[SPEAKER_00]: High praise podcasts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey everybody, this is Pastor Josh.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll leave Pastor here at High praise and I want to thank you for downloading today's podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know that this message is going to encourage and bless you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want you to open up your heart and receive with the Lord as for you today.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, grab your Bible, go to Hebrews, and then go to, we might look at first John, but go to Hebrews chapter number five.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hebrews chapter number five, and then we'll probably read a text from first John.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hebrews chapter number five, first John chapter number four, and I want to
[SPEAKER_01]: I do want to say this and I mean this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been coming home and telling my wife about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's not here a lot of times during the week because she's working.
[SPEAKER_01]: She sells real estate and it gets crazy during the summer calls.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you didn't know this, there's a lot of tourist and visitors that swing by.
[SPEAKER_01]: Panama City during the summer and think they want to buy something until they don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so but I've been coming home telling her that what Pastor Robert's been teaching on Wednesday nights about Psalm ninety one specifically.
[SPEAKER_01]: has been so life-giving.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just a breath of fresh air.
[SPEAKER_01]: You need to go back and hear that.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's going to finish part three next Wednesday, but you need to be here to soak it in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can I get a witness from somebody?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I thought before he finishes, before he shares about the rest of Psalm anyone, when I've been listening to the sermons, Peter talks about being stirred up by way of remembrance that when you are reminded of God's promises,
[SPEAKER_01]: that that has a way of stirring you up.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I love so much about even the prophetic ministry that happened tonight, and that always happens here.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just the prophetic words that I love, but it's the heart in those prophetic words.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those prophetic words are actually just a remembrance of how the Father cares for us, how the Father's always working to do good in our lives, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this teaching on Psalm anyone has been such a stirring up by way of remembrance.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when I hear such rich teaching on the promises of God, the goodness of God that God intends for us, it just comes alive on the inside.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a confession to make because when I hear preaching like this, I have a confession to make.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, my wife is here.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to amen aggressively.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I am by nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am by nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: A sexy beast.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am by nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: They would call it pessimistic, negative, doomsday.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the world's going to collapse.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am pessimistic by nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am negative by nature.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a terrible flaw of mine and God has got to help me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm always thinking about everything that's going to go wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: My daughter's the same way God helper.
[SPEAKER_01]: We overthink everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I don't overthink to the point where I can't sleep.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's never a problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: You get tired enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't care if the sun doesn't come up in the morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm tired.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I have that bent where I'm negative and I like to call it realistic.
[SPEAKER_01]: They call it pessimistic.
[SPEAKER_01]: They call it pessimistic just about every day of my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we'll go with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when I hear all of these promises and when I was raising the word of faith and I believe in the promises of God, when I hear all of these promises and then I find this conflict to not want to believe or this trending toward doubt or this trending toward unbelief or this trending toward anxiety.
[SPEAKER_01]: I often reflect on what all is at work in that dynamic.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you hear the rich promises that have been preached, but then we get flooded with our own doubts and concerns and anxieties and worries.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Jesus teaching on this is absolutely radically opposite of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus just tells everybody, take no thought for your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want you to think about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I grew up in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I grew up in church, they told me, you need a five-year plan, you need a ten-year plan, you need a fifteen-year plan, you need a twenty-year plan, you need to have a IRA, about time you're six.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know exactly what you want in the spouse, you need it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you just had to have all your life planned out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Jesus comes along and says, take no thought for your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: As a matter of fact, he says, don't even think about tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't think about what you're going to eat or what you're going to eat.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't be thinking of because your father in heaven will tend to these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And so years ago, I studied a stumbled upon this old Christian writer from about the fifteenth, sixteenth century, a great writer by the name of St.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ignatius.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Ignatius was known for what he called his spiritual exercises.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he specifically taught, and this is what I want to teach on tonight, in about fifteen minutes.
[SPEAKER_01]: He specifically taught on how to discern the spirits, how to discern the spirits.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this will all make sense in the end.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go to Hebrews chapter number five.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hebrews chapter number five.
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, we're going to start with John.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was just kidding.
[SPEAKER_01]: First John chapter number four.
[SPEAKER_01]: First John chapter number four, verse one, beloved do not believe every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they be of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Many false prophets have been going down to the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: By this you know the spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus is coming to flesh is God.
[SPEAKER_01]: every spirit that does not confess that is not from God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Ignatius takes this line and launches this deep spiritual teaching on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Much deeper than what you're going to get for me tonight.
[SPEAKER_01]: He takes this line and launches this profound way that Christians can discern their way through the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I promise you it's going to make sense here in the end.
[SPEAKER_01]: Beloved, believe not every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they be of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now go to Hebrews chapter number five.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hebrews chapter number five, verse number twelve.
[SPEAKER_01]: For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: You need milk and not solid food.
[SPEAKER_01]: For everyone who lives on milk, being still and infant is unskilled in the Word of righteousness.
[SPEAKER_01]: But solid food is for the mature.
[SPEAKER_01]: For those whose faculties have been trained by practice,
[SPEAKER_01]: to distinguish between good and evil, or the King James says, whose senses have been exercised to discern between good
[SPEAKER_01]: and evil.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who senses have been exercised.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of times when we talk about the word discernment, we frame it as a gift, a gift of the Spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is certainly a gift of the Spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, Paul listed in the text about the gifts of the Spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then here, there's another dimension to it where discernment is not only a gift, it is a skill.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is something that you develop.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Ignatius is going to help us develop that tonight.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I want to say just a brief idea, a brief introduction into how early Christians thought about, thought about our emotions, our thoughts, our thought life.
[SPEAKER_01]: What we would call our soul, how they thought about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, if you've ever, if you're like me, you ever had a moment where
[SPEAKER_01]: You get a report, you hear something, you were hopeful that something was gonna happen and then it fell through or it didn't work out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then in that moment, you just sort of feel this, this sense of worry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You just have this, this fleeting moment of anxiety.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or heaviness.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or if you're like me, you cared around for three days.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or you can have these fleeting moments of joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: You ever just out of nowhere just thought for a moment about the goodness of God in your life and just real honest to God, Joey and gratitude come up out of you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, now we all the time, we're Christians.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we all the time, while we're outside, praise God.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, like a real gratitude, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It just sort of comes out.
[SPEAKER_01]: or this real sense, you ever just, you ever just talking to somebody, and for whatever reason, or in my being weird, you just overwhelmed by just this, this fresh sense of love and care for this person.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, that's never happened ever in your life, not for your spouse, children, nobody, never happened for your kids, you're like witch kid.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have these moments where anxiety or fear or love and gratitude enjoy and peace,
[SPEAKER_01]: where these happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: The early church would call that movement in the soul.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were very reflective.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were very keenly aware.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were keenly aware about what was happening on the inside of us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Day by day, even sometimes the moment by moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Am I living in peace right now?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or am I living in anxiety right now?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or if you're like me, you could be on that roller coaster all day long.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: These movements of peace, joy, or heaviness, and worry, or, I mean, you see this all the time like in sporting events, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: All of us Alabama fans were at peace for years, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Nick Sabin left, and the thing that we feared the most has come upon us, like Joe,
[SPEAKER_01]: And then all of our friends are like, Job's friends, what did you do to make God mad at you?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's these movements of the soul, these movements of anxiety or joy or happiness or it is those movements that Ignatius said, you'll have to learn to discern.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I hear somebody like Pastor Robert preaching the promises of God,
[SPEAKER_01]: If I sent some moving me, that says, well, that's not for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have to distinguish between that spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not the spirit of the God, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or when I hear a prophecy for Will Owen, and I consider Will a dear friend.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I don't know all these stories that they talk about, brother.
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to hear about fifteen years ago, Will.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lord Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, I'm not going to say that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been said.
[SPEAKER_01]: The way Ignatius would talk about it is good spirits bring peace, bad spirits bring anxiety and concern.
[SPEAKER_01]: Learning to distinguish between those two things, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you can watch the news in dependent upon what you think about the end times.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, oh, Lord, my kids are gonna die.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or it's like, oh, this happens every three months.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But we have to learn to discern between what is happening in us in that moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Things are moving in our hearts and in our souls.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're being moved to fear, or we're staying in peace.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're being moved to worry, or we're staying in joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And Ignatius says these things can be fueled by good spirits or bad spirits.
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, sometimes they can just be us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They can just be us.
[SPEAKER_01]: But even then we have to learn to discern between us and God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because we can feel something so strongly, even if it's worry and fear and anxiety, that we can get it mixed up and believe that's God telling us to be worried and fearful and anxious.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's never a moment where God calls us to worry fear or anxiety for any reason.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: There is never space for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is space to be disappointed, but even in being disappointed, that doesn't have to break our spirits.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can still believe that we serve the God of victory, like we sang tonight, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna hear him going somewhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just getting warmed up.
[SPEAKER_01]: So discernment means we learn to distinguish between what's, well, first of all, we become aware
[SPEAKER_01]: of what's going on in us.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've actually heard people say, not to pastor Robert's message, but about messages like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, somebody's proclaiming the goodness in the promises of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've had people tell me, well, that's never going to happen for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have enough faith.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have enough of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have enough of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they think they're being faithful and humble, but in reality they're being deceived by a bad spirit.
[UNKNOWN]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So we have to become aware of what is happening in us and then we have to understand where it's coming from and then we have to take action by resisting the bad spirits and embracing the good ones.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not to the meat of the message.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm saying, yeah, you with me?
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ignatius knew that the fruit of the Spirit of God is love.
[SPEAKER_01]: joy, peace, God help us all, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, and he knew that when the Spirit of God is at work in our life, we are staying there.
[SPEAKER_01]: We stay in love when the good spirits are at work.
[SPEAKER_01]: We stay in joy, in peace, in patience, in kindness.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when we leave peace, that's bad spirits.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a line in the book of Mark, I'm sorry, the book of Luke, when Jesus goes into a city and they don't honor him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the disciples say, Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know where they get this story, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They get it from a lie-john-top-amount karma.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Jesus rebukes them and says, you don't know what spirit you're up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you're not staying in love, whatever's motivating you there, you're not staying in peace.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're staying in anger and reaction.
[SPEAKER_01]: And frustration, rather than peace and kindness.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't have time to get this, but Jesus is actually rebuking what Elijah did.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not only do you not know what spirit of your love, neither did Elijah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't worry, I know that's difficult.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll keep moving along.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, and so forth.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when the Spirit is at work, he's keeping us there.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, this is the part I want to get to, and I have to hurry.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to show you a couple of practical ways that our thinking becomes habituated, habitual, it becomes practiced,
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's influenced by bad spirits and we don't even know it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We just think it's personality, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or my mom was like this, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or we'll look at the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: How else are you going to have peace?
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We explain away all of these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I want you to think about some of these ways that we learn to think that's completely broken and that keeps us from the promises of God that he's talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Number one.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the ways that wrong spirits shape our thinking is, number one, we jump to conclusions.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're quick to jump to conclusions.
[SPEAKER_01]: With no explanation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And not only do we jump to conclusions, we jump to the worst possible conclusion.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And we call that discernment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I just sense it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not the spirit of God at work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whenever somebody does something and you don't understand why they do it, there's a gap between what they did and your knowledge of what they did, what they did.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a gap there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can feel that gap with suspicion, which will just create more distance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or you can feel that gap with trust, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You ever saw somebody post it on Facebook and be like, what has happened?
[SPEAKER_01]: Have they lost their minds?
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes the answers, yes, they sure have.
[SPEAKER_01]: But sometimes there's something deeper at work, or sometimes we misread it and misunderstand what they were saying from the job.
[SPEAKER_01]: But even in our misunderstanding, we have no problem spreading that misunderstanding.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And not only does this stir-up strife in our hearts, we spread that strife, and that is motivated according to a saying Ignatius by a bad spirit, because we jump to conclusions.
[SPEAKER_01]: We become mind readers, which means we're always concluding that everybody is thinking the worst possible thing about me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pastor Robert walked through the lobby and he did not even speak to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even think they want me here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the Lord has told me to go somewhere else.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can feel that so strongly.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you can fill it in your bones, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And we don't understand, we're not able to discern what that is.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not able to distinguish the source of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so instead of resisting it, we welcome it with open arms, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Not only does he not care for me, nobody cares for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even Jesus does it love me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even my old mama don't like me, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And the point is, is we are being motivated by a bad spirit because our senses aren't exercised to discern these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or we just become fortune tellers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We automatically decided that everything that can go possibly wrong will, and that's just our life.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is something I struggle with.
[SPEAKER_01]: My name's Casey, and I am a pessimist.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it gets worse, the later on in the night it gets.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know how your reasoning capacity falls asleep before the rest of your brain doesn't, you're like, what if me and my kids end up starving to death?
[SPEAKER_01]: We just moved down here and Lindsay's starting a new job and they're probably going to turn to life a crime and I'm going to have to bail him out of jail and we're going to be living under a bridge or in Pastor Robert's garage.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this is going to go sideways.
[SPEAKER_01]: The renovated part of the garage with air conditioning
[SPEAKER_01]: Preferably.
[SPEAKER_01]: We project negativity.
[SPEAKER_01]: We project wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: Give her people talk about their kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lower God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Help me, Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like Lord have mercy.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like Pastor Robert says the worst thing you can do is give them low expectations.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're like waiting for the cops to call.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we don't, we're not able to discern that's not the spirit of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: That movement toward anxiety and worry and fear, that's not the spirit of God at work.
[SPEAKER_01]: We keep going.
[SPEAKER_01]: Second one, emotional reasoning.
[SPEAKER_01]: When we are convinced that our emotions are telling us the truth about reality and about people,
[SPEAKER_01]: You ever had this happen, you ever had like a weird interaction with somebody.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't even say the rest.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's kind of off-putting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're like, what was that?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you start thinking about it?
[SPEAKER_01]: What was that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I know by going to talk to me that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you start having imaginary arguments with him.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll tell you what, if the Lord opens the door for me to say something.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, driving down the road.
[SPEAKER_01]: And another thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, you just get hot.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just do a plan that's called that Tabasco sauce going up and down.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your body just get hot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Start breaking out on your neck.
[SPEAKER_01]: Imaginary Conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just just hot, boy, just heat it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Go home, start telling your whole family.
[SPEAKER_01]: If they say something else, I will take my earrings out and we don't be in the front yard and kind of go have to break us up because I don't want to play.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't get like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't act in Hollywood.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like just looking straight forward, like praise the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I see how some of y'all drive around here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Y'all wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Lord, if it's got a Georgia tag on the back, y'all need delivered.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then you have another encounter with this person and you bring it up and they're like, oh, I didn't mean that at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so sorry, I didn't know I even came off that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was the furthest thing from my mind and you're like, I've wasted four days fighting with you in my car, all the way to and from work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Only to find out that I was being stupid because I thought that my emotions were telling me the truth about reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you have to learn to discern that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Growing up, those that are mature have their senses exercise to discern between good and evil.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to learn to discern that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a bad spirit at work.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not the spirit of God driving you to talk to yourself in your car like a psycho.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's just put that rule in the ground.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you catch yourself in the mirror going off at somebody that's not with you or even if they are with you, that's not the spirit of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your emotions are not telling you.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the best things we've ever told people in church is to pay attention to your emotions because for so long we told people to deny the fact that they even had emotions.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you aren't able to grieve.
[SPEAKER_01]: You aren't able to be sad.
[SPEAKER_01]: You aren't able to experience discipline.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the worst things we ever told people to do in church is pay attention to your emotions.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because then we think it is the be all in all of all truth.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got a bunch of these.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Ignatius had fourteen rules of discernment, fourteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: We would be here to my third grader, graduated high school, if I was going to share all that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I won't give you one or two more.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ways that are thinking get shaped by bad spirits, and we don't learn to discern it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it will keep us
[SPEAKER_01]: Not just from the promises of God who keep us from that yes, but it'll keep our inner world in turmoil, just tore up all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: No peace, no rest.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're supposed to have complete rest, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're supposed to have complete peace.
[SPEAKER_01]: Only the wicked are not supposed to have rest, I'd say, is it?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're supposed to be completely at rest.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're supposed to be asleep with Jesus on the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another one.
[SPEAKER_01]: We get these mental filters where we pick out a single negative detail and we dwell on it exclusively.
[SPEAKER_01]: We do this in marriage.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's been loving and faithful, a wonderful mother and a wonderful wife for a hundred and twenty-five years.
[SPEAKER_01]: But she can't cook.
[SPEAKER_01]: How's the Lord expect me to stick around?
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We dwell on it exclusively to the point that all of our reality becomes darkened by this one negative obsession that we cannot get past.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've most of the most of the marriages that I have ever counseled, that failed.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was not something big.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was not some right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have been some big ones.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't misunderstand me.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can tell some stories should be like, you mean people do that?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not just in the movies.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're in the PTA meeting with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: But most of them are individuals who get this unbearable microscope on one another and they can never shake it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They become as fixated and they dwell on this one thing that darkens their whole reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we can't discern the source of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can't discern the source of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a bad spirit at work.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's always helpful for you to get to the end of your day in marriage and just ask yourself the question, how much fun was I to live with today?
[SPEAKER_01]: How much fun was I to live with today?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're looking at me funny, sweet and sweet.
[SPEAKER_01]: It calls with me, it is a fiesta.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my Spanish coming out, Brian.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another one.
[SPEAKER_01]: All are nothing thinking.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything is black or white.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no room for gray.
[SPEAKER_01]: No room for compromise.
[SPEAKER_01]: We think that's being strong.
[SPEAKER_01]: But instead, it's being immature.
[SPEAKER_01]: You should talk to these young people about their ideas of relationships.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is fascinating.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm to the point with this generation, I don't know that I believe in pre-marriage counseling anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because trying to explain marriage to them is like trying to explain advanced calculus to a wino on a bar stool.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're like, oh my God, I have this ache, I have this ache, and I can't get past it, and there's no way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this person loves God, they have a career, they have a job, but they saw him run across a parking lot with a backpack alone, and they're like, oh my God, y'all think I'm kidding.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think he loves Jesus with all of his heart, and he'll be a wonderful father, and a wonderful husband.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he swims a little weird, and I just cannot live with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a real one I heard by the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I tell the truth, K.P.
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been the subject of much counseling at E.B.F.
[SPEAKER_01]: during the week.
[SPEAKER_01]: All or nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Enter out.
[SPEAKER_01]: No compromise, no growth, no maturity.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all the people in here have been married fifty years or like, I don't even care if they can swim.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my list of priorities that didn't even make it on the sheet.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll give you this last one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I'll shut up there.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a good place to stop.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I can't.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have to learn all of these beautiful promises that Pastor Albert's been teaching us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our minds have to be renewed because our minds
[SPEAKER_01]: will be shaped either by bad spirits or by the spirit of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so Paul even uses some militant language about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: You take it captive.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you hear that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a prisoner or a war of war, you drag that thing under submission to the Word of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how you resist it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's how you keep peace until the promise comes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stand upon your feet.
[SPEAKER_01]: I went way longer than I expected to.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hope that made sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: If not, guard your thinking.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that pastor Robert is why we would have preferred you prophesied us on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lift your hands to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: Father, thank you so much for your people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for your great, your exceedingly great.
[SPEAKER_01]: What the text calls, you're exceedingly great in precious promises.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're so thankful for your goodness and your care for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to dwell in the secret place of the most high so we can abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then every promise that you have for us, Lord, we trust you for those to be made to be, to come to pass in our life, to be real in our lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bless your people in Jesus' name and the church said Amen.
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[SPEAKER_00]: God bless you and have a great week.