
READ THIS BEFORE WE BEGIN TONIGHT AS A RECAP OF THE JOURNEY SO FAR:
We all need to become preachers. We all need to learn to preach to our own hearts. The psalmist says, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits” (Psalm 103: 2). To whom is he speaking? The answer is to himself.
The famous preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?” We need to take every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10: 3– 5).
It helps immensely if we can start to learn how to identify the specific lies behind our sin and the corresponding truths that will set us free. But this isn’t as hard as it sounds. You don’t have to be able to analyze your heart in detail, it is simply learning the truths of the gospel that unleashes the power to change.
Great Truth #1: God is Great, so I don’t have to be in control. (September 2020)
We all crave control. Going all the way back to the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were striving for control LIKE God. And that is where the mess of sin all began. It is the same with us. It takes PERFECT faith and trust in God to NOT try and grab what little control we have every 11 minutes.
What happens when you don’t truly trust God’s sovereign control? You might try to take control yourself in harmful ways, through manipulation or domination. You might wear yourself out with busyness or frustration. You might make your security and wealth a bigger priority than God’s kingdom (Luke 12: 22– 31). Or you might worry (Philippians 4: 6– 7). We become preoccupied with the bills, and money becomes our main obsession. All because we don’t believe our Father knows what we need. Jesus goes straight to the heart of the problem— our little faith:
Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? … O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you. (Luke 12: 25– 31)
Great Truth #2: God is Glorious, so I don’t have to fear others. (October 2020)
The word FEAR has more than one definition or understanding. We can FEAR certain situations, experiences, or circumstances, but we can also FEAR other’s opinions of us. We all share a healthy need to be well liked, respected, valued, etc. but when we feel we are not liked, respected, or valued, we usually don’t associate the negative emotion we feel as Fear.
Each of us experience (1) the desire for approval and (2) the fear of disapproval running through our veins. Due to our sin, weaknesses, and perhaps traumatic past experiences, we might assume these things are merely consequences of the fall in the garden. But at the core, they’re not. God actually designed us to be motivated by these emotionally powerful forces. The desire for approval and fear of disapproval reveals who or what we love most… and what or who we FEAR most reveals who or what we LOVE most!
No one of us is immune to thinking about what others think about us! Some of us are more concerned about opinions of our outward appearance… others more concerned about opinions related to our conduct or behavior… others more concerned about what people think about us as a husband/wife, father/mother, or friend… others related to what people think of our intellect/intelligence/professional capacity… what people think about our financial situation…
Freedom comes when we start to discover that chasing the GLORY or accolades of another person is a waste of our lives. God is Glorious, ULTIMATELY, IT IS HIS VIEW OF YOU THAT COUNTS! His approval and acceptance of you is constant because of what Jesus did on your behalf on the cross. His perfect performance for our benefit, before His Father made us worthy, valuable, and accepted. Our works, good or bad, NEVER changes His opinion of us.
November 2020 Discipleship Rally: 4 GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT GOD: #3
OPENING UP: Make sure that you have introduced yourself to everyone at the table in case you don’t know everyone… and share a little bit about yourself. Be careful not to focus on WHAT YOU DO too much, but instead, talk about WHO YOU ARE with one another!
QUICK RECAP FROM LAST MONTH: The key to gospel change is the recognition that change takes place through faith. We become Christians by faith and we grow as Christians by faith. Faith recognizes that God is bigger and better than anything sin might offer. So, what’s the connection between faith in God and your Tuesday-morning struggles? Identifying and remembering these four liberating truths about God will help:
A failure to embrace one of these four truths lies behind most of our sinful behavior and negative emotions. Whenever I’m feeling a negative emotion it’s a signal to me that I need to look at what I’m not believing about God. The goal is to reach a place where automatically, before we try to DO anything when we feel those negative emotions rise up, we PAUSE……… and ask ourselves “what am I NOT believing is true about God and myself right now?”
For example, if I’m…
…angry about the way this country is going.
…frustrated about how the school systems are handling COVID.
…hurt because someone I think is a friend treats my unkind.
…afraid of what others think about me… and I can’t seem to stop.
…worried things are going to get a lot worse in the weeks ahead.
…mad that my employer doesn’t seem to recognize how much I contribute. …irritated or embarrassed by the behavior of my spouse or my kids
…insecure that people will see1me, notice me, or want me to do something scary …nervous that something I did or said might make me inferior to those around me
DISCUSSION QUESTION #1: Every underlined word above reveals a negative emotion we FEEL as human beings… someone in the group read through those NEGATIVE EMOTIONS underlined above… Then create a list below of additional negative emotions you might feel in a typical day… go ahead, get crazy and make the nightmare list of all the feelings that can sabotage you in life!
BIBLICAL EXAMPLE OF NEGATIVE EMOTIONS LEADING TO DESTRUCTIVE DECISIONS:
All of our sinful actions are born out of responses or reactions to negative emotions we feel. Look at these brief recaps of Genesis chapters 15-21.
● Abraham was afraid he would be killed, so he lied about who Sarah was, that his wife was his sister, and another man almost took her to bed
● Sarah was sad that she couldn’t get pregnant, not wanting to wait on God’s timing, she invited her husband to share his bed with a servant of theirs, Hagar, to have a child
● Abraham was envious of other dads with sons, and didn’t want to wait on God, so he welcomed the thought of having a child by any means possible.
● Hagar, when she was pregnant, was angry with Sarah that she used her, and treated Sarah with contempt
● Sarah was jealous since Hagar was pregnant with her husband’s baby and felt bitter because of Hagar’s disrespect towards her
● Sarah was heartbroken that Hagar gave birth to a son, Ishmael, so she hated Hagar and was jealous of her
● Hagar was proud that she could provide a son for Abraham, and treated Sarah harshly
● When Sarah finally got pregnant, and gave birth to Isaac, as God promised, she was proud and became more hostile towards Hagar
● Sarah was jealous of Abe’s attention towards Isaac, not wanting to share with Ishmael so she forced him to send Hagar and Ishmael away from them.
● Abraham was heartbroken to not father Ishmael, but ultimately gave in to Sarah’s demand and sent his son and his mother Hagar away from them
Just one simple story of our history found in Scripture, that can be traced back as the root of a conflict between the Jews and Islam still affecting life today. Their sinful actions toward one another were motivated by negative emotions they FELT, and chose to act on in destructive ways. So much of the suffering we experience years later can be traced back to our actions or reactions made in response to a negative emotion we felt.
Often our actions, or reactions (OUR SINS) are a response rooted in the FEELINGS we have in the moment… that we act on selfishly, and ends up causing great damage. We tend to look back and wish we DID something different in that moment, believing that our actions were the problem, but what we fail to see is that our BIGGEST problem lies in our hearts and where our FAITH is immediately placed after the negative emotion rises up. When we are NOT believing in WHO God says He is, or NOT believing I am who God says I am, then we react in destructive ways.
In all these examples, we don’t intuitively look at WHAT I AM NOT BELIEVING as the problem we need to uncover. We look at the person as the problem; my teacher, my boss, the president, a politician, the circumstance, ourselves… and if they would just BLANK or if they wouldn’t BLANK and if I could just BLANK then everything would be solved!
“Sinful acts ALWAYS have their origin in some form of UNBELIEF. Behind every sin is a lie. The root of all our behavior and emotions is the heart, what it trusts and what it treasures. We sin because we believe the lie that
-we are better off without God -that His rule is oppressive
-that we will be free without Him -that sin offers more than God does
We may not think or say we are better off without God, but our behavior, our thoughts and our responses tell a different story… We are given over to our sinful desires because we’ve exchanged or don’t know the truth about who God is….so we believe lies. —“You Can Change” by Tim Chester
Each of these TRUTHS we are discussing over the next 6 months are powerful tools to use when we FEEL these negative emotions rise up.
Great Truth #1: God is GREAT, so I don’t have to BE IN CONTROL.
DISCUSSION QUESTION #2: It’s easy to tell ourselves that “our Father is in control” but stories from our own lives and those in scripture that point us to who He is and what He’s done are what grounds our hearts in this truth. Use these story telling prompts below to spark conversation about God’s sovereign authority.
Prompts:
- Tell a story about a hard experience you went through,that you wish you could
change, but you see now… after… how God used it for your good?
- Share a story from the Bible that occurs to you where things went bad in the short term, but then later… God’s supreme power and plan revealed itself and in the long term He brought good from it.
- Share a story from your life where you’ve seen the greatness of God’s supreme power at work.
Great Truth #2: God is GLORIOUS, so I don’t have to FEAR OTHERS.
A biblical way to think about FEAR, is that of weight in your mind. What you think about from moment to moment occupies WEIGHT in your thinking. When you are watching a scary movie or a thriller, your mind is consumed with the weight of FEAR (or concern) for the main characters and how the story will end. When it comes to your relationships, different people hold different WEIGHT in your mind regarding their approval or disapproval of you.
Another biblical way to think about this FEAR, is the idea of GLORY. We give WEIGHT or GLORY to the opinions of others about us. There are certain people in your life that you hope think YOU are GLORIOUS (good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, successful enough, wise enough, trustworthy enough, etc).
For instance, most of us care about what our parents think of us. And to receive their disapproval stings deep and sometimes for decades, especially when we know we have failed in some way. It is human to desire the approval of others and not inherently sinful, but it can quickly become an all-consuming pursuit of our hearts to PERFORM for the praise of others because we want them to GLORIFY us with praise.
The Bible calls this the FEAR OF MAN, and it flies in direct opposition to the FEAR OF GOD. Both FEARS cannot be present. One will rule, and one will be a slave. This FEAR is not describing the emotion of terror because God is powerful and could destroy the universe with a word out of His mouth. Rather, this FEAR OF GOD explains the discovery of WHO He is in all His Glory and the high cost He paid to rescue us through the death of His One and only Son, so we
DISCUSSION QUESTION #3: What are some of the behaviors we might engage in that reveal we are living in fear of others (what behaviors reveal we want them to glorify and praise us)?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS #4 Our Father has ALREADY given us what we try hard to get from other people: acceptance, approval, value/worth, significance, belonging, & unconditional
love. Yet, we try hard every day to “ADD” to His work as we look for significance elsewhere, even though Jesus reveals our worth & value at the cross… it’s as if we’re saying to Him “you’re not enough.”
Our Father’s approval of us came at a great cost to Him, so why do we “settle for” or “chase” the approval of others at all? Can you share a story of a moment in your life when you truly grasped God’s love for you, not because of anything you did, but just because you are his child? Was it satisfying to have that realization? Did you experience a sense of clarity about how silly it was to try and find that approval anywhere else when it could never compare?
COMBINING THE TWO!
God is GREAT & GLORIOUS…
So… I don’t have to be in control OR fear others
Revisit the list of negative emotions above, both those listed, and the list you created. None of us like to “feel” those feelings. BUT, what if these emotions, often associated with bad situations, weren’t actually all bad. What if their presence were actually a biological GIFT from God within our bodies for spiritual freedom? What if the negative emotions you feel are a spiritual “warning signal” like a smoke detector, beeping to indicate that you are about to believe a lie.
Think about a cliff with a deep gorge below… on the left side is the negative emotion you feel that will either cause you to jump based on the lie or to walk across the bridge of what’s true to FREEDOM. The emotion is the ALARM to BELIEVE the Gospel and walk across… but in our flesh often we FEEL a negative emotion, and then we just JUMP off the edge in a destructive way life goes splat on the bottom… we yell, we scream, we fall apart, we feel worthless, we are empty, and we reveal our need for a Savior.
But if we allow the negative emotion to spark a spiritual ALARM it can be a reminder to choose to believe WHO God is, WHAT He can do/has done, and WHO we are as His kids. It is in believing what’s true that we find the freedom Jesus promised was possible.
1st example: God is Great, so I don’t have to be in control…
o How Anxiety Leads Us to Death:
When you feel ANXIOUS it can be an alarm for you that you are believing you are sovereign and you “should” have control, but since you obviously don’t have control you start to be overcome with worry. That worry persuades you to start to believe a lie that you cannot trust God, His love for you, His plan or timing, and whether He will deliver on His promises or not. So you JUMP off the cliff because of a LIE (I should be in control of this overcome with worry, and it is destructive.
How Anxiety Can Motivate Us Toward Freedom:
When you feel anxiety rise, you ask yourself… WHAT AM I NOT BELIEVING ABOUT GOD?… and you choose to walk across the bridge of TRUTH, that God has not lost control, but He is still in control… that you were never meant to be in control and that is a good thing… He is perfect… you are not alone… He has a plan… and He is with you even if it is hard… the bridge of what’s TRUE leads away from the PIT of worry, and across to FREEDOM
o The negative emotion of ANXIETY is a trigger… it will either trigger you to JUMP off the cliff emotionally, or trigger you to recall what’s true about your faith and find peace and freedom.
• 2nd example: God is Glorious, so I don’t have to fear others…
o How Insecurity Leads Us to Death: When you feel INSECURE it can be an alarm for you that you are believing you have to “perform” to a certain level so that other people approve of you. You are believing a lie that your confidence is rooted in your abilities/skills and you desire other people’s approval of you to give you value. You are doubting that God’s approval of you is enough, and being His son/daughter is more value than any you can ever attain… so your insecurity is present because you are trying to “earn” your own worth and value in the minds of other people rather than believing God’s acceptance of you is everything.
o How Insecurity Can Motivate Us Toward Freedom: When you feel insecurity rise, you ask yourself… WHAT AM I NOT BELIEVING ABOUT GOD?… and you choose to walk across the bridge of TRUTH, that Jesus’ life given for you is the most precious deposit of value your life could ever find… that you are fearfully and wonderfully made… that you belong to Him… that He has rescued you… that He made you as you are… with great skills, talents, passions, and a calling on your life… that what He “says” about you as His precious child who He has chosen to adopt is a GLORIOUS declaration of how much you are worth… and to chase anyone else’s attempts at defining you would be downright silly. Confidence then is the byproduct of an identity formed wholly as a child of God, because no one can steal or diminish your worth.
o The negative emotion of INSECURITY is a trigger… it will either trigger you to JUMP off the cliff emotionally, or trigger you to recall what’s true about your faith and find peace and freedom.
DISCUSSION QUESTION #5:
Can you look at that list of negative emotions back @ Question #1, and pick 5 of them to list below. As a group try to begin to identify the “ALARM” they can set off in your mind to trigger you.