So I Was Thinking...

I'd like to welcome everyone to Bridge Gospel this morning.
I'm really glad that you're here with us.
I'd especially like to welcome you if you're a first-time guest.
I know it can be strange to walk into a new church.
So just make yourself at home.
There's coffee in the lobby if you'd like to grab some.
I'd also like to welcome everyone who is with us online.
I believe that God will bless you right where you are.
Hallelujah.
So I think we just have one announcement.
I think the women have an event this week.
Is Michelle going to come up and talk about that?
She's right there.
You coming?
You're not sure?
You want me to talk about it?
I don't know anything about it.
All right.
You see how much of a plan we really have.
So this month has two events, actually.
So this Tuesday will be Flourish.
We'll meet again from 645 to 830.
And our guest speaker is going to be Pastor Jesse.
So it's going to be fun.
We'll do a speaking and break out kind of like last time.
And then also we have the community event.
This month is going to be, we're going to be making three cards and a bookmark.
So it's very important that you guys go on.
Terry was very sweet and put a little, what do you call that, QR card.
She made it real simple for us.
Even I can do it.
So that says something.
So sign up.
You don't have to put personal information, just your name and that you're attending.
And if you have guests, bring them along.
Just have them register as well because I want to make sure we have enough for everybody.
And that will be the 24th of October, Saturday, from 5 to 7, I believe.
So.
Cost?
No cost.
So.
But I do need registrations.
Please, please, please.
Here we go.
Awesome.
Could you guys show your appreciation for Michelle?
She works very hard behind the scenes with the women's ministry, putting events together,
checking up on people.
Amen.
All right.
So I'm going to pray for the offering.
We're not going to pass a plate or a bucket or put anybody on the spot.
We got a box in the back.
You can do your thing there.
If you write a check, just make that out to Two Rivers Church.
They have so graciously helped us establish this church here in Apache Junction.
Or you may give online.
So, dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the many ways that you provide for our needs,
that you open up doors of opportunity in the form of jobs and businesses.
And, Lord, that everything that we ultimately have belongs to you and comes from you,
and it is entrusted to us.
So, Lord, we just thank you for the opportunity to worship you by giving back.
And we know that it may leave our hands, but it never leaves our life.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
Hallelujah.
So, for thousands of years, human beings have looked at the moon.
And in Psalm 8, what are you guys laughing at?
So, today's message is called, So I Was Thinking.
Thank you.
So, we've looked at the moon.
In Psalm 8, David is talking about this.
And he's considering the heavens and the moons and the stars.
And he starts to marvel at everything that God had done.
And then he asked this question, you know, who is man that God is mindful of us?
And even though he made everything that we see, he still cares for us.
And I think it's fascinating that as humans, we look at things and we wonder.
And for thousands of years, we've looked at the heavens and the moon.
And here's David looking out.
And along the way, somebody said, well, like, I kind of want to go there.
You know, I want to see this thing.
I want to touch this thing.
And I want to pick the dirt off the moon and feel it in my hands.
But the problem was we couldn't go there.
We could see it.
We could imagine it.
But we could not go there.
We didn't have the technology.
We didn't have the knowledge.
We maybe didn't even know how far away it was.
And for thousands of years, that's all that we could do is to look and to wonder.
And then we said, well, maybe we could go there.
And we started to build things.
And we started to explore.
And we started building rockets and thinking about going to the moon.
And, you know, someone along the way, I think, well, what could go wrong?
Well, apparently a lot.
But what interests me about it is for years we looked at it and it was so far away.
And we said, well, we could never get there.
And at the time, we were right.
You know, but imagine if that turned into, well, we'll never get there.
You see, that's a whole different statement.
You know, one is a description of where we're at today.
We can't go there.
But then there's this, we will never get there.
And that's a prediction about the future and what we're capable of.
And they're not the same things.
It was an interpretation.
So I was thinking, you know, I wonder how often do we do the same thing in our own lives?
You know, we look at something in our lives and we see what's happening.
And we see what we have.
We see what's in our hands.
We see the things that we don't have and we come to kind of a conclusion about what we can do.
And then maybe we don't always realize that our conclusion isn't the same as the facts.
You see, we have a tendency to assume that because we can see something and we can take in all this information,
that we can understand what our options and what our possibilities are.
But like the moon, that isn't necessarily true.
You see, our eyes give us information, but our mind tells us what that information means.
And two people can look at the same idea, the same idea and say, well, I want to go to the moon and say, well, how could I do that?
And the other person might say, well, that's impossible.
Or two people can experience the same failure in life and one says, well, I failed.
What can I learn from this?
And the other person says, well, I failed, therefore I am a failure.
It's the same chain of events, but it's a completely different interpretation.
Or one person experiences rejection.
Maybe they applied for a job and they didn't get a job.
And they said, well, that didn't work out.
I'm going to try another one.
And the other person might look at it and say, well, nobody wants me.
Or one person loses a person or something very important to them.
They say, well, loss is hard.
I've lost something.
And the other person might say, well, my life is over.
Now, the loss is real.
The rejection is real.
The failure is real.
But somewhere between what happened and what we concluded and decided about what happened,
we've brought our interpretation.
And oftentimes in my own life, I don't realize that I'm doing this.
And I can quickly go from observing and saying, well, I think.
And then all of a sudden I'm saying, well, I know.
And my grandma, she used to have a phrase for this.
She called it stinking thinking.
I thought it was silly as a child.
But I think she had something.
You know, everything that goes through our head, every thought that we have, isn't necessarily true.
How many of you said, well, I'm never going to get this to work.
I'm never going to amount to anything.
Who says that?
Or nobody would ever give me the chance to do this.
Or I'm too old.
Or I tried that and it didn't work.
And, okay, when did that become this thing didn't work to nothing will ever work.
You see how it escalates?
You know, the other day somebody asked me, how are you doing?
I said, I'm good.
It's kind of the default answer in America.
But don't you have all these problems?
Well, yeah, I got problems.
Do you have problems?
Yeah, I got problems.
But I'm still good.
Are you lying?
No?
But shouldn't you feel this way about your life?
Shouldn't you be discouraged?
Shouldn't you be upset?
Shouldn't you be bitter?
Are you lying?
No?
It is well with my soul.
Okay, what more do you want to know?
Like, who told you that I'm supposed to feel a certain way because these things are happening on the outside?
And who decided that because something happened on the outside that somehow that gets to decide what happens on the inside?
Come on.
Who decided that because I failed at something that I'm a failure?
Who decided that because somebody hurt me that I should be bitter?
Now, I'm not telling you I don't get discouraged.
And I'm not telling you that I don't grieve.
Sometimes life is going to be terribly painful.
And sometimes all you can do is sit down and cry.
But that's different from deciding that what has happened to you gets to determine everything about you.
And I think there's an important question under all of this is that how do you narrate your own life?
Your circumstances, your failures, your past, the people who told you you weren't good enough, the opportunity that didn't work out.
Why do those things get a vote?
And there's something that started to bother me as I wrote this.
It's that we can become so convicted that our interpretation about ourselves is correct that we won't even consider another possible explanation.
And then we get this little voice that rises up and we start to defend our conclusions.
Well, maybe I am a failure.
Maybe these people are right.
Maybe there is no future for me.
Maybe I can't find a job.
Maybe there is no hope.
And we start to protect and defend this thing that we built up inside of us.
And we start to organize our life around this idea.
And sometimes we build our entire future around something that we don't even really know.
Now, I want to ask, you know, I think that we've all reached conclusions about our own lives.
Of who we are and what we could do and what we're capable of.
What's possible.
What we think is going to happen next.
And I think some of those things can be correct.
But how do we always know?
You know, I was thinking.
You know, when I was young, when I was four or five years old.
Or maybe when you were young, when you were a little girl, a little boy.
You had ideas.
You had dreams.
And you could imagine yourself doing things that at your age you could never do.
Going places you've never been.
Or building something.
Or you didn't have any money.
You didn't know anything.
You didn't have any experience.
You didn't know anybody that could help you.
You didn't have the skills to do this thing.
And you didn't even know what you didn't know.
But somehow you could imagine doing something.
And as you grew up, you learned.
And you worked.
And you made mistakes.
You met people.
You developed your skills.
You acquired resources.
And you became capable of doing things that as a kid you could never have done.
But then there's this strange thing that happens that as adults our capacity grows.
And yet somehow our imagination for our futures gets smaller.
You see, the little boy couldn't build what he could imagine, what he could see.
But then the grown man is capable of building things, but he can't see them.
You see, what happens to our imagination?
You know, our capacity is growing.
And I'm not saying that every childhood inclination and dream was a good idea, believe me.
But what is it about our wisdom that somehow makes our world get smaller?
What if it was our disappointments pushing up against us?
You know, what if it was people that laughed at us?
What if it was the things that didn't work out that started to shrink our imagination about what we could do?
And somewhere along the way, maybe just wanting less was a little bit safer.
You see, experience can produce wisdom, but can also bring us to some really limiting conclusions.
You know, we tried something.
It doesn't work.
So maybe I'm not good at that.
Maybe we asked somebody for help and they said no.
And I said, well, maybe nobody wants to help me.
And these experiences bring us to conclusions and they start to shape our lives and our outlook.
You see, for thousands of years, we could not go to the moon.
We could not do it.
But then we started learning.
We learned how to put things into space.
Then we put a person up there.
Then we learned how to keep them alive.
I don't know which one happened first.
But we learned how to maneuver and connect things and navigate and eventually to orbit the moon in one problem at a time.
And nobody suddenly said, well, let's just move the moon closer.
You see, we became more capable of reaching what was already there the whole time.
And I wonder in us, you know, what has changed about our capacities since we decided that something was impossible?
What do you know today that you didn't know 10 years ago?
Who have you met?
What have you learned?
What could you do today that you couldn't do then?
And what are you still calling impossible?
And you may say, well, I don't know the right people.
And I say, well, maybe you don't.
Do you even know everybody in this room?
Do you know what they know?
Do you know what they've done?
Do you know who they know?
What they've learned?
You see, some of us will sit next to people for decades and have no idea what they've done or what they're capable of.
And our connections to them are there for a purpose.
And you don't know who you're going to meet next month.
You don't know what you're going to learn in the next year.
And you don't know what opportunity could become available.
And yet, we can get to a place where we've already decided, well, this thing is never going to work.
This vision is never going to work.
Based on what?
Where did you get that information?
You say, well, I know it won't work.
Only God can know that.
We know things.
We can know what happened before.
We can know what resources we have today.
We can know what we've tried.
But we take information and we reach conclusions about a future that we've never experienced.
You don't have to pretend you know what will work either.
It's just making the same mistake in the other direction.
You don't know what will fail or succeed.
You just don't know.
And I think what's interesting about the way that we think is once we've decided something won't work or won't happen in our lives,
we can build a whole explanation around that conclusion.
Well, that door closed.
See, I knew it.
I knew those people were going to reject me.
I knew they would say no.
Or maybe an opportunity.
Oh, that looks a little bit too risky.
And, you know, maybe someone comes along and encourages.
Well, they don't really understand.
They don't know how limited I am.
They don't know what I've had go wrong in my past.
And at a certain point, we can get to a place where there's no evidence that could even change our mind.
Because sometimes the explanation isn't producing the conclusion.
The conclusion is producing the explanation that we have.
And every road in that explanation leads to the same place.
Don't try.
Don't risk.
Don't hope.
Don't find out.
Just stay where you are.
And you may have convinced yourself that maybe you're just being realistic, being an adult.
You're being a mature person.
You see, realism acknowledges what we know.
And humility acknowledges what we don't.
And our pride can say, I know what only God can know.
And we can act as if every little bit of our experience is all that there is.
As though everything we've ever learned is all that there is.
But let me ask you this.
What do you believe about yourself that you've never really examined?
And that you've never really submitted to the word of God?
What do you believe about your future?
What do you believe about God can do?
What do you believe about God is doing in the people around you?
And what conclusions have you reached that you would somehow struggle to defend?
And what have those conclusions cost you?
I think that's the trouble with experience.
Now, there's a reason, you know, some of these conclusions are very convincing.
Some of them have a lot of evidence behind them.
Real evidence.
Real pain.
Real failure.
Real cost.
Because you did try.
You did trust someone.
You did take a chance.
And sometimes those things happen over and over again.
So this isn't just a question about good information.
The question is, what are we doing with it?
You know, I was talking about the space program and rockets.
And, you know, a lot of things went wrong.
Engines failed.
Guidance systems failed.
Equipment broke.
Humans made mistakes.
And, you know, when you ask the question, well, what could go wrong?
I don't think that's a stupid question.
Hey, how about you get in this thing?
What could go wrong if I got in this thing?
I think that's a fair question.
It's an extremely important question before you climb in.
But imagine if that was the only question.
We wouldn't get very far.
Because identifying what could go wrong is only a part of it.
We also have to learn and take risks and try things and discover what is possible.
You know, Apollo 8, it went around the moon and it came home.
It didn't land.
Was it a failure?
No.
Apollo 9, they tried a little more stuff.
Apollo 10 did everything but actually land.
But it was not a failure.
And sometimes the things that we attempt to do, they teach us something.
Sometimes they teach us what does work and doesn't work.
Sometimes they teach us who's really for us.
Sometimes you accomplish what you wanted but it was just a small part of it.
And sometimes we do fail.
And the question is, what does that failure mean?
Does it mean that our attempt failed or does it mean that I myself am a failure?
Does it mean that every opportunity in my life is over or is that God can send another one?
Does it mean that something terrible happened?
Or does that mean something good could never happen again?
Because those are very different conclusions.
Proverbs 24, 16 says,
Indeed, a righteous person will fall seven times and then get up.
But the guilty will collapse in calamity.
So this describes a righteous person who falls repeatedly.
One time, two times, three times, four, seven times and gets back up.
This proverb is talking about adversity.
It means that righteous people encounter trouble.
How many of you know that is true?
Amen.
The righteous man can suffer calamity.
He can be knocked down.
And the text doesn't sit there and pretend he never hits the ground.
But he doesn't stay there.
He gets up again.
His trouble was real.
The fall happened.
But his story was not over when he hit the ground.
You see, what happens next?
What happens after the failure?
What happens after the disappointment?
What happens when you get knocked down?
You see, we can dream our way all the way to the ground,
to failure, and not imagine getting back up.
But Proverbs says that the righteous man gets up again.
Why?
Why?
Why?
Endurance?
That's a good answer.
I'm thinking even more.
Even more.
He gets up because what he believes about God.
What he believes about redemption.
What he believes about second and third and fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh chances.
And his view of God and his view of what God is doing in his life
is what makes him righteous in the first place.
Because the person who fell and stayed down
had no belief that God could do anything with him again.
Do you see it?
And I want you to notice something that you can imagine
the whole catastrophe,
the whole, everything that could go wrong.
And not see yourself getting back up.
I'll go back to that little boy for a moment.
The one who could just imagine,
imagine things that he didn't know how to do.
And he grew up and he learned and he worked
and he acquired all these knowledge and skills
and somewhere along the way his dreams maybe got a little smaller.
And I wondered, well, did he stop dreaming?
But he didn't.
You see, we all imagine things that haven't happened.
Good things, bad things.
We still try to predict the future.
We try to make wise choices.
Some of us lie awake at night wondering
what's going to happen tomorrow.
You can build a whole world of possibilities
and a future in our heads.
Of conversations that haven't happened.
Problems that haven't happened.
Failures that haven't happened.
Imagining what people might say.
You imagine losing the things that you have.
Losing an opportunity.
And a lot of times we can imagine a lot of disappointment.
Embarrassment, embarrassment, pain.
And I challenge you that if this is where your mind goes,
you didn't lose your imagination.
You see, the dreamer didn't die.
We just learned to dream about something else.
See, how does a little boy go from imagining
so many possibilities to being an adult
that imagines so many things going wrong?
And here's what's ironic is we become more capable.
We learn more.
We have more resources.
But somewhere along the way,
our imagination goes from building a future
to building fear.
You see, worry requires imagination too.
And some of us, we've experienced horrible things.
Some of us have been terribly hurt.
It's understandable to be a little bit concerned.
But I'm asking whether the danger you've experienced
is the only future that you can imagine.
And whether what happened before
has become the lens for what you think about everything
that's going to happen next.
Whether you've started treating possibilities as certainties.
Because there's something deeper.
We're not merely making predictions about the future.
We're making judgments about ourselves.
And we're making judgments about who God is.
So I was thinking, you know,
I know how this story goes.
I know what happens when I try.
I was thinking that I know what kind of person I am.
And I was thinking, well, I think I know what God is doing.
And sometimes I just stop examining those thoughts.
And they're just, well, that's just a part of who I am.
That's what I believe.
And that, I think, brought me to the most uncomfortable thing.
He says, what if I'm wrong about myself?
What if I've misunderstood what all these things in my life mean?
What if I've confused a failure and made that my whole identity?
What if I've accepted someone else's judgment
about what I'm capable of as if it were my own?
Or maybe, what if the truth about my past isn't flattering?
Then what?
You see, you can't solve that just by coming up with a more pleasant interpretation.
So I was thinking, you know, I can be wrong about what I believe,
but I can't fix that
by simply deciding to believe something else
because that thing could be wrong too.
So I needed something more reliable than my own conclusions.
And that brings me to the thought of, well, who gets to tell me what's true?
You see, I think that the deepest problem is that when we misunderstand ourselves,
we really misunderstand God.
And sometimes we elevate our judgments and our criticisms about ourselves
into things that maybe God actually says or thinks about us.
And they must be true because of our experiences.
And sometimes we do the same thing about our identity and our whole life.
And I think that Scripture calls us to look again.
Romans 12, 2 says,
So at this point in Romans, Paul has spent 11 chapters.
He's talking about all the things that God has done.
He's talked about God's mercy, his righteousness, his salvation.
And then in chapter 12, he says,
Okay, here's how you should live in light of these things.
And Paul tells us not to be conformed to this world,
but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
That means our mind needs renewal.
It doesn't mean we need more information.
It doesn't mean we need more education or more experience.
It's the mind itself that needs renewal.
And Paul says that this transformation,
it enables us to discern the will of God,
of what is good and what is pleasing to him.
And in verse 3, he tells us not to think more highly of ourselves than we should,
but to have sober judgment.
He wants us to think truthfully about ourselves.
Paul's immediate concern is how we understand ourselves
and our place in the world and among God's people.
But notice the principle is that we are not the final authority
on how we see ourselves.
Our judgment needs to be shaped by the mercy and the truth of God.
This isn't some, you know, positive thinking mechanism,
some seminar at the Holiday Inn.
You know, this isn't pretending your problems aren't real.
This isn't looking at the mirror and saying,
Wow, I'm great.
Paul isn't teaching us to replace one fantasy with another.
He's teaching us about a mind that is transformed in response to God.
A mind that learns to judge and discern things rightly.
And that must mean that our own judgments,
well, maybe they're not very good.
Because I think about, you know, what happens when I get this wrong
and I experience something and I interpret something.
I reach a conclusion.
And I start treating that conclusion as though it has this authority
in my life.
And we can get to a place where in our own minds,
well, we insist, well, you know, this is never going to work
or I'm worthless or I'm unforgivable
or I'm incapable of change.
I can't quit.
And then I've decided what kind of person I am.
I've decided what I'm capable of.
I've decided what my future can look like.
And sometimes I become so convinced of my own conclusions
that I won't reconsider.
Not even when there's a good reason to.
And Romans 12 is calling us to something different.
It's calling us to a transformed mind.
It's calling us to sober judgment.
Learning to discern what is pleasing to God.
So that means that I'm not the final authority
in what's true about me or anyone else.
That doesn't mean we stop thinking,
but it means that we start thinking differently.
We examine our conclusions against the word of God.
We test our assumptions against the word of God.
We recognize the limits of what we can to know.
And we learn to measure our judgments
against something that is greater than ourselves.
You see, some of us have been evaluating
today's opportunities using what we learned of yesterday.
Maybe you've been evaluating your future
using the weakest and worst moments of your past.
And maybe you've been looking at the resources
and you say, well, this is all I've ever had.
And maybe your fears are becoming predictions.
I encourage you to look again.
Not because the facts don't matter,
but our interpretation may not be the whole truth.
And, you know, maybe your interpretation
is too optimistic.
Maybe you're convinced you're right about everything.
I've never done that.
Maybe you've decided everyone else is the problem.
You see, it cuts both ways.
We don't get to invent the truth.
But we don't get to overrule what God said.
You know, sometimes the truth challenges
the things that we fear.
Sometimes it challenges the things that we want.
Sometimes it tells us we're capable of more.
We sing that song that we're made for more.
The question is,
has that allowed my mind to be renewed?
And am I willing to receive that into my life?
Even if I have to admit that I was wrong.
Now, I have to ask, you know,
we spend a lot of time talking about, you know,
what could go wrong?
And I think that's a legitimate question.
But what could go right?
What if the person that you're needing their help,
what if they said yes?
What if you discovered you really are good
at this thing you want to do?
What if somebody came into your life
who wants to help you?
What if you took the next step
and discovered the next thing and the next thing?
What if you failed and you got back up?
Listen, I'm not promising everything is going to work.
Maybe it won't.
But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
But at least now you can ask another question
and consider what you haven't thought about before.
You can look at your assumptions.
And you can filter those things through the word of God
and what he says about you.
So I want to encourage you
to never let a day go by
without doing something
that your future self will thank you for.
And whatever it is that God has put on your heart
that makes you hesitate
or fear or hold back,
just take a step.
Do it.
Call somebody.
Learn something.
Have a conversation.
Ask somebody for help.
Apologize.
Forgive somebody.
Just take a step.
Take care of something you've been avoiding.
And our whole next decade of your life
is going to be built around moments like this.
And, you know, when I was in business,
sometimes people were just getting started on.
They asked me,
well, how did you get where you're at?
Well, it was a lot of ordinary Mondays
and Tuesdays and Wednesdays
and Thursdays and Fridays
and 20 minutes here
and a conversation there
and this decision
and one more attempt
at getting up one more time.
And I believe that every single one of you
has it in you
because God put it there.
And you don't have to know
that everything is going to work
to take the next step.
And maybe the thing that you're afraid of,
maybe it won't work.
That's okay.
Do it scared.
Remember the moon?
Apollo 1 through 10
didn't land anywhere.
It wasn't their assignment.
And maybe you've been expecting everything
to accomplish everything all at once.
Don't laugh.
You just have to take the step.
Get back up.
The first time.
The second time.
The seventh time.
For thousands of years,
we looked at the moon.
And now we can hold it in our hands.
I can't promise the thing
that you're thinking about will work.
And I can't promise that
you won't fail.
I'm asking something a lot simpler.
I'm asking,
do you actually know
what's possible
with you
and God?
You see,
some of us have been looking
at our lives
through yesterday's information
and limitations.
And maybe your circumstances
are real,
but I think that all of us
could go back
and look at the conclusions
that we've made about ourselves
and our families,
our spouses,
our kids,
and our lives.
And maybe we could give
those things another look.
You know,
I think it's really interesting
how AI,
how artificial intelligence
has divided people.
And you have this one camp
that's saying,
well,
this is the end of the world
and they're buying cases of spam
and getting ready
for the world to end,
right?
But then you have
this whole other camp
of people that's saying,
well,
this isn't the end of the world.
This is the beginning
of a new one.
So you have one group
of people over here
that's looking at the circumstances
and what's happening
in their life
and the uncertainty.
And they are burying
their dreams.
People are literally
getting ready
to live out of a bunker.
That's crazy.
Don't build a bunker.
But then there's other people
that are building things
that they'd never imagined before.
Things that they wanted
to build for 20 years
that they weren't smart enough.
They didn't have access
to the right information.
They didn't have the time.
But now they are building
their dreams.
Because as a man
believes in his heart,
so is he.
And there's a limit
to what we can change
about ourselves.
You see,
we can learn new skills,
new habits,
and accomplish remarkable things.
But the one thing
that we cannot do
is make ourselves right
with God.
And we can't manufacture
our way into
a better relationship
with God.
And I think this is
where the gospel
is so much greater
than anything we've talked
about so far today.
2 Corinthians 5.15,
it says,
So that those who live
should no longer
live for themselves,
but for in him
who died for them
and was raised.
So then,
from now on,
we acknowledge
no one,
get this,
from an outward
human point of view.
Wow.
Paul is talking about
how we regard people
and how we look at people,
how we understand them,
how we evaluate them,
and I think,
how we evaluate ourselves.
And this isn't because
Paul went to a seminar
at the Holiday Inn.
You see,
he's thinking about
the death
and the resurrection
of Jesus.
And Paul says
that those who live
should no longer
live for themselves,
but for the one
who died
and was raised for them.
And he isn't just saying,
well,
we should have a better opinion
of other people around us.
He's saying that
because Christ died
and rose again,
that something about
all of us
has fundamentally changed.
You see,
we can't understand
people who belong
to Christ
from a human perspective.
We cannot look
at other people
who are in Christ
and not take into account
what God has done
for them
and in them
and what God
could do through them.
And I think
we look at ourselves
from a human perspective
and we don't look
at ourselves
in a way that says,
well,
what could God do
in me and through me
because Christ died
and he was raised
and he lives in me?
How could I look
at myself
from simply
a human point of view?
A failure.
I can't.
Christ changes
the categories.
He changes
the basis
of our judgment
and then in verse 17
he tells us
he tells us why.
He says,
so then if anyone
is in Christ
he is a
new creation.
What is old
has passed away.
Look,
what is new
has come.
And it's not
someone who finally
learned to believe
in themselves
or accomplish
everything that they wanted.
It's anyone
who is in Christ
is a new creation.
And Paul,
he tells us
how this happened.
He says,
and all these things
are from God
who reconciled us
to himself
through Christ
and who has given us
the ministry
of reconciliation.
In other words,
in Christ,
God was reconciling
the word to himself
not counting people's
trespasses against them
as he has given us
the message
of reconciliation.
This isn't something
we've accomplished.
This is something
that God has done.
And I wonder
how many of us
still look
at our lives
or parts of our lives
through that old lens
when God has already
done something new.
And we can interpret
our lives
through things
that happened
20 years ago.
Through a failure,
through a bankruptcy,
through a divorce.
But that's from
a human perspective.
And we look at ourselves
the way we used to be
instead of the way
we could be.
And, you know,
sometimes it's almost
like God is trying
to put this crown
on our head
and we keep
knocking it off.
And God says,
you're mine.
And we say,
well, I'm worthless.
And the thing falls off.
And he says,
you're forgiven.
He says,
you don't know
what I did.
And the thing
falls off.
You're a new creation
in Christ.
But you say,
I'll always be this way.
And it falls off.
But you see,
those things
do not get
the final word
about you.
Jesus does.
And this is why
the work of Jesus,
the finished work
of Jesus,
matters so much.
Because the deepest
change we need
is not something
that we can manufacture
through positive thinking.
It is something
that God has done
for us
through Jesus.
We don't get to
declare ourselves
innocent.
Jesus does.
We don't get to
invent a more
flattering story
about ourselves.
But we don't get
to overrule
what Christ
has done.
And if God
has forgiven you,
your guilt
and your past
does not have
the final word.
and if he's
made you new,
your identity,
your old identity
is not who you are.
You see,
we don't get
to invent the truth,
but we don't get
to overrule it either.
And I think
this is why
what Paul wrote
was so extraordinary.
He's not
asking you
to imagine
that you're
someone different.
He's telling you
what God
has done in you.
So I want to just
kind of reflect
on everything
we've talked
about today,
the way that
we see ourselves,
the conclusions
that we come to,
the things we believe,
the future
that we imagine.
And then listen
to what Paul says,
if anyone is in Christ,
he is a new creation.
The old
has passed away.
And he says,
look,
see,
behold,
the new has come.
so maybe
we should look
again.
Maybe we should
look at our
circumstances.
Maybe we should
look at the
possibilities.
Maybe we should
look at our
failures and look
again at our
future.
And look at
what God
has done in
Christ.
The one who
died for you.
The one who
rose again.
The one who
makes people
new.
The invitation
is right here.
Be reconciled
to God.
You can know
that you have
eternal life.
And if you
know that,
you know that
you don't have
to let your
past
control your
future.
You don't have
to let your
failures become
your identity.
Because God
has done
something new
in you.
And today
is the day
to start
seeing yourself
in light
of being
a new
creation.
That the
old has
passed away
and the
new has
come.
Amen?
So dear
Heavenly Father,
we thank you
for what you
have accomplished
that we could
never accomplish
for ourselves.
That you have
made us new
creations.
That you have
opened up a
way for us
to be made
right with God.
That we can
know you.
And that we
can know
that we're
on our
way to
heaven.
I pray
for each
person here
that has
dreams and
goals and
ambitions that
have been on
a shelf for
20 years.
Lord, I
pray that
those things
get dusted
off,
brought into
the light,
and re-evaluated.
Re-evaluated
as a new
creation,
not as a
failure.
not as
someone who
couldn't,
but as a
new creation,
Lord.
And I
pray against
fear that
paralyzes.
I pray
against the
past that
reminds us of
where we've
gone wrong.
And Lord,
I thank you
that you have
made each and
every one of
us a new
creation in
Christ.
And I pray
that our
future is no
longer determined
by the sin
and the loss
and the pain
of our past.
So Lord,
we thank you
for what you've
accomplished for
us.
And Lord,
I pray that we
can identify in
that and that
we can walk in
that all the
days of our
lives.
And all God's
people said,
Amen.