Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life // The Rewire Principle // Guest Speaker Edgar Ramos

And if you're here to hear something from the Word of God this morning, can I get an amen?

That's right.

That's right.

Well, I'm excited to be here with you guys this morning.

My name's Edgar.

I'm the Next Steps Director here at FCC.

I want to give a thanks to Pastor Nate for giving me an opportunity to preach, although, I must say, I must say, last time I preached was Cinco de Mayo.

You got the Mexican guy to come preach on the Cinco de Mayo and you know, do you guys know what?

Today is Mexican Independence Day.

That's right.

So, hey, I'm so excited to be here today as we're continuing on our Change.

Your Thinking Change your Life.

It's all about how we think and how we can apply the Word of God to change our lives, and today we're going to be talking about the rewire principle.

Last week we talked about the replacement principle, how we replace the lies that we tell ourselves with God's truth, and today we're going to go a little deeper into that.

Now, what am I talking about when I say the rewire principle?

Well, let's see what the word of God has to say for us.

In Romans, chapter 12, verses one and two, the Bible tells us this.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

And here we go Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed.

By what?

The renewal of your mind.

But by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

The Bible here talks about the renewal of our mind, how we can be transformed, how we can see what is the will of God for us, what God wants for us in our life.

And we can see that and be good and acceptable and perfect.

But how exactly do we renew our minds?

How exactly do we rewire our minds here?

Well, it all depends on how we're wired, because how we're wired can make a ginormous impact.

How many of you guys have heard of the 737 MAX incident a couple years ago?

How many does that ring a bell?

737 MAX?

Well, good, not too many actually.

So what the 737 Max is is a type of plane.

Usually, if you fly commercial, you fly either a Boeing plane or an Airbus plane.

And back a couple years ago, airbus came out with a brand new design for a plane, where their engine was 15% larger and consumed 50% less fuel.

So a bunch of airlines were already pre-booking and pre-buying all these planes so that they could save a few bucks right on fuel.

It makes sense.

Well, of course, since Boeing is the direct competitor of Airbus, they wanted to go and they wanted to make their own plane.

So they made their engines 15% larger as well.

There was an issue Usually Airbus planes are higher up on the ground compared to Boeing planes.

So when Boeing planes made their engines 15% larger, whenever it would go forward it dragged a bit on the ground.

So what they decided to do was that they moved the plane engines just a smidge up a couple feet, a couple feet, so that it basically glided over the terrain, all right.

So they made it up a little bit and they thought oh, nothing's going to happen, we just move it up a smidge.

Well, when they ran it through the aerodynamics test, they found out that because of the plane, of the weight, it just shifted Just a few feet.

It shifted up.

It made the tail of the plane go down in the air.

And you can't fly a plane like this.

You got to make sure it's straight when you get at cruising altitude.

You got to make sure it's straight.

You can't fly like that.

So what they did is they said well, this is kind of an embarrassment.

We got to put this plane out as soon as possible, we got to fill in the gap and make sure Airbus doesn't get these sales.

So let's put a little piece of software into the plane that makes it input that whenever it senses the tail going down, it corrects the plane and makes the nose go down instead, so it balances it out.

Sounds good on paper, right?

Well, they didn't really tell anybody about this because, like I said, it was an embarrassment to them.

They didn't want to admit that they made a design flaw.

So they shipped out the planes just like that and they told pilots.

They told pilots if you ever flown a 737, you can fly a 737 MAX without any basic training.

And what they did is investigations came out later they offered pilots just a 20-minute iPad course and then they said you're good, go ahead, fly the plane, right.

But then disaster struck.

These planes got shipped out and all over the world not just in the US literally everywhere.

One crashed in Indonesia, killing everybody on board, and then another one in Ethiopia crashed, everybody on board dead.

Two fully loaded passenger planes went down.

Well, investigators, they saw that they were both 737 MAXs, they were both new planes, and so they went and they recovered the black boxes of the planes that showed all the data, and what they found was disturbing.

They found that when the plane took off, right when the plane was going up and they were getting ready to get into the cruising altitude, all of a sudden the plane just went down.

Well, the pilots tried to correct it.

Right, they pulled up on the plane.

But no matter what they did, when they pulled up the plane and they got back to equilibrium, the plane just kept on going down and down and down and the pilots didn't know anything.

They didn't know what was going on.

Imagine, being in that cockpit, that, no matter what you do, you try to pull it up and the plane just keeps going down and down and down.

You keep pulling up.

Imagine being a passenger on that plane.

Right, they didn't know what was going on.

And eventually, eventually, because they had to wrestle so much in the air in that pivotal time when the plane was going up, the planes crashed, killing everybody on board.

Now, of course, boeing was sued and they had to go back and they had to fix everything.

I'm sorry if you got a flight later this week right on a 737 MAX they're still out there.

By the way, they fixed all the software issues, I'm told, so hopefully it's all good now.

But that goes all to prove how something is wired makes a huge impact.

Now, us as human beings, we're all wired with certain tendencies, with certain habits, with certain things that we just do because that's the way that we do them, right.

And some people they shrug their shoulders and say, ah, that's just the way.

I am right, I just speak in a rude manner because that's just the way I am.

Don't like it.

Sorry, you got to take it me that way, right?

So we all have things that we do, but we all have tendencies and vices and things that we have that we know hurt us and hurt the people that we love.

And it can be difficult to get out of that.

It can be difficult to go against the way that we're wired.

Because we're wired at such a young age, right, do we pick up things from our parents, from observations about the people that we grew up with and the way that we found out things work in this world.

It can be difficult to get out of that, but nothing is impossible with God.

Nothing is impossible with God.

We can get victory over the way that we're wired if we decide to rewire our brains, because if we want to win the war in our minds, we have to be willing to rewire our thought patterns, rewire our brains.

Now, this is going to be a process, and this whole series, this whole series that we've been talking about change your thinking, change your life is talking about this exactly Breaking apart the mental shackles that we have, getting out of the habits that we've been succumbing to and living a life of peace and victory.

It's not just about behavior modification.

This is about changing the very way that we think, and because all our actions, they start with a thought, we're going to start exactly with that.

So how do we rewire our brains?

First of all is this we have to identify our ruts.

We have to identify our ruts, and what is a rut?

What is a rut?

A rut is a path that's created from repeated usage.

We have to identify them.

That's the first step to name it and to realize our goal and to realize what exactly we're dealing with.

Now I call them ruts because that's exactly what they are.

Think of when you go hiking in Rockville Road, when you think, go in Pena Dobe, you're on that path that they designed for you to go, but then you look to your left, you look to your right and you see a little patch of dirt where no grass is growing.

What is that?

That's a path that was created from repeated use.

Hikers went up those paths and down those paths and eventually no grass grew on them.

Think of when you're home and you got a door that just drags a little on the ground, given enough repeated usage.

What's going to happen?

You're going to see some scuff marks there.

You're going to see some markings there.

If you don't repair that door, if you don't do anything about it, you're going to get yourself a little rut on your floor.

I got a picture up here.

Think of when you go and you go in the middle of.

If you've ever been to Yosemite or Yellowstone, you see something like this.

Right, you see that cars are going in the mud.

Eventually, those tire tracks, they create a rut and if there's any amount of little rain that's on there, what's going to happen?

It's going to sink.

It's going to sink.

So ruts are ways that we go unintentionally are pathways that we've created unintentionally, that we walk over and over again that eventually become a pathway.

Our brains, they work in a very similar way to these ruts.

Our brains, our human brains, always try to go down the path of least resistance.

If something has worked, that's the way it's going to be.

If we try to do something and something accomplishes the goal that we've been trying to do, that's exactly how we're going to do it and if we do something enough times, that's going to be just the natural way our brains go.

Think of water going down a stream.

It's not gonna go uphill, it's gonna go downhill, down the way of least resistance.

And all of us have created neural pathways in our heads, in our minds, in our thoughts, from the very way that we grew up, because of observations that we've seen from our parents, because of the way that we've seen school and how the dynamics in that work.

We all have tendencies, we all have habits, we all have just the things, little quirks that we do.

But some of those ruts are dangerous.

Some of those ways that we do and how we treat people and how we treat ourselves can be harmful to them and can be harmful to us and it can be very, very difficult to break out of it.

Even people who are like this with Jesus, who are neck and neck with Jesus, suffered through this human condition.

The Apostle Paul in Romans, chapter seven, says this for I do not the good that I want, the Apostle Paul, the guy who went and preached to the whole world.

He found it difficult to do good deeds that he wanted to do.

But the evil that I do not want is what I keep on doing, those bad habits that he had.

That's what he found easy to work with because of his human, sinful nature.

That's the way that we all are, because of the way that we've grown up, because of the way that we've seen our parents.

This is just the way that sometimes we can be wired.

What does this look like?

What does this look like?

Well, maybe when we were a little kid and we scraped our knees, our parents offered us an ice cream cone and when we got broken up with by our first boyfriend or girlfriend in high school or whatever right, your mom took you to Denny's and that habit of reinforcing you did something bad happen to you.

Let's fill in that void with food.

Maybe that created a pathway in your head where, whenever you feel stressed, whenever you feel depressed, you fill that void with food.

Maybe it looks like men, that the only emotion you ever saw your father express was frustration.

It wasn't manly to cry, it wasn't manly to say I love you, it was just manly to be angry.

And, like it or not, that neural pathway has stuck with you.

Maybe the only time that you ever felt heard in your household was when you raised your voice, when you yelled, when you got angry, and that's the only time your parents have ever listened to you.

Well, guess what?

That might have created a neural pathway in your head.

Maybe you didn't have a lot of stability growing up.

You didn't know who you could trust.

So now, whenever you have a new relationship, a new friendship with somebody, you second-guess yourself.

You think, well, do they actually like me, or are they just putting up with me?

I got to think about what I say to them.

I got to make sure that I'm not being overly annoying.

That's a neural pathway that's created in your head.

Maybe you grew up in poverty, where you had government cheese growing up every meal.

And now you have money, you have a good job, but it's your money, it's your things, it belongs to you.

You have difficulty being generous.

That's a neural pathway.

Maybe the only time that you opened up yourself, you opened up your very soul and your heart to a friend or to a family member, to a significant other.

They used it against you later in an argument.

You know what that's going to make you do.

That's going to make you shut up like a turtle and never share with anybody ever again.

That's a neural pathway.

Maybe the only time that you felt recognized by somebody was when you did something.

The only time somebody gave you a pat on the back was when you accomplished something.

So now, unintentionally, like I said, these ruts are all unintentional.

You equate I'm going to be someone when I do something.

The only time that I am important, the only time when I am acknowledged, is when I do a certain thing.

That can be so, so toxic.

All these ruts are so destructive.

They hurt us and they hurt the people that we love, but above all, they can just be so, so tiring trying to climb out of that rut, but then you just keep falling right back on your butt.

It's just the rat race is just so, so tiring.

So how do we break out of it.

Our first step is that we identify it, we call it out.

If we have enough self-awareness to realize why we do something not just what we do, but why we do it, not just the branches of it but the roots of it, about why we do it that's great.

But if we struggle with figuring about why we do something, you know how we can know.

We can ask our loved ones, we can ask our friends, our parents, our family, because they know.

And it's going to take enough honesty and enough vulnerability to be willing to ask Because, like I said, it's not about the branches, it's about the root issues.

For example, you might bite your nails.

I know I struggled with this as a kid.

I struggled with a lot of anxiety as a kid.

I bit my nails.

I even got to a point where I started to like pull my own hair out, I bounced my leg and something like that.

That's the symptoms.

That's the symptoms, but the root of it is anxiety and a fear of loss of control of my life.

And, like I said, getting to that point where you identify your root issue not just the problems, not just the symptoms, but the root of it is going to take a lot of self-awareness and a lot of vulnerability, but that's the first step.

The first step is to identify what you deal with, because we're not talking about behavior modification, no, no, no, we're talking about going deeper than that, because unless we decide to break the pattern, our lives will continue to move in the wrong direction.

It's like trying to walk up an escalator that's going down.

Like imagine going to the mall and you see somebody just trudging along in there and it's just keep going down and they just keep going down.

That's exactly what is happening to us if we don't do anything about the ruts that we're stuck in.

We might try, we might try our best, but eventually we're just going to keep going down.

So, due to the natural pathways that our brains have developed, change is difficult, but it's not impossible, because nothing is impossible with God.

So first step is to identify our ruts.

Second of all is this we have to build new trenches.

Build new trenches.

So we talked about ruts, how they are unintentional pathways that are created.

But what's a trench?

A trench is something that is intentionally created to create a new pathway.

Think about when you're on the beach and you see those kids on the shore right.

They're making a line that the waves go in so that they can fill up a little pool of water.

That's a trench right.

Think of World War I right, trench warfare.

On the French and Eastern Front they had these trenches that were created.

Why?

So that they could move people, so that they could move supplies and create a new pathway.

That's exactly how we have to be thinking.

These ruts that we've been stuck in for a long time and maybe even since childhood, been stuck in the same rut, are unintentionally created.

That's just the way that we grew up.

That's just the way that we've been.

But these trenches, they're going to take some shoveling, they're going to take some work, they're going to take some determination, but when we open them up, it's going to create a new pathway.

A rut is formed in the mud and eventually becomes a nuisance, even a danger.

It's unintentionally created.

But a trench is intentionally created to provide a necessary resource.

It has a specific problem and solves an existing issue.

And when we learned about last week how we replaced the lies that we tell ourselves with the truth of God's word, that's exactly what we're going to be talking about today.

These ruts are lies that we tell ourselves are ruts that we are made to believe.

I am blank, I am angry, I am anxious, I am fearful, I am greedy.

These are lies that we tell ourselves.

But when we replace it with the truth of God's word, that's when we open a new pathway.

When we replace these thought patterns, not just actions, it doesn't start at actions, it starts with the here, it starts with the thoughts.

When we replace our thoughts with the truth of the word of God, that's when a new pathway gets opened up.

So what does this look like?

What does it look like?

Practically?

Right, I've been talking about concepts, but like boots on the ground.

What does it look like?

I'm glad you asked.

We're going to talk about it right now.

All right, so here we go.

We talked about fear and anxiety because of finances.

Right, we talked about fear and anxiety because of finances.

And sometimes you know, like I said, you can look at your checkbook, you can look at your statement and you can think about oh, I don't know if I can even give anything this month, I don't know where my next paycheck's going to come from, I don't know if I'm going to have enough money to go and do X, y, z, and you can start feeling anxious, like the heaviness in the chest, like the mental cloud.

You start feeling it.

Well, the Bible says this and my God will supply every need.

It doesn't say every want, let's be clear.

But God promises.

This is a promise to supply every need of yours, according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

So we've identified our issue.

My issue is that I am very fearful and I'm very anxious about my finances.

I feel like I have to be in control of it.

I feel like I have to get a tight grip of it or it's going to slip out of my fingers and it just consumes me.

Well, what does the Bible say?

The Bible says that God will supply every need.

Now here's where we can get creative with it.

We build a declaration.

What a declaration is is something that takes either the very words of the scripture or the principles of the scripture in a way that we can easily memorize it and we can easily digest it.

So, for example, with this we can say this my God is an abundant provider who will meet every need.

So how do we live this out?

I'm looking at my checkbook.

I'm looking at my bank account statement.

I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling heavy, I feel like I don't know what's going to go on White.

When I start feeling that way, I pivot.

I pivot Instead of going down the rut and keep walking down it.

And keep walking down the rut of oh, I don't know how I'm going to do this.

I feel so anxious, I feel so fearful.

I go and I pivot, I build that new trench of my God is an abundant provider who will meet every need.

You catch yourself in that thought.

When you catch yourself in that thought, you open that new pathway of saying my God is an abundant provider who will meet every need.

We talked about food as a coping mechanism.

Maybe that's your issue.

Well, the Bible says that you must honor God with your body.

The Bible also says Lord, my strength and my fortress, my refuge in times of distress.

Maybe you can tell yourself this when I'm stressed or in times of distress, I turn to God, not food.

When you feel yourself going down that pathway, like I said, when you feel yourself going down into the rut again, when you feel yourself I need to go to the freezer, I need to go to the fridge, I need to go by the drive-thru and if it's a toxic behavior for you.

Instead of going and doing that, you catch yourself in the thought and you open that new trench, that new pathway and say, when I'm stressed or in times of distress, I turn to God, not food.

Maybe you deal with lust.

Statistically, pornography is not just a man issue, it's a woman issue as well, and it is so.

It is so ingrained just now in our culture.

It is so easily accessible, more than ever before in our lifetimes.

Well, what does the bible say?

For this is the will of god, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality.

Well, how, how can we digest it?

How can we tell ourselves something?

Maybe you tell yourself this lust is not my master.

God has redeemed me and given me pure thoughts.

So when you catch yourself, like I said before, it becomes action, when it starts up here in the head, when you're alone in your bedroom with your phone and nobody knows what you're doing, lust is not my master.

Lust is not my master.

God has redeemed me and has given me pure thoughts.

Because before it becomes an action, before you start walking up and down that rut, you start with a thought, you start with a desire, you start with a want and you catch yourself in that moment and you pivot with a thought.

You start with a desire, you start with a want and you catch yourself in that moment and you pivot to the word of God and the principles of the word of God and you tell yourself lust is not my master, god is.

God has redeemed me, god has given me pure thoughts.

Maybe you deal with self-worth issues.

Maybe you deal with thoughts of issues.

Maybe you deal with thoughts of I'm so dumb, nobody likes me, I'm a waste of space, I don't have any friends, nobody cares about me.

Maybe you just struggle with yourself and it can be so, so tiring, just walking up and down that rut over and over again.

But when you catch yourself doing that, tell yourself that blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places.

Tell yourself this I am who God says I am.

When you catch yourself insulting yourself, when you catch yourself saying mean things about yourself, tell yourself I am who God says I am.

Because God says I am blessed, I am fulfilled and I'm called to make a difference and what God says is true for my life.

And if God says it it's true, I can believe it.

So, instead of believing the lies that you tell yourself and walking up and down the rut, walking down that dark path, pivot and build a new transfer yourself, based on the word of God, and say I am who God says I am.

I gotta say, though, this is different from enabling claimant.

This isn't speaking the word of truth into existent.

This isn't just a I speak it and therefore it's truth.

You know what you're doing here.

This is exactly what the Bible calls meditating on the word of God.

You know, the Bible says actually to read it like once or twice.

That's it.

The Bible says to read the Bible once or twice, but the Bible says to to read it like once or twice.

That's it.

The Bible says to read the Bible once or twice, but the Bible says to meditate on it hundreds, thousands of times.

And what does meditating on the word of God mean?

It means thinking about the word of God, thinking about the Bible, keeping it in your head, keeping it in your heart throughout the day and just thinking about that.

And that's exactly what we're doing with here.

Instead of allowing yourself to go down the dark path, you pivot and you start thinking about the word of God and the promise of the Bible is this that when we hide his word in our heart, sin will be kept from us, we will go down the right and the narrow path and we'll have a light into our feet and a lamp into our path.

We're gonna know the right way to go when we hide the word of God in our heart and when we think about it.

Now, if you need help, we're finding what God has to say about whatever issue that you're dealing with.

I wanna resource you, I wanna equip you, because I want you to do this right.

I want you to be able to have victory over what you're dealing with.

To give you three resources First of all, is what I used the YouVersion Bible app.

Literally, all I did was to help me prepare for this message is.

I went on the YouVersion Bible app.

I typed in lust and bam, the first verse that's on there is what I use today.

So, whatever you're dealing with, when you open up the Bible app, there's a literal button right there that says search.

You can type in any word that whatever you're dealing with today, and you're going to find verses on there.

Guaranteed it's easier today to find out what the Bible says about whatever issue we're dealing with than ever before in any era of human history.

All we got to do is download an app and hit search.

There's also gotquestionsorg.

If you need to go a little deeper, maybe you find a verse, but you're like itching your head.

I don't know what it means.

Go on gotquestionsorg, search it up.

It'll help you clarify things.

And something that I personally like to use is I use openbibleinfo slash topics.

I use this a lot when I prepare messages and when I'm preparing studies, because it has a lot of Bible verses for whatever topics you're dealing with.

So I would encourage you don't just identify the issues you have, but don't just identify the issues you have, but build that new trench based on the word of God, because what we put in our minds comes out in our lives.

What we put in our minds comes out in our lives.

If we put in our minds the lies that we tell ourselves, if we put in our minds the ruts that we've been walking to for years, ever since childhood, that's what's gonna come out in our lives.

But if we put in our minds the words of God, that is truth, that is holy, that is sincere, that is what, exactly what God wants us to learn about him and about us.

That's going to come out of our lives too.

And last of all, is this repeat it till you believe it.

Repeat it till you believe it.

What we've got to do is we've got to repeat these principles until we believe it.

Unfortunately, this type of message is not a one and done.

This type of message is not a okay, I'm going to go do this when I get home, and then I don't have to think about it ever again.

It's not like that.

Rewiring your brain is a process.

Rewiring our thought patterns is going to take time, it's going to take determination, it's going to take the power of God in prayer, but the outcome of it is a relief that you would not imagine, a victory that you would not imagine.

You know, the Bible tells us this in Romans 8, for those who live according to the flesh, which is our carnal desires, the things that we have, those bad habits we have to set our minds on, those things are the things of the flesh.

But those who live according to the Spirit, set their what?

Set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

For to set the mind on the flesh is death, and when you're stuck in that rut for years and years and years, when you've been stuck in there in the pits, it feels like death.

It feels like there's no hope.

It feels like you're just stuck in there and that's just the way you've been and that's the way your parents made you and you're just done.

But there is hope.

There is hope in the word of God.

When you set your minds on the things of the spirit, when you set your minds on the principles of the word of God, what do you have?

You have life and peace.

How many of y'all want life and peace?

How many of y'all want life and peace?

I want it in my life.

So I'm gonna set my minds on the things of the spirit.

I'm gonna set my minds on the word of God.

If you wanna change your life, you've got to change your thinking, and that's how we do it.

So just to review real quick how do we rewire our brains?

How do we find hope?

First of all, we've got to identify our thought ruts.

We've got to identify them, call them out for what they are, and not just the behavior, but the roots, not just what we do, but why we do it.

Second of all.

We've got to build a new trench based on God's word, not just self-help, not just my ideas, but based on what God says about himself and about myself, and build a new thought pattern based on that.

And when I feel myself going into the thought not just the action, but the thought of that thought rut, I pivot and I turn and I go to that new trench.

And then, finally, is this repeat it till you believe it.

You've got to keep it in your mind, you got to keep it in your heart, you got to pray about it.

This is going to be a process, but I'm willing to go through this process with y'all because I really believe it's going to work and I've seen it work.

I've seen it work in my life.

I remember it was my sophomore year of Bible college.

I was laying in my bed and it was like 2 am.

It was too late to talk to anybody.

I couldn't call my mom because I didn't want to Imagine getting a call from your kid at 2 am.

You're going to start thinking about like the worst thing happened.

I couldn't talk to any of my roommates because they were all snoring, falling asleep.

I just remember the only thing I saw was my moonlit room, the dark, pale blue light of the moon just coming through the curtains, and I was breathing really, really fast.

Something that I've struggled with my whole life are anxious feelings.

Like I said, I had an era where I kind of pulled out some of my hair, I bit my nails.

If you ever sit next to me at church, you're going to see my leg rot, going at a thousand miles an hour.

It's just the way I've been.

I can't really point to anything that happened in childhood to me, but that's just the way I've been.

Ever since I was a kid, ever since I was a child, I've been anxious.

But the root of it and, like I said, this takes a lot of vulnerability, a lot of honesty with yourself is that I don't like it when I don't feel like I'm in control.

I don't like it when I don't feel like I have the reins on my life or in a situation.

So I felt out of control at the moment because there was a lot of things that I felt were coming on after college that I had no control over.

I thought to myself and my breathing was so heavy, so rapid.

It was what if I don't have a job after I graduate from Bible college.

What if nobody wants to hire me?

What if, like, okay, well, if nobody hires me, I don't have any money.

How am I going to pay for an engagement ring?

How am I going to marry my wife?

How am I going to provide for a family A man's supposed to provide?

So, like, how am I supposed to do that?

But what if I'm not called to be a pastor?

What if I'm a sham?

What if, like nobody, I'm just, I don't know what I'm doing right here.

I don't know what I'm doing, and those thoughts were covening in my head constantly.

But then I remembered something.

We had a speaker come and preach for us earlier that week and, to be completely honest with you, I don't even remember his whole message, but I remember his text.

He preached from 1 Kings 19.

And the Bible story that goes along with that is, to put it shortly, this there was a prophet of God called Elijah.

He just got a huge victory over these prophets of a false God, and then they wanted to kill him.

So they chased after him and Elijah was isolated.

He thought to himself I'm alone, I'm depressed, and the Bible even says he was suicidal.

But God tapped him on the shoulder and said go up this mountain.

I got something to show you.

So Elijah went up the mountain and God sent a firestorm, but God was not in the fire.

God sent an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake.

God sent a huge gust of wind, like we're having out there today, but God was not in the earthquake.

God sent a huge gust of wind, like we're having out there today, but God was not in the wind.

It wasn't until Elijah quieted himself that he heard a still small voice, and that's when God reminded him I am with you.

I have people all around you that are with you.

I have people that are there with you.

And what I remembered from that message was this God is with me.

So you see, I identified the issue, I got the word of God and now I digested it in a way that I can remember God is with me.

So that night I remembered that that God is with me.

So I told it to myself, I literally whispered it to myself.

So I didn't wake anybody up, but I literally whispered to myself over and over again, instead of going down the path of being anxious and having all these questions about not knowing what to do because I was out of control.

I said God is with me and he is in control.

So I said God is with me, me, god is with me, god is with me, god is with me.

And I fell asleep.

Well, that became my battle cry through college, because there was a lot of transitions, a lot of things going on in college and I can testify that this is what I had in my mind, because when I graduated in December 2016, without a job, my worst fear there at that time I didn't have one.

I kept interviewing and nobody really wanted to pick it up because of some circumstances I was in.

But I remember God is with me and I can testify that to the truth.

This year, this message has been years in the making.

You can go on my social media, on my Instagram, on my Facebook.

Scroll down all the way to December 2016.

You're going to see a post right there when I graduated, picture of the sun coming up over the horizon, and at the end of the caption you know what I put God is with me.

So when I graduated college without a job my worst fear at the time, when I had no control over it I didn't feel anxious, I didn't feel fearful.

I knew God was in control.

Why?

Because I remembered that God is with me.

I want you to have that victory.

I want you to have that story.

I want you to experience the life-giving peace that it can be from transitioning from that thought rut over to a new pathway based on the word of God.

I want you to have life and peace.

Today, let's pray to that effect.