Getting TunedIN
TunedIN (1)
This Is The Truth About You
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwmZEza2CDY
Amen!
QUESTION – which ½ of that video did you like better? I remember the first time I watched it and I was about to kill myself…
MGCC - this morning we kicked off our much awaited series (at least much awaited to me), called
TunedIN, hearing His voice above the noise.
Prayer
MGCC
R U ready?
R U ready to do this?
OKAY… let’s roll.
NOW - the premise for this 6 week series is the following…
“The voice you believe will determine the future you will experience…”
LET’S – say that together on 3…
“The voice you believe will determine the future you will experience…”
NOW - this series was inspired by a book I read last fall that was written by Steven Furtick called, ‘Crashing The Chatterbox.’
I wish I had a little devil on my left shoulder. I could flick him off and tell him to go to hell. Then I could fist- bump the angel sitting on my right shoulder and get on with doing all the things God has called me to do.
That would change everything. I’d discover an unshakable confidence. It wouldn’t be borrowed from the ever- changing assessments of others. I would instinctively offer my weaknesses as a platform for God’s power instead of typecasting myself as someone God couldn’t use due to my endless character flaws.
I’d be unstoppable because the devil wouldn’t be able to dominate my mind with the kinds of fears that control me a lot of the time. Then I would be able to move forward in faith without being scared of failure or rejection or the sacrifice required to obey God. I’d never again be paralyzed by condemnation or bullied by feelings of unworthiness. And at the end of each day I’d go to sleep in perfect peace because I’d be finishing the day with no shame, no regrets, no need to sew any fig leaves to conceal anything. I’d be nearly immune from discouragement, because I would stop wondering if the sky was falling every time I faced a new challenge. I’d see my biggest obstacles as my greatest opportunities … and all the other stuff you read on Starbucks cups. Unfortunately, there’s no devil on my shoulder. What’s worse, there’s no angel either. Instead, I’ve got this ceaseless war going on inside my heart and my head. I’m waging it every millisecond of every minute of every hour of every day— nights, holidays, and weekends too.
AGAIN…
“The voice you believe will determine the future you will experience…”
NOW – this morning I just want to introduce this topic in a conversation I am calling ‘Getting TunedIN.’
AND – a great place for us to begin tuningIN is by looking at some words that God spoke through His prophet Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 55
The heading in my bible for Isaiah 55 reads…
“An Invitation To The Thirsty’
NOW – it’s important for us to understand who these words were first written to… they were - written to people who have;
Been disobedient
Followed other God’s
Listened to the wrong voices
Been led astray by wrong desires
AND (in Isaiah 55) GOD – is inviting them back to real life…
MGCC – let’s hear what God’s prophet had to say to them 2700 years ago and what he has to say to us may 3, 2015…
Come,
Again this an invitation from God
Come all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
UNDERSTAND – God house is the only place where we can and eat a meal and not have to worry about whether or not we can pay the tab… IT’S – a place where we enjoy and feast on, His love, His mercy and His Grace and never worry about Him handing you a check, because He knows that you could never pay Him back.
Come all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.
Verse 2
Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Turn to the person to your r/l and ask, why?
Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?
AND LISTEN – anyone who has ever given themselves to things they should not have… OR – has chased after things and after they got them found out they did not do for them all they had hoped, know exactly what that verse…
NOW – for the emphatic part of the text
Listen, listen (shama)
AGAIN - it’s an invitation…
Listen, listen to me, (understand for years God has watch His people listen to the wrong voices – respond to the wrong noise)
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
No more junk food, it’s time for you to start eating the good stuff.
and you will delight in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live.
Listen that you may what?
that you may live.
LOOK UP
MGCC – understand there is a lot on the line here.
LISTEN – to me, eat voices that are good = LIFE
AND – to do otherwise, to eat the wrong voices = DEATH
“The voice you believe will determine the future you will experience…”
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, my faithful love promised to David. – Isaiah 55:1-3
MGCC - the goal of this series is for us to learn how to overcome the lies of the enemy with the voice and promises of God – that we may live, really live.
NOW - in the coming weeks we are going to look at:
FOUR – truths, promises, confessions that come straight from the word of God therefore they are living and active.
UNDERSTAND – to confess is to say with…to agree with God.
AND LISTEN – some of us in this room have already spend way too much time agreeing and accepting with things…
spoken about us, to us and over us
that God never intended for us to agree with.
AND SO – in this series we are going to learn how to embrace these confessions that are grounded in the voice and promises of God.
AND EACH – of these confession target one of the main areas that the enemy (who is the father of lies) uses to weaken our faith, corrupt our worth and derail and destroy our destiny.
QUESTION – do you ever struggle with insecurity?
WELL – next week we are going to learn how to o/come that insecurity with the confession…
Insecurity - “God Says, ‘I Am!’”
ON – May 17th we are going to talk about overcoming fear with the confession…
Fear - “God Says, ‘He Will!’”
UNDERSTAND – some of us are staying awake at night worried about things that God never intended for us to be haunted or terrified by… and in 2 weeks we will leant how to move past that…
AND THEN – (on May 31) we will learn how to demolish one of the enemies greatest lies that he gets Jesus-followers to agree to accept and being imprisoned by….
MGCC – on 5/31 we will learn how to overpower shame and condemnation… with the confession….
Shame - “God Says, ‘He Has!’”
Disappointment - “God Says, ‘I Can!’”
UNDERSTAND – thoughts/voices are to our soul what food is to our body…
EAT – what is good and we will live
EAT – what is not good and we will die.
LISTEN – it is the goal of our enemy for us to live: fearful, ashamed, defeated and insecure and disappointing lives…
NOW UNDERSTAND – this series is not about…
changing our behavior
changing stuff out there
changing our dysfunctions
INSTEAD – it’s about getting to the root of what is driving our dysfunctions…
MGCC
we are listening to the wrong voices
we agreeing with the lie of the enemy
“The voice you believe will determine the future you will experience…”
AGAIN
Like I said today is just an introductory conversation.
SO TODAY - I just want to lay some ground work
TODAY – my goal is to get us to not only start thinking about what we are thinking, BUT ALSO – to get us to start thinking about the voices that are driving that thinking.
YEAH TODAY - I want to talk about getting TunedIN
WHICH – at least in theory is a simple as ABCDE…
Prayer again
A – Acknowledge That There Are Other Voices
VOICES – that are trying to invade our heads, hearts and minds…
VOICES - that are empowered by the lies of our enemy.
VOICES - that are attempting to convince us that what they are saying about: who we are, what we are worth and who we can become… is truth.
NOW – when I talk about hearing voices… in our heads, some people my get a little nervous and think… okay our pastor has gone off the deep end… (what a great day to bring my friend to church).
BUT HEY – let’s get real, we all hear voices in our heads.
I MEAN – if I could hook up your brain stem to the screen behind me and put up some of the thoughts you were thinking.
NOT - this week, but while we were singing…
‘Oh how he loves us… and His love never fails’
IT – would be quite the show.
I MEAN – the apostle Paul talked about the battle that was going on in his mind in Romans 7…
I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave… - Romans 7:22,23
AND - Jesus in John 10 talks about the power of a voice and the truth that there is more than one out there.
The sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice…
The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.
John 10:4,5,10
B – Believe That You Get To Choose
Believe that we get to choose the voice we will listen to…
UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING – we see started with something God said, everything.
AND – getting tunedIN is all about hearing His voice above all others…
NOW – the bible begins with this idea of the voice of God…
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. – Genesis 1:1-3
UNDERSTAND – the same pattern that God used to establish the universe is what our lives will be established by…God said and It was…
Everything in our lives will be created or destroyed by the words that we speak and the words that we believe.
AND LISTEN – God’s invitation from Isaiah 55 still calls out today…
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live.
YOU SEE – the invitation of God implies that we have a choice, that we are not some helpless victim to the noise that surrounds us.
UNDERSTAND – the noise is never going to stop. Our enemy will never stop speaking His lies. The negative chatter is never going to go away.
BUT – the good news is that God has given us the ability to choose the dialogue we believe and respond to . And once we learn how, we can switch from lies to truth as deliberately as we can choose Classic Rock over Country Music on our radio.
MGCC Learning to think the thoughts of God is the most important thing, and it is our greatest battle.
BECAUSE – we are going to be constantly bombarded with thoughts, feelings, and even facts about why you can’t do it. Why you shouldn’t do it. And why you’ll never be able to do it. Why you’re too dysfunctional, too petty, too immature, too melancholy, too impulsive, to weak, too fearful…
BUT LISTEN - I’m now awakening to the reality that I can access the power of God’s promises and use them to overpower the shouts of the Enemy.
HOWEVER – I know that this will be a constant fight one where I will have to learn how to
Call out my inner critic…
C – Call Out Your Inner Critic
Anybody recognize this theologian?
"Beware of no man more than yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.” - Charles Spurgeon
“I’m loosing myself, I’m stuck in the moment I look in the mirror my only opponent.” – Jay Z
Looking back, my life seems like one big obstacle race, with me being the chief obstacle. – Jack Parr (comedian)
The devil is our enemy but the battleground is our mind.
I read online this week that the average person has 60,000 thoughts a day and that about 80% of those thoughts are negative… that’s 48,000 negative thoughts a day.
NOT SURE – how they measured that but it sounds about right.
I wondered how much of those 48,000 negative thoughts you have already heard today and it’s not even lunch time.
DID YOU – hear it in the closet when you were getting dressed, telling you that it doesn’t matter what you put on. Because nothing will look good on you… you’re too tall, short, old, skinny, too flabby…
DID YOU – hear it when you were trying to get the family ready for church…
NOW – most of you know that I journal and I gotta to tell you many days as I grab my pen and begin to write the noise in my head is raging… Hey I’m just being real…
Sunday 3/8
“Good morning Lord, I am exhausted and so tired. I can’t see very well… I am frustrated… I am worried. I need your help today. I don’t see how I can do anything worthwhile today.
I feel like a loser and I failure… there is so much negative chatter going on.”
I heard the negative noise yesterday when I was doing some yard work with Conrad (and the twine broke off) You can’t even use a weed wacker... What kind of guy can’t do that
The chatter goes on even while I am standing up here.
They don’t like your jokes
This is not making sense to anyone
The lady over there looks bored
I think that guy is asleep
YOU KNOW – sometimes in my mind I feel like I am in a Walgreens during the Christmas season… and those songs just want stop…
BUT – I can walk out of the store…
BUT HOW – do you walk out of the store if you live there.
YEAH – go ahead and call me crazy but a lot of times I feel like I am in the middle of a dialogue that I cannot get out of.
WHICH – brings me to the “D” …
in the ABCDE of ‘Getting TunedIN’
AND – this ‘D’ is a two parter.
FIRS - when to…
D – Dialogue With The Proper Destiny
YOU KNOW – most self books on positive thinking led to the conclusion that negative thoughts make you unhappy… (and they do)… AND – that they can keep you from enjoying things and they will…
BUT UNDERSTAND – the worst thing about the negative noise and chatter is that it can keep you from discovering and living out your destiny.
Great deeds remain undone and the possibility of growth into greatness of soul is aborted. – Brennan Manning
Great deeds remain undone….And we never become the people we were meant to be.
QUESTION …
What great deeds in your life remain undone because of lies you have believed?
What lies (has you) and are you believing and agreeing with that are keeping you from your God-ordained destiny?
UNDERSTAND
Lies create limitations. And the limitations we accept keep us from the destiny we were created for.
As parents - we are not the parent we could have been because of the lies we have believed.
I MEAN – what kind of friend, husband, wife, leader, worker, leader, pastor… could you have been if you would have confronted the lies.
WHAT – difference in the world were we meant to make that we are not making because of the lies we have believed.
UNDERSTAND – when lies are not confronted, destinies are not fulfilled!
AGAIN
Part of the ‘D’ in ABCDE stands from
Dialogue With The Proper Destiny
The dialogue we choose to participate in determines the destiny we experience.
LISTEN – a lot of us are not fulfilling our destiny because we are engaged in the wrong conversations… the wrong dialogue.
AND LISTEN – we are not the first…
IN FACT – we see this all the way back in the beginning in Genesis.
In the first two chapters we see the VOICE of God (the dialogue of God) creating – God speaks and creation responds.…
THEN – in Genesis 3 we see another dialogue. The dialogue of our enemy who takes the form of a serpent.
The devil will say whatever he has to say and he will take whatever form it takes, to keep us from seeing who we really are.
HE WILL – take the form of…
Your parents
The media
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.
More crafty – knows what to say and how to say it
He said to the woman,
He invites Eve into a dialogue
“Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” – Genesis 3:1-3
Isaiah 55 – eat and lie
Serpent – eat and live
UNDERSTAND – every time we believe (eat) a lie something inside of us dies… and every time we eat the truth our soul delights in the richest of fares.
NOW – up until this week, I had always thoughts that things started to go downhill and tank because of what the serpent said…
Genesis 3:1 ‘The serpent said to the woman.”
BUT – now I see that it actually went down hill in verse two…
The woman said to the serpent…
AND – Eve engaged in a dialogue that destroyed her destiny (I mean, her and Adam were destined to live in the garden with God)…
MGCC – anytime we open up a dialogue with the father of lies, with the serpent – we have already lost.
UNDERSTAND – just because he is talking doesn’t mean we have to listen.
Sometimes we just need to change the channel.
NOPE – sorry not going there today….
I get to choose what I listen to…
Just – because they are tweeting doesn’t mean I have to listen…
THESE ARE – the people I choose to have speak into my life…
- Detect The Distortion
You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman.
– Genesis 3:4
NOW – the thing that makes deception so effective is that is hard to detect.
I MEAN – if our enemy showed up in red tights and carrying a pitch fork and said… hey here is a lie I want you to embrace that will screw up your life we would not listen…
BUT UNDERSTAND – our enemy is a master at distortion…
AND DURING – the next 6 weeks we are going to learn how to detect some of his most common lies that hold us in bondage to – fear, insecurity, shame and disappointment…
And we are going to do much more then find and detect them.. we are going to replace them…
We need to find and replace….
A – Acknowledge That There Are Other Voices
B – Believe That We Get To Choose
C – Call Out Our Inner Critic
D – Dialogue With The Proper Destiny
– Detect The Distortion
E – Everyday Hear What God Want
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HESJgpYYUyM
UNDERDSTAND – as we walk through this life we will be surrounded by noise on every side.
NO – I can’t stop the noise but I sure can block it…
I bought a pair of this yesterday…
Because today May 3rd 2015 I am telling my enemy
That he can keep on talking
That he can talk whatever form he wants
Say whatever he wants
But I am going to listen to his lies anymore!
NO – I can’t stop your noise
but I sure can block you out.
Finally, brothers and sisters,
whatever is true,
whatever is noble,
whatever is right,
whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely,
whatever is admirable—
if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—
think about such things…. - Phil 4:8
Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live. – Isaiah 55:1-3
