentile Christians, you know, non
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Jewish Christians living in Corinth is major, very very secular
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port city, very wealthy city. And in this letter where
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he's trying to get them to rethink their narratives, he employees,
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we're gonna see military terminology, which is interesting because he
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only does this a couple other times. And I and
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at first I again if you're kind of anti military
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or anti violence, or you're thinking, oh no, where's this going.
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This is actually so appropriate because getting rid of or
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tearing down the narratives that we grow up and then
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live with it is not a casual endeavor. It is
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a difficult thing. So Paul uses extreme language to say, look,
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if you're gonna get this right, if you're gonna get
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rid of these narratives you tell yourself and excuses you
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give yourself, and if you're gonna move forward in life,
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this is gonna take some work. You're gonna have to
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attack this. So he challenges his readers in first century,
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and he challenges us as well, to attack the walls
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that protect our ignorance, our false assumptions, our false narratives,
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our flawed worldview, our flawed self view, our flawed view
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of others, and then once we tear it down, to
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rebuild a sin the dole around the value system and
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the worldview that Jesus introduced to the world, because Jesus
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introduced the Kingdom of God to the world, and he said,
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everyone has invited to participate in it. But if you're
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going to participate in it, you've got to embrace it,
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and to embrace it, you got to get rid of
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some things you have thought and believe, perhaps your entire life,
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things you never chose to believe. But because of where
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you live, where you were born, how you were treated,
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you've just grown up believing. And then he says, once
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these things are destroyed, you're to rebuild this value system
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around the God, around what Jesus taught, who came to
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reveal what God was like, and what God likes, and
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who God likes, and and he's and again, this is
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this is so difficult. He's writing to a group of
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people whose worldview is shaped by things that we find
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so repugnant that we think, how could anybody believe that?
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And the reason you respond to what I'm about to
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show you with, how could anybody believe that? It's because
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of where you were raised and how you were raised
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and where you live in the period of time you
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were raised in Again, we are all victims of this dynamic.
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But he's writing to a group of people who grew
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up with a narrative that looks like this, that people
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are property that was just assumed anybody in the first
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or second century, at any time could become somebody's property.
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This had nothing to do with race. This had everything
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to do with economics. This had everything to do with
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where you lived. This had everything to do with whether
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or not Rome decided to conquer your village or conquer
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your nation and enslaved twenty percent of the population. You
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could be the wealthiest person in your town, and you
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could be somebody's property. That's the world they lived in,
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and they just assume that's just the way the world is. Right.
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The assumption was might makes right. Whoever's got the most
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weapons and the biggest army, they determine what's right. There's
16:48
no morality that everybody subscribes to. There's no morality that
16:52
sits on top of the population or the populations. Whoever
16:56
has the might makes the rules. And you know that
16:59
becomes right right can change overnight. And number three, the
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God's determined the fate of the individuals. Something happens to
17:06
a child, well, that was just the child's fate. Something
17:09
happens to a woman, that's just the woman's fate. Something
17:11
happens to a village, you know, that's just fate. The gods,
17:16
you know, you can't trust him. You got to worship
17:17
them and try to keep them happy. So this worldview,
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we can't even imagine that he had his work cut
17:22
out for him. Yet he shows up and he begins
17:25
to try to help him understand. God has done something new,
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and you have to renew your mind. You have to
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renew your thinking to this very brand new world, this
17:36
brand new kind of invisible kingdom that God has introduced
17:39
to planet Earth. And just as he had his work
17:42
cut out trying to convince them, I think if he
17:45
were here today, he'd have his work cut out trying
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to convince us. Because the interesting thing is this as
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as wrong as all of this appears to us, it
17:55
was self evident, it was self evident. It was like, well, yeah,
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it was self evident in the first century. And so
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many things that are self evident to us are wrong
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and they stand in contrast and in conflict to the
18:11
Kingdom of God that Jesus introduced to Earth. So with
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that in mind, here's what he says to Christians living
18:20
in Corinth. Here's what he says to us. For though
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we live in the world, we do not wage war
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as the world does. So he starts this whole military conferences.
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It starts using military terminating terminology. Literally this means we
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do not conduct our military campaigns the way the world does.
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Sounds kind of violent. He goes on. The weapons that
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we fight with are not the weapons of the world.
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Oh so there's weapons, Yeah, and weapons here the Greek idea,
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the idea behind the term he uses for weapons. This
18:53
is not like swords and shields. These are like, this
18:54
is like siege equipment, like towers that you roll up
18:58
to a wall to go over a wall, or catapults
19:00
you use to knock down walls, these enormous structures. On
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the contrary, he says, on the contrary, they these weapons
19:08
that we're gonna use have divine power to demolish strongholds.
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And a stronghold again, would be a stone wall around
19:16
a city, or a stone wall around a palace, or
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some kind of stone structure. And he says, the weapons
19:22
that we use have the power to destroy even the
19:24
strongest structure, to which you know, if you're following along,
19:28
you're thinking, what is he talking about? Right? Does have
19:31
anything to do with me? Because I don't know, I
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don't you know, I never attack a stone wall. We
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just you know, we don't do that. He says, Okay,
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let me tell you exactly what I'm talking about. We
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are demolishing Here's what he says, we talking about these
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new Christians, talking about Christians in the twenty first century.
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We are demolishing arguments, not physical stone walls. We're not
19:53
trying to overcome a physical army. We are in the
19:56
process of using all of our skill and all of
19:59
our might to demolish arguments, specifically to tease this out.
20:03
We we are to wage war on flawed conclusions based
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on false assumptions. That we have to go to war
20:10
with our flawed conclusions that drive our decisions based on
20:14
false assumptions. Or again, to keep you with me, let's
20:18
go back to middle school in high school. Remember middle
20:20
school and high school, you were never wrong, right, I mean,
20:23
you were rarely ever wrong. So what did your parents
20:26
face when your parents, you know, or lambet at night
20:28
are talking about, or your aunt and uncle or whoever
20:30
raised you, they're talking about, how do we get through
20:32
to this kid? Because they found themselves faced with what
20:36
an impenetrable citadel of argumentation. That's what you were in
20:40
high school and I was in high school. I mean,
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no matter which way they tried to get in that wall,
20:45
they couldn't get in no matter which angle they used.
20:47
They tried to get through to you, They tried to
20:49
get through to me, and I'm like, no, I don't
20:50
see it that way. No, I don't see it that way.
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And we would argue and ar you and argue, and
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what were they doing. They were trying to get through
20:56
this this wall of argumentation. The apostle Paul this first
21:00
century audience, and he would say to you, and he
21:02
would say to me, Hey, did you know your heavenly
21:05
father is trying to do the same thing with you,
21:07
just like your daddy did it with you. Your heavenly
21:10
Father is trying to do that with you. He is
21:12
trying to push through, press through, break through this defense
21:15
system based on how you were raised, when you were raised,
21:18
where you were raised, what you've always thought, what happened
21:20
to you, what didn't happen to you, what you got
21:22
to accomplish, what you didn't get to participate in, all
21:25
those things that create all of these narratives that stand
21:28
in conflict the way God wants the world to be
21:31
and the way God intended the world to be, and
21:33
this value system that Jesus introduced when he came to Earth,
21:38
He says, this we what we're demolishing. We demolish arguments,
21:41
and then he uses a really interesting word in every pretension.
21:45
In fact, the different English translations of the Bible here
21:48
kind of go in different directions because it's kind of
21:50
hard to nail down what the apostle Paul is saying.
21:52
But everybody agrees on this. He's talking about high things,
21:56
tall things. He says, We're coming against every high thing,
22:01
every arrogant attitude, everything that puffs us up beyond what's
22:05
true and what's real, our towering conceit, our presumptuous notions
22:11
that set itself up that now he's getting to the
22:14
point of this, that set itself up against the knowledge
22:17
of God. In other words, we as Jesus followers, or
22:21
if you ever decide to become a Jesus follower, this
22:23
is part of the process that we are to assault
22:28
head on intentionally every single day. We are to assault
22:32
any narrative about ourselves, about the people around us, about
22:38
the people like us, about the people who don't like us,
22:41
about the people who are different from us. We are
22:43
to assault any narrative that stands in contrast to what
22:49
God has revealed as we're going to see in Christ.
22:54
We are to assault. This is part of following Jesus,
22:57
this is part of discipleship. We are to assault any
23:00
narrative that stands in contrast, that stands in conflict to
23:04
the knowledge of God. And here it is, he gets
23:08
so specific, And we take captive all this military language,
23:13
and we take captive every thought. The idea of captive
23:17
is we lead into captivity. We take as our own prisoners.
23:22
We take prisoners of war chained ankle to ankle to ankle,
23:26
and risk to risk. We take every thought captive. Here
23:29
it is to make it obedient, to make it obedient
23:33
to Christ. He says, here's what you have to do,
23:36
you Corinthians, who see the world in such a different way.
23:39
You've got to take every single thought and bend it
23:42
into conformity to what Christ taught. You got to take
23:45
every attitude and edit it and bend it and inform
23:49
it and train it so that it's it's in sink
23:52
with what Jesus taught and the values that Jesus introduced
23:55
to the world. That you are to line it up
23:57
with the value system the vision of Jesus for the world.
24:03
And this is why and I say this all the time,
24:04
but I can't say. This is why reading the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke,
24:08
and John. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, this is why
24:10
the Gospels are so extraordinarily important, because in the Gospels
24:15
we get a glimpse of what the Kingdom of God
24:18
would look like if Jesus' followers would fully embrace it.
24:22
In fact, there's this interesting little piece of narrative at
24:24
the end of jesus life. He's kind of getting that
24:26
he's got the guys together, he's going to be arrested
24:29
very quickly. Then things start moving really quick and he'd
24:31
be crucified, and so he's kind of summarizing things and
24:35
condensing things and getting his apostles, you know, ready for
24:38
this moment. He said, God, I'm gonna leave, and they're like,
24:40
where are you're going? Well, I can't tell you. You
24:42
can't come with me, And Peter's like, why can't I go?
24:44
So lots of confusion and lots of information, and finally
24:47
Phillip says, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hey wait, Jesus,
24:51
I'm sure all this is important, but look, just show
24:55
us the Father and that will be enough for us.
24:59
If you'll if you'll just what is God like? What
25:03
does God say? Just Jesus, come on, just show us
25:06
the Father. And Philip was exactly right. If we could
25:10
see as God sees, we would be more inclined to
25:14
do as God says. If you could see yourself the
25:17
way that God sees you, you would be more inclined to
25:20
do what God says. If you could see the people
25:22
around you the way that God sees the people around
25:24
if you could see the people around you the way
25:26
that God sees his people, you would be more inclined
25:28
to treat them in such a way that honors God.
25:30
So Phillip's right, it's like, just show us. If you
25:33
could just show us what God is like, that would
25:35
actually change everything, that would inform our narrative. And do
25:39
you remember what happens in this next moment. It's so powerful.
25:42
It's one of those moments they should have all gotten
25:44
up and left the room, but it's too late. They've
25:46
seen Jesus do so many things, They've heard him say
25:48
so many crazy things. I mean, one time he told
25:51
this guy who is sick, he said, your sins are forgiven.
25:54
And the leaders and the teachers of the law said,
25:57
only God can forgive sin. Jesus is like, yeah, you know,
26:03
one time, he says, something greater than the temple is here. Okay,
26:06
whoa who woah, Jesus is something greater than the temple
26:08
is here, then we don't need the temple, just saying.
26:11
So they've seen this over and over and over, and
26:14
so Philip says, just show us the Father, and Jesus
26:17
smiles and he looks at Philip. I think he looks
26:22
at us, and he says, don't you know me, Philip?
26:26
Philips like, I didn't ask to know you. I want
26:28
to show me God, show me the Father. Don't you
26:32
know me, Philip? I mean, this is so blasphemous. They
26:35
should have all gotten up and left the room, don't
26:38
you know me, Philip, even after I've been among you
26:40
for such a long time. Then he just says the
26:43
most amazing thing. And I'm telling you this is this is,
26:47
this is the invitation of a lifetime in a world,
26:50
the world we live in, where we have access to
26:52
this literature. Twenty four to seven. He says, anyone who
26:57
has seen me, remember this, has seen the Father. Don't
27:02
miss this. In other words, Jesus said, do you want
27:04
to know what God is like? Watch me. Do you
27:08
want to know what God is like? Listen to me.
27:12
Do you want to know what God is like? Follow me?
27:15
Do you want to know what God thinks about you?
27:17
Listen to me. Do you want to know what God
27:19
thinks about the people around you who are nothing like
27:22
you and don't like you? Listen to me. Do you
27:24
want to know how God views the world? Follow me?
27:28
Do you want to live with a liberating, life giving narrative,
27:35
one that will correctly inform your conscience, that will correct
27:40
your false assumptions, that will inform your behavior and ultimately
27:45
change your attitude, even towards the people you have nothing
27:48
in common with, the people who are nothing like you,
27:51
the people you have such a difficult time liking. Then
27:56
follow me, because I have come to introduce the Kingdom
28:01
of God to earth, and everyone is invited to participate
28:05
in it. But you're never gonna fully participate unless you
28:09
go hard after the walls that support all your incorrect
28:12
assumptions and your prejudice and your wrong ways of viewing
28:16
yourself and the people around you. In the way that
28:18
the world works, You've got to tear it down. On
28:21
another occasion, he said this again, these big statements while
28:24
I am in the world, because he was leaving. While
28:27
I'm in the world, I'm the light of the world.
28:30
If you want to know what the world really looks like,
28:31
if you want to know how the world really looks,
28:33
then follow me. Follow me, and together we will demolish arguments.
28:38
We will demolish every high and lofty thing. We will
28:41
demolish every pretension lifted up against the knowledge of God.
28:44
And you will take captive every single thought. You will
28:48
take captive every single thought to obedience to me, Jesus said,
28:52
Follow me, and you'll begin to change the way you think.
28:57
Follow me. You'll have a brand new narrative. To Follow me,
29:01
and you'll see the world as it is, that the
29:02
world is broken, but that my father redeems broken things.
29:08
Follow me and you'll begin to understand that you, as
29:10
an individual, you really do matter to God. And follow
29:15
me and you'll discover that the you besides you also
29:19
matters to God, which means the you besides you should
29:23
matter to you, because the you besides you matters to
29:26
God regardless of their political persuasion, regardless of where they live,
29:32
how they live, and how they treat you, being full
29:36
of yourself, he says, will leave you empty. Follow me,
29:40
and you'll discover that emptying yourself will lead leave you full.
29:46
Jesus would say this, He'd say, we some of us
29:48
learned this as as children, this little story. We learned
29:50
a song to go along with it, he says. Look,
29:53
Jesus says, look, you're never going to get closer to
29:56
understanding the Father than me. If you look past me,
29:59
you're missing God. If you stop short of me, you're
30:01
missing God. God loved you so much he didn't send
30:04
something written. God's loved you so much he became flesh
30:09
and dwelt among you. And in the first century, when
30:12
it was almost impossible for this to happen, many people
30:16
sat down and wrote out what I taught, wrote out
30:19
what I did, and wrote out accounts of my lives.
30:22
And they have survived through the ages because your heavenly
30:26
Father wants you to know what he's like, and he
30:29
wants you to live in accordance with the reality that
30:31
he introduced to the world through Christ. And so Jesus
30:34
could say things like this, everyone, everyone who hears these
30:38
words of mine and puts them into practice, doesn't just
30:40
hear them and go, that's good. Never heard that before.
30:42
Every single person that hears these words of mine and
30:45
changes their internal narrative so they can begin to act
30:48
on the words of Jesus is like a wise man
30:50
who builds his whole life on a firm foundation. And
30:55
then Jesus was warning. He'd say, like we said last time,
30:57
but if you don't have the potential of becoming your
31:02
own worst enemy. And then Paul closes the same passage
31:10
with these words that could be so easily misunderstood, but
31:13
he's making such a powerful point. He says this, and
31:17
this is back to first Corinthians and second Corinthian excuse me,
31:21
and we will be ready. In other words, this is
31:24
military terminology again. We will be at attention, we will
31:27
be on guard, we will be ready, we will be
31:30
ready to punish. And the idea here is to bring
31:33
justice to to respond appropriately to and we will be ready.
31:38
We will be ready to punish every act of disobedience
31:42
once your obedience is complete. His idea, the idea hears
31:46
this that we as individuals should be ready to react
31:51
swiftly when our old narratives start cropping back up. We
31:55
should be willing to respond quickly when we begin to
31:59
when we were fuse or forget to bend our attitudes
32:02
and bend our thoughts, and bend our presuppositions and our
32:05
assumptions toward the words towards obedience to Christ, that we
32:10
should respond quickly when we find ourselves rebuilding old walls,
32:14
walls that keep people out, walls that shut us in
32:18
with people who are only like us. So here's the question,
32:22
and I'm gonna go ahead and give you the answer
32:24
to the question. Okay, it's not a trick question. The
32:25
answer is yes. Okay, So would you please just repeat
32:27
after me, yes, one more time. Okay. So here's the question.
32:33
Got any strongholds that need to be demolished? Yeah? You do.
32:39
They as so judgmental of you, Andy, No, it's just true.
32:42
It's true of you, it's true of me. Why because
32:45
I can't help the way I was raised, where I live,
32:47
where you were raised, the way you were lived, what
32:49
you were taught, your education, your lack of education, where
32:51
you were educated, the things that happened to you, the
32:53
things that didn't have You can't help any of that.
32:56
So consequently, we are always at war, potentially with the
32:59
narrative that want to creep up and misinterpret the world
33:04
around us. So to get you started and to kind
33:08
of meddle in your business just a little bit, I'm
33:11
going to ask you a list of questions. And most
33:14
of these questions won't have anything to do with you,
33:16
and you will be so happy they don't. But a
33:20
couple of these questions may just hit you right between
33:22
the eyes. And here's the reason I'm asking you these questions.
33:27
I want you to listen to the narrative that pops
33:31
into your mind when I ask you these questions. I'm
33:35
not saying your narrative is right or wrong. I'm just
33:37
saying I want you to be aware of it. And
33:40
then maybe later today, when I get to a question
33:42
that intersects with your actual life, you'll find yourself going,
33:45
that's true. Why do I think that? Why do I
33:47
assume that? Why do I respond that way? So here's
33:51
some questions for you ready. Why don't you call your brother?
34:01
Why won't you call your sister? Why won't you call
34:06
your dad? Why won't you call your mom? Maybe for
34:12
some of you, it's why won't you call your oldest son?
34:18
Why do you drink so much? Why do you respond
34:22
the way you respond when people point out that maybe
34:25
you drink too much because you have a narrative for
34:29
all those questions. You have a narrative, right, Why did
34:33
you move in with him? Why did you move in
34:35
with her? Why did you file for divorce? What do
34:42
you tell yourself? What do you tell yourself about why
34:47
you aren't more generous with your money? What do you
34:51
tell yourself about why you won't pay your taxes? What
34:56
do you tell yourself about why you just despise Republicans
35:01
or Democrats, or rich people or poor people, or white
35:08
people or black people or brown people or immigrants. What
35:15
do you tell yourself? What do you tell yourself about
35:19
why you gave up on God and why you gave
35:21
up on church. Have you listened to that narrative lately?
35:29
And what happens? What happens to your narratives and what
35:37
happens to my narratives? When we hold it up to this,
35:44
for God so loved the world, for God so loved you,
35:57
For God so loved that you besides you, that he
36:03
gave his only son, do they start to feel kind
36:11
of small and petty and maybe in conflict with the
36:16
worldview that you say you have subscribed to as a
36:19
Jesus follower. What happens to your narratives when you hold
36:23
them up against this. You're not your own, You're not
36:28
your own, you don't belong to you. You have been
36:34
purchased with a price. Therefore, honor God with your bodies.
36:41
My friends, this is I just it's a big deal.
36:44
We could spend weeks on this. Pay attention to your narratives.
36:50
Here's how you know you're in an incorrect narrative could
36:53
cause you to become your own worst enemy. All you
36:56
have to do is think back to a season in
36:57
your life when you were your own worst enemy. And
37:01
I guarantee you you had a supporting narrative for those
37:06
decisions you now regret. When you think back to that season,
37:10
that decision, that relationship, whatever it was, where you were
37:13
looking back, it's like I can barely laugh about it.
37:15
I can barely tell the story. I was my own
37:17
worst enemy. I did it to myself. You had a
37:19
supporting narrative to support those decisions you now regret, and
37:25
those that narrative stood and start. Contrast to the liberating,
37:31
life giving narrative that Jesus introduced to the world and
37:35
invited you to step into. So I got an idea.
37:42
It's not my idea, it's an idea. I stole it
37:44
from Paul. Let's demolish arguments and every pretension that sets
37:51
itself up against the knowledge of God. Let's take every
37:57
thought captive to make it obedient to Christ. So here's
38:04
the commitment I would like for you to make. Last week,
38:06
I asked you to make a commitment as it related
38:08
to pay attention to the tention. Here's the commitment I
38:10
would like you to consider this week. Would you be
38:13
willing to commit it? Just tries for a week. I
38:16
will demolish every narrative that conflicts with the value system
38:19
introduced by Jesus. I will demolish. And I use Paul's word.
38:23
I know it's a big word. It's a powerful word,
38:25
it's a violent word. But this is a big deal.
38:27
There's a lot of steak I will demolish. I will
38:31
come against. I will tear down every narrative. It's I
38:33
listen to those things run through my mind. I think,
38:35
Wait a minute, that's not what Jesus would do. Wait
38:38
a minute, that's not what a Christian to do. Wait
38:39
a minute, that's not what a christ follower would do.
38:42
Wait a minute, that's not the way somebody who really
38:44
believes there's a personal God would think. I will demolish
38:47
every narrative that conflicts with the value system introduced by Jesus.
38:51
My friends, you hear us talk about follow Jesus, Follow Jesus,
38:54
Following Jesus and make your life better. You heard us
38:56
say our mission for our church is to inspire you
38:59
to follow Jesus. The mission for our whole organization is
39:01
to inspire people to follow Jesus. This is what it
39:04
looks like to follow Jesus. It's not simply pray a prayer.
39:08
It's not simply believe a list of things. It's tearing
39:11
down everything on the inside that gets in the way
39:14
of us living it out in the real world, to
39:18
embrace his view, his values, and his vision for the world,
39:25
to repeal and to replace the views, values and visions
39:29
that we've grown up with and the ones that we
39:31
are so incredibly comfortable with. Because in the end, it's
39:36
true what I say all the time. In the end,
39:39
following Jesus really will make your life better. And when
39:43
we follow Jesus, we make the world a better place.
39:48
And when you follow Jesus. When you follow Jesus, odds
39:53
are you will never become your own worst enemy. So
39:58
pay attention, pay attention, pay attention to your narratives.