Rehearse The Right Story | Pastor Paul McGee

The Lord everybody good to see you in God's house.

It's where we come. It's not just habitual, but it's

a place of strength that regardless what your week may

have served you, you can come to a place that is consistent.

His presence. His presence is consistent.

You can find hope there and you can find a means of reprieve

from life, right? We all need that sometimes.

I know some people like, oh, if you just knew what my week was

like. That's the reason why I show up

on Sunday. I just get in His presence and I

can just kind of hit the pause button on everything else.

Amen of life. Hallelujah.

Going to be turning to the book of Deuteronomy chapter #11

appreciate everybody's prayers for my back and feeling better.

My massage therapist. I'm thankful for the gifts that

God has given her, Amen, because she helped me out tremendously.

Now in the moment, it felt like she was killing me.

Matter of fact, I thought she's going to have to help me turn

from my stomach to my back. I'm serious.

But as the day went on, I start doing better.

So I thank God for the knowledge that people can acquire Amen to

help. Amen.

Deuteronomy chapter #11 I'm going to read the first 7 verses

of this chapter today. Therefore thou shalt love the

Lord thy God, and keep his charge, and his statutes and his

judgments and His commandments, alway, and know you this day.

For I speak not with your children, which have not known,

which have not seen the chastisement of the Lord your

God, His greatness, His mighty hand, His stretched out arm, and

His miracles, and His axe, which He did in the midst of Egypt,

and to favor of the king of Egypt, and to all his land.

What He did into the army of Egypt, and to their horses and

to their Chariots. How He made the water of the Red

Sea to overflow them as they pursued after you.

And how the Lord have destroyed them unto this day.

And what He did unto you in the wilderness, until you came into

this place, what He did and to Dathan in the Byram, the sons of

Liab, the son of Reuben, how the earth opened her mouth and

swallowed them up in their households, in their tents, and

all the substance that was in their possession in the midst of

all Israel. But your eyes have seen all the

great acts of the Lord which He did.

Kind of set, Lord, just the stage where we are.

Israel's on the verge of crossing the Jordan into their

land of promise. Moses is speaking to them.

But here particular, and I'll talk about this here in a little

bit here particular, he's talking to the ones that have

made their way through the wilderness, wasn't born in the

wilderness, but have seen some of these things that you can

only imagine. Their parents stood at the very

same place, intimidated with fear and did not crossover.

You'd only imagine some of the thoughts and feelings and

memories that are conjuring up within their hearts and minds.

So Moses is really speaking to them and some memories that they

had trying to get their mind fastened on the right memories

to be able to do what they're about ready to do.

Here's what I know this morning about every single one of us

sitting across this place. We all have some memories.

None of them, not all of them are things that we smile about

and are encouraged from. Some of them are intimidating.

Some of them are even menacing. And so I want to minister this

morning, rehearse the right story.

Rehearse the right story. Can we go to the Lord right now

and pray? Father, I thank you because

you're mindful of us. Holy Ghost, I'm asking God for

your aid and your help, Lord Jesus, in this place this

morning. God, your mindset, Lord, it's

higher than mine. It's greater than mine.

Pray, O Lord, help me just to follow your will, Lord Jesus for

the next few moments. God, let your words speak.

Let your word find us. I pray today, God encourage

someone, strengthen them, Lord, by the power of the Holy Ghost

and the lovely name of Jesus Christ that I pray Hallelujah.

You may be seated this morning in Jesus name.

Deuteronomy, the book of Deuteronomy.

It's, it's like the, it's the Deja Vu book.

That's what I would affectionately call it the Deja

Vu book, because as you read the book of Deuteronomy, you're

starting to read some things like men.

I've heard this before. I've, I've, I've, it seems like

I've already passed through this story.

Did, did they happen to, you know, do a little error in my

Bible and just reprint one of the other books and just happen

to slap Deuteronomy on it? It's almost like the, the the

Deja Vu book. As a matter of fact, by many it

is even called the book of remembrance.

The word Deuteronomy itself means second law or repetition

of the law because we see that Moses is repeating or referring

and even we see the, the containment of the statement of

the 10 commandments all over again in the book of

Deuteronomy. It's like, I thought that was

Exodus 20. And so he is re familiarizing,

Amen some to some of these laws. It's not new laws.

It's just rehearsing what God had already said, what God had

already done to now what predominantly maybe is a new

generation of Israelites. But over and over again we read

through the book of Deuteronomy and Moses says stuff like

remember, that is a phrase that is constant.

He says do not forget. He says recall, and he wants

them to recall, recall what the Lord has done.

And so the entire book is a retelling and a reminder.

And it is Moses's final message to the children of Israel that

he has LED for such a long time. And it's been instrumental in

being a deliverer for them out of the House of bondage.

And his audience that he is speaking to is really a mixed

bag of Israelites. We OFT times say, and this isn't

totally correct, but we OFT times say that the wilderness

generation, they died off in the the the wilderness due to their

unbelief. But that's really only partly

true. According to the Scripture

record, the Bible says in Numbers 14 and verse 29, this is

Moses speaking to the Israelites for the first time that they had

come to this Jordan River with entertaining the idea of

crossing over. He said your carcasses shall

fall in this wilderness and all that were numbered of you

according to your whole number from 20.

Here's here's the breaking point from 20 years old and upward,

which have murmured against me. So we can't paint with a broad

brush and say all that generation died in the

wilderness, all that generation 20 years and upward died in the

wilderness. But that means there were some

19 year olds and there were some 18 year olds that were going to

survive during the time of the wilderness 40 years later,

right? 40 years later, being 59 years

old, 58 years old, and their feet was going to stand in the

same soil that their parents and grandparents had stood in, and

they were going to be contemplating the same things

that they contemplated just 40 years removed from that moment

standing there. And so Moses is speaking then to

a mixed bag of Israelites, some who had been at the Red Seed

Crossing and some who had not, some who had been slaves in

Egypt, though very young and sons who had not, some who had

seen some different wilderness happenings and others who did

not. We understand in Scripture, we

oftimes go to the Joshua and the Caleb, right?

We know that they survived those wilderness journeys.

We understand that. But so did every individual that

was under 20 years old. They were not taken away.

They did not die. Their funeral did not happen in

the and so now as they approach the Jordan River for the second

time, they represent a very large sector of the adults that

are standing there at the edge of Canaan, at the edge of the

land, a promise. And unlike those that were born

in the wilderness, these people have a memory of Egypt and they

had perhaps a keener recollection of the wilderness

happenings. As a matter of fact, according

to verse number two of our text today know what Moses he he

makes some defining words about whom he was really speaking to.

Moses tells him he says, I'm not necessarily addressing Israel's

children right now. I'm I'm not necessarily

addressing, but the the the, the, the ones that were born

during the wilderness journeys or of the most of the newest

generation of Israelites. He says no.

He says I'm talking to those who did not die in the wilderness.

I'm talking to those who made it through experience.

Some stuff has some memory of past things.

He says I'm talking to you. He speaks to those that have

memories of the things that are listed in those seven verses of

the chapter that I read to you today.

He wanted to speak to people that had some memory because

Moses understood that memory is very powerful, but not all

memories are empowering someone say man memory oftimes becomes a

lens through which we look and through which we interpret Amen

life going forward. That the idea is if something

hurt you before you naturally pull back from that and avoid

that because you have a memory and you don't want to be hurt

again. If some nothing brought you joy

or some type of excitement than some people chase those type of

things because they remember how that made them feel.

Memory, it shapes how we trust, it shapes how we love, how we

fear, how we dream, all based upon memory.

Because memory is not just what happened to me, it's how I

remember what happened to me that often decides how I react

and how I go. It influences what I'll do next

based upon a memory of something from the past.

This is an old illustration, but I think it serves well today

and, and it's true in circuses and parts of Asia, young

elephants are often trained by being tied with a strong rope to

a stake in the ground. And as a baby elephant, they'll

tug and they'll pull up on that rope that they are tied to in

that stake that is in the ground ground.

And they'll strain with all of their might and strength, But

the rope and the stake is driven too deep and it's too strong for

them. And so that little baby elephant

eventually just gives up pulling on that.

But the shocking part is this is that when the elephant grows up

into maturity, into that larger mass in size that it will

become, it is undoubtfully strong enough to RIP the rope

from the ground and pull the stake from the ground.

But they say it never tries again to do that since it's

little stature, because the memory of its failure doing it

when it was young is stronger than the muscles that it's

developed in its mature body. Amen.

The elephant's mind is still chained even though it's body

and it's ability is really free from that.

It's not the rope that's holding the elephant there.

It's it's memory. Why someone say Amen?

It's it's memory. I came across something the

other day I was doing Friday. Some of this stuff was coming on

my mind before we were going to to the conference.

And I came across something else again that kind of underscores

this. It was a very well documented

experiment by two students of MIT that were going for their

doctorate program and and they proved the power of memory in,

in many instances, the power of memory from the past to control

our present. And what they did is they

implanted a lab mouse, as I know the poor mice always get it.

They implanted the lab mouse's memory within the brain of

another lab mouse. All right.

So they took some memories of 1 and they implanted it into the

mouse of another within the brain of another lab mouse.

And that memory, the exchange of the memory of one mouse to

another, controlled the present actions of the mouse.

That it didn't occur to the first time they took this is a

possibility. They took memory cells.

They took memory cells in particular of a bad experience

from a mouse and put it into a different mouse that didn't have

that experience. But when they put that mouse in

the context of where the first mouse had been when that memory

first happened, that mouse reacted to the environment in a

timid, scared way because of the bad experience and the bad

memory. It was just showcasing the power

of memory. Someone came in.

See, there's some memories in our life that haunt us more than

they do help us. Psychologists tell us that

negative memories stick more strongly in our brains than

positive memories do. That's the reason you'll be

quicker to think about what negatively has happened to you.

That's the reason why you'll be quicker to remember your failure

than you do your success. That that's the reason why

you'll you'll remember your fall rather than you climbing the

rung of the ladder. It's called negativity bias.

It's the way that the brain has conditioned itself to survive.

Because when we remember pain and we remember danger, Amen.

From past experiences, it's supposed to be a protective

thing really for us in the future.

It's supposed to be a survival type of trait.

But something that was meant to be protective to us and our

generation has become paralyzing to us.

So now as a person recalls A traumatic memory and something

that has all these emotions that are intense.

Amen. That's this sewn in the fabric

of that memory. And allow me just to get a

little nerdy here today. You have in your brain the

amygdala, right? It's the fear center of the

brain. It kicks in when you begin to

recall that negativity from something, a memory of something

that was passed. And as a result of it, your body

begins to experience what you experience.

Whenever that occurred, it starts happening again.

Your heart rate increases, Your muscles tightening tighten.

The thinking Amen becomes foggy. That's the reason why some

people freeze and overreact and sometimes shut down when they're

facing something that feels familiar to a past wrong or a

past circumstance. They call them today triggers

because it's not just even the fact that that that you are

recalling the memory. You are in reality and the

emotional part of your body, reliving the memory.

Science tells us that negative memories can cause mental ruts

in our brains. The brain will repeatedly

rehearse what went wrong over and over.

By doing so, it is reinforcing the emotional impact of that

moment in our brains. It's almost like you remember,

and I know this won't speak called generations here, but you

remember the old vinyl records and you get a scratch on it and

that little needle's going along and it just skips back to that

same spot. It skips back to that same spot.

It skips back to that same spot, and negative memories have that

type of impact on your brain. It's like you can't get past

that spot. It skips back there and it skips

back there, and it's making it hard to imagine a different

outcome, a different tomorrow. I'm feeling the Holy Ghost come

here right now. A different future.

Amen. Maybe for an environment that

seems very, very familiar to you, it can shape your identity.

They can shape your belief system.

That's the reason why people get caught in the vice of saying,

well, I'm not good enough. I always mess up.

Nothing ever works out for me. I'll never get past this.

It's the power of memory. Some of us, and maybe all of us

to a certain degree, have those things where there's one failure

from your past that overshadows your future.

Someone say yes. Moses knew something about

memory. He understood that memory is a

weapon. It'll either fight for you or it

will fight against you. It'll either be your sword or

it'll become your chain. Israel standing on the edge of

the Jordan River. They're facing these fortified

cities. They're facing the giants that

they remembered even their parents talking about 40 years

ago. They understood that once they

cross that Jordan, there are still several, several battles

to be had. And as Moses stands there with

those who had memories of the past and he addresses them and

talk to them, he wasn't trying to put new weaponry in their

hands. He wasn't trying to give them

new suits of armor or a fresh sword or a spear to crossover

the Jordan whip. He wasn't even trying to give

them a new strategy, a man to handle new blueprints that they

could go by. No, he reaches in the past and

he grabs an old story, their story that they could build upon

that they could launch forward from.

Can someone say man? He says, Moses says, look at it

first. He says I'm not talking to those

who don't know. I'm not talking to those that

have no memory what I'm talking about, He says, But I'm talking

to people that saw God's greatness.

I'm talking to people that remember his mighty hand.

I'm talking to people that remember his outstretched harm.

I'm talking to people that went through the wilderness and ate

the Manor and drank the water that came from a flintstone.

I'm talking to the people that knew what it was like to walk

through the Red Sea with walls of.

Water on the left and on the right.

I'm talking to people that seen their enemies drown.

That's the what the words with the memory of that verse 4 says

and how the Lord have destroyed them speaking the Pharaoh in the

army unto this day. It's a fascinating phrase.

It's that phrase as I've been reading this year in the

contemporary English Bible. It's that phrase that brought me

to this message today. The NLT says it like this.

He destroyed them and they have not recovered to this day.

The CED, which is what I'm reading this year, says Egypt

still suffers from that defeat. In other words, the memory of

God's power for Egypt crippled their future.

It wasn't just about the army drowning in the Red Sea.

There was a psychological defeat that every time they thought

about it and the hands got sweaty and the trembling of

night sweats, you know, in the dreams at night came in that

they could not recover from that divine blow that was by God.

And the same Red Sea that opened to the Israelites became a

watery grave. Amen to Egypt, the same memory

that empowered a people, Amen also on the other side of the

coin, paralyzed a people. And so Israel's memory in this

moment was to propel them forward while Egypt's memory

haunted them. And so it is though, ladies and

gentlemen, with each and every one of us.

Memory is either paralyzing to you or it's propelling to you.

It'll or hunt you or it will arm you.

The same mind, that same region of your brain, Amen.

That rehearses. Amen.

Sometimes victories has the capability of rehearsing

defeats. Not everything about Egypt was

good that Israel faced. But Moses says, as we're

standing right here, you can't stand here and think about the

whips. You can't stand here and think

about the taskmasters. You can't stand and here and

think about the babies that were thrown in the Nile River, he

says. You got to think about the

victory. You can't think about the

negative. You can't think about the

failure. You got to think.

You got to rehearse the right story.

Someone say Amen to the Lord so lastingly destroyed Egypt and

ringed them lasting impact on the future.

They never be able to bring back those drowned Egyptians.

When Moses speaks those 7 verses in this chapter, he doesn't

bring up to this next generation of the negativity of Egypt.

He doesn't bring up the hardships per SE of the

wilderness journey of the Fiery serpents.

Doesn't mention that. He doesn't mention their failure

of making a golden calf. He doesn't mention their failure

of immoral alliances with Moab. He talks to them about their

victory. Someone say, Amen.

Can I tell you that all those memories were there, both the

good and the bad. All those memories were there,

Amen. Both the victories and the

defeats. And sometimes, as humanity in

our brains are, they'd have been quicker.

Amen, to call to memory the negative, unbidden, unwelcome

negative would arose quicker than the positive.

Moses, God knew this. Moses was instructed.

Don't talk to you got to talk to them about the good things.

You got to talk to them about the positive things.

Their feet is where their parents feet stood.

They're going to remember how their mom and dad and

grandparents didn't crossover. They're going to remember the

report of them saying there were giants and we're too small and

we can't do this. They're going to remember all of

that negativity, and they're going to become frozen and

stymied in their place if they don't rehearse the right

memories. He would remember.

They would remember the 10 spies 40 years earlier and how all

that played out. They would remember that, they

said in numbers 13 in that moment 40 years ago, he says.

We are like grasshoppers in our own sight.

They would remember. They would remember if they

looked back at Egypt. They would remember how strong

Pharaoh was. They would remember how entire.

They would remember all the funerals that they attended in

the wilderness because of a lack of faith and unbelief.

But Moses is standing here and he's not.

He's not just being like Israelite historian here.

He's he's not being a history teacher in this moment as much

as he was fighting for their minds and for their memories.

It's what happens in our real lives.

Your, your, your fear is recycled, just a recycled

memory. Matter of fact, some of the

greatest fears we have is from an episode we had earlier that

created a feeling and some unease and that recycled fear.

Just a recycled memory. Doubt, right?

You rehearse the defeat and there comes the doubt.

I've been right here before. I had something similar to this.

I didn't do it. It didn't turn out well.

Doubt, I can't do this. I couldn't do it.

But doubt, Worry, huh? Old wounds, worry.

Can I tell you this morning that faith is the result of a

recycled testimony? Faith is remembering the right

things. David understood this principle

when he had already lived part of his life as a young lad.

And he goes to the valley of Allah and he's going to face

Goliath. And Saul pulls him to the side,

hearing word about about this plan, about this tenacity from

this young man, about going up against what everybody else is

running away from. And David tells basically Saul,

the emphasis, the force, the the what it was that drove him to do

this. He said in First Samuel 1737, he

said, the Lord hath delivered me out of the paw of the lion and

out of the paw of the bear, and he will deliver me out of the

hand of this Philistine. You know what David was, he was

harnessing the right memory because I guarantee you as a

shepherd boy, it wasn't always that story.

I guarantee you as a shepherd that there's not probably every

sheep that he could always rescue.

But in this moment, he's not thinking about the ones that he

lost, he's thinking about the times he was victorious.

He said I've taken one out of the paw of the lion.

I've taken one out of the paw of the bear.

And this uncircumcised philistine is not going to be

any different than pay. What are you doing, David?

I'm rehearsing the right memory. I have a choice.

I could rehearse when I was defeated.

I could rehearse when I failed. I could rehearse when I gave up.

I could rehearse when I tripped. I could rehearse when I failed.

But I'm choosing right now to rehearse the right memory

because not everything from my past has been bad.

He didn't have been. A new strategy grabbed a hold of

an old story, an old testimony of a win.

Joshua stands besides Moses, and he would later say to the people

in Joshua one and verse #9 Have not I commanded thee, Joshua

speaking, Be strong and of good courage.

Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord by God is

with thee, whether so ever thou goest.

Joshua's one of those ones that had memory of all of the former

that was there along the way. Concerning the former, Joshua

Amen was using memory on his side.

He remembered the plagues. He remembered their deliverance

from the Red Sea. He remembered the Walls of

Jericho falling down flat. He remembered all that.

Listen to me today. There may have been a period in

your life when you failed, but that doesn't mean everything

during that period of your life was a failure.

Hear me, We condition this society.

Humanity really does this. It's bad that we do, but we do.

People fail and so we throw out every success and victory they

had in the same time period of their failure along with their

failure because they failed. Does it mean everything during

that time period was a failure? And so then Brother Malone, as a

result, we go forward in life and that the negativity

humanistic system of us wants to be skipping over to the same

thing on that time period. That only concerns failure, and

it makes our steps slow and our surety and our confidence

lacking. Amen.

But I'm here to tell you today, even in the moments when you did

fail, there were other things prior to that happening that

were successes, if you will, that were wins, that were good.

It is up to you. We must choose what story we're

going to rehearse. That doesn't mean the failure

does. That didn't happen.

It just means I'm not going to live my life defined by it.

I'm not going to live. I'm not going to empower that to

have power over my future. Someone say, man, stand for me

today. I'm going to hold you much

longer. Your memory is a weapon.

Fighting for you or fighting against you.

There may be some of you today. You have one foot straddling if

you will, into the wilderness and 1 foot planted in the

promised land, right? Almost feel torn between 2

worlds. Promise.

It's there. Todd said it 40 years earlier.

It's there, but I got memories of that time and you're in this

mode of in between almost stuff that got my foot there, but I'm

still work foot in the the wilderness and all we got it

really to to point to keeping us in that stage.

Is this our memory? One thing holding us back, our

memory, not Pharaoh, not giants, not walls, but a memory to this

congregation this morning. It's time for you to fight for

your mind. It's time for you to take your

memory back. It's time for you to choose what

you will remember. And let's just allay all the

thoughts and feelings. Let's let's think this real

quickly. You're not starting from scratch

because you do have pieces of a old story that you could stand

on if you choose to remember them.

You've seen his hand before. You should survive some battles

that you should not have made it out of.

Your memory is a weapon. So, Brother McGee, what's the

thing, ladies and gentlemen, if we can just bow our heads today?

The thing is this, You must rehearse the right story.

Moses says, let me rehearse God's works and miracles and his

mighty acts that you were Privy to, that you experienced.

Let me rehearse the faithfulness of God.

And he says as you rehearse that memory, go on and walk into your

future victory and listen for please, I don't want to be

misunderstood or misconstrued here today, Pastor.

He's just insensitive. And that is not my, that is not

my heart today. Please, I don't, I don't want to

be misunderstood as like, well, you know, I really have some

things that, you know, really conjure up some emotions in my

past and it, it is crippling. And I don't doubt that one bid.

I don't doubt that one bid. So please, I, I don't have this

mindset and adage. I'm just saying like, we'll just

get over it, you know, go on. But that's not, that's not what

I'm getting at. I'm just saying when that

happens, whatever means, whatever tool or gimmick,

however you must go about it whenever that happens.

It's like with the record. If you can just pick the needle

up, I know it just skipping on that same line, same line, same

part of your life. But if you can just pick that

needle up and just place it in the next track over.

There's some that's not heard every song on your record yet

because you've allowed it just to get to that point where it

skips and it skips and it skips. Hallelujah.

I'm here to tell you today there is a merciful God that's wanted

to empower you to lift the needle up and just set it on the

next track and hear a melody. This soldier is open today.

There's not one of us don't to have some accusing memories.

There's not one of us that don't have some accusing memories that

try to dictate our future, that our mind just defaults to.

Oh, but with God's power and God's faithfulness, he's wanting

us to go back to those same eras of time and pick out the winds

and pick out the successes and pick out.

Oh yeah, by Shia a story. Sorry to remember.

I know your context may feel similar to where you felt

before. I know your context may feel

similar to where you were before when you faltered.

But it don't have to be the same story.

Don't let the emotion of the past overwhelm you for what God

is wanting to do in this moment. Now crossover toward it.

You crossed over the Red Sea. Crossover toward it.

There's something on the other side of this boundary of water

for your life. Come on, let's talk to him.

If you're praying at the altar for at the Pew, I wish right now

we could just press in here for a moment.

The Holy Ghost is here. The Spirit of the Lord is here.

I'm wondering if we can just press in right now for a moment.

Could someone that prays start to lift up their voice in some

prayer right now? Could someone go to God in some

prayer right now? Hallelujah.

Let's petition the heavens right now.

Hallelujah, God, I have the choice.

I have the choice. God, am I going to dredge up the

negative or how am I going to dredge up the positive?

God, am I going to be held hostage by my failure or I'm

going to remember. Lord, your faithfulness and how

you brought me through some things, help me remember the

right things. Come on, Sir.

Come on, ma'am. Young and old alike.

It doesn't matter if you're single.

It doesn't matter if you're married.

It doesn't matter if you're a grandparent.

God is reaching today.