Art of War | Know Yourself: The Battle Within - Ephesians 6:10-18 | February 15

You are listening to teaching from Mountainside Church in Boone,

North Carolina, where we live as real people who are a part of a real family

serving a real God in the high country.

To learn more about our church, stay connected or partner with us, visit mcboone.com.

All right. Ready? Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.

Put on the whole armor of God and you may be able to withstand against the schemes of the devil.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers,

against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness,

and against the spiritual forces of evil and the heavenly placements.

Awesome. Thank you. Go ahead and sit down. we are going to expand that into

the armor of God versus next week.

So you'll have even shorter amount of time to memorize those bits.

But this is where we've been camping for the last couple weeks.

This is the third week we've been in this discussion about spiritual warfare.

And the last two weeks have been the weirder part.

Now it gets into the, okay, how do we kind of fight spiritual warfare, in a sense.

We're still in this knowing idea, but we want to make it a little more personal and more practical.

Because, just to recap a little bit, there is a war that is real.

This verse in Ephesians 6, depending on your translations, says that we do not,

fight against or that we do not wrestle against. It might use different words,

but the word there means war.

We do not war against flesh and blood, but we make war against these spiritual

powers and authorities. So there is a war.

It's real. Everyone's a part of it. You don't get a choice in it. Sorry.

You are all involved in this. And there is a real enemy who is out to get you,

to get you to question God's goodness, to get you to doubt God's promises,

and it offers fulfillment and wisdom apart from God.

And this is what we've seen since the very beginning in the garden,

that he starts with the lie that God doesn't really have your best in mind,

that he doesn't care for you, that he's holding out on you, that he doesn't love you.

He starts with truth and he twists it into just a subtle lie until that lie

becomes believable and until the sin that's associated with it actually seems quite reasonable.

And we look at the fruit and we think, that does look pretty good.

That does look tasty. It does look like it's good for me. Why don't I go ahead and try it?

So it starts with a twist of a truth becomes a lie.

And that deception leads to temptation.

And then once we fall into it, then he just comes and reminds us time and time

again of that sin that we've committed.

He redefines us by it and he brings it back up over and over again. This is who you are now.

This is who you are. You can never come back from this. No one will ever love

you. No one will ever accept you. He just brings it back and pelts us with this,

This deception, this temptation, this accusation, that's the enemy.

And that's what we talked about last week, knowing the enemy.

It's important to know his tactics, not to be obsessed with him,

but to be aware of how it comes.

Because his whole goal is that we feel like we're stuck, that we become stuck.

But as a disciple of Jesus, and we've continued to talk more and more about

discipleship in this family.

And a disciple is someone who knows Jesus, who follows Jesus,

and who leads others to do the same.

That's what we're talking about. A disciple of Jesus is meant to walk in the

freedom that he provides and not to feel stuck, to walk in God's freedom of peace and joy.

And that is what we are all called to, even if the years have made us question it.

I want to say definitively before we get into anything else,

because as Jenny has reminded me, we have to have an upshot.

I can't just be depressing all the time.

So we're going to get to the depressing for a little while, but the message

that you need to hold on to the whole time is freedom is possible for you.

Not only that, we are made new creatures. God has made us a new creation and

we are not called to be stuck as his disciples. We're called to walk in freedom.

And so that does deserve an amen. Thank you.

It is because of humanity's rejection of God, because of our own rejection of

God, that we end up wrestling with these things daily, these self-made things.

The self-made knowledge, the satisfaction of physical appetites,

values shaped by the created world and defiance of our creator.

And like Adam and Eve, we still tend to find ourselves running from God,

hiding from him, blaming others, fracturing relationships, and withdrawing from

meaningful connection.

But that's not what we're destined for. We're destined for freedom.

And this battle that we've been talking about is not just a battle that's out

there at the gates, so to speak.

This is a battle that happens within us, a war that takes place a lot closer

to home often in our own very hearts and the hearts of man.

And I'm always reminded of this verse. I mentioned in the beginning or last

week that Satan, one of his names is the Croucher.

And this comes from Genesis chapter 4. when the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry?

Genesis 4 · chapter mention

Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?

But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door.

It desires to have you, but you must rule over it.

And so Genesis is characterizing sin almost as this predatory animal that's

waiting and taking the opportunity to wait and ambush for the right time to

jump out and take hold of Cain's heart.

And it's interesting that just a few chapters earlier with Adam and Eve,

right, God gives authority over Adam and Eve to rule over the beasts.

And we see this turn of event after the fall where God is saying,

there is a beast waiting to take hold of you, but you must rule over it.

You must step into the authority that I've given you and master it and don't let it take hold of you.

But instead, we end up being ruled by these beasts in our lives.

Cain ends up becoming ruled by what he was warned and instructed against.

And one of the ways that we master, that we fight back, is this idea that we

see in different places.

Romans 12 is one of them where it says, Do not conform to the pattern of this

world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

That we master and we take hold and we rule over these driving engines of our

lives as we renew our minds in Christ,

which means intentionally trans-performing your thought patterns,

shifting from fear and anxiety and worldly negative perspectives to a mindset

that's rooted in truth and love and faith.

I've said this several times before in past sermons, but we must learn to stop

trusting our own thoughts and replace them with God's thoughts.

This is something we'll talk more about in a couple weeks for sure.

We doubt so much stuff. We doubt God's goodness.

It's time for us to start doubting our doubts. So we must renew our minds.

As we've been talking this last week and this week, we're still in the same

idea. I framed it in this idea of Sun Tzu's The Art of War. We're in the midst

of war. It just felt right.

Again, as I always say when I bring up a book, I haven't read it,

but I kind of know what it's about. It's about war, right?

There's a famous phrase that happens in that. It says, if you know the enemy,

but also it says, if you know yourself, you need not fear the result of 100 battles.

So we fight back against not just the symptoms of the fallen world,

but against the root of the deception in our own minds, in our own hearts, in our own lives,

and the source of the accusations that are not grounded in truth.

We fight back against these things within our own selves as this spiritual warfare

that we're talking about, as it shows up not just in external pressures,

but as it shows up in habits, thought patterns, emotional reactions,

and relational cycles, we fight back, we push back.

That'll be an important thing when we get into the armor of God.

It says so that you may stand firm, not to give too much away,

but the sandals that it's talking about of the Roman soldiers had spikes in

them so that they could drive back against the enemy.

So we push back against these things.

And this is why we must investigate about ourselves these things.

We must become excellent students of ourselves so that we can push back,

so that we can tear down these strongholds, so that we can walk in freedom.

We must become incredible students of ourselves so that we can know where we

are most vulnerable and then invite God's spirit and healing and strength to

speak into that, to speak life into that.

For this, our time together, my thoughts have been mostly around 2 Corinthians

2 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

chapter 10 rather than Ephesians 6, perhaps.

But in these couple of verses, it says, for though we live in the world,

it's something very similar, we do not wage war as the world does.

The weapons we fight are not the weapons of this world. On contrary,

they have divine power to demolish strongholds.

And so we demolish arguments, every pretense that sets itself up against the

knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

Pay attention in that verse. You can mostly see it. I didn't fix the whole weird

problem where it's cutting the verses off. I don't know what's going on.

You can see the important parts. Pay attention how this verse defines what the

strongholds are, what we're actually at war with. It starts off with the word argument.

And we know kind of what an argument is, not in the sense of when we yell at

each other, but competitive thoughts, a competing thought, a speculation, a hostile reasoning.

I have in my notes Romans 2.15. So if somebody has a Bible and you want to look

at what Romans 2.15 says and tell me what it says in a second.

In this idea, here in 2 Corinthians chapter 10, this idea of arguments,

2 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

it is a word in the Greek that comes from the word logos,

which is a word that we might talk about often in the Bible because it is the

word that means the word,

which is a weird thing to say, but Lagos means the word, and it's often referred

to Jesus as well. He is the word, the truth, and the lie.

So it is a word that comes from Lagos.

It is something that means something similar to that argument.

And so I almost think of it in this regards to, we see Paul write about a false gospel.

Not that there is any other gospel, he says, right?

But if anyone preaches you, even an angel comes and tells you another gospel, don't believe it.

If these wicked spirits come and speak to you another gospel, don't believe it.

This idea of argument. What does Romans 2.15 say?

So these competing thoughts that are taking place within us,

that are competing specifically against God's thoughts, these are what we're

talking about with this idea of arguments.

These are, we wage war against the strongholds, and then it says,

this is how we do it, by tearing down these arguments.

And then it uses the word pretense, which are assumptions that we have,

these wounds that we have in our past, our pretenses. any lofty thing that is

set up against the knowledge of God.

And another place that this word shows up, not pretense, that's English,

but where it comes from is in a version of kind of the Sermon on the Mount,

where Jesus is talking about how the Pharisees stand in front of people to be heard when they pray.

And the word that it uses, I think this might be in Mark, but don't quote me

on that, is that they love the pretense of standing before people when they pray.

And so this idea that they put on the show, but their heart's not connected to it.

So anything in our lives that we hold up against the knowledge of God,

anything that competes with God, anything that we can be.

That we can believe that we are being spiritual while at the same time,

we are not pressing closer to God.

These are these pretenses and they're set up against the knowledge of God.

And so we're instructed to take our thoughts captain.

And that's how we fight back by replacing our thoughts with God's thoughts.

And so this battle that we are in the hearts of every human being in our own hearts,

this battle that we are at is very much the idea of breaking the agreements

within you so the spirit can lead you into real freedom.

It's about breaking these agreements. And I realized that using the word agreements

in this place is kind of funny and doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense.

It's a little weird to use that.

So I want to give a little explanation. I want to go on a slight detour and

then get to the idea of why I'm using the word agreement.

And this detour is that there are five engines that drive us,

that drive each and every one of you. There are five, these five engines.

Fair point. People might disagree with how many engines there are,

but there are these things that drive us.

We actually see in scripture, let alone psychology and counseling and things

like this, that different people have different perspectives.

But verses like 1 Thessalonians, it says, may God himself, the God of peace,

sanctify you through and through.

May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So even within the theological world, because of verses like this and other

ones that only use two instead of three, there is an argument theologically

of are we body and spirit or are we body, spirit, and soul?

Are there two or are they three? Is there a dichotomy or trichotomy?

So fair point. But for today, there are five engines that drive us.

And I am viewing it in this idea of body, soul, and spirit.

I'm just having to divide soul into two and spirit into two.

So there's these five engines. We have the physical appetites, the body, the cravings.

These are good and bad. These are the things that drive every decision that we make.

Our hungers, our cravings, our comfort seeking, our stress responses,

food, sleep, substances, escape, control, whatever they may be,

good and bad, are physical appetites that drive our decisions.

I should have a counselor up here talking about this with more authority than me.

And then we have this idea of soul, which I'm going to break up into two parts.

Left brain, right brain, beliefs, emotions, the things that we believe about ourselves.

So we have these left brain beliefs, again, good and bad, the stories that we

tell ourselves, the core assumptions.

You might have heard the word worldview.

This is where that idea comes from. What do we bond to?

These core assumptions that we make about ourselves for the purpose of our time

together, these strongholds that we build. I'm just going to give negative examples.

That I'm unlovable, that God won't come through, that I have to control everything.

These are where strongholds are built in these assumptions and beliefs.

But we also have these right brain attachments, our emotional attachments.

And strongholds can also be built here, but more so in the way that we suffer

wounds and how these wounds over time shape us deeply.

These are relational tensions, what we bond to for safety, soothing identity,

the people that we bond to, success, approval, isolation, performance,

fantasy. These are the things that drive us.

Physically, and that drive our soul through beliefs and attachment.

Now on the spiritual side, so these are the three physical driving engines that we have.

On the spiritual side, I'm going to divide spirit again into two.

These are the spiritual engines that every person has, even if they say they

don't believe in the spiritual world or God, we are helplessly religious and

all deep down believe that there is a God,

whether we recognize it or not. At least we live that way.

So these spiritual engines, this is where it's kind of like negative, positive and negative.

We have the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit that leads us to truth,

that leads us to freedom, that leads us to repentance, that leads us to life, that produces fruit.

And then the other spiritual engine would be the wicked spirits that are raging

at war along with our flesh and along with the world,

that they're not creating these strongholds in our life that we have,

but they're definitely taking advantage of them and exploiting these agreements,

these wounds that then amplify the lies that we have already believed,

we've already bought into.

And this is where this idea of agreement comes in.

Because you are always being influenced by these driving engines,

positively and negatively.

Disclaimer before we go on, you are still responsible for every choice.

We are driven by our engines.

And even if there is a wicked spirit speaking lies into our ear,

the responsibility for our actions still always lies with us. So that's a disclaimer.

But we are always being influenced by these engines.

And so this is why we must become excellent students of ourselves.

Lamentations chapter three says, let us test and examine our ways and return

to the Lord. We have to test and examine ourselves.

Second Corinthians chapter 13 says, examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith.

2 Corinthians 13 · chapter mention

Test yourselves. Don't just assume, but be excellent students of who you are.

And this is where the word agreement comes up.

This is how agreements and strongholds come into view. A struggle is something that we're fighting.

We're struggling against it. an agreement, or perhaps I should say this way,

a stronghold is something that you've already agreed with.

So these are the agreements that we already believe that are in us.

These strongholds that I can't change, that this is just who I am,

that God won't meet me here, that I need this to survive.

These agreements we've already made with ourselves.

We're no longer struggling against them. we have to have a real truth encounter,

maybe even a power encounter, to start breaking them up so that we can begin the struggle.

The strongholds are built from lies. And freedom comes by breaking these agreements,

breaking these lies, choosing truth, walking it out, walking it out together in community.

But first we have to figure out what those agreements are. We have to know what they are.

We have to know that they're a lie because they can feel so true sometimes.

So you have to figure out what are these agreements in the first place.

And this is where I want to, for just the next several minutes,

I'm going to pass out some pens and paper. If you have a pen,

you don't have to take one.

And we're going to go through kind of like a spiritual warfare assessment,

which I don't want you to find depressing.

And I don't want or intend it to bring up old wounds.

But what I do intend it is for us to begin this conversation of where am I vulnerable?

Where am I vulnerable? And I have no expectation that you're going to fill it

out completely or that you're going to answer every question in our time together today, but guess what?

You have a piece of paper that you can take home and finish on your own time

and answer in depth if you're afraid of answering and somebody might see it

or whatever fear may bring into it.

Write some notes down as you go. Answer questions as you can.

But again, I have no expectation that you're going to completely fill anything

out in our time together.

But as I get ready to hand it out, what I want us to do first is just,

I'm going to pray and I want you to sit in a quiet reflection as I hand out

the papers and reflect on these verses from Psalm 139.

And this is my prayer for us as well. Search me, O God.

Show me where I have made agreements with lies and lead me in the way everlasting.

Lead me in the way of freedom, God.

Expose all anxiety, all fear within me.

Expose within me these assumptions and agreements I believe in.

Expose within me the hurt that has been caused, the source that has brought

them into view, where they show up most often, so that we can break down these

strongholds by the power of your spirit and the authority you've given us,

so that we can speak truth.

Remind ourselves of truth, renew our minds with truth, and walk in freedom of God.

So again, just spend a few minutes, quiet reflection, as I hand this stuff out.

So again, I don't want you to be discouraged.

I know that many of us have real trauma and hurt in our past,

and it's not my intention for us to just bring that up for no cause.

But this is what we're going to do. I'm going to ask questions intended to kind

of like guide us along in this deep dive of who we are so that we notice patterns,

that we can trace roots, so that we can name these driving engines.

What do I struggle with? What drives it? Where did it come from?

Where did it form? What keeps it alive?

And ultimately, what might God want to heal and uproot within me?

Where's the freedom available?

So it's not, this is not about finding out what's wrong with you so that I can

make sure to remind you of what's wrong with you.

This is not what this is about. It's not about perpetuating the lies.

This is about identifying the patterns, the emotional triggers,

the coping strategies, all of these kind of things so that they can be broken

up and we can walk in freedom.

That's the intention here. So I'll hopefully remind you of that along the way.

This is what I'm going to do. I'm just going to kind of read through questions

that will guide you in each part.

And I'm not going to give a lot of pauses. The time that I'm asking questions

and reading will be the pause for you to kind of let God to search you and reveal

to you in those in each part what that is.

And again, I have no expectation that you're going to finish this completely,

but it can guide you in the future, the rest of the day or tomorrow.

So this part one, these symptoms.

What is showing up repeatedly?

This is why we're going to hang out with the kids and love our mamas so that moms can participate.

So what shows up repeatedly? What consistently appears in my emotional life,

my behavior, my relationships?

Emotions. You might feel anxious in situations that don't seem objectively threatening.

You might shut down emotionally when conflict begins.

You might feel shame even though you haven't done anything wrong.

What are your emotional triggers?

What is your behavioral? Do you scroll for hours when stressed?

Do you overwork when you feel insecure? Do you overeat? Do you procrastinate? Do you withdraw?

Relationally, do you push away people when they get close?

Do you need affirmation to feel steady? Do you assume people will eventually leave?

We're trying to ascertain what shows up most when I'm not at my best.

What do people close to me notice about me? What reactions of mine surprise even me?

If someone followed me for 30 days, what patterns would be obvious to them? Just identify.

Don't condemn yourselves. We can hold on to the truth that it says,

who is it that condemns? This is Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Jesus is the one who died, more than that, who lives.

So there's now no thing that separates us. if Christ doesn't condemn us,

then you don't need to condemn yourself.

So this is not an opportunity to condemn yourself as you work through these

symptoms, this assessment.

So what shows up most often? Part two is about what triggers it.

What situations consistently provoke this reaction in me, this behavior,

this emotion, this relationship?

Is it criticism, feeling out of control, being ignored, failure,

conflict, loneliness, fatigue, being overwhelmed. I'm not giving exhaustive

lists, so you don't have to choose one of those.

What are the strong reactions that are often connected to old pain more than present events?

That's where a lot of these triggers come from, is something of the past,

not necessarily something we're currently dealing with.

If a small critique feels like

total rejection, if a delayed text response triggers abandonment fear.

Being overlooked feels like humiliation. If losing control of a plan triggers anger.

Some questions to help us. When did I last overreact? What was happening?

Do you have kids? It might have been as early as 20 minutes ago.

What situation feels disproportionately intense?

What feeling do I avoid at all costs? What emotion feels intolerable to sit with.

We're trying to connect the pattern and the circumstances and our reactions.

I tend to feel frustrated when something unexpected happens,

and I notice that in our son.

So you might notice these things

in your children as well, these patterns that we pass on unknowingly.

Again, I'm not giving you enough time to fill it out completely. I understand that.

Part three, coping and soothing. What do we do about it? How do we deal with it?

Where do I run? This section explores what you rely on for comfort, control, or relief.

And these might begin as protection strategies

if we experience real hurt real trauma but we

tend to end up depending on them right when discomfort rises what do i instinctively

move towards escape control numbing the things that are involved in that tv

phone when spiritual activity even spiritual activity i want you to understand

even being spiritual being religious.

Can become avoidance when it replaces emotional honesty.

So even spiritual activities can fall into this category of coping.

And they're not always ones that lead us towards God.

When I'm stressed, what do I crave? What feels necessary for me to calm down?

What would be hardest to give up?

What do I turn to before I turn to God?

These are functional saviors that we've built up in our life.

To replace Jesus, our true one and true Savior.

And so these aren't necessarily obvious sins that we have in our lives.

Some of these things, if we could define sin a little bit, sin is not just the bad things you do.

It's also not just the things that you don't do that are good.

Sin is when we turn to other things and sin God. So even good things could fall

into this category and become sinful and become these functional saviors of ours.

Part four is this idea of belief. These are our left brain and right brain.

I forget what I had to say about it, whichever brain of its side it is.

This is our soul patterns.

What do we believe in? These are where the strongholds are formed.

These are the things, the lies that we believe about ourselves.

And again, these are things that feel true.

So it might be something that you're just thinking, no, that's completely true about me.

We have to identify these things as lies when they conflict with the truth of

what God says and who you are.

So this is where strongholds usually live. These are not just sinful behaviors.

These are deeply held beliefs that shape our behaviors.

Every sin that we've had first began as a thought in our mind.

So what do I emotionally believe about God, myself, and others?

That's what these three categories are.

These are going to feel true, but they're also not going to be theologically

accurate. This is how we know that they're a lie.

That God is distant, that God is disappointed in me, that God helps others more

than me, that God expects more than I can give.

These are the things, the narratives, the stories that we tell about God that aren't true.

We tell these things about ourselves as well. I am not enough.

I'm too much. People can't handle me.

I'm fundamentally flawed. I'm only valuable when productive.

These are the things that we build up about ourselves that feel true but are not.

These are lies that we tell ourselves about other people to deal with and cope

with the difficulties of relationship.

People can't be trusted. Here's a big one that I know I have felt,

so I guarantee everybody else has felt this.

Because if I felt anything with my emotional intelligence, then all of you who

are much more advanced than me have felt this.

If I'm fully known, I will be rejected. If somebody knows everything about me, then they'll leave.

Belief that vulnerability with others leads to pain. And you know what teaches us that? Experience.

But you know what else? If we keep risking ourselves, eventually we'll find

a person who reacts the way that God would react and it will reform our opinions.

What thought runs under my anxiety? What sentence would describe my deepest fear?

What do I assume about God when life is hard, not just when it's easy.

What belief creates pressure or striving in me?

This is all about naming the agreement, naming the lie so that we can begin

to see it as a lie, so we can begin to replace it with the truth of God's thoughts

about us, which are greater than our thoughts about ourselves.

Part five, this is our history, our stories, are the roots of where this might

have first shown up, where might have this formed. And this is going to be the hard part.

We're not This is not therapy that we're doing here.

I know if you've been to therapy, you might think, this feels a lot like therapy.

I'm not trying to go through therapy right now. So that's not my intentions.

What we are doing is noticing, becoming students of ourselves,

noticing where our hurt is, where our wounds are.

Because the reason we feel stuck sometimes is because we don't even want to

let God in to help us walk in freedom.

So we have to identify and name these things to allow wounds to heal.

We just perpetuate those that hurt with our agreements that we've made as a result of them.

You might be fully aware of your wounds and your hurt and your trauma,

but you may not be as aware that as a result of that, you made agreement with

yourself that you're never going to be hurt like that again,

that has caused you into a stronghold that you never intended.

So some formation points, these might be messages that you heard as a kid.

And so parents pay attention because these might be the messages that we give

our kids, which is the first one for me, don't cry.

I tell the kids all the time. Don't cry. Stop crying. Don't cause problems.

Be strong. Be impressive. These are the messages that formed us that we might

have forgotten about. I don't remember being a kid, so.

We might have experienced things like abandonment, humiliation,

chaos, instability, betrayal, shame.

Girls can be mean in middle school. There might be something there.

Any way that we've done any spiritual searching apart from Christ,

seeking control of our lives, seeking peace, seeking identity.

Some odd one, this is where the weird comes back that I'll just mention briefly

and where I'm going to camp on it.

This is where stuff in your past might fall if you've ever done anything new

agey or like with tarot cards or that kind of stuff,

like trying to gain spiritual control over your life through other means other

than God. rituals, practices.

There's Wicca. People are witches up here. That happens.

And if you've ever had that experience in your life, that might be the root

of some of your strongholds.

What did I learn about safety growing up? When did I first start feeling this

way? What did I have to do to feel secure? What inner promise did I make when I was hurt?

We've learned all of these things innately before we ever formed a theology about God.

So it can feel way more true because we learned it first.

So we have to replace it with what is more true, what we maybe understood afterwards,

but it is way more true. That is who God says that we are.

Six. These are the agreements. What have I been living from?

Have you made a vow to protect yourself from pain?

There's this verse that I like. I don't want to draw this out longer than asked

to, but there's this verse that I really like where it talks about,

it's in 2 Chronicles, I think, not a place that you might memorize verses from normally.

But it talks about this guy who prayed to the Lord, the God of Israel.

It didn't even call him his Lord.

He prayed to God of Israel and his prayer, the second half of his prayer was,

Lord, I pray that you would keep me from harm so that it might not bring me pain.

And you know what? The next verse says, and God granted what he asked.

But we do this with ourselves apart from God, right?

I'll never depend on anyone again. I have to stay in control.

I can't let people see my weakness.

If I'm not impressive, I'm invisible.

These are things that can be beneath our own awareness. What belief is driving

my pattern? What do I feel compelled to maintain? What feels unsafe to surrender?

What would I be afraid to release? What fear would surface if I stopped this behavior?

Identifying the agreements that we've made, these strongholds.

Because ultimately, this is where part seven comes in.

Ultimately, what fruit is it producing in our lives?

Jesus said that a tree is known by its fruit, right? We hear about that from Jesus.

We hear contextualize it a little bit for us, though. A banana tree produces

bananas. It can't produce anything else.

And if you say you're an apple, but you're producing bananas,

you're really a banana tree, not an apple tree, right?

James talks about thorns and vines and things that might be more contextually

relevant to people who grow grapes and stuff, but we eat a lot of bananas and apples.

What fruit is it producing? Is it leading us towards God? Is it driving us away?

Does it lead to peace or anxiety, connection, isolation, honesty or hiding,

freedom or compulsion, trust or control?

What has this agreement cost me relationally? I just had this thought the other

day at the funeral that I was with Terry.

The funeral I was at with Terry wasn't one of our funerals.

And I just thought about the, Terry said this morning, you know,

funerals are celebrations of the best of who we are, but there's always relational friction.

But what I thought about at the funeral, what relational, what was I being robbed

of by letting relational friction keep me from that relationship?

What is it costing me? Has it cost me my joy?

Has it drawn me closer to God or further away? If nothing changed today,

Where would this pattern lead me in five years?

We want to see clearly this pattern

and what it's producing so that we can answer these final questions.

Specifically these, what does God want to heal in me?

Where is the freedom that I'm missing out on? I promise you this,

God wants you to walk in freedom.

Even if over the years we've taught ourselves and believe that that's not possible.

And this is the turnaround. This is Jenny's recommendation. Actually,

I already had this written down, but I really want to emphasize the upside to this.

This battle isn't just against the enemy around you. It's about breaking these

agreements within you so that the spirit can lead you into real freedom.

Whether it be a daily encounter with the truth, renewing our minds,

whether it be the occasional power encounter that needs to break up strongholds

so that we can live in the truth.

Freedom comes by breaking up these agreements, these lies and choosing truth.

What the problem is and why it feels so impossible sometimes is that we have

a lifetime of telling ourselves a lot.

We have a lifetime of repeating it over and over again.

But Jesus said in John chapter 8, if you abide in my word, you are truly my

John 8 · chapter mention

disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

If you abide in my word, then you are truly my disciples and you will know the

truth and the truth will set you.

Jesus doesn't stop there though. He goes on a few verses later.

Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

There is real freedom. Notice this progression. Abide in my word,

know the truth, be set free.

A disciple is someone who knows Jesus, who follows Jesus, who leads others to

do the same. as we know more who Jesus is, as we follow him,

as we abide in his word, as we know the truth, we walk in freedom.

As we abide, as we remain, as we live inside God's word, we are rewired.

We are reshaped. We are reformed.

Most of us, because it's easy, we interpret our circumstances through trauma,

through rejection, through cultural messages, through survival strategies.

And the more trauma and the more wounds that we have, the easier it is and the

more we hold on to and the more we react in situations.

Because here's the thing that always happens with patterns is it starts to feel

like the same thing's happening again.

But there's a lie there as well because just because something looks the same

doesn't mean it is the same.

And the other lie is that you've probably heard, time heals all wounds.

That's not how wounds work.

Don't treat them, they fester, and they become infected.

And God wants to heal your wounds. We have that verse, by his stripes,

we are healed. God's all about healing. God's all about freedom.

As we replace the truth, the lies with the truth. And this is what I want us to end in for today.

Knowing that your identity is anchored in the cross of Christ.

This is what we're going to talk about next week. As a preview,

we're going to talk about the victory that Christ brings in the fact that spiritual

warfare is not fought to gain the victory,

but we are fighting these battles in ourselves and amongst us,

walking in freedom because the victory has already been won.

We fight from a place of victory, not to earn victory.

Knowing that your identity is anchored in the cross of Christ.

You are who Christ says that you are.

You are not the things that you wrote on this piece of paper.

That's the biggest uplift from this whole thing. And again, you didn't finish

writing these things down. I understand.

Please write them down. Please, this week, name the lie, break the agreement,

talk to someone else who's trusted.

If there's freedom there, talk to your family group, which is a little larger, I understand.

So that's not necessary. But talk to a couple people that are trusted.

Ask for prayer, pray together, break these agreements this week,

because we are not stuck.

And if the Son has set you free, you will be free indeed.

That's the truth that we all have to believe. That's the first step to walking in freedom.

What we're going to do is we're going to stand And we're going to sing We're

going to sing an older song Those are coming back I hear Which I'm very thankful

for Maybe we'll sing Mighty to Save one day You guys remember that song?

What do people say? That's a vibe, that's a banger I don't know, I'm not cool enough.

We're going to sing an old song But sing it as a prayer Especially if you do

know it And it's words that you're familiar with Already Sing this as a prayer

we're going to take communion and respond to that.

We'll sing another chorus. I just pray that if you've experienced slavery with

regard to these mentalities, these patterns, I just pray that this is the first step for all of us.