This Is Going To Be Different - Week 2 - Ti'eshia Moore - June 14, 2026

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the City Place Church Podcast.

Please join me in a moment of prayer before we get started.

Heavenly Father, thank you for the person listening to this prayer.

I ask that you would help open their mind and their heart, and that you would speak directly to them through today's message.

In the name of your son, my brother, Jesus Christ, I pray.

Amen.

You said you were gonna talk back.

Are you? I'm ready.

All right now, I'm ready.

Th- thank you for sitting on the front row, choir.

Let's go.

Thank you.

And all of us are gonna follow suit, too.

Are you ready this morning? Yeah.

Uh, well, Pastor Damon sends his love to you this morning from Delaware.

From Delaware.

I believe he is not in 101-degree, uh, weather right now sitting in this school.

But, um, a dear friend of ours, in fact, he's come to preach for us and has served as a mentor and a friend, uh, Pastor Chris Rue has come through CityPlace Church a time or two.

Uh, and he is, uh...

He called up Pastor Damon this week, and he said, uh, "My friend, uh, I am going through something significant in my family."

And without further ado, before the conversation was done, before he even hung up the phone, he said, "I'm there.

I, I will be there."

And so he got on a plane, uh, a bit unexpectedly this week, but this morning he is preaching three services in Delaware.

And so will you just, while you're here, begin to pray for your pastor as he's delivering the word of the Lord instead, uh, in Delaware.

It's amazing, uh, as a church, we are a generous church.

We've always been a generous church, and we thank you for being a part of that generosity.

And as such, we are a church that says it's just not about this church, it's about God's church, and God's church is all over the earth.

And so I love your generosity.

I love your ability to send a pastor and, uh, and let him do what he is called to do in the earth.

So thank you for that this morning.

But I have not left you empty-handed.

Last week, Pastor kicked off a message talking about this is going to be different, and it, it was really an extension from a series over the last couple of months that we've been talking about, uh, from cautious to courageous.

How many of you have been here? If you've been here, wave your hand at me.

Good.

Then you, you know what I mean.

And if you haven't been here, we're gonna give you a very quick CliffsNote version.

It's this idea of, uh, how we operate and when God calls us into a life that feels calculated, it feels safe, it feels cute, right? From cautiousness to courageous.

And over the past couple of months, we've been dissecting this, and what does it mean to us t- to live courageously? What does it mean for us to lean in? We've been going through a church building process that I talked about.

We've been going through, uh, called the Courageous Project.

We've also been going through our courageous journeys as we step into what courage looks like for us.

And last week, Pastor kicked off a s- a, a message entitled This Is Going To Be Different.

You know, everybody loves change, right? Until you have to do it.

Yeah.

I like the idea of change.

I like the idea of new.

In fact, when I think of, like, do you want the same or do you want something new? Have y'all ever seen that show, I forget the name of it right now.

It's the one with the curtains, you know, and Wayne Brady does it.

It, but it used to be the old guy, and he'd, like, pull something out of your purse, and he's like, "Do you want the $500?" You know what I'm talking about? What's that show called? Let's Make a Deal.

Let's Make a Deal, that's it.

That Let's Make a Deal, and he would dress up all crazy, and then they would do these stunts, and they would give you something.

And they would ask you a magic question.

They would say, "Do you want to keep the $500 in your hand, or do you wanna trade it in for curtain number two?" And almost like clockwork, because it's human nature, people would do what? Trade it in.

They would trade it in for curtain number two.

And sometimes behind curtain number two was, like, a boat.

Sometimes it was, like, you know, a computer monitor, and sometimes it was a Zonk.

And Zonks were goofy stuff.

It was just, like, a bunch of rubber chickens or it was, like, you know, like, toilet paper or whatever.

It would be something real crazy.

And the person would be like, "Why did I trade in what I had in my hand for what I hoped for?" And the reality is, is because psychologically we all love this idea of the thing.

The thing has to be better than my thing.

Huh.

You don't believe me? That relationship has to be better than the relationship I'm plowing through.

That new job has to be better than the, the job that I'm suffering through.

That thing over there will be better because this thing feels hard.

And when we bring ourselves into maintenance mode, it's just far less exciting.

It's far less exciting to plow your ground and to maintain what God has given you than to think about something new.

This is kind of the idea that we found over the last couple of months in Joshua.

In Joshua 1:9, we've been repeating this verse for months, and it is this idea that God finally, Moses has passed on, Joshua is being called into leadership, and God says, "Have I not commanded you: Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go."

Joshua 1:9

And that verse gets me excited.

The verse gets me excited because I can see myself in Joshua.

I can see myself in the places where I've not been, uh, courageous, where I've been a little afraid, where I've been a little timid.

And God's like, "Come on, Tyesha.

Toughen up.

It's a different season.

It's time to be strong and courageous."

But we talked about a few weeks ago, if you were here with me on Sisterhood Sunday, this idea of debunking what courage it i- is and what it's not.

What we believe courage is is this giant leap from fear into bravery.

Like overnight, we're not fearful anymore.

But that's not the way it works.

What courage actually looks like is incremental, unexciting steps that take us from cautious to consistent.

And when we're consistent, we begin to shed and become committed.

And then we become committed and finally, after many steps of faithfulness and, and our connection to God, we become courageous.

It's a process.

I submit to you this morning, as Pastor kicked off, this is going to be different.

In which case...

Oh, by the way, I know you're praying for him, but I also heard through the grapevine that Pastor did not finish his blanks last week.

Is that correct? I heard of your notes.

He left you with three blanks filled.

Abomination.

I shall finish what he started- Yeah.

and faithfully do.

Mm-hmm.

Let him know, okay? Let him know.

When he comes back, say, "Pastor Ty finishes her blanks.

I don't know what's wrong with you."

In this idea of Joshua, I wanna carry a psalm now because in chapter two of Joshua, we see that Joshua begins to take on a mission, and this mission isn't just a normal mission.

It's actually a mission of creating something different.

As we said, courage comes in steps, and so Joshua is essentially saying, God tells Joshua, "Be strong and courageous," and then Joshua begins to walk out the steps.

And why is this important? Because you and I, when God gives us a promise, when you have a dream in your heart, when there's something that you are intending to do, it is time for you then to walk out steps.

But what steps should you be walking? What is actually going to be the change when God says, "Be strong, be courageous, get ready to change, get ready to pick it up, get ready to do X or Y or Z"? But then what? What do I do? I submit to you today that there are two phases of any kind of change, and in your first blank, it says phase one.

Right there in that blank, you're gonna put the word internal.

The first phase of change is often extremely private.

This is how, though, when we think about change, we don't think about the change within us, we think about change.

But the truth is, is that God always starts in us before He starts demonstrating stuff external to us.

He does stuff internally, and this looks like it is not always private, but it is often private.

It looks like us recognizing privately when God is speaking to us.

For example, you're going from a dry season into a new season.

It's internal.

Nobody sees anything different, but God speaks.

And this is where we find Joshua in chapter, uh, one, "Be strong and be courageous.

Do not be fearful.

Do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you for wherever you go."

Who is God talking to? Who's God talking to? He's talking to Joshua in this verse.

He says, "Joshua, do not be fearful.

Be strong.

Be courageous."

But it's happening inside of Joshua, meaning that nobody else is knowing that this is happening to Joshua.

Have you ever been there, where you start to sense a change and everything around you is the same, but you start to feel different? Yeah.

This is an internal phase of change, and it's important because if we know that our change is gonna go through two phases and the first one is private.

Yeah.

God starts to just drop you a little nugget.

You just st- sort of start to sense, "Gosh, I don't want to do that thing anymore."

Yeah.

"I want to be more like this or less of this."

Yeah.

It's private.

It just starts to sit in your heart.

And some people always ask me, "Uh, Pastor Ty, how can you hear the voice of God?" And I always say, "Get quiet-" Yeah.

so that you can begin to just hear those nuggets, the unctions."

It's not this big thing.

God is not gonna bring a megaphone to you.

He's gonna begin to drop small nuggets, and it's in phase one that change actually starts to happen.

In phase one is also the season, watch, where psychologists tell us that there's something called, uh, neural pathways.

I'm not an expert in this space, but my mom that you have met is.

And she tells us that, uh, uh, as your mind, uh, your mind is a muscle, and like any other muscle, it can grow.

It can morph.

It c- it's crazy.

It's actually a brilliant muscle.

And what happens when we have a thought is your mind lays down a pathway because your brain is lazy.

It says, "I don't wanna think new things.

I wanna get there as quickly as possible."

And so if I say, "Look, that's what Marlo is like.

This is what I know," then that's what my brain associates.

That's lazy.

I have one interaction and now, now this is what I think of Marlo.

But what happens if I have an incorrect picture of Marlo? What happens if I caught her on a bad day? What about if she caught me on a bad day, and all of a sudden now I have to work harder to make an association for what Marlo is? It's called a neural pathway, which means my brain has said, "Connect point A to B."

But the brain is able, in a neural pathway, to lay down a new path.

Yes.

It's harder.

It causes more effort.

It doesn't like it, but it's able to do it.

Why is that important? Because sometimes in our lives, the enemy understands our physical bodies, and he understands that sometimes the greatest enemy is you The greatest enemy to your future is you.

It's what you believe about you.

So if he can get one quick, watch, if he can get one quick interaction point, you're no good.

You will always be this way.

This sin will always capture you.

It's a neural pathway that he lays down, and our brain is lazy.

And so instead of creating a new pathway and saying, "No, that's not what the word of God says.

I'm taking you all the way around the word of God, and that is, I will believe the word of the Lord, and I will do this, and I will do..."

The brain is lazy, saying, "You're always gonna do this.

You're always that.

You're always gonna be stuck with this."

And do you see what I'm saying? And so one of the pieces of phase one is that we have to rewrite the pathways.

We have to rewrite the lies that the enemy is speaking over us, and we have to choose a new pathway.

Now, it's difficult.

It's, it's, it's challenging, and it's private.

This is why mental health and mental health work is so important because oftentimes the lies that we tell ourselves, the thing that you tell yourself when you lay your head on the pillow when no one else is there, is private.

Yeah.

And so then the key to phase one, it's in your notes, is community, and not just any community.

It's the community that will ask you the tough questions.

What is it that you're thinking about? Why do you believe that? Who told you that? Or somebody that will tell you, "No, hard times will not last forever."

Right.

"God is still good."

Yeah.

Nothing lasts forever, at least not on this earth.

It's the kind of community that will push you out of your lazy brain.

Yeah.

And I'm not trying to be nasty.

I'm trying to be serious.

It's, it's somebody that will push you out of your lazy brain to say, "That's not what God says, so go the harder way to make the connection."

Do you hear me this morning? Yeah.

Am I making sense? Yeah.

In Joshua 1 we see this.

We see an example of phase one energy, the kind that is internal and private, and it happens, uh, when Joshua, it says this, "Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people saying, 'Pass through the camp and command the people saying prepare f- provisions for yourself, for within three days you'll cross over this Jordan.

You're gonna go and possess the land which the Lord is giving you.'"

This is private.

Joshua's declaring what God has said, but at this moment, we have no idea if the people are going to receive it.

So the, so the people then answered Joshua, verse 16, saying, "All that you command us to do, we will do, and whatever, uh, wherever you send us, we will go.

Just as we heeded Moses in all things, so we will heed you.

Only the Lord your God, uh, be with you as He was with Moses."

You see, something was happening in verse one, I mean, in chapter one of Joshua.

Now flip with me to Joshua 2, and it says this.

"Now..."

Somebody say now.

Now.

Say it louder.

Say now.

Now.

"Now Joshua, the son of Nun, sent out two men from the Acacia grove to spy out secretly saying, 'Go view the land, especially Jericho.'

So they went and came to the house of a harlot named Rahab and lodged there."

So much of the success of this passage that is actually found, the whole point of this is found in the very first word, the word now.

Now is considered a conditional word, a transitionary word that bridges two things.

Why did the Bible say now? It didn't have to say now.

It could have just started the sentence by saying, "Joshua, the son of Nun, sent out two men from the acacia grove."

Why did it say, "Now Joshua"? Stop reading scripture so fast.

Now Joshua, what do you mean? Why is now in there? Every word in the word is an important word.

Now Joshua.

Now why? Now what? It bridges chapter one and chapter two.

Yeah.

We leave chapter one with God giving an instruction, and then Joshua saying, "Go do this thing.

God's gonna meet us."

And somewhere between where we left Joshua to where Joshua then says, "This is what we're gonna do," the word now appears.

Yeah.

And now is one of these words, it's a tie-in word, and my question to you is, what is the thing that hinges your past to your future? Right now.

For you, what is the moment that you say, "Now I did this.

This was happening.

I was frustrated.

I was defeated.

Now."

Yeah.

Now what? Now she believed? Now she fasted? Now means something different happened.

Yes.

It says, "Now Joshua," something different in Joshua, something private, but now something shifted.

Joshua, the son of Nun, sent out two men from the acacia grove to spy secretly.

So what's different? The very first point in your notes is something that pastor talked about last week.

Now Joshua said, "This is not Moses' mandate.

This is my mandate.

Now I have confidence and boldness, just as Joshua one told me, 'Be strong.

Be courageous.

Do not be fearful.

Do not be dismayed.'

Now I believe it He had confidence and boldness.

And it's gonna take the same level of confidence and boldness.

You can put that point on the slide.

It's number one, confidence and boldness.

It's gonna take that same confidence for you and me, too, to be strong and courageous and choose it.

Yeah.

You know that God's principles and His goodness and His mercy aren't just gonna happen.

Come on, now.

We're gonna choose it.

That's right.

You know that as you come and you sing the songs and we say, "Worthy is Your name," it's not just words.

We're gonna choose it.

That's right.

You know that the promises of God are never gonna fall away.

What's the difference? You're gonna choose it.

Yes.

We're gonna choose confidence.

We're gonna choose boldness.

We're gonna choose to believe.

What else is different that we see here? We see it right away.

Second point, we're gonna sense, like Joshua did, the shift.

Come on.

And we're gonna drop the baggage And there was plenty of baggage.

I know that in, when we have the moments on Sunday mornings, sometimes we can't get deep into the context, but let me show you something very quickly in Numbers, because this was not Joshua's first rodeo.

In fact, Joshua, if you will remember, that there were two times that there were spies sent out to the land, and the first time that the Lord spoke to Moses, the second time God spoke to Joshua.

That's right.

But let's visit what happened with Moses, 'cause this is gonna be really important to understand why this matters.

In Numbers 13, beginning in verse one and two, and I'm gonna skip around a little, it says, "The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 'Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I'm giving to the children of Israel.

From each tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, every one a leader among them.'

And then Moses sent the gr- the whole group to spy out the land of Canaan and said to them, 'Go up this way, into the South, into the mountains.

See what the land is like, whether the people who dwell in it are strong or weak, few or many, whether the land they dwell in is good or bad, whether the cities they inhabit are like camps or strongholds, whether the land is rich or poor, and whether there are forests there or not.

Be of good courage, and bring some of that fruit back.'"

Verse 31: "The men go, they spy out the land, they bring back grapes, and then they say, 'The men who had gone up with him,'" that's Joshua and Caleb, "said, 'We are not able to go up against these people, for they are stronger than we.'

And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, 'The land though, uh, through which we had gone out as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and the people whom we saw in it are great of stature.

We saw them as giants, and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight.'"

You see, the first time that the spies go, uh, out in the land, the first time that they go, Joshua was one of them.

Yeah.

Joshua was one of the 12.

Moses sends out 12 men, 12 leaders, and Joshua was one of the men.

Yeah.

Uh, you have to, you have to, you have to sit in that.

I don't, I don't...

Maybe you're not getting it the way I got it.

Joshua was one of the 12, and as a result of the negative report, the children of Israel said, "Oh, really? You don't repr- you do not believe me? You don't believe the report of the Lord? We will spend 40 years together in the desert Have you ever made a mistake? Have you ever made a big mistake? Have you ever made a big mistake that you knew that sat with you, that everyone knew that you made this mistake? Joshua was that person.

Joshua was one of the men, and even though he didn't believe the original report, he still had a badge on him that said, "I was one of those people that came back incorrectly."

What's different that Joshua gives us in this moment and that we must know, you must do it, I must too, is we must rewrite wrong thinking You must rewrite wrong thinking There is sort of a psychological, uh, uh, groundwork to this, and again, I'm not the expert in this space, but I wanna show you a video.

It's just about two minutes, and this video will help us understand what it's like to sit in this moment with Joshua when he knows that he has made such an error because he is approaching now the opportunity to rewrite his wrong thinking, but he has to overcome himself.

Can you play this clip for me? This isn't meant to be hard.

These are anagrams.

Just do the first one only.

Go ahead and solve it.

An anagram is rearrange the letters to form a word.

Just one.

Just rearrange those letters to form a word.

When you're done, I need to see your hand raised Hold the weight.

Keep your hands up, please Just do number one.

Don't go on.

Don't go on When you're done, I wanna see your hands up Everybody's hands down.

We're gonna go ahead and do number three.

For number three, rearrange the letters, and as soon as you do, go ahead and put your hand up Here's what you need to know.

You were both given two different lists.

This side of the room was given these three words.

The left side of the room, here you go.

They were given bat.

What would the word be? Bat.

The second one, they were given lemon.

Brian, the word? Melon.

Melon.

They were easy.

The trick here was both of you were given the third word, which was the same.

The third word was Cinerama, which was- American American.

Your first two words on this side of my classroom were not solvable.

They were impossible tasks.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I know, but here's what we did this for.

I was able to induce something called learned hel- So the, the, what you see here, sorry that it cut off, what you see here is a social experiment.

Researcher goes into a classroom and she says, "I'm gonna give you both this ability to just do a quick word unscramble."

And to one half of the room she gave three words.

You, you saw her do it.

It was bat, and lemon, and something else, right? Cinerama.

The other side of the room, she gave two impossible words, they could not be unscrambled, and the exact same third word.

And she begins to unpack with the class, "When you're done and you have the word unscrambled, go ahead and raise your hand."

And you see half of the room raise their hand, and the other half like, "What, what did you...

What are you getting that I don't get?" She says it to the second word and half of the room raises their hand, and then the other half of the room is like, "What? I'm really, really, really behind."

And the third word is the exact same word.

But did you notice it in the clip? It was a little bit hard to decipher.

When she got to the third word, American, the same half of the room, the one that had already had the easy words, got it, and the other half of the room didn't.

The concept is called learned helplessness, and it's one that we now know means that when I start to believe that I can't do this, it doesn't matter if you slip in something that I actually can do, my brain has now made a neural pathway that is lazy that says I can't do this.

Instead of going, "Wait, I can do every one.

I have to approach every one as if I have the potential just like anybody else."

Now while that seems warm and cute, let's jump back into Joshua because do you remember that Joshua had once gone into the land and unsuccessfully with his comrades spied out the land so much so that everyone needed to wander the desert for 40 years Could he shed the learned helplessness to go, "I can't do that.

I don't know, God."

Why do you think God spends so much time in chapter one saying, "Be strong.

Be courageous.

I'm not calling you..."

Because He's trying to talk him out of what he has lived through.

Yeah.

And how many times do you have to talk yourself out, "But God, this is the area I get tripped up in.

This is the area I'm not able to overcome.

I've had this sin since I was a girl.

God, this is how I am.

This is how I show up.

God, I don't know if I can think about this.

God, I always get the wrong men."

And He's going, "Get it together.

Be strong."

Now something has shifted.

Yeah.

We see this, uh, chart, and I wanna show this to you, the difference between Numbers 13 and Joshua 2, is Joshua got smart.

He rewrote his thinking, and here's what's different in plain language.

In Numbers, when Joshua goes with the other spies to spy out the land, it was public, publicly commissioned.

In Joshua 2, he says, "No, no, I'm gonna send out some spies, and I'm going to do it secretly."

Yeah.

Joshua shifted.

In the first, uh, book, in Numbers, the leaders were sent out, the leaders, the people, "Oh, I have to, I have to represent my people.

I am the leader of my tribe."

But in Joshua 2, we do not know who these men are.

They are completely anonymous.

There is no ego involved.

In Numbers, they go out and spy everything, the mountains, and the south, and the north, and the east.

And in Joshua 2, he goes, "No, no, I don't care about all of that.

I want you to especially zero in on Jericho."

Yeah.

The purpose in Numbers was to explore everything.

I don't know.

Is the land good? Are there grapes? Are they bigger than us? Is God real? Is He not? Is His word true? Is it not? I don't know.

Go check it out and see what you think for yourself.

In Numbers, it was a test, almost a test of God.

In Joshua, He says, "Don't you dare.

Go to Joshua, and you are on a reconnaissance mission to spy out exactly how to take the city down."

The outcome was doubt and panic, and the outcome in Joshua 2 was courage, and victory, and confidence.

So what's different then? Point number four, the focus of the target You know, with God, it said that Joshua, uh, now Joshua sent spies secretly, and he said, "Go to Jericho," and I wanna show you this.

I realize I'm jumping all up in all these other concepts today, but I wanna show you this map of Jericho.

Why did he focus on Jericho? This is a map of old, and it's actually quite hard to see up here, but that's all right.

Take my word for it.

This is the map on the left side of Egypt and Canaan.

Egypt is in the blue, and Canaan is here.

So the children of Israel would have left Egypt towards the north.

They would have gone into this yellow area, which is the desert.

They would have spent 40 years in this desert.

And then the pink up there, there's a little body of water, which I can't point to, but a little body of water.

That, on the left side of that is where Jericho is.

Now, Canaan, that pink section, is what I want you to focus your attention to.

This map is that pink section.

The pink section is divided into 12 for the 12 tribes of Israel.

This is what they were supposed to inherit.

This is what they would inherit.

But in order to do it, they had to get there, from Egypt through the desert into, uh, Canaan.

So when you see that Moses sent spies to Canaan, they were spying out the entire area of pink.

When Joshua sent spies to Jericho, he was going to an extremely specific point in the map.

He said, "I don't want you to go to all of that.

I want you to go to this," there's a little gray thing that represents a little body of water, and to the left is Jericho.

"I want you to go to this one spot."

Why? The Bible tells us that Jericho was the first city.

I don't even have time to unpack the significance of that.

This is an example, next slide, of what the walls of Jericho would have looked like.

The one on the bottom left is sort of an archeological rendering, and now they've begun to dig up the city.

And many of us have heard about the walls of Jericho.

The walls of Jericho are represented here in the larger picture.

And the Bible tells us that Jericho was a small, probably only, uh, ba, ba, ba, ba...

Let's see.

I have it here for you.

Ten acres in diameter That's nothing.

That's like some of your backyards.

Relatively small, but incredibly impactful city.

It was known for its vast population, uh, but it had sizable advantages, and it was a linchpin city for all of Canaan, meaning that in order to make it through Canaan, you had to go through Jericho.

This, uh, specific region had access to the mountains in the north, to the south, to the west, and even to the s- bits of deserts to the east.

Once, um, the Israelites crossed over this area, uh, uh, Jericho was a linchpin city and it was known to be fortified, as you can see here, with double walls.

And so when the Bible tells us in Deuteronomy 9 that the children were gonna cross over into the Jordan, and it says this about Jericho, "You're about to cross over the Jordan and go in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than you with large cities that have walls up to the sky."

It doesn't seem like a lot now, but the fact that the children of Israel needed to get to this city meant that Joshua had to be very, very, very specific.

Don't go spy out all the land and test God.

Go into the most important, most critical city.

You see, Jericho does not represent a place or a place only.

It represents the fortress of our mind.

It means that God, even though this looks impossible, and everyone in this day believed that Jericho was impenetrable, but this represents that God is supersedes our impossibilities.

He is not a God that is subject to our impossibilities.

And so therefore, in phase one of change, when something is going to be different, like any of us, like the children of Israel, we will come to a Jericho moment.

We will come to a point that seems impossible.

God, are you God or are you not? And this is what we must tell ourselves.

This is going to be different because I am different I'm different.

I'm not the timid Joshua that understands my failures.

I'm not the person that does not understand that you are doing something new.

It's going to be different because I am different, and it's going to be different because I believe the Lord My question for you, and it's found-- If you will go to the bottom of your notes, kinda the second page, if you will, you'll see a little box, and I have a question for you there.

I'm gonna skip around for just a moment, and the question is this: Do I have the community and the accountability to support me? Joshua goes through a second phase, and I wanna take these three points with you very quickly 'cause I told you I would finish your notes, and I believe in telling the truth Phase two.

If phase one is an internal phase, you can guess what phase two is.

Phase two is an external phase of change because this is going to be different, and the children of Israel are, are moving through a-and they're believing God, but they're have-- they have to just get out of their minds.

Now they have to do something.

Just because they believe they can doesn't mean they've taken any new territory, yes? Just because you believe you're different doesn't mean that your life changes, yes? In the second phase is when we actually need to do something.

We need to prepare.

We need to move.

We need to make bold moves, and the key here is doing something different and standing firm.

The phase one and two are in constant communication.

We believe internally, and we act externally.

We are different inside, but then it results in action that's different outside.

In phase two, we begin to see two things, and I want to take your mind to what Pastor, uh, was talking about last week in Joshua 2.

What's different in this phase is we now understand who God is.

We understand that we are different.

We understand that God is good.

But what's different in phase two, when it's time to move, when it's time to act, when it's time to do, it's not time to think anymore.

It's time to get those feet a-steppin'.

And what's different is that we reposition ourselves for something new.

You can't expect the same, uh, different results in the same place.

Yes.

Oftentimes in Hebrews, we see this phrase, "By faith, so and so did this," and, "By faith, so and so did that," and, "By faith..."

And it often means a person just like you and me in the Bible that had the opportunity to believe God, and first, in phase one, they believe, but then by faith, they do something about it.

That's right.

By faith is often associated with our action, and I wanna challenge you with this point.

Stop waiting for you to think and get everything perfect in a laid out plan before you act by faith.

That's good.

By faith is often, um, only internal, but in Joshua, we see something different.

Go back with me to Joshua 1:11, where it says, "Joshua commanded all the officers of the people."

Joshua 1:11

He tells them, "Go pass through the camp.

Get yourselves ready.

In three days, we go."

Then in Joshua 3:1, it says, "Joshua rose."

Joshua 3:1

He acted.

He moved.

He got to steppin' early in the morning, and they set out from the grove and came to the Jordan, and all of the children lodged there.

In between chapters one and chapters three, what is Joshua doing? Sending out a secret mission of spies.

He's moving.

He's rewriting something, and this leads us to our second point in phase two.

What's different in phase two is we rewrite wrong behavior I often ask myself what kind of strength it takes to be a different person, particularly when we feel choked or entrapped by sin or wrong thinking.

Thinking right is not enough.

You have to think and then act.

So in the first phase, we rewrite wrong thinking, and in the second phase, we rewrite wrong behavior And the question in this particular point is this, and it's, it's one for me, but it's also one for you.

Where are you triggered? Where are you tempted? Where are you laying down lazy neuropathways? And I mean this in a very practical sense, meaning that when you think about who you want to be, you think about the kind of man or woman of God that you want to be, you have to ask yourself, "What is preventing me from being that person?" And then the next question is, "Where am I getting tripped up?" For me, when I was little, uh, we didn't have a lot of money, and so I, I don't know where or how or when this started, but I just started kind of stealing things.

Not in a big way.

I didn't steal, like break into people's houses or something.

But I would just go into a store and be like, "I just want that."

And, and I don't know why.

There's no excuse for it.

Like, there's no real reason.

I can't be like, "Here's the real..."

And the, you know, somebody...

N- I haven't worked it out on psy- nobody's couch.

You know what I'm saying? I just sorta did it, and I had to ask myself after a while, "What is triggering me to, like, take things that don't belong to me? And, and why am I doing that? Why is that a thing? Where am I being tempted?" And then here's the, here's the real flex.

Take the temptation out of the equation.

Yeah.

If it's being alone, stop being alone.

Yeah.

If it's calling somebody after hours, block the phone number.

That's right.

If it's, you know, taking a certain path home past a certain store that you don't need to be at, take a different path.

Yeah.

There are some things, and I don't mean to be so plain about it, but there are some things that we have to ask our- ourselves, our own questions, "Where am I getting tripped up?" Right.

"And do I have the community and accountability to help me with that thing?" Oh, yeah.

We see this in, um, in Joshua in the remainder of the chapter, and this is where I will close.

So Joshua sends out the spies, and he has this ability to act differently, and he does it.

Uh, but then he meets, and the spies meet a woman named Rahab, just a prostitute.

I'm a little annoyed that the Bible tells us her occupation But it helps me understand that God can and will use anyone These spies go into the house of Rahab and they stay there, and the king catches word that the spies are there.

And he goes to Rahab, I love this, and, and, and she decides in phase one to tell the men something that's happening internally.

And it's...

I'm gonna skip through, but more or less she says, um, in verse 10, "The whole community, we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea.

We heard how you came up out of Egypt.

We heard what you did to those kings in battle.

We heard these things and our hearts melted, and neither did there remain any more courage because of you, for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven and He is God on earth."

And she takes them through phase one in her head privately.

And you can almost sense that the scripture says, because it does if you keep reading, "Now therefore."

Rahab begins to tell these spies, "This is what's happening internally, and I can sense the shift.

I can sense the moment.

I can sense that you're here, and I sense that it's something different and our hearts are different.

Now therefore."

What's different What's different? Why did Rahab even know to tell these spies that? Why did she do that? And there is this thing called anchoring.

There's a, there's a, a writer, you might not know his name.

He's actually here local in Orlando.

His name is Benjamin Hardy.

Dr.

Benjamin Hardy, who wrote a book called The Science of Scaling.

It's a business book and, and he talks about this concept of anchoring.

And as he, as he was sharing this principle and I was reading this verse, I said, "My God, that's what this verse is."

The concept basically says that you and I, when we are, um, thinking about ourselves, we often look in the past, and then we let the past inform our present.

And, and like Rahab, and like ourselves, and like Joshua, Joshua had to do it.

I was a spy, but now I'm gonna do something different, and you use the past as your guide.

Have you ever? I, I learned.

Right? I, I learned from the past, and so you use the past and you let it inform, but there is a different possibility and a stronger one where you don't look to the past to inform the present.

You actually look to the future, and you let the future inform your present You see, the past will give you some lessons, good lessons.

But when you look to the future, you have a different anchor.

I don't anchor myself in shame.

I don't anchor myself in what I'm not.

I don't anchor myself in the sin I'm trying to overcome.

I anchor myself in the future.

For the God that says, "This is who I see you as."

For the salvation, for the thing that I say that is the promise of God, I anchor myself in the future.

And so Rahab turns to these spies, and she says the word that tells us that she's made the shift, "Now therefore, I beg you, swear to me by the Lord, since I have shown you this kindness, that you too will show me kindness."

And she slips a little red scarlet cord down her window that represents the blood of Jesus.

Amen.

A little red cord that as she puts it in her window, the spies know that when we come back, that house is covered, like, by the blood.

If you think the Bible is not a whole circle book, you are mistaken.

That cord represents the blood of Jesus that would come thousands of years later, and she puts it out her window and says, "Swear to me, because I'm not looking at the past.

I'm not worried about what people are saying.

I'm looking to the future," and you have to too.

You have a choice today.

You have a choice of where you are to be anchored, and that is your final blank.

Your final point is re-anchor.

Re-anchor.

We have the choice to anchor ourselves in the past, or we have the choice to say, "God of my future, I know you see me for what I will be, not for what I used to be.

I know you see me with the blood that covers me.

I know you've called me into something greater than I'm walking in right now.

I know the promises that I have for you are sure."

And Hebrews 6:19-20 tells us this: "We have hope as an anchor for our soul that is firm and secure, and it enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain where our forerunner," who? "Jesus, has entered on our behalf."

Hebrews 6:19–20

We have an anchor of hope, and the anchor we re-anchor, not to the past, not even to the present, but to the future.

And I wanna speak to those of us this morning.

That know that you want something different.

You sense something different.

God is shifting something different.

You, you want it.

You desire it.

God, do something different.

So let it be different because you are anchored to the Lord, and you are anchored to a promised future Thanks for tuning in.

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