Replay | Thumb Wars with Rhet Troxell and Karl Hartman

You can have all of me

Every single little peace

You can have it all

Welcome to Hub City Vineyard.

To get connected or to give online,

go to hcv.church or give.htv.church.

If at any point during this message

you feel called to make a change in your life,

text change me to 970-00.

Thank you and enjoy the message.

So if you are here for the first time,

we want to say good morning and welcome.

Carl Hartman and myself, my name is Rhett Troxel.

We actually are part of the worship team

here at Hub City Vineyard.

So this is a bit out of our comfort zone.

I'm going to tell you now,

the thing that we are the most nervous about today

is having this microphone that I can't pull away from my face.

So that's my most nerve-racking thing about this morning.

But we just want to say good morning to you and God bless you.

We're just so happy and thankful to have this opportunity

to bring the message that we hope is going to be impactful

to your hearts, to your minds, to your souls.

I had the great privilege of being here yesterday.

Tracy and Christy put me at the front door to welcome,

which I think was a really good thing.

But I also said hi and was goofing and laughing around

with my buddy Nathan to about 500 people.

So I'm hoping that my voice holds out for today

given this message.

But if you were part of that,

we just want to say sincerely from the bottom of our heart,

thank you so much.

You have no idea the impact that that has

on the kingdom of heaven.

You have no idea the reach that that has to giving people.

I got to see girls and boys walk out of here

with smiles on their faces, holding book bags

that they otherwise would not be able to have.

And just what a blessing.

What a blessing.

I had a memory pop up on my Facebook memories this week.

From exactly 10 years ago.

And it was Chris and he was celebrating the fact

that he couldn't believe that we were able to give away

115 backpacks 10 years ago.

Yesterday we gave away 1,115 backpacks.

Come on.

Yeah.

So and that's not to like shine light on the number of backpacks,

but it's really to shine light on just the reach

that we are having in our community.

So thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

We appreciate you.

We love you.

We're grateful for that.

So as we kick off the second week of one on one

conversations on the couch, if you were here last week,

you heard our associate pastor Rudy give mention that two years ago,

Chris came to me and asked me to give a message and I thought,

Chris, what do you think if we switch it up a bit

and I can ask my best friend Carl Hartman to come up here

and we can just sit down and have a casual conversation.

And Chris was like, that would be interesting,

but yeah, let's give it a shot.

We didn't really know if it would take,

but the feedback was largely popular.

So we're really excited to be able to give a whole sermon series

during the month of August where we're just going to flip the script

a little bit, we're going to change things up

and we're going to just have a seat on the couch.

And I want to tell you the reason that this series has come to fruition

is because this man here is my best friend.

And one of my favorite things to do in this life

is just to sit down with him and have a conversation.

And that's what prompted this sermon series two years ago.

And so Carl, I just want to thank you for your friendship

and tell you what you mean to me.

And I'm excited that you and I are just going to have a seat.

And these people are going to benefit from a conversation

that we're going to have tonight.

I cannot wait.

The Bible says as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

And that's really an embodiment of our relationship.

I think we've been through so much together.

We've shared so many ups and downs just in each other's personal lives

and with our ministry and everything.

And I want to encourage you that if you haven't found somebody

within this community to grow close to, to allow them to sharpen you,

I think about like sharpening a kitchen knife.

You know, when you're sharpening a kitchen knife, if knives had feelings,

it probably wouldn't be very comfortable to sharpen a kitchen knife.

It probably hurt, yeah.

But I think for some of us, you know, we struggle with in this day and age

just with how shallow things are, we find friends that polish us.

They don't really sharpen our edge.

And so a dull, polished knife isn't any better at doing its job.

And I just want to encourage you that if you haven't found that relationship

with people that you can be close with, that you can be honest with,

that can really help you to grow, go out and do that.

That's part of what this message series is really about,

encouraging this type of relationship and conversations.

Absolutely, absolutely.

So what do you say we have a seat and jump into this thing?

Let's do it.

All right, cool.

So Carl, to kick off today's message, I want to tell you a story.

And the story might not make a whole lot of sense to you right now in this moment,

but we're going to bring it back later, okay?

So I want to tell you a story.

So there's this guy, let's give him the name of Dave, just for the sake of conversation.

So Dave is searching for a new hobby in his life.

And Dave, he's a single guy, and he's just looking for something to fill up some

of his time, and so he decides that he wants to get into the world of motorcycles.

So he sees like some commercial on TV, and it's this guy who owned a motorcycle,

and he's like, maybe that's what I need to do to fill my life.

So he says, okay, there's a couple different types of motorcycles out there.

What kind do I get?

So he starts to do his research, and he figures out that he thinks he either wants

to go the Harley-Davidson route on a big old sports cruiser.

He's also looking at the dual sport, where you can ride him on the road,

but you can ride him on the dirt as well.

Or he's thinking about, man, maybe I want to be like a full-fledged dirt bike racer.

So first place he goes is Harley-Davidson and Williamsport, and he's like,

hey, I'm thinking about getting into the motorcycle world.

I'm not sure if I want to be a cruiser, if I want to do the dual sport,

if I want to be a motocrosser.

And so without hesitation, they got the Harley-Davidson dealership,

says, well, let me tell you what you don't want to do.

Do not go the dual sport route, because that's kind of like this medium ground

where you're not really on a sport, on a dirt bike, you're not really on a Harley-Davidson.

You're just kind of in this middle.

You're always going to be wanting one or the other,

and definitely don't go the route of motocross, because you're going to find that,

yeah, it might fill you up for a minute, and you have your thrills and your jumps,

but I'm telling you, the thing you want to do is you want to get on a cruiser.

But he really put down the other two areas.

So Dave leaves, and he's like, OK, well, maybe I don't want to do that.

So he goes to the dual sport dealership, and he asks the guy the same question,

and that guy says, well, definitely don't go the Harley-Davidson route,

because those things are big, and they're heavy, and they're loud, and they're obnoxious.

Dual sport is what you want to do.

It's the best of both worlds.

Definitely don't go the motocross route, because you're going to be locked into that box,

and you're going to wish that you were able to drive on the road at one point.

So he leaves there, and he's like, man, OK.

So last place, he goes to Twig Cycles up in Hagerstown, and that's more of the motocross world.

So he goes there, and he asks the same question, and guess what the feedback is.

That guy up there says, well, definitely don't get a Harley-Davidson.

They're big, and they're slow.

You're not going to have fun.

Don't get a dual sport, because if you're on a dual sport,

you're going to wish that you could take this thing to Tomahawk in West Virginia and do jumps.

Motocross is the way to go, because you can fly high.

You can hear the zing of the YZ.

Motocross is the way to go.

So the guy leaves, and he's just completely conflicted, and he's thinking, what in the world?

What am I going to do?

That's where I'm going to stop the story.

So I know that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to you right now, but that's where I'm going to stop.

Intriguing.

And before we get going today, I want to tell you guys that Carl and I are uncomfortably comfortable in this conversation day, and here's why.

We purposely came into this message not scripting out our talk.

Two years ago, when we sat down, we had our bullet points ironed out,

and we kind of knew who was going to take the lead and who we were going to kick it to.

Purposefully today, and hopefully for the benefit of you, we want you to know that this conversation is authentic, it's organic, and it's raw.

He did not tell me all the points that he's going to share.

I did not tell him all the points that I'm going to share.

We have a rough outline.

We prepared for you.

I don't want you to think that we didn't put any time and effort into this message,

but we purposefully didn't tell each other what we're going to say.

So the interaction that you see, it's real today.

I want you to know that.

Okay?

I'm so excited to be able to have this conversation with you and to share this message.

I know the concept of this message is something that I think really started taking shape probably about a year ago.

You and I were both in this weird period of our life where we were seeing this increase in conflict,

and it was in the culture around us, in our community,

and a lot of this conflict seemed like it was taking place in the digital arena of social media.

And one day I was reading through James chapter 3,

James 3 · chapter mention

and in this part of the Bible, James is talking about the power of our words and how we communicate with one another.

And I was struck by the number of times that James references the tongue,

which of course is the part of our body that we use to form words.

The thought occurred to me that in this digital age and for our generation,

you could easily replace the word tongue with the word thumb or thumbs.

We've really diversified how we communicate with one another.

So we post things online, we text one another, we email one another.

And so the title of our message for this morning is Thumb Wars.

And this is a reference to the game you may have played as a child with one another.

The word thumb is referencing that digital style of communication that we're primarily talking about this morning.

The word wars is indicative of conflict,

but we're not really talking about conflict, you know, interpersonal conflict between two people.

We're talking about more the internal conflict that we feel as we attempt to exercise self-control over our words,

over how we speak to one another.

So this morning I want to take a look at this passage of scripture from James.

I want to hit on these points that you and I have, you know, what we've extracted from this passage of scripture.

And then I think at the end we're going to talk about how to reset our hearts and reset our minds.

Does that sound good to you guys?

Okay. So God, I just thank you for this time.

I thank you for this opportunity that we have just to have a conversation, Lord.

God, we thank you that you're a relational God,

that you want nothing more than for us to just look you in the eyes, to speak to you, to worship you, to engage with you.

You're not far off. You're right here with us right now, God.

And we thank you for that.

I just ask that you would bless this message.

I ask that your words would flow out of Rhett and I,

and that we would bless your people with what you have to say this morning.

In your name we pray. Amen. Amen.

All right. So the passage of scripture for this morning is from James chapter three.

And the book of James is written by, as you may have guessed, James, who is thought to be the half brother of Jesus.

And his audience is the converted Jewish church.

So these would have been Jews by heritage who had converted to Christianity.

And the book of James as a whole is just a really practical study in godly living.

So James chapter three, verse one says,

Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers,

because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.

We all stumble in many ways.

Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check.

When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us,

we can turn the whole animal or take ships as an example.

Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds,

they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go.

Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts.

Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.

And moving on to verse nine, with the tongue we praise our Lord and father,

and with it we curse human beings who have been made in God's likeness.

Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing.

My brothers and sisters, this should not be.

So our first point for this morning is platforms are designed to elevate.

When we think about physical platforms, when you put something up on a physical platform,

your intention is to create greater visibility and to draw attention to it.

Digital platforms work the same way, whether it's Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

What digital platforms do is they draw attention to our thoughts through our words.

Sometimes too many thoughts.

Yes, sometimes too many thoughts.

But they draw attention to our thoughts through our words.

And I think with the wide variety of platforms that we have available today,

it's never been easier to share all of our thoughts with so many people.

Quickly, too.

Yeah, in such a fast-paced environment without thinking.

I think you could easily make the case that our platforms are growing.

And right off the bat, James addresses this in verse one.

He says, not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers,

because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.

Now, many of you this morning may be thinking to yourself,

Carl, I'm not a teacher in a classroom.

I don't speak or preach from a stage.

I certainly don't have thousands of followers in social media.

But I want to challenge you with this thought.

We live in a broken and hurting world that is desperately searching for answers.

As followers of Christ, every time that we interact with the world around us,

whether it's verbally or digitally, we're teaching them something about the character of Christ.

We are. If you're sitting in this auditorium this morning or if you're watching online,

hello to our online community, you are a leader.

I want you to know that. You are a leader.

Because as Carl mentioned, if you are in this place today,

it's because you are trying to further your relationship with Jesus

or you are trying to better yourself in your relationship with Jesus.

Because of that, you are spot on.

Sometimes we think that if we're not serving or if we're not in a position of leadership,

then we're not a leader.

The words that come out of your mouth in the various functions of your life

make you a leader.

I want to empower you. I want to empower you with that this morning.

Take that away this morning. You are a leader.

Yep. It's not a question of whether you're a leader.

It's a question of where are you leading the people around you?

Where is it that you're leading them to?

There's a fundamental truth about platforms that I've found

that what we place upon a platform, what we elevate,

tends to become the object of our worship.

We see this in political parties.

We see it in our own personal ideals.

We see it in religion itself.

What we elevate tends to become the object of our worship.

We see this really early on in Israel's history.

As Israel was getting ready to take over the promised land,

God gave them this specific command.

He said, I want you to go into the surrounding nations

and I want you to tear down the high places.

These high places, they were literal elevated areas

where these other nations were worshiping false gods.

God knew that if Israel didn't tear down these high places,

they would become a snare.

That Israel, when things got tough,

they would be tempted to worship false gods.

That's unfortunately exactly what happened.

I think there's a powerful truth there that what we elevate

tends to become the object of our worship.

I know that's something that we're both passionate about

as we serve in the worship ministry.

Yeah, it's something you and I, as key leaders on our worship team,

it's something that you and I do a good job, in my estimation,

keeping each other in check.

Because what we never want to create here at Hub City Vineyard

is a culture where we worship the worship.

Yeah.

What I mean by that is so many times,

and no disrespect or no fault to you guys,

you guys will come up to me and you'll say,

hey man, the worship was awesome today.

Are you saying that your tangible connection with Jesus was awesome

or are you telling me that things sounded and looked good?

Yeah.

Because we can create, if we're not careful,

we can create an environment where we put things up on platforms

and we start to worship the wrong things.

Right.

If you and I come up here and our goal is to produce sound

that sounds good on a Sunday, we are missing the mark.

That is exactly right.

I would rather have a team who, and I love this team so much

because I believe that our hearts are pure and we do well in this area,

I would have a team of unskilled musicians who are passionately

seeking out the goodness of God through worship

than a team of polis musicians where everything sounds perfect

but they're up here because they think they play and sound good.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

And I wonder how many times in our life can you take that example

and extrapolate it out where we're not just talking about worship

but the question for you today is what's on your platform?

What is on that shelf in your life where you may be elevated

to an unhealthy level of worship?

It's good to want to do good at your job,

but if you're going about it in the wrong way

and you're undercutting people to get to the top,

that's an area where you really have to check your heart

and you have to understand what am I worshiping?

What is on that platform?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

And I think that ties into my next thought here,

that platforms can be a pathway to pride if we're not careful.

And this is true, I think, not just for physical platforms,

like what we're sitting on right now, but also digital platforms.

When you think about social media,

it's just built on this concept of self-promotion.

We take pictures of ourselves, we post updates about ourselves,

we talk about ourselves on and on and on,

what we're thinking, what we're feeling, what we're eating.

And I think that that ultimately can lead us,

that focus on self-promotion can lead us towards pride.

And followers of Christ, as compared to that,

followers of Christ are called to live in humility,

because I think if you look further on in the book of James,

chapter four, he says,

God opposes the proud, but shows favor to the humble.

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up.

So when you think about elevation,

it's not just the fact that we are elevated,

it's the nature of our elevation.

Are we elevating ourselves, or are we humbling ourselves before God

and allowing God to elevate us?

Yeah, there's a verse in the Bible that's coming to my mind,

and it's money is the root of all evil.

I think pride's a close second.

Absolutely.

Because I think, and we're going to talk a lot today about social media,

but we want you to know this is not just pertinent to those who have Facebook

and Instagram and Twitter.

If you don't have a social media platform in here,

this is still for you because social media tweets and posts and everything else,

it's the same thing that comes out of it.

We all have a platform.

But I think if you look at a lot of the things that come out of our mouth

that get us in trouble, you can trace back to the root of pride.

Absolutely.

If somebody says something that you don't agree with,

our first instinct is usually to respond back.

Why is that?

Because we want to be right.

We want to get people to see our side of things.

And sometimes we do that at all costs.

We will sever a relationship with somebody.

We will use inflammatory words because we want them to see our point of view.

Why do you want them to see your point of view?

Because you want to be right.

Why do you want to be right?

Because you want to feel good about yourself.

And what is that?

That is pride.

That is pride.

So I want to read this verse again.

God opposes the proud.

So if you are prideful in here, this verse is telling us that God opposes that.

God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.

Humble.

Humility I think is one of the most attractive features in mankind.

And maybe it's because I'm so against pride.

But I think humility is such a beautiful thing.

When you see somebody considering others as greater than themselves,

those are attractive people.

Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up.

So platforms are designed to elevate.

What's thought two, Carl?

Thought two, our words have weight.

Look at your neighbor and tell them, I'm watching my weight.

Oh, what if it's not true?

Can I still say it?

Say it anyway.

I'm watching my weight.

Continuing on in James chapter three, James compares the tongue to a small bit

that guides a large horse.

He compares it to a small rudder that guides a large ship.

And he compares it to a small spark that starts a large fire.

And I think clearly James is trying to draw our attention to the power that we have in our words.

The fact that our words have weight.

Proverbs 18, 21 puts it this way.

The tongue has the power of life and death.

And those who love it will eat its fruit.

Now, I don't think the message here is that, you know, the tongue has the power of Jesus or John Wick.

I think a better way to frame it is that every time that we communicate with other human beings,

every time that we talk to other people, it's like we're giving them a set of directions.

And we're either leading them towards Jesus or away from Jesus.

And, you know, I think I've seen this trend that's, I think, started online

and has now become part of our everyday speech where somebody will post something

that's a little bit controversial, a little bit edgy.

And at the end of their post, they'll tag it with hashtag just saying.

I knew you were going to say that.

And, you know, it's something that we do in our speech too.

It's completely insulting or offensive to somebody else.

And we think that we can get by and we'll say, just saying, you know.

And I think as followers of Christ, I know I'm probably going to step on some toes this morning,

but knowing that our words have weight, that the tongue has the incredible power of life and death,

we should never be just saying.

We should always be seeking to honor God with our words.

And I think sometimes that we miss the mark here because we're not always aware

of the impact of what we're saying until after the fact.

Yeah, that's good.

And I think as the hashtag just saying comes at the end, I am guilty of this too.

I'll engage in conversations even if it's just with my wife, Katie, or some of our best friends.

I'll say something at the front to try to offset it like, hey, I don't mean to be controversial,

but and then the thing that comes out of my mouth is controversial.

Or, hey, I'm really not trying to start drama here, but and then I'll start drama.

Or, hey, I'm really not trying to be disrespectful, but.

That's exactly what you're doing.

It's like we think if we use this hashtag just saying, or if we give the disclaimer up front

that we're not trying to be, but then we are that it cancels each other out.

And you're right, as followers of Jesus, we're not afforded that opportunity

because everything that comes out of our mouth has to be something that is producing life,

something that is producing fruit in people.

There's no disclaimers in the Bible.

There's no, never once did you see Jesus say something that didn't align with the way that he believed

or the way that he lived and then say, oh, I was just saying.

Everything that came out of Jesus' mouth was pure, was holy, was rich.

And that's because he knew his time on this earth was short and every syllable counted.

Yep, Jesus never wasted his words.

Because he understood that his words have weight.

And again, I think sometimes we miss this because we don't always understand the impact

of what we're saying until after the fact.

A couple months ago, my son Jake had surgery and he was just recently cleared for physical activity.

And one of the first things that he asked for, he wanted us to take him to a local playground.

So we all got together, we went to the playground,

and I got the bright idea that I was going to join him on the playground.

So I was swinging on the swings and I was hanging on the monkey bars and doing flips over the pull-up bar.

Tell me we have video.

No, I'll cast you my, but I don't have one, not one prepared.

But I didn't think much about it.

I got home that night, went to bed, woke up the next morning, and I realized that my neck was stiff

and my back was aching.

And I said to my wife, I said, babe, did I miss something?

Did I like black out on the way home when we got in a car wreck?

Good grief, I think I got whiplash from the playground.

And the thing is like I didn't understand the impact of my decision until after the fact.

And while you may not get physical whiplash from something that you have posted online,

you can definitely get the verbal equivalent.

You can get word whiplash or as I call it, word lash.

You know what I'm talking about.

Word lash.

Yeah.

You know you're dealing with a bad case of word lash when you post something online

and you spend the next six hours of your life with your time spread equally between responding to angry comments,

leaving voicemails for your therapist, and binge eating an entire bag of tater tots.

Our words have weight and we have to understand the impact because number three,

culture invites us to fight on the wrong level.

That's good.

I'm going to take a quick poll here this morning and I want you to be honest with me.

How many people here today legitimately thought that you would see the day when the two CEOs

from the top two social media global companies in the world,

we're going to challenge one another to a cage match?

I got to be honest.

I did not see, I did not have, you know, Musk versus Zuckerberg on my bingo card of notable events for 2023.

No.

No.

But culture is inviting us to fight on the wrong level.

And I think we need to be aware that we live every day simultaneously between two kingdoms.

We live in the current present kingdom of the here and now.

Yep.

And because of our relationship with Christ, we live connected to the perfect eternal kingdom of heaven.

These two kingdoms are in constant conflict.

And because of this, it's so important for us to understand who the enemy is.

Ephesians chapter six says, our struggle is not against flesh and blood,

but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world,

and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

What this means is that if the first thing that comes to your mind,

when I say the word enemy, is another human being,

then you need to recalibrate your internal targeting system because you are aiming for the wrong thing.

Our enemy is not other human beings that are made in God's image.

Our enemy is the powers of darkness that are seeking to upend the kingdom of heaven.

And when we look at these verses from James chapter three, he really hits on this in verse nine.

He says, with the tongue, we praise our Lord and Father.

And with it, we curse human beings who have been made in God's likeness.

Now, I'm going to put on my biblical scholar hat here for a second.

The word that James uses for the word curse is found elsewhere in scripture.

So in the gospels, there's an account where Jesus is traveling between Jerusalem and Bethany,

and he comes across a fig tree.

And this fig tree had leaves out, it was blossoming,

and by every visual indicator, it should have been bearing fruit.

The Bible says that Jesus was hungry, so he went up to the tree, but he found no fruit.

And so he cursed it. He said, may you never bear fruit again.

The word that's used to describe Jesus' interaction with the tree

is the same word that James uses to describe our interaction with other human beings.

And I want to draw this connection between these two passages of scripture.

When we speak maliciously against other people, when we curse them,

we can unintentionally limit their ability to bear fruit.

Amen. Amen.

And I think we need to take this even further into how we quote scripture,

whether it's verbally or on social media.

How we use scripture should be similar to how we would use a flare gun.

So when you think about how we use a flare gun,

you point a flare gun straight up to draw attention for rescue.

You shoot it straight in the air.

You wouldn't take a flare gun and shoot it into a crowd of people

because you would seriously injure someone.

How we quote scripture works the same way.

When we quote scripture, we should always be doing it to point back to a loving father

who loved us so much that he gave his only son for us.

The problem is when we weaponize scripture, whether it's verbally or on social media,

and we point it towards other people, we weaponize it,

we can seriously cause damage to other people and their walk with God.

That's good.

Pesticides or miracle grow?

You get to spray one of them on a tree.

The tree is the people in your life,

and your words are either the pesticide or the miracle grow that goes on it.

One is going to produce life.

One is going to produce brilliant foliage.

One is going to produce growth,

and the other one is going to kill the root structure and end up killing the person.

And while that seems a bit extreme, it seems a bit dramatic,

I believe that our words literally can send people down one of those two paths.

Absolutely.

I have had numerous people in my life, whether it was something that I said

or whether it was a story they were telling me,

say that they're up here on this stage because of a single word that someone told them.

And one day someone said, I believe in you.

I think you're going to be successful in this.

And that was enough to propel them.

What if that person, there's someone in my life who spoke

that I was going to be a powerful worship leader years and years and years ago.

If that person wouldn't have spoken at the end of my life, I might not be here today.

But because that person literally came up to me without knowing me and said,

I feel that there's a special gift on your life to lead worship.

I did lead worship at the time.

I played guitar and sang, but singing on a stage was foreign to me.

But because that person believed in me, because that person told me that,

here I am living out the fruits of those words.

If she wouldn't have said that to me, if she would have decided to keep her mouth quiet on that day,

I might not be here today.

And this is one of my greatest privileges in life.

Thank God.

So, what are you praying?

I'm praying for the outside or miracle girl.

What are you spraying?

What are you spraying?

There's something that you and I were texting and getting ready for this week

that I want to give to people because I think it's a good thought.

I texted Carl and I said,

social media provokes us to have deep conversations on a platform that is extremely shallow.

I'm going to say it again.

Social media provokes us to have deep conversations on a platform that is extremely shallow.

And what that means is so many times, I've done it in my past, I'm not here judging, I've been that person.

I've engaged in conversations that I know are dead ends because you can't get deep enough with the person

to have a meaningful conversation because the Facebook and Twitter and Instagram platforms are this deep.

What you're trying to talk to somebody is this deep.

And what happens if you jump in a pool head first in the shallow end?

You're going to get hurt.

You're going to get hurt.

So for those of you that do have social media in here today, I want to issue a challenge.

Watch what you post because true as I'm sitting here today,

I know that there are people in this room who claim to be followers of Jesus.

But I see engaging in dialogue on social media that is not doing anything good for the Christian church.

That is not doing anything good for the kingdom.

A couple years ago when the whole political rate, I mean, not that it's died down any now,

but when it was Trump versus Biden and they had all those celebrities that were saying,

well, if Trump gets reelected, I'm leaving the country.

There was literally people in our church, Carl, who were applauding and saying, get out of here.

We don't want you in our country. We don't need you here.

And then inviting people to church the next day.

So if you're telling someone that they don't believe in your political views,

you're OK with them leaving the country, but yet you're saving them a seat in church.

Those two messages don't align.

When you look at the gospel, Jesus was inherently non-political.

The only kingdom that he was interested in elevating was the kingdom of heaven,

even though all of the people around him, all of the Jewish culture around him,

they were trying to bring up Israel as its own state.

And the Romans around them were trying to advocate for their emperor.

Everybody around him was political and even his disciples failed to get that.

You see some of the things that they said to him towards the end.

They were really encouraging him to try to kind of overthrow the establishment.

And that just wasn't what he was here to do.

And it's not part of what we're here to do either.

You know, we're here to love and to offer grace and to bring people to Jesus.

Yeah. So why do we say the things that we do?

Why do we post things to do?

Our thought for today is intake impacts outflow.

Yeah.

Intake impacts outflow.

So the question for you today is what are you ingesting on a daily basis?

What are you allowing to have hold in your life?

What are you allowing yourself to be subjected to?

You see, we are inundated with things that produce anxiety in our lives.

We live in the age of social media and 24-7 news coverage

and always feeling like we need to be only up and up with every little thing that's happening in the world.

And we have most likely been subjected to these anxious thoughts.

And if we allow the wrong stuff to get in our body, what is the result of that?

We're going to output the wrong stuff as well.

If you're ingesting good stuff, let's just look at it from a health perspective.

If you're eating your fruits and vegetables and your vitamins and you have a healthy diet,

your body is going to be better ready to face the challenge of the day and be in a better physical state.

If all you're doing is going to McDonald's for three times a day,

you are going to see the effects of that in your physical health.

It's same relationally. It's same spiritually. It's same emotionally.

If you allow yourself to be subjected with just the wrong stuff, you are going to produce the wrong stuff.

Matthew 15 10 17 through 20 says, And he called the people to him and said to them,

Hear and understand it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth.

This defiles a person. Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled?

But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart.

And this defiles a person for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

These are what defile a person. So what are you allowing to get into your heart?

Facebook posts, 24 7 news coverage, the next conspiracy theory.

Do we really need to know about every detail of life that is going on in obscure places of the globe that could possibly potentially one day interconnect with our way of life?

No, I don't think we do. Carl, this is an illustration that I thought about.

You know, as we all go to the gas pumps, sheets and BP in particular have made it extremely difficult to realize which one is diesel and which one is regular.

Thirty seven options for gas.

Yeah, they have their their advertisement at the BP that I go to is anything in diesel is green, like it's all like it's green.

But the pump has a black handle. The diesel pump has a black handle on it and the regular one has a green handle on it.

And I filled up there 4200 times in my life. And every time I go to get gas, I go, OK, it is this.

I have to like recalibrate my brain. And here's the point.

If I would put diesel fuel in my gas powered engine, I'm going to have a catastrophic effect on my car.

You see, diesel fuel in itself is not bad. No. Right.

There's nothing wrong with diesel fuel, but inserted, injected into the wrong system can cause a massive departure from intended use.

Yeah. And something I can tell you about the situation is that if you would accidentally grab the wrong handle and fill your gas engine with diesel and you want to remedy that situation,

the first thing that you'd have to do is you would have to drain the diesel out.

But in some industrial applications, when you put the wrong fluid in the right system, you might have to take an extra step.

You may need to flush the system. Oh, you're getting deep.

And for some of us here today, as we recognize that we've adopted wrong attitudes or wrong mindsets, wrong thought patterns, we need to allow the Holy Spirit to flush the system.

What's your flushing mechanism? Exactly. Word of God. Exactly. Yep. That's good.

OK, so let's watch and watch in the time here. Let's transition onto the used to be called the backside of the back.

Back when we had that. But in order to control the words that come out of our mouth, in order to control the things that we say to people, in order to control the things that we post online,

I believe that we need to learn how to reset our hearts.

Anyone younger than the age of 19 probably won't understand what I'm getting ready to say.

But how many of you old people in here, including myself, used to remember the famous keystroke control on delete on the computer? Right. Yep. Right.

There you are on Napster or LimeWire downloading the illegal stuff and retroxels early albums.

You don't want to hear that. And what happens? You get you get the circle of death. Right. So start spinning.

You click on Excel and it comes up, but it freezes. And shoot, man, here you are. Now you're stuck.

So what do you do? Control, delete. The task manager pops up and you can find the program that says in parentheses not responding.

You click on it, hit end task and what happens? Man, you're back. Right. You're back and running because you killed the program that was taking up all the bandwidth here.

Here in this day and age, sometimes we just turn it off and turn it back on. Right. So if my phone's acting up and I just this is this is a cool feature.

I don't know if you guys know this, but if you hold these top two buttons on your phone, you get this prompt that comes up.

You can actually turn these things off. Did you know that? Did you know that? Yes. You can turn these things off.

So you need to learn how to turn your phone off. But anyway, sometimes I'll tip my wife is famous for that.

She'll be like, babe, my phone's not working. I can't send a picture when I call you. It's cutting out.

I'm like, just turn it turn it off and turn it back on. And 10 seconds later, hey, it worked. Thanks.

It's a magical thing. It's a reset, right? It's a system reset. She's resetting her phone.

Sometimes we control off, delete and we reset the programming on our computers. I don't think our lives are any different.

No. So our action steps today are going to be around controlling our thoughts, controlling our conscious, altering our approach and deleting.

I'm not going to give away your teaser at the end. But how the question for you guys today is how often are you resetting your hearts?

Yeah. Sometimes it can just be a quick 30 second minute with God.

Sometimes it may be a Bible study that you need to get in with a group of friends who are going to challenge you in a certain area of your life.

Sometimes it's joining a small group. We do a really good job of encouraging small groups here at church.

That can be a life reset for you to get involved with people who are going to speak life into you.

How many remember the infomercial set it and forget it? Forget it. Forget it. Right. I remember that was like this like rotisserie. Ronco. Ronco.

Rotisserie chicken. You know, you put it in there. I have four of them. Do you know? Wow. I eat tater tots. Come on. Tater tots. Yeah.

Don't do this on a rotisserie. But anyway, that was the famous tag. He put this thing in there and he'd say, set it.

And the whole audience would say, and forget it. Yeah. Friends, that's got to be a thing of the past.

OK, it might work for cooking, but it doesn't work for daily life. It doesn't work for communicating.

We can't adopt a singular way of thinking and acting and pretend like it's going to be perpetually sufficient for the rest of our life.

We can't set our thoughts and forget our thoughts. You see, controlling our tongues, Carl, I believe is directly linked to being able to constantly reset our heart.

Yes. Controlling our tongues is linked to resetting our heart. So our first action step today, control your conscious.

Control your conscious. You can control your conscious when your conscious is the things that you actively think about.

Right. Not conscience. Conscious is the right word. Conscious means what you are actively thinking about in the moment.

We can learn to control those things. Remember, we just talked about intake impacts our outflow.

So if we allow ourselves to ingest the right things, we are going to have a byproduct of being able to control our conscious.

We need to actively monitor our thoughts and be aware of things in our life that are directly contradicting scripture.

You and I lead this worship team. If we would live our lives in a way that didn't align with being a worship leader, that would be a problem.

Absolutely. You and I are constantly controlling our conscious and making sure that we are speaking life into the team.

The words 423 says, above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it.

Letting your mind wander is kind of like driving without steering.

If you just put your mind on the set it and forget it, Ronco, Rotisserie Chicken autopilot,

eventually that car that you are driving is going to veer off the road at some point.

The road is going to shift and you need to be consciously aware of what it is that you are allowing yourself to ingest.

There is a Latin word that is called maramnate.

Maramnate. Maramnate. What does that word sound like to you?

Marinate. Marinate.

So, Latin word maramnate is a Latin word for anxiety, believe it or not.

Marinate, here in the American culture, is a cooking technique.

Let's use the cooking technique of being able to take, let's say, a steak or chicken, whatever it will be, a piece of meat,

and you put it in a bag and you inject flavors into it.

That maramnate is what that steak or that piece of meat then takes the flavor of.

You take an entity, you allow it to maramnate in a substance, and the hope is that you use things that taste good and that way your steak is better.

So, the question is, what are you maramnating yourself in?

What bag are you in and what are you allowing yourself to pour in that bag?

What are you soaking yourself in?

Because, as I just mentioned, the goal of marination of steak is to produce a delicious tasting entity.

So, if we want our lives to be delicious, if we want people to love the things that we're saying,

we have to challenge ourselves with what are we marinating in?

And I want to look at a story to show how easy it is for the world that we live in today

to produce things that come out of our mouth that shouldn't be, and we're going to take it back to Mark 4, 35 through 40, 35.

You guys should all know this story, hopefully in the Bible.

The day one evening came, he said to his disciples,

let us go over to the other side, leaving the crowd behind.

They took him along just as he was in the boat.

There was also other boats with him.

A furious squall storm came up and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped.

Okay, so imagine this, right?

So imagine this, the disciples are on the boat and this is like a bad storm.

So it says furious squall, the waves are crashing, they're throwing stuff overboard,

they're up on the top deck running around, they're scared for their life.

Jesus is downstairs in the stern of the boat taking a nap.

So they run down and one of the disciples says, sorry, Jesus was in the stern sleeping on a cushion.

One of the disciples runs down all in capital.

Teacher, don't you care.

Don't you care if we drown.

You can tell that he's not casually talking to his creator.

He's not casually talking to Jesus here.

He is so marinating in the anxiety of the storm that he's in.

He runs down and he says, teacher, don't you care.

Don't you care if we drown?

And Jesus casually gets up, rebuked the winds and the waves and says, quiet, be still.

Then the wind died down and was completely calm.

He said to his disciples, why are you so afraid?

Do you still have no faith?

The disciples were on a boat with Jesus.

The one who created the storm itself, the one who created the storm itself,

the one who had the power to say, quiet, be still.

They knew who Jesus was.

They knew of his power.

Yet they were so ridden with anxiety in their lives that they forgot to remember that the storm

that they were in was able to be turned off by the one who created it himself.

And I wonder how many times in our life we forget that,

or we give more power to the storm that we are in thinking that the one who created it

isn't good enough to solve it for us.

They were so ridden with anxiety.

They were so marinating in their anxiety that the thing that came out of their mouth was,

teacher, don't you care.

Do you think the disciples knew that Jesus cared about them?

I think they did.

I think they did. I think they knew that.

But what came out of their mouth in the moment was a reaction

because they were marinating in the wrong stuff.

They were so scared.

How many times do the things that come out of our mouth sound like that

when we know we have the one in the stern of our boat?

That's with us.

I am by no means a grill master.

My daughter would probably say otherwise because she loves when I cook on the grill.

But when I marinate something in a piece of meat,

and when I pick the herbs and the spices and the fluid that I'm going to use,

my intention is to bring out the full potential of that piece of meat.

And just like you talked about, you know,

what we consume and what we marinate in can cause us to have anxiety.

The reverse is true as well.

So as followers of Christ, if we're willing to marinate in

or to focus on Scripture,

it can allow God to bring out the full potential of our lives.

Just like I'm trying to bring out that full potential in that piece of meat.

That's what God wants to do.

That's why he gave us his word so that he can bring out everything

that he has for us in our lives.

Amen.

All right, so as we move on today, thought number two is alter your approach.

So I'm going to take it back to the story we just talked about.

Remember the story about Dave and the motorcycle?

Dave ended up walking away from motorcycles, remember,

because the three places that he went turned him off to the other two areas

that he thought surely there's no good option out there.

Because no matter where I go, no matter what I do, no matter what I choose,

I'm going to be missing something in the other areas.

I read a Facebook post years and years and years and years and years ago,

and it was about a guy who was leaving a church.

And when he left the church, he thought that the proper thing to do

was to go on Facebook and air out all the church's dirty laundry.

And when I read that, I was so disheartened because that person used his platform,

which elevated him, and he didn't choose the weight of his words carefully.

And I read that article and I wondered to myself, how many nonbelievers

or how many people who are thinking about getting into the Christian faith

are going to read this and think,

this guy's just going on here and just dragging this church and the pastor

and the way that they manage their finances and everything else through the mud.

Why would I want anything to do with that?

And I wonder how many times as Christians is that the life that we embody on Facebook?

We get on there and even talking to people at the water cooler at work as well.

You see, all of those people at the motorcycle stores

didn't really talk about how good one thing was,

but they talked about how bad something else was.

And I feel like as Christians, we need to do better at pointing glory to God

and not taking the glory away from God.

Amen.

Because I forget, it was either Steven, thank you.

It was either Steven or Rudy, forgive me.

One of you guys put up a quote and I forget the prophet,

but it said, I like your Christ, but not your Christians.

Is that you?

Gandhi.

That, man, I've never heard that before.

That broke me.

That broke me.

I love your Christ, but I don't like your Christians.

Yeah.

Guys, we don't want to be in that camp.

We don't want to be in that camp.

And I wonder how many of us are the people at the motorcycle store

airing out all the dirty laundry on the Christian church or God himself.

We got to be better.

Alter your approach.

Resetting our minds requires renewal.

Ephesians 4, 22, 24 says,

You were taught with regard to your formal way of life

to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires,

to be made new in the attitude of your minds

and to put on the new self, created to be like God

in true righteousness and holiness.

The power of your words is a reflection of the position of your heart.

If you are speaking life, you are going to be full of life.

What do you need to alter in your life this morning?

What gets your first fruits when you wake up in the morning?

Are you checking your Facebook status that you posted last night

to see how many likes you get?

Are you looking at how many people double tapped your Instagram photo

to say that they loved it?

Are you checking the most recent tweet from Zuckerberg

or Twitter or whatever?

I don't do Twitter.

I think saying tweet is ridiculous.

But anyway, so what and then the second thing,

what do you need to alter in your response mechanism?

Do you respond or do you react?

Do you respond or do you react?

So whether it's on a social media post or whether it's just in your everyday life,

do you respond or do you react?

There's a difference.

Response is to provide a calculated, well thought out reply.

But to react is to give an impulsive rebuttal.

And I think a lot of the times our first option is to react.

We want to tell somebody why they're wrong and why we're right.

So we need to control our conscious, alter our approach.

And one of the things that determines whether we're responding or reacting

is really our level of spiritual preparedness.

Colossians chapter four says,

let your conversation be always full of grace,

seasoned with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone.

So we're called to be prepared to respond so that we don't fall back on reacting.

And you know, we've talked about altering our approach in the way that we communicate.

But I think I want to take it a step further and even talk about how we alter,

how we can alter our approach spiritually.

Growing up, one of my favorite books was If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

And for those of you who haven't read this book,

I'm just going to give you a brief overview.

So basically it follows the story of this young man who he goes out to do one act of kindness

and he gives a mouse a cookie.

And then the mouse asks for a glass of milk.

And then it snowballs from there until at the end of the book,

this young boy has spent his entire afternoon entertaining this mouse

and they've gotten into all kinds of trouble.

And I was thinking that for one of our next projects,

we could write a children's book that's on a spiritual level.

We could call it If You Give the Enemy an Egg Sandwich.

And I can imagine the first couple pages, all right?

So if you give the enemy an egg sandwich, he's going to ask for a glass of orange juice.

And when you're pouring the orange juice, the sound of the fluid in the cup

is going to make him think of bacon.

And so he's going to ask for you to make a plate of bacon.

And as you're warming the oven to make a plate of bacon,

it's going to remind him that he wants a side of tater tots.

And, you know, I can see we've got sequels in the future.

If this takes off, if you give a priest a pancake, if you give an apostle a waffle,

I mean, come on, we could go all kinds of places here.

And it's a cute idea, but the reality is that for many of us,

we spend way too much time entertaining the enemy.

We spend way too much time allowing the enemy to influence our thought processes and our attitudes.

And as followers of Christ, we're not called to entertain the enemy.

We're called to evict the enemy, which brings us to our final thought.

Number three, delete the deceit. We got to delete the deceit.

We need to eliminate thoughts that don't align with God's will for our life.

And in order to do this, we have to be familiar with scripture.

If we don't know the truth of what God says about us,

we're going to be that much more susceptible to believing the lies of the enemy.

A couple of years ago, during the workday, I received a call from our corporate office,

they said, we need you to log off all the computers, power everything down, and wait for our call.

And I think it was maybe 48 hours later, they called me back and they said,

okay, you have the green light to get back on your computers.

And I found out through conversation a little bit later what had happened.

So during a routine scan of our company's operating system,

they had determined that somebody had hacked into our server,

and they were using it as a Bitcoin farm.

Now, I'm not super technologically savvy, so I don't totally understand what this means,

but the gist of what I understood is that an outside entity gained access, unauthorized access, to our server.

They were using the processing power that was supposed to be available for us to do our jobs for a different purpose.

And this had all gone unnoticed for several weeks because it was happening in the background.

And this morning, I want to challenge you with this question.

What's running in your background as you seek to honor God with your thoughts and your actions, as you go about your day?

What is it that's running in your background?

Because we need to eliminate the thoughts and the emotions that are driving us away from God,

the things that are sabotaging our success.

Colossians chapter three says,

Control, alt, delete.

These are the actions that we need to take to reset our hearts and our minds.

We're going to get ready and close out this morning, so I want to invite you guys to stand with me.

You know, as I was preparing for this week,

I had a completely different direction in mind with how I wanted to close out this service.

But I felt like God was challenging me to change things up.

And I believe that somebody here this morning is going to experience freedom.

We just got done talking about what's running in your background,

the thoughts and the emotions that are running in your background.

And I believe that for many of us, we're being distracted by the enemy.

We're being distracted by thoughts and emotions that are running in our background.

Anger, anxiety, guilt, pride, perfectionism.

So this morning, I want to give you an opportunity to respond to what the Holy Spirit is doing here right now.

I'm going to invite you to bow your heads and close your eyes.

With every head bowed and with every eye closed,

if that's you, if you're struggling with feeling distracted,

I want to take this opportunity to pray with you. Would you just slip your hand up?

Yes. Yes, God. Yes.

Holy Spirit, come.

God, quiet our hearts.

Quiet our minds.

Father, one of your names is the Prince of Peace.

You knew, you knew that as we walked through this life,

as we sought to honor you with everything, with every thought, with every word,

that we would come up against distractions.

You knew that, God, and you provided your Holy Spirit so that we could live undistracted.

We could live focused on you.

God, I ask right now for anybody in this room, whether the hand is raised or not,

if there are distractions in their life that they're living with on a regular basis,

God, I pray freedom over anybody here this morning.

God, that needs to be set free.

We thank you, Father, that you're consistently here with us,

even through the distractions. You're here with us in every moment.

We thank you, God. In your name we pray. Amen.

Now, we're not done here this morning because as I was preparing this week,

I got this strong feeling that there were going to be some people who were coming here this morning

who were tired and weary, worn out,

and just sick of the struggle.

And God laid this word on my heart for you today.

You need to surrender. Don't surrender to the struggle.

Surrender to the Savior.

So in just a minute we're going to have an opportunity here to surrender through worship.

And for some of you, you may need to get on your knees before God.

You may need to allow your physical posture to match your spiritual intent to surrender to God.

So I'm going to throw it over to the worship team here,

and I just want to invite you to sing out in worship.

You can have all of me, every single little piece.

You can have it all, you can have it.

Here I am at your feet. I surrender everything.

You can have it all, you can have, you can have all of me, every single little piece.

Oh, you can have it all.

Oh, here I am, here I am at your feet.

I surrender everything.

You can have it all, you can have, oh, you can have it all.

Oh, you can have it all.

Yeah.

For some of you, your act of surrender may look like turning back around

and running back towards the perfect arms of a loving Father who loves you so much.

He's calling you back home this morning.

And if that's you, if you haven't responded to that call,

if you haven't chosen to make Jesus your personal Lord and Savior,

I want to give you that opportunity right here and right now.

I have good news for you. Today is your day.

So here at the Hub City Vineyard, we pray this prayer all together.

Jesus, I'm broken.

Distracted. Full of doubt.

Fear. Shame. Regret.

Today, as an act of my will,

I choose to make you the Lord of my life.

I receive the Holy Spirit

and all that you have for me.

In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen. Come on. Come on.

God bless you guys. Thank you so much for coming here this morning.

I'm going to head to that door. Carl's going to head to that door.

Don't forget, team up in the family room right after the service.

We love you. Have an awesome rest of your Sunday. Online, we love you guys.

We love you.