What’s on your Mind? | Ps. Maegan Pittman

Welcome to the Celebration Church Orlando podcast.

Thank you for joining us to learn more about Celebration Orlando, a church devoted to reaching the lost, equipping the found, and helping the hurting.

Follow us on social media using the handle at Celebration ORL or visit our website, celebrationorl.org.

Sometimes we can't um put things into words, but then we have things like this videos that can elaborate the things that we have in our life and speak the words for us.

How you doing this morning, you guys?

Good.

Happy Mother's Day to everyone.

Today is a day that we can celebrate and honor those incredible women in our lives today.

So can we give a hand clap for those in our lives that have done so much for us that have made an impact?

It doesn't even matter if it's a your natural or biological parent, but there are so many women that have impacted our lives and shaped us into who we are today.

So we want to honor them today.

Well, our theme for this year is Rooted in Rising.

And I love the title of that.

Like when we sat around and collaborated, like what kind of title was summarized, especially specifically for this month, which is mental health awareness month, um, what is the thing that we can use for our whole year to embody this particular theme and it's rooted, where we planted.

And then as we're planted, we're going to rise in the things that God has for us and the pathways that He is going to direct us for our lives.

So as we dive into our series on mental health and spiritual renewal, we'll dive into the deep rooted things of Christ that's going to rise above our circumstances.

And it's going to produce a harvest.

Our belief is that it's going to produce a harvest in your life for healing and transformation.

How many of you want that in your life?

Some healing and transportation.

I mean, transformation.

I said transportation.

I'm trying to get out of here already.

Um, but as we're continuing these series, uh, we're gonna fuse biblical wisdom with insights from mental health to enrich our understanding and practice of spiritual living.

Our theme scripture um is Romans 12 and 2, where it says, Do not allow this world to mold you in its image.

Instead, be transformed from the inside out by renewing your mind.

And as a result, you will be able to discern what God wills and whatever God finds good, pleasing, and complete.

There's another translation that um I found, but I'm gonna read that later.

Um, so last week, Keith talked about renewing, and the process of renewing is an ongoing process to making things new.

So if we change our mind, we can change our life, even when addressing the traumas, triggers, and the cross.

So if you missed that message last week, we have it on our podcast.

Make sure you go back and watch it.

It's it's something that can uplift you and encourage you where you are.

So we want to continue the conversation by looking at two passages.

And the first one is in 2 Corinthians 10.

2 Corinthians 10.

If you don't have your Bibles, there's a Bible in the sky.

Paul addresses the spiritual warfare in this chapter.

And um, what he's showing is the spiritual warfare that believers are engaged in.

And it emphasizes the power of divine weapons versus spiritual, um, divine weapons versus the earthly ones.

You know, our earthly weapons can be like physical weapons, but our spiritual ones are more in the natural, the ones that God gives us through prayer and all these other things.

So in this chapter, Paul highlights the necessity of protecting our thoughts.

And um, there's a scripture in there that says, so a man thinks, so he is.

So a lot of us, many times we can say, Oh, I'm not organized.

And then guess what?

We're not organized.

And then we'll say, Oh, I'm just not smart.

So then we think that, oh, we're not intelligent when we are.

Maybe it's we didn't comprehend this one particular thing or a couple of things, but we think that we're not intelligent by the words that we speak.

So a lot of times when it says, so a man thinks, so he is, we embody what we speak out in our lives, and we oftentimes speak that over our lives, and we continue to walk out in that.

Um, 2 Corinthians 10 and 5 says, We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

Another translation says, we are taking prisoners of every thought and every emotion and subduing them into obedience to the anointed one.

So as we focus throughout this message, we're gonna see the recurring theme about taking every thought captive to obeying Christ.

Mark 5, 25 through 29 says, A woman in the crowd has suffered for 12 years with constant bleeding, and she had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she has spent everything she had to pay for them.

I can't imagine 12 years suffering with an ailment.

When we get a toothache for one day, it's like, no, God, rescue me! This is so painful, and that's just one day.

Imagine this woman having this pain, this issue for so long, and never feeling like she's going to get relief in that area.

She had spent everything she had to pay for them.

She had gotten no better, and in fact, she had gotten worse.

She heard about Jesus, and so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe.

She touched his robe.

I can't imagine how meaningful that was to get a hold of Jesus.

Sometimes we're we're going through um different things, and it's like, what does it look like to grab a hold of him with all that you have, with all the distractions, with all the barriers, grabbing a hold of him and not letting go.

I will be healed.

Her faith rose up in that moment.

She said, If I can get to you, I know I'm gonna be made whole.

And immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition.

Can we say breakthrough?

She was free in that moment and healed.

Today I want to talk to you about the role of our thoughts play in shaping our lives, and I've entitled this message, What's on your mind?

Let's pray, Lord.

I thank you for today.

I thank you for bringing us together to grow through your word.

Please speak to us, encourage us, and challenge us to be rooted in your truth so that we can rise in your grace.

It's in Jesus' name that we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

So imagine you're in a garden, and in a garden you have flourishing plants.

It's beautiful, they're deeply rooted, and they're rising to the sun, they're growing.

It's beautiful.

But then there's what happens when a weed is in there, right?

It starts small, it's not noticeable at the time, and then slowly it starts creeping in with creeping in and entangling itself around the healthy plants.

And so when it starts like that, it begins to spread, and then it threatens to take over the whole garden.

And if left unchecked, the weeds can grow, spread, and ultimately affect the entire garden.

As the gardener, we must be vigilant in recognizing weeds and removing them diligently and quickly.

Because if we don't do that, then what happens is the weeds are the stronger ones and they will take over, and eventually those trees will die.

This is similar to this is similar to our thought life.

We're often just living our lives, having a good time, and then our minds get flooded with all types of unhealthy thoughts.

I mean, I know many of us in here have had unhealthy thoughts throughout our lifetime of being what we have.

And so if left unchecked these negative thoughts, these weeds can spread and rob us of our peace, our mind, our joy.

And we will ultimately we won't have any rest.

Our desire is for peace in the mind.

So we must be mindful of what we're thinking about.

So today, let's ask ourselves what's on your mind, and I want each of you in this moment to just take a moment and think about what's on your mind.

What is the thing that is maybe negative in your mind, or the thing that you can't get a hold of God with?

What is that thing?

Think about it.

This is a practice we should do on a regular basis.

Because if not, whatever, if we start to become negative or we have these negative thoughts, it overtakes us.

It spirals us out into depression, creates anxiety, and other mental health challenges that we were not expecting because we never did a check-in.

The busyness of our lives are the things that will keep us from assessing where we are today.

And so as you make those practices in your life, they become habits.

And as you have those habits, you're able to counteract those things that come into your minds and cast them out quickly.

Amen.

As we ask ourselves those questions, those thought, those thoughts, um, if we start nurturing healthy thoughts, it'll help us to grow.

It'll allow the weeds of negativity and doubt to overrun our mental, our mental garden.

And so if you can change your mind, you can change your life.

I want y'all to say that after me.

If you can change your mind, you can change your life.

Amen.

And you keep repeating that until you believe it.

Because what the enemy wants to do is he wants to put those negative thoughts in our minds and he wants us to stay there.

And how we do that is keep believing until it becomes fruition, requiring practice.

This reminds us the power that's held in our thoughts.

Our mindset shapes our emotions.

Our mindsets shapes our actions, our relationships, and our spiritual health.

It shapes them.

And so, in the context of the woman with the issue of blood, she faced so many challenges.

Um, and this was due to cultural and religious aspects that she faced.

And so, with that condition, it caused continual bleeding and it rendered her unclean.

And so this condition led to isolation, it led to religious exclusion.

Just imagine if you had to come into church and you had this issue for 12 years, whether it was like cancer or something else, and you couldn't come into this place of worship because you had a disease or you had an ailment.

Imagine that.

Imagine this woman not being able to come to the house of worship.

I can't imagine how this impacted her psychologically and in her emotions.

And so I'm sure this caused like some type of emotional distress, um, leaving her with shame and feeling alienated in that moment.

And so I just thought about man, how much did you how much did you experience during this time that you had to rehearse every day?

Moments of crying and no one being able there, being there to support you.

Despite all of that, her narrative shifts when she hears about Jesus.

When she hears about Jesus, this changes for her.

Jesus was a man whose reputation was a healer and he was compassionate, and the word was getting around spreading like very quickly.

Like for us, we have cell phones.

If we want some news to travel really fast, we got our cell phones, we got social media, we have all these things.

They didn't have that.

It was by word of mouth.

Jesus is coming, the healer is coming.

So I can't imagine her feeling this sense of excitement or this drive to get to the person who can heal her.

And she thought to herself, if I could just touch the hem of his garment, I would be made heal and whole.

And this news sparked a glimmer of hope in her life.

It increased her faith.

And despite the barriers set by society, she saw Jesus as a safe place, a safe haven, a source of potential, healing and acceptance that she had denied for so long.

Someone accepts me.

I have someone who accepts me, and I'm trying to get to him.

So deciding to seek Jesus, she touched his garment.

And I bet it wasn't simple.

I bet she had to fight through the crowds.

I bet she was in so much pain, she was just crawling to get to him.

She had to have a drive and an urgency of I need to get rid of what is hurting me and not allowing me to be moved forward.

And so with that, I'm sure in her mind she had periods of doubt, were unworthiness.

Or even the prospects of if I don't get to him, I'm not gonna be made whole.

So here's the lies the moment that we take our thoughts captive, just as it says in 2 Corinthians 10 and 5.

We should take our thoughts captive, even in the darkest moments, even if it still remains there, continue in our faith.

God said, if you have faith of a mustard seed, a mustard seed is small.

We all have at least that.

Um, so for this woman, she steps up and it requires her to push past the fears, the doubts, all the negative things that people were saying to her to reach the person who can cleanse and heal her.

And so the act of taking our thoughts captive, it's not passive.

It's not passive.

It's an active, deliberate choice to reject the lies and the limitations imposed by society or even ourselves.

But by choosing to believe she was worth healing and by acting on that belief despite the backlash, she not only physically reached out to touch Jesus spiritually and mentally, but she reached out to embrace the truth of his love and his divine power.

Amen.

We know that we can get to him because if we get to him, we can be made whole.

He can heal us.

But also, it's his divine nature that can do that.

So her story powerfully illustrates the transformation that follows when we choose to align our thoughts with God's truth.

It reflects a journey from isolation to inclusion, from suffering to healing, and from rejection to acceptance.

And this highlights our mental battles that can take over our spiritual lives and our physical realities.

So taking every thought captive means it's an ongoing process.

It doesn't mean because you try to take it captive today, it's not gonna come back.

It doesn't mean when you try to take it captive, it's not going away, but it's an ongoing process.

And we it requires practice.

And so it's about constantly realigning our fears, our doubts, our insecurities with promises and truth of his scripture, and in doing so, we will find freedom and courage to change our lives.

If you can change your mind, you can change your life.

So here are the three ways that we can protect our thoughts.

And the first way is to identify the thought.

So this journey that we have, it's um a spiritual and emotional journey, and to get to that health part of it, we have to be self-aware.

Self-awareness is, man, I'm taking time to think about like what is going on with me in the moment.

It's identifying what thoughts are arising and why are they there.

Are they rooted in fear?

Are they rooted in doubt?

Or do they uplift you?

Do they encourage you?

And do they align with God's truth?

We have to take the time to do the self-assessment.

Just as the woman with the issue of blood recognized her condition, she believed in the possibility of healing that we must acknowledge our mental and emotional states as well.

She recognized, man, this is my condition, but I know I can be better.

I know there's a prospect of me being well because there is someone that can heal me.

Awareness is the first step towards transformation, but it's also about catching the weeds of negativity before they take root.

So, how do we take those things out?

How do we take those things out before they set in and take root and we embrace and embody those negative things in our life, and then our pathway follows suit.

So imagine a mother uh watching her children at play.

I'll say this for me like, you know, when you have the first child, man, oh man, parents, we're so anxious.

We have all this like anxiety.

We're like, oh my gosh, I need to make sure they eat the best foods, otherwise, they're gonna be sick in sick children when they get older.

They gotta have their veggies.

Oh, don't climb on this.

There's such an anxiety that comes upon that because we're looking at their safety and we think that we're able to protect them from it all.

And it robs us of our peace.

And so, recognizing these thoughts, um, we can address them without letting them simmer and produce this anxious feeling that we have every time when it comes to our loved ones, when it comes to ourselves.

How do we do that?

We have to become aware of where we are, what is stealing the joy and the peace from us.

And sometimes it's what we care for.

God cares for the small things, but he also cares for the big things.

And so identifying our thoughts is essential because it's the initial step in deciding which thoughts we will allow to reside and grow in our minds.

And so identify the thought.

The second point is question the thought.

Questioning our thoughts involves examining them critically and asking these questions.

Is this thought true?

Is it true?

One of the things I remember one time somebody walked past me one day and I had spoken to them and they couldn't hear me.

Oh, well, I thought they were ignoring me.

And um, immediately my mind went to, oh, they don't like me, I must have done something wrong, I'm a horrible person.

Was it this thing that I did like back in the day?

You know, I'm thinking of all these things.

I immediately went far right.

And upon having a conversation with that person, I found out that they have found out some bad news.

And um for myself, I was like, oh my gosh, I completely jumped to something that wasn't even true without even having a conversation.

Like, hey, my what I should have done was, hey, I noticed you earlier.

I tried to wave to you.

You know, I know you probably didn't see me.

That's how I should have appointed instead of like thinking so far right when that wasn't even true, but that was my reality and my truth in the moment.

Um, is it helpful or harmful?

Are these thoughts helpful or harmful?

Is this gonna make me feel bad?

Am I um saying negative things to myself?

Um, am I being self-deprecating?

You know, um, what are the things?

If that's not helpful for me, it's harmful.

And so recognizing where you are in that spectrum and questioning that will help you to be able to process and move forward.

And also, does it align with what I know about God's character and his promises?

The woman with the issue of blood, she might have battled thoughts of unworthiness or fear of rejection due to her condition.

However, by questioning her assumptions about Jesus and his willingness to heal her, she found courage to reach out and touch his garment, which initiated her healing.

That's so powerful.

Man, she stepped outside of what she could have thought.

Man, everybody's around here, maybe they're even more worthy than me to be healed.

But she said, No, I'm worthy to be healed in this moment.

I'm going to stand on his promises.

I know he's a healer, and I'm going to get to him so that I can get my healing.

Amen.

We don't have to shrink back and cower.

Like, we can ask the Holy Spirit for boldness and courage if we don't have it within ourselves.

Amen.

Have you ever had a thought that comes out of nowhere?

You're just sitting, you're minding your business, and it's something from your past or your childhood or a trauma, and you're and you're asking yourself, what triggered this?

Sometimes our thoughts are like unexpected guests.

They pop in without warning and they can lead us down rabbit trails, invoking fear and giving us anxiety as we consider the unknown.

And I know with all that's going on in the world, the fear of the unknown sometimes gets to us, right?

But we trust in the God that we're saved, God's gonna protect us, we have a place, our our home is temporary, but in this, we know that God is gonna take care of things and he's gonna order every step that we have in our lives.

And so as a mom, I think of my children.

Um, I have like uh an app, you know, on my app, I can, you know, check my children or whatever.

And um, if my kids go out, Keith is like looking at me like, what are you doing?

I'm like, up, I'm so nervous.

I'm like, oh, they're not back home yet.

They're like 54, no, not 54 miles away, like 20 miles away, 15 miles away.

It could be five, y'all.

Um, I'm like, he's not back in the house, and I'm just waiting for my doorbell, my ring app to like alert me that my child is home.

And so I fear is not of God.

I have to make the conscious choice to trust God, that he is in control.

I have to question the thought, pray, and then give it to God, and then rest on his promises that he's gonna take care of what I care about, small or large, he's gonna take care of it.

And so questioning our thoughts ensures that we accept and act upon what has been purified by truth to align with the life of Christ and what he calls for us in our lives.

So as we as we identify our thoughts, we're gonna question our thoughts.

And then the last thing is we're gonna replace the thoughts.

That's the hard part.

No one said it was gonna be easy to replace the negative thought, especially when we're focusing on the reality of what we're dealing with and what we're facing.

So replacing our thoughts is an active and creative process of replacing destructive, false, or harmful, harmful thoughts with the truth of God's word.

It's not merely a defensive stance, but a proactive strategy that transforms our mental landscapes.

And so by planting new seeds of God's truth in our minds, we can cultivate a garden that bears the fruits of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and even self-control.

The woman with the issue of blood, she replaced her despair with hope and action.

And by deciding to reach out to Jesus for healing, she was made whole.

We must actively fill our minds with thoughts that empower and align us with God's purposes.

Philippians 4 and 8 says, Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent and praiseworthy, think on these things.

Says to focus on that.

The good things.

I love grateful journals.

Grateful journals, if you do them every day, they give you three points.

Give me three things that was good out of your day.

It could be I didn't quit my job today, you're grateful.

God, I'm still here.

I'm taking care of, I'm still at the place that you have blessed me with.

That's why there's grateful journals because you have to find the good.

There are goods in the midst of the chaos and bad.

Let's think on those things.

Some of us may struggle with self-worth.

We might feel like we're good enough.

We may feel like we could be a better mother, sister, friend, employee, son.

And oftentimes, when we look at things like our social medias, maybe even TV shows, that comparison can compare uh it can kill our confidence.

Because we'll feel like we're not doing enough.

We're trying to keep up with someone else when God has given us a different grace, especially in our seasons.

So I know I've seen a lot of times where I wanted to, oh, I just want to travel.

I like traveling.

And here's my reality.

I have church, I have internship, I have full-time school.

It's my season.

I can't want something, I can want it, but if I obsess about it and I let it control me, when that's not my reality, and it's not my season, and it may not be the finances either.

Hello.

But we can focus on those things and try to keep up with that.

But by replacing it, by replacing negative self-assessments with the scriptural affirmation that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Whatever we had, being content in our seasons, we can begin to view ourselves as valuable and beloved by God.

So replace our thoughts with those that reflect God's truth, and it will enable us to rise above our circumstances and embody the new life Christ has won for us.

And this will ensure our mental soil is fertile ground for God's transformative work.

In closing, as we reflect on today's message, let us consider what's on our minds.

Are we nurturing the seeds of faith and truth?

Or are we allowing weeds of worry and doubt to choke our spiritual growth?

This is Mother's Day.

Let us commit to being vigilant gardeners of our minds rooted in Christ, rising above challenges and blooming beautifully in every season of our lives.

Amen.

All right.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, help us to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ.

Teach us to identify, interrogate, and replace our thoughts with your truth.

May our minds be gardens that reflect the beauty of your spirit, producing abundant harvests that glorify you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen, amen, amen.

Church, we give it up for Megan for such an encouraging word.

Thank you for joining us to learn more about Celebration Orlando, a church devoted to reaching the lost, equipping the found, and helping the hurting.

Follow us on social media using the handle at Celebration O R L or visit our website, celebrationorl.org.