Internal Voices

You're so worthy, Lord.

As he continues to play softly, just lift your hands and tell the Lord, I'm ready for your word today.

Whatever you have to say to your people today, God, let it penetrate even the hardest of hearts.

Let those who are broken find their strength again.

Those who have been sad, they find joy returning to their hearts.

Those who have been distracted, they begin to find their focus again.

Those who have lost the desire to even be here, they find a place in your arms today.

That every lie of the enemy that has been trying to whisper in their ear, may it dissipate at the mention of the name of the Almighty God.

We rebuke the attack of affliction on this church.

We rebuke and bind every disease.

In the name of Jesus.

In the name of Jesus.

If you'll stay standing for a second.

In 2 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 5.

2 Corinthians 10:5

If you have your Bibles with me, if you don't want to get it out, if you don't have it, look up on the screen.

And you see here that the language that is said, the words that are used, is not a light prayer.

These are not light-hearted words.

They are meant to destroy.

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.

And we take captive.

We're not making friends.

We take captive every thought and make it.

We force it to be obedient to Christ.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you so much for your presence that has been so evident here already.

I pray, God, that it be a continuation of what you have begun in today's service that moves on through the word today.

In your precious name we pray.

Amen.

You may be seated if you can.

So those of you that know me, a little more than just seeing a guy on the stage or singing a couple of songs, you probably have found out I am a little blunt.

So when I decided, yeah, some of you had to apologize.

We have to become blunt and assertive with the enemy.

If he's been robbing you of your joy, you've been handing it to him.

If he's been taking your peace, you've been handing it over.

We need to be people of God that know the name that we bear, that when we step in the room, the very Spirit of God steps with us.

That no matter what the doctor says, no matter what your spouse is telling you, no matter what your job says, what your school says, what your kids are doing, we serve a God who is still on the throne.

And he has not moved and he has not wavered from his position.

Now, the question you have to ask yourself today is are you allowing him that position in your life?

Because you can put on a brave face at church, you can say hallelujah, oh Bible is and highly favored, and you walk out the door and you were lying the entire time and go right back to the filth like the dog returning to its vomit.

So I thought it was very fitting last week when we started this series to call it shut up.

I was raised you didn't say that, along with other church curse words that I'm not gonna say from the platform because I don't want some of you to pass out or leave the church.

But it's time that we get serious with what the enemy has been whispering in our ears as truth, but it is nothing but a lie.

We live in a day today that I never thought I would see.

I talked to my dad about this.

We never thought we would see a very basic school teaching subject as biology to be so confusing.

You is or you ain't?

So if we don't understand how to tell the devil and the lies of the enemy to shut up, how can we tell the world what is truth and what isn't?

We must demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.

This is not a time for you to put your two cents in.

Because the word of God, the truth of God, can speak louder and dig deeper than you ever could.

When God speaks something into you to speak to somebody else, speak that and shut up.

Like, well, wow, do you talk yourself like that?

To like that, yeah, I do.

If I'm taking thoughts that I'm not supposed to, I have in my car, and people probably thought I was nuts, in my car, screaming out, shut up! Get out of my head, stop whispering the lies in my ears because I am no longer that person anymore.

Some of us carry around from place to place.

We have luggage that we pack up with our sins and our past, and we carry it with us wherever we go, whispering, I mean, uh whistling amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me and all the baggage I bring with me.

You need to leave what you were and what you deal with, the sickness, the disease, the affliction, all the issues, every season.

Give it over to God.

Why?

Because if you don't, you will never stop thinking about it.

So we are in week two of Shut Up.

There's something about saying shut up.

Last week I had y'all turn to your neighbor and say shut up.

And some of y'all enjoyed that a little too much.

And if if I was in tune with the spirit that day, it really, really felt like uh you've been waiting to say that for a while.

And I finally gave you the opportunity to say it and get away with it.

Praise God for church, amen.

So we are in our shut up series.

So last week was kind of the groundwork.

Do you remember the types of voices?

So we want to speak to the voices.

We want to get to the root of the problem.

If you go out to your garden and you only cut the weeds off at the top and you're not getting the root, eventually it will damage your fruit.

So we need to get to the root of the problem.

And a lot of us, we live negative, mundane lives that we go around that, oh, well is me, and life is never good, and then we come in church and say, Oh, praise you, Jesus.

Those are called conflicts of interest.

They cannot reside in the same brain.

All of a sudden, you will get confused up here and really, really bitter, and you don't know why.

It's because you are living one way and speaking another, and those two conflict.

We learn that there is three types of voices.

We have the external voices.

These are the people that you will never meet face to face.

It may be the news, it may be social media, it may be if you some of you watch the online pastors or whatever.

It's people that are outside of your immediate touch.

You'll never, chances are you will never get to meet them, but they constantly are speaking into you.

Hello, social media.

Some of you, sorry, I'm the soapbox here.

I'm gonna get on it.

Some of you will believe a celebrity.

Some of you will argue, oh, they wouldn't do that.

And you have never met them to know if they would or wouldn't.

Like I said, I'm blunt.

If you do this, please stop.

You sound dumb.

Because you've never met them.

They, if they're an actor or an actress, they lie to be someone else for a living.

You'll never know how they really are.

And then let's move on before I dig deeper.

Then we have local voices.

This is like your family, your church, your pastors, people at your job, even your kids can be voices in your life, sometimes a little louder than they want, but hey, it is what it is.

Family, church, co-workers, pastors, always, always, always face to face.

You can literally reach out and touch them.

They are in what we call your sphere of influence.

They are in your bubble, all up in your personal space.

And then we have internal voices, which is the title of today's sermon.

Now, we also call these thoughts.

I don't know about you, but I struggle with that verse we read.

Because to capture my thoughts, y'all know I talk fast.

Imagine how fast I think.

That's why a lot of things slip through because I can't catch it fast enough.

It's like a rabbit, and all of a sudden I'm trying to catch it, and it's like herding cats.

It don't work.

You gotta focus and grab one while the rest of them scatter and run and get away.

It's important to keep your mind focused and in the right space.

Have you ever let your mind wander?

This is dangerous for me.

Because you know what the devil does to me?

When my mind begins to wander and doesn't stay focused, it begins to remind me of things that I have done that I thought were gone and buried and dead.

Now, just because they pop up in my mind does not mean I'm not free of that.

But sometimes the enemy likes to whisper in your ear, how can you say that?

How can you how can you go to church?

How can you pray for this person?

Don't you remember when you did this?

Don't you remember when you used to live this way?

Don't you remember?

How can you even bear the name of God?

You're not worthy.

Boy, you right.

I am not worthy, but I have given my life over to the King of Kings.

Now, what does that mean?

That means that I have poured his blood out on me, his sacrifice has made me righteous in the sight of God.

It has not made me perfect.

I strive for perfection, but I am not perfect, but I am living in righteousness before an Almighty God.

Why?

Because you yourself cannot be right.

We are born into sin.

Your thoughts are going to try to rule your mind.

This is why it says to captivate them, to capture them, make them obedient to God.

Have you ever had a rogue thought?

Just shoot through your mind.

It's like one of those little bottle rockets at Fourth of July that shoot wherever they want to, and you can't stop them, they just go.

Phew! Right through your mind, you're like, what was that?

What was that?

Where did that come from?

This is the why.

This is why I tell you, every single Sunday, until you begin to implement it into your daily routine, you have to do the challenge of 17 or 15 plus two, whatever you want to call it.

Five minutes in prayer, five minutes of reading your word, and five minutes of praising.

Why?

Because you need to get your mind in the right space before other voices have the opportunity to speak into you before you touch your phone.

Well, who's got the habit?

Now listen, I'm not gonna judge you, but I'm raising my hand too.

Who's got the habit?

First thing you do when you wake up, you grab your phone.

And I don't mean to turn off alarms, my 15 alarms that I have set so that I actually wake up.

Is there anybody else struggling in the house?

Come on, somebody man.

So in this 21-day fast, at first God uh moved on my wife to fast social media.

So if you don't see us on there, that is why I do very small church stuff that I have to do on there, or I give it to Sister Ashley so that she can do it.

But very rarely have I touched anything on social media.

Now, here's my problem.

We're fasting on social media, so what do I do?

I try to occupy it with emails.

I've got to have something feeding me.

Am I the only one?

Something has to.

It's seriously, Jesse and I talked about this.

Like you sit in a red light, and what do you do?

Well, you got your phone in front of you, so you just check with your old notifications.

Look, scroll up right quick.

It's at a red light, y'all.

It's not illegal, I don't think.

So you're scrolling, you're looking, you're checking, oh, something popped up.

I gotta look.

Oh, what was that on YouTube?

I gotta go there and see what that was.

And then all of a sudden, I hear a and I'm sitting at a green light still.

Because something grabbed my attention and manipulated my thoughts and lured me into a space that was not the proper time to be there.

How many times daily do we allow ourselves to be lured in to a place in our thoughts and we don't belong there?

But if you begin your day with prayer, if you begin your day with reading, if you begin your day with praising, you're like, wait a minute.

I want to praise God after he does something.

You will never praise like you praise until you do it before you see it come to pass.

Because we don't praise God for what he does, we praise him for who he is.

And if you're waiting for something to happen, God may dangle you out there a little bit longer until you understand how to really praise him.

So we want to get our mind right.

You don't anybody ever played any kind of sports ever in your life?

I used to, I know it don't look like it, but in seventh and eighth grade, I was the same size as everybody else.

I played football until they started getting bigger and taller, and I stopped.

So I was like, okay, tennis, here I come.

Why are all the short people laughing?

Y'all the same size as me.

And so we never went out on the field.

We I never picked up a racket to go to the tournaments and practiced at that moment.

I always did it before the time to play the game.

Some of us are trying to live spiritual lives in the Bible after the conflict, after the season that is so terrible.

Oh Lord, where are you?

Waiting on you to grow up and grab his word.

You want to pre-decide that before anything comes your way, you know that you got your thoughts on lock.

There is nothing that can tear a person up more than sinking into dark thoughts.

Has anyone ever been in a crowded room before, but you felt like you were alone?

You will sink so deep into your thoughts.

And I've told y'all this before.

I've had arguments, especially when we first got married, with my wife, that never actually happened, but I was blaming her for something in my mind, and my thoughts had a heyday.

And I was like, Oh, she's gonna say this, and then I'm gonna say that, and then she's gonna say this, and I'm gonna say that, and she never said any of it.

And I was so tormented in my mind for nothing that never actually happened.

I was letting the thoughts run rogue however they wanted to.

I was letting the crazies run the asylum.

Some of y'all, I just called your house out.

Excuse me, moving on.

But we have to get our minds right.

Pre-decide.

Pre-decide.

I'm going to decide that before something happens to me, I'm gonna praise the God that is going to work through me.

I have to recognize that he is the savior of the world, that he is the Lord of all.

He is the Lord of my heart, he is the Lord of my soul, he is the Lord of my thoughts, and whatever comes against me, the Bible says that he will raise up a standard.

But we have to, we have to do the work.

Read from cover to cover in the Bible when God came down to Moses and said, Moses.

And to me, that's how God sounds.

Moses.

Build an ark.

What's an ark?

It's a boat, dummy.

Okay, out of what?

Gopher wood.

Go where?

That's how Noah is to me.

He's kind of dumb.

You get it?

I'm scared.

Now, when God told Noah this, he didn't all of a sudden.

There's an ark.

He had some work to do.

But the work wasn't something that he didn't understand.

It was just something that he had to do.

A lot of times God presents something to us and says, Hey, I need you to do this, or I want you to get here.

And sometimes we try to jump from here to there so that we can fast track all of the process in the middle.

Because we know that from the Bible and from personal experience, that through the process there is always pain.

Always.

Listen to me.

Imagine if Noah.

Think about this.

Imagine if Noah did not stay focused and did not listen to the voices of everyone calling him crazy because they had never seen rain before.

You know what?

We wouldn't be here.

Think about it.

They didn't know what a flood was, they didn't understand what he was talking about and flooding the whole earth.

This dude has lost it.

Sometimes faith is gonna make you look like a nut job until it works.

And then when you start acting out in faith, and all of a sudden the things that you said God spoke to you begin to happen, they're gonna be knocking on your boat trying to get in.

And you cannot be upset if God does not allow them into your boat.

The devil knows that if he can get your mind to wonder or to question if God told you to do it, he can rob you of the miracle that you were headed towards.

Or your thoughts can be consumed by the wrong thoughts.

He can distract you and dismantle you from the inside out.

If you're taking notes, write this down.

If he can rob you of your focus, he can rid you of your faith.

If he can rob you of your focus, he can rid you of your faith.

What happened when Peter was walking on the water?

The man literally had faith to walk out into the storm, and his foot went on the water and he did not sink, and he kept stepping.

He took a chance of jumping out of the boat.

He didn't really know what would happen, but he knew that Jesus had called him to him.

Some of you are screaming in the boat for your life, wrapped up in your own thoughts, and Jesus is saying, Come out to me and you won't get out of the boat.

And what happened?

It was only when he began to pay attention to the storm and he lost his focus on the master, is when he began to sink.

But thank God, even when we lose our focus and we begin to sink, he will still stretch out his hand and he will lift us back to safety.

But God is calling some people here today to stop and listen to his voice.

If he is telling you to walk out into the water, know that even if you begin to drown, he will save you.

But believe that when you step, it will be solid.

If he can rob you of your focus, he can rid you of your faith.

So, how can this little bad thought do so much wrong?

If you remember at the end of last year, we talked about seeds of faith.

Seeds.

You cannot take a watermelon seed and get a pear.

You cannot take an oak tree and get a banana, whatever seed you.

You are planting on purpose, or you're allowing other people to plant seeds in your garden, meaning the voices that you're allowing to spill into you, whatever is planted is what will grow.

If you are growing or you're planting seeds of bitterness, bitterness will begin to grow, it will become your life, it will consume you.

But if you plant seeds of faith, faith is what you will reap.

What you plant is what you will reap.

The same applies with thoughts.

The more you think negatively or positively about yourself, others, or whatever, fill in the blank, the more your mind, your body, and your soul will move in that direction.

The more your mind, body, and soul will move in that direction because your life will move in the direction of your strongest thoughts.

It frustrated me when I got out of jail and I was forced to go to AA.

Great program.

If you go or you're part of it, that's fine, whatever.

But they said every single meeting, they would introduce themselves and say, I am whatever they had addiction with.

I hated it.

I was speaking my addiction over myself.

If you keep saying, I am this or I have a problem with this, you will continue to have a problem with it.

You are planting seeds of that issue in your heart and in your mind, and you will be consumed by it.

It will grow up inside of you and you will never be free of it.

Do not say, I am a meth addict.

Say I was and now I am free because God set me free.

And who the Son says free is free indeed.

That means that I do not have to go back.

I choose to go back.

I don't have to.

When those thoughts start to try to creep into your mind, into my mind, say no, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

That's an old coat that I used to wear when I was that size, but I've outgrown that.

I don't have to wear that anymore.

Now listen to this.

Here's some actual scientific studies.

Yeah, I know it's gonna get all scientific on you about thoughts.

And this study shows this.

Every day your brain processes about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day.

Per day.

Some of y'all, never mind.

I could say it and you wouldn't know who it is, anyways.

Of those thoughts, 80% were found negative.

80% and 95% were exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before.

We slide and glide right into negativity very easily.

Anyone else?

I am the world's worst.

I will keep myself up at night thinking about things that may or may not happen, or they did happen, and I don't know if I said the right thing.

We very easily go negative.

That means we have to fight to keep our thoughts focused on God and godly things and righteousness.

I'm gonna do some scripture reading.

Colossians 3, 1 through 17.

Now, if you're struggling here today, one of the biggest crises we have today is identity.

People don't know who they are.

I mean, down to the don't know which gender they are.

To me, that's one of the simplest things to find out.

Maybe I'm weird, I don't know, but to me, that's pretty easy.

And we try to rewrite what truth is.

So listen to this.

If you're struggling today of what truth is, I want you to think about this.

If you have been saved and redeemed, you no longer have to be subject to that sin.

Because you can live above it, you can rise up out of it with the power of God.

Listen to this.

Verse 1 through 17.

Since you have been raised to new life in Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God's right hand.

Verse 2, think about the things of heaven, not of things of earth.

For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden in Christ, in God.

And when Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in his glory.

Verse 5.

So put to death, once again with that cruel language, demolish, put to death sinful earthly things lurking within you, inside of your thoughts, in your mind, lurking within you, have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires.

Don't be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater.

Uh-oh.

Watch out, influencers.

A greedy person is an idolater.

How many people you see something online and you don't want it till you see somebody else have it?

Come on now.

Some of y'all are probably wearing some Instagram outfits right now.

Hey, I'm just saying, it happens.

You get on there, you see somebody else, and you don't you don't mean to, but all of a sudden you want what they got.

How many people are looking at you and wanting what you got?

Mm-mm, mm-mm.

The person is an idolatry, worshiping the things of this world.

Because of these sins, the anger of God is coming.

You used to do the same things when your life was still part of this world, but now it is time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language.

Don't lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds.

Put on your new nature.

There's something in the wearing, the helmet of salvation that you can be saved and it will protect your mind.

Put on your new nature and be renewed as you learn to know your creator and become like him.

If you don't know how God wants you to live, you're not reading the word.

In this new life, it doesn't matter if you are Jew or a Gentile, circumcised, uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave or free.

Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.

Since God chose you to be the holy people that he loves, you must clothe yourself with tender heart and mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

Make allowance for each other's faults and forgive one another who offends you.

Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.

Above all, clothe yourself with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony.

When you read the Bible through, it's so obvious how how a blessing of God's people in unity is to him.

He loves it when we get together, when we bind together, when we serve one another.

It makes him happy.

It's pleasing to him.

In verse 15, it says, And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts, for as a member, for as members of one body, you are called to live in peace and always be thankful.

Let the message about Christ in all of its riches, richness, fill your lives.

Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom that He gives.

He doesn't need your wisdom involved, he needs only his.

Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts.

And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks through him to God the Father.

When you come to know Jesus and you take on his name, when you bear his name, something in you changes.

It's different.

Your life will move in the direction of your strongest thoughts.

If you always think that you will be a sinner, you will keep on sinning and doing the same old things you used to do.

We are to be the example.

I've said this before and I'll say it again.

How you live your life and what you do is the standard of what the world will say they can live theirs by.

If you're allowing things into your homes, into your music, if you speak a certain way at your job, they will know.

People know and they talk.

Amen.

Especially in a church house.

People talk and they know you go to Connect Church.

You don't have to have the sticker on your car.

They know where you go, they have your number, and when you speak or what you do, they'll say, Well, if they can do it, I can do it.

And now you have diluted the definition of God.

Now your witness is it a witness of whining?

I know church people don't do that.

That was for people online.

That's for you.

Do you live a life that is pleasing to God's sight?

How do we do this?

We first take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.

Every urge, every desire, everything that we just read here in Colossians, that we are now, once we're underneath the blessing and the bloodline of Jesus, we are to turn from our wicked ways.

We are to stop being who we were and start living and walking in who God is calling us to be.

Now, I can't tell you what that is for your life.

I have no clue.

Some of you, God has spoken to me about, and I had your number as soon as I met you.

Some of you, I don't know yet because God has not revealed that to me.

But it's not my place to come to you and say it.

You need to be mature enough and know God enough and have a relationship with God enough that He will release that into your spirit and you begin to walk into what you need to be walking into.

Now here's one that is I said earlier, we gravitate towards negativity.

Has anyone had ever had a negative thought before?

I know not in here, we're all safe people.

We've never done that.

But you ever had a negative thought?

Let me dig a little deeper.

Have you ever had a negative thought about yourself?

And it's times of insecurity that we begin to listen to lies instead of the truth.

Because when we become insecure, we we allow voices that have no place to be speaking into us that manipulate our thoughts.

We become people of no self-confidence.

We can see that other people are accomplishing things, but we can never do it ourselves.

Now you may be here today and you might be struggling with your identity.

Maybe you come to Christ and you're like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do because I still have real fresh urges of what I want to do with my flesh, but I'm trying to live for God.

What do I do?

First, you need to allow the Spirit of God to fill you.

That is where your power will come from.

You need to allow the Spirit of God to consume your mind.

Paul talks about keeping his mind set on things above.

Why?

Because if we get so focused right here, we'll lose it.

You ever got something so close to your face and you try to focus on it, your eyes hurt?

We do this all the time in our heads.

We try to figure things out, we're gonna get a solution.

I told my wife Wednesday or Thursday, I don't remember.

She was like, you know, we were talking about something, she said, Are you okay?

I said, I'm fine.

Because I know God's got it.

When we begin to understand that no matter what season we go through, no matter what issues we have, no matter what loss we may suffer, no matter what thoughts we have in our mind, we have to come to the realization that God is still on the throne.

And that in every season, in every circumstance, he is still the God that delivers, heals, and restores.

And that's the bottom line.

Because I know who he is, I can begin to understand who I am.

Because the Bible says that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Some of you may not know this.

I'm gonna kind of open up about myself.

But pastors are some of the most insecure people you ever meet.

If we sound secure, or we sound like we've got it made, and we we understand everything, we have no issues, it's because I have zero confidence in myself and I only have confidence in God.

I constantly lie awake at night, and the house is quiet, and I put my hand over on my wife, and I thank God that she's even still here.

Because Lord knows, Lord knows, she should have left multiple times, and I thank God for my child that's living in her house, and I see the things and I think about the things that God has done in my life, and it makes the things in front of me not so forced on me.

Sometimes when I when I think back at the services, I think, did I pray what I was supposed to pray?

Did I say what I was supposed to say?

Was that dumb advice, or was that God's wisdom?

Or you look out in the crowd.

Some of y'all you notice, but from up here, I can see all the empty seats.

Sometimes a pastor sees the empty seats and wonders why the people that used to fill it didn't come back.

You begin to question Did I say something wrong?

Was I stupid that Sunday?

Probably, and you have all these questions about yourself and these doubts that consume my mind.

Did someone slip through the cracks?

Who wasn't there this Sunday?

And I start questioning the very gift and the very calling on my life that I know is true, and these are the loud thoughts that beat against my ears every single week.

How can God use someone like me to tell other people about the message that He has?

How can I be that person?

I'm undeserving.

God's blessing on my life is unwarranted.

I do not deserve anything that He has given me.

This isn't a feel bad for your pastor moment.

This is I have thoughts that try to consume my mind too.

Now I don't know what yours are here today.

I don't know if you have doubts about your family, about your jobs, about your children.

Lord knows I stress my parents out.

There's all kinds of doubts and bad negative thoughts that fill our mind.

God, why haven't you done this?

God, why am I still in this valley?

I know you can do it.

I believe that you can do it, but why am I still here?

Believe that the same God that restores confidence and doubts in me every week can do the same for you.

But I've started to change my way I think about things.

If you're taking notes, write this down.

And if you're not, remember this because this is the best point you're gonna hear all Sunday.

I believe.

You ready?

This is gonna change your life.

God is not stupid, and you are not a mistake.

I'm gonna say it one more game.

God is not stupid.

Where you are is exactly where you need to be.

He knows you, he sees you, he believes in you even when you don't believe in him.

And you are not a mistake.

Things happen in everybody's life.

Even Jesus prayed, if this possible, Lord, take the cup from me.

But yet, if it is your will, sometimes we pray the first half of that prayer, God take this cup, but we forget to pray, Lord, if it is your will, use my life, use my damage, use my baggage, use my suffering for your name's sake.

Whatever it is that you are struggling with today, it may be self-doubt, it may be self-worth, it may be your identity, but God knows you, he sees you, and he loves you.

Before you were ever born, he had plans for you to be in the spot you're sitting in today.

In every season, in every circumstance, he is still on the throne.

And when the enemy tries to convince you otherwise, look him in the face and tell him to shut up that he has no place, he has no voice in your mind anymore, he has no real estate in your thoughts anymore, he has been served his eviction notice.

Get out and shut up.

I know I had my share of cries in the office yesterday.

But every person in here, you matter to our God.

So much so that before you even began to sin, he sent his son to love you, to die for you, to bring healing to you.

So I want you to ask yourself this morning: what have you allowed to consume your thoughts and to manipulate who you are allowing yourself to become?

Everyone in here has a divine destiny from the Almighty God of who you need to be, who you could be.

The only person that can stop you and get in your way is you.

Every person in here has a responsibility as a believer to share the gospel.

It is not just a pastor's job, it is the job of the body of Christ.

Every piece of the body has its place.

I want you to ask yourself, what have you been allowing to whisper in your ears and become an internal voice?

You see, we oftentimes, the more you hear something, whether it be false or whether it be true, if it's spoken as truth and repeated enough, you begin to live it out as if it is true.

Something could be a lie, and you hear it over and over and over again, and you will live it out and receive it as if it is true.

And then once you begin to think about it as if it is true, now you are moving in the direction of that thought.

If you think you have no worth, you will begin to live a life of worthlessness.

God loves you so much, and God wants to set free the mind today of all the internal thoughts that we've allowed to speak into our hearts and begin to plant seeds and grow roots when they do not belong there.

At the beginning of my message today, I ask you to lift up your hands and say, God, whatever you want to do today, do it.

I want to close out in the same way.

If you want God to change the your very way that you think about yourself, about others, stand to your feet and lift your hands to Him.

Say, God, I need my mind renewed.

I need my mind renewed, God, I need to see things the way you see things.