Trails of Thought - Week 1

Welcome back, Go Church family. We're so excited to be with you again. My name is Gilbert and

I'm here with Pastor Matt Haribo. Hey everybody. And I'm here with Lara. Hi everyone. Ahlan

wassahan. Thank you. We're so glad to have Lara with us over the course of this month

to talk about trails of thought. Yes. Thank you for having me. We had a great discussion

last week and I'm enjoying having Lara here. We're going to hear more from Lara as we go

through the weeks. But this is a great study and it's a great subject. Something Lara that

you said last week about how we look to make things practical in the grow groups. This

subject is very practical. This is right where everyone lives. And you know everybody, no

matter who you are, you can look at truth here and find something to apply into our

life. That's right. Yes. And we're also looking forward to having Lara ask questions that

you might have. And it's good that she's here in the room and she's going to ask those questions

on your behalf. That's true. We're ready to go. I'm going to make a couple of quick announcements.

Just the fact that today is week one out of week three for this series on trails of thought.

We're so excited to start discussing this in our grow groups. And like Pastor Matt just

said, we want to make it practical. We want to think about application. We want to think

about how these things can change our lives and can improve our lives and how we can move

forward and grow and understand these missing elements that we might have not seen before.

So I will ask you to be honest with yourself and to be, I don't want to say critical because

it sounds like a negative word, but to really observe what's going on in your mind. To really

observe whether the patterns that we're talking about when it comes to trails of fear, do

you have any of those? Is there anything that you could change in your lives? Or the patterns

when we talk about trails of faith, is there anything that I can adopt or I can change

or I can actually walk in? And that's really important because the people who really get

blessed and who really grow are the doers of the word of God. Not just heroes.

When I was a, when I was Ramistude, of course, you know, Rayma just started where we have

jumped into Ramah. But when I was a Ramah student, this instructor said something and

it stuck with me all this years. He said, every once in a while, it's a good idea to

sneak up on yourself and listen to what you say and look at what you're thinking about.

And if you do it, I found that if I'm honest and I do it, sometimes I don't like what I

see. You know, I'll sneak up on myself and listen. What am I saying to myself? Or I sneak

up and what am I really spending my time thinking about? And that's a good way to catch yourself

worrying or catch yourself saying things about yourself that don't agree with the Bible.

And of course, don't just stay then in the shadow, just step up and interrupt yourself

and say, Hey, we don't think like that. Hey, we don't talk like that. That's not what the

Bible says. That's not what the Bible says. Yeah, I always have that Pastor Matt's voice

in the back of my mind. If I have a question or have an issue in my life, it's like, well,

what does the Bible say about that? I just have him, his voice, his tone. That started

with me recently. Yes, same. Pastor Matt haunts us all. That's terrible. It's probably a bad

stuff. We're talking about fear. And now I just mentioned haunts. So let's see the good

kind. Well, what does the Bible say? Let's look at Romans chapter eight. That's good.

Yeah, let's let's get into it. So like I said, this week, we're going to talk about trails

of fear. So we're going to talk about the carnal mind. Let's go back to our key scripture,

which is Romans chapter eight, verses five and six. I'm going to read this in the youngest

little literal translation. It says for those who are according to the flesh, the things

of the flesh do mind and those according to the spirit, the things of the spirit for the

mind of the flesh is death and the mind of the spirit, life and peace. So what I really

want to emphasize this week in the scripture is the mind of the flesh is death. And you

know, we we named this series trails of thought because it's just such a nice illustration

or such an accurate illustration of of what this looks like. Because on one hand, you

have a path that goes in a certain direction and it takes you down a certain scenery and

it gives you like a certain experience leading to somewhere. And then you have another path

doing doing the same thing, but in another direction, another scenery with another experience

and that leads you to somewhere else. That's so good. So yeah, so this this week, we're

going to talk about one path, which is the trail of fear and what it looks like, where

it leads us. And I can already tell you the end from the beginning, because it says the

mind of the flesh is death. So if we are walking according to that mindset, or you know, if

our mind is the mind of the flesh, we're walking towards death. And we're going to experience

the experiences that the path of death actually leads us in. I know that that's a very sobering

thing that I'm saying, but there's there's truth there that we can pick out and start

turning the course of our life around starting today. So there's good news in this, but we

have to be aware of what this path looks like first in order to be able to get off it. You

know, so the first thing I'm going to ask is, what is the carnal mind governed by? Pastor

Matt, what answer would you give to that? Well, the word carnal literally means to be

ruled or governed by the flesh. That's it's actually I mean, the English word comes from

Latin, and it literally means flesh or meat. And so to be flesh ruled, to be and say we

say flesh, but really, we could just say natural things that can be perceived with the senses,

touch, taste, sight, what we can hear, smell even these kind of physical evidences. If

those become the if that becomes the dominant determiner of our actions, then we are carnally

minded or we are flesh ruled. And, you know, last week, you made a reference to Second

Corinthians, Chapter four, and Paul makes a comment. In fact, maybe it's good for us

to just take it, take time and look at that. Second Corinthians, Chapter four. Do you

have that where you can just read it? Yeah, absolutely. So Second Corinthians, Chapter

four, verse 18, he says, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things

which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are

not seen are eternal. You know what that verse is? That's Romans, Chapter eight, verses five

and six in Corinthians. That's right. It's the same theme. It's the same message in different

words. Paul says there's a way to think about things according to only what you see, and

there's a way to think about things according to what you do not see. And what he's trying

to tell the church in Corinth and the church in Beirut is the things that you don't see,

that's what's real. And the things which you do see, that's what's not real. In fact, what

you see is temporary because it's passing away. And first John, Chapter two, you made

reference to this as well. And I want to make a note of this verse. First John, Chapter

two, verse 15, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. And we can

look at that and say, yeah, that's right. To be a real follower of Christ, you should

just not love anything of this world, not have any of this old world's goods and just

be separate, live in a cave, not have anything nice because we don't love the world. Well,

that makes you very ineffective. And that's what we're trying to talk about. We want to

love, grow and go, go church. We want to be effective in the kingdom of God. But he says,

don't love the things of the world. Why? Because they are temporary. They are passing away.

You know, something I heard a mentor of mine say that the Lord dealt with him about was

to, you know, he heard himself, he caught himself saying this a lot. He'd say, I just

love this. But it was something like a sandwich or a restaurant or a car. I just love that.

Oh, I just love that painting. I love that pie. I love I love I love chocolate croissants.

And then he realized love is holy because love God, the Bible says, is love. And this

is not something to be applied to temporary things that perish with the using that verse

that you quoted last last week. No, love is something that is for things that are eternal.

And so he changed the way he used the word love. So I enjoy this dessert, but I love

people. I love God. I love truth. So he started applying love on purpose to things that are

eternal. And to the things that are not that are seen, but temporary, he changed the way

he talked about him. And that is that is a literal application of this verse in First

John. It's very practical. Yeah. That's really good. I also like you know, going back to

second Corinthians chapter four, this is something we'll talk about in more detail over the over

the month. But you know, in Romans eight, he says, set your mind because you know, you

have to have be spiritually minded. But in second Corinthians chapter four, he actually

talks about you have to look at the things which are unseen. What if you're what you're

looking at, and inevitably, what you're looking at is what you're thinking about. I mean,

literally your eyes are, you know, windows to what eventually your mind is going to absorb

and what is going to just start thinking about. And it's, I want to I want to take this this

thought about, you know, what is a carnal mind governed by a step further, I want to

say that, you know, the book of Romans in chapter one, chapter two, actually talks about

every single person on earth having an awareness of eternal things, like, there is some kind

of I don't know the better word awareness, there is an awareness of the fact that there

is more than what I see, there is something more than what I'm living in right now in

this present day, there is more that created the heavens and the earth, there is more.

And whether someone knows God, they don't know God, they know that there's something

more there, they know that there is, and there's something beyond their capacity. And this

is where I want to talk about this word hope, the Bible word for hope, which, you know,

our English language, unfortunately, cheapens it a lot, because we say, you know, I hope

that I'll make it on time for a movie, or, you know, I hope that the burger I ordered

gets to my house warm, you know, I hope it's not cold. And like, we just we use this word

in such an easy way. But the the Bible definition of that word is a confident expectation of

a good end, or a confident expectation of something that will happen, or that is happening.

And the fact that, you know, every Christian has that gives them hope. So you have hope

because you have a confident expectation of a good end. And that good end is in Christ,

whether whether you are in Christ today, because you are, and whether you see it today or not

yet, you still have that hope you know that this is who I am, this is what I have. I have

this confident expectation in Jesus that every single thing he's done for me. That's the

truth. That's what I have. This is what belongs to me today. And I will see it in my life,

you know, and the opposite of that is true for the carnal mind, because it's governed

by hopelessness, because you're living your day to day already knowing that this is not

eternal, like you're living your day to day already knowing that this is going to end

at some point, this is going to change at some point, you know, I should be quoting

the Bible and not guns and roses songs, but you know, nothing lasts forever. Even cold

November rain, right? And this is like, I'm just making fun. I'm just being funny about

it. But the reality is, you already know that nothing lasts forever. And so the carnal mind,

whether they realize it, or you realize it or not, is governed by hopelessness or despair.

The fact that there is an end, and it's not a good end, right? There's whatever I'm working

on is it's going to go the other way at some point. And so this leads you down a path of

fear, everything you do is based in fear. So let me let me ask another question and

something that we should address. What is fear? What does fear actually mean? What do

you think? Laura, what do you think? uncertainty? You don't know what's gonna happen? It makes

you afraid. Not the not knowing. Yeah, not being sure of what's gonna happen. That makes

you afraid. Not being sure. That's really good. That's right. You know, it's, it's sometimes

just to understand something, it's good to look at its opposite, you know, to identify

what it's not. You can kind of see things as you remove elements. And if, if fear has

an opposite, it's faith. There is absolutely no fear in faith. And we were just talking

about the second Corinthians chapter four, verse 18, while we look not at the things that are

seen, but the things that are unseen. Well, how do you do that with the eyes of faith,

right? And so let's look at the Bible definition of faith. The Bible definition of faith is

in Hebrews chapter 11, verse one, now, faith is the substance of what we hope for. It's

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

the evidence of what we do not see. And when we're talking about that, you know, that element

of seeing, looking, which, you know, when we say that, what are we talking about? We're

talking about thinking, going down the right trail of thought. Hebrews chapter 11, verse

Hebrews 11:27

27, says, by faith, Moses forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, because he

endured, he, Moses endured as seeing him who is invisible. How do you see what's invisible?

Faith. Yeah. So faith is substance and evidence of what is not seen. So what is fear? Fear

is a confident expectation that what I see, what I feel, what I hear, or what I don't

see, what I don't feel, what I don't hear is the only thing that I'm going to have.

Fear is a confidence that what I, the uncertainty that I have is going to turn into certain

destruction for me. Fear is a confidence that what I have will be taken away and I will

be left without. Fear is the opposite of faith. Fear is the substance of things not hoped

for. Yeah. The things that we do not want to see. That's right. It's the reaction to

the confident expectation that things are going to end badly. Yeah. Right. I really

like that you brought up Hebrews 11, verse 27. In verse 24 and 25, it says, by faith,

Hebrews 11:27

Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing

rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures

of sin. See that is a spiritual mind. That is a mindset on greater things and more important

things than passing pleasures and focus on fleshly things that will end. He didn't put

his hope in the identity that he had in the world. He didn't put his hope in enjoying

moments and like the Bible says, the passing pleasures of sin. He didn't focus on those

things. He focused on the task at hand. He focused on the plan of God. He focused on

the people of God. Yeah. This is something that we see and obviously we'll see more of.

I do want to go back to this point about fear. Just like we see hope. If you look at the

path or the trail of faith, you have hope at the end of it. You have this confident

expectation of a good end and you start walking down this path of faith. Faith is the spiritual

walk, the spiritual action, a consistent action. A lot of us when we hear faith, we've heard

different faith principles and we think it's like a momentary thing. But the reality is

that it is a constant consistent action. Faith originates in the heart but you exercise faith

and you accomplish faith by the things you think and the things you do. James says that

faith without works is dead. What does he mean? He means that in order to demonstrate

or in order to say, if you say you have faith, you better have corresponding actions with

it. I can't say I believe something and do the opposite. I can't say, a trivial example,

I can't say I believe that DHL is delivering a package and I leave the house. It makes

no sense. Obviously there must be a corresponding action to the belief that I have. I have a

confident expectation that DHL is going to deliver exactly what I want to my house and

then I do the opposite. That's not faith, that's the opposite of faith. Faith is a spiritual

action that leads to a natural or material result but faith starts in the heart and then

it goes to your mind and then it is accomplished even in your actions, even in your body. Fear

is the exact opposite of that. Fear is the path that people take or the path that we

take when we are governed by the flesh. We go a little further in fear. This is a trail

or a path that leads us to a bad end. The thoughts that we have govern how we respond.

The fact that we have certain thoughts take us deeper into this path, take us further

into this path of fear. I want to give some examples because I think it's easier to explain

this not with an image but it's easier to explain this with different examples of what

fear is and what fear does. Let's go back to that image for a second where we have a

trail of fear and a trail of faith. The trail of faith is the trail that God wants you on,

that God designed for you to be on. That's where he is. He's present on that trail. He's

literally there. Everything that you come across on this trail of faith that is God

designed is good. There's good stuff on that for you. There's promotion. There's all your

needs met. There's health. There's security. There's right place, right time, right relationships

on that path. The trail of fear is literally the trail that your mind is taking you out

of the will of God, out of the plan of God. I almost want to say the opposite direction

of where God wants you. Fear takes you in the wrong direction, gets you in the wrong

place and gets you doing the wrong things. This is what fear does. I want to go to the

book of Job. I really love this book and I really love sharing about this book. If you

notice in a lot of the messages or a lot of the series that we've done, I bring Job up

because I do feel like at the end the book of Job is called the book of wisdom and a

lot of people twist that wisdom around and take false assumptions and start creating

theology around false assumptions. That's exactly what the book of Job is showing us

that people have false assumptions. Obviously throughout 30 chapters or so in this book

you have Job and his friends debating why God did this to him. When we already have

the answer in Job 1, God didn't do this to him, the devil did this to him. This is a

book filled with the wisdom of false assumptions. There is an element of truth in Job in chapter

3 verse 25. Again I want to read this in the Young's literal translation because it is

a literal translation. As you're finding that, you made a note when we were putting this

together that constant thought patterns lead to actions. What we believe determines how

we think. That's so key and as we look at Job you can really see these constant thought

patterns that keep coming up between him and his friends. It's all based on a false

assumption.

Yeah, that's right. There's something here that slips out and you start seeing the reasons

why there was this… Let's say you see the place where he was at in the one thing he

says here. In the Young's literal it literally says, for a fear I feared and it meets me.

What I was afraid of comes to me. I want to take it a step further and say fear is a spiritual

force. Just like faith is a spiritual force, fear is literally a spiritual force. A fear

that I feared and it met me. What I was afraid of, it came to me. We literally see that the

door was opened to the enemy, to the devil through fear. How does that happen? Go back

to the trails. If you get caught on the wrong trail and you see a bear, you were on the

wrong trail. You don't blame your GPS, you don't blame your thing. You knew you were

on the wrong trail and now you met a bear. The fear I feared, the path of fear that I

was on opened the door to whatever I was afraid coming back at me. We can see that obviously

in the mouth of two or three witnesses, let every word be established. We see this all

across the Bible but I want to go back to a passage of scripture in 1 Peter 5, 7 and

8. I love this passage of scripture because personally there is life in this word that

helped me take decisions in my life and Pastor Matt knows that.

That's a great way to say that there is life in this word. There's a lot there. Go ahead.

In 1 Peter 5, 7 and 8 he says, cast all your cares upon him because he cares for you. Be

sober, be vigilant because your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion

seeking whom he may devour. Those things are connected. If we have cares and we're holding

onto these cares and we have fears and then we end up on that path of fear, guess what?

The enemy who prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. What does

that mean? He means he can't devour everyone but there are certain people he can devour

and those are the people who hold onto their cares, hold onto their fears. Go down the

wrong path because that path is determined by their thoughts and like we said the constant

thought patterns lead to actions. The action here is going down the trail of fear and we

literally see that fear meets you on that path.

Yeah, I love that. I love the way that's phrased in the Young's literal and you can imagine

I mean we can just see this maybe you've experienced this or encountered someone like this. Someone

they start thinking, you know, I'm afraid I'm going to lose my job. You know they're

laying people off, they're reducing staff where I work. I'm afraid I'm going to lose

my job. What if I lose my job? You know if I lost my job how would I make my payments?

If I could make my payments what would people say about me? Well they would say, maybe they

would say this, maybe they would say bad things about me. And when you're talking about trails

of thought one of the things I loved about this message when we first talked about it,

you could sit in your room, a person could sit in their room and physically not go anywhere

but in their mind they could go into unemployment, they could go into to become like this social

pariah where everyone is saying bad things, people are whispering about them, people are

calling out, do you hear about what happened to this person? Isn't this sad? Oh it's so

sad. You know until finally you know they just no one wants to be around them, no one

wants anything to do with them. Why? Because you know I just, but where that fear meets

them is they go to work and now they're like, oh here comes the boss. They try to sit up

straight and now they don't want to say anything because they don't want to stand out. They

don't want to come up with any new ideas because oh yeah I've been meaning to talk to you,

come in here I want to talk to you about firing you. So they start hiding and then what happens

the bosses are sitting around and say well this person they're not actually doing anything

and so maybe we should get rid of them because we are trying to get rid of them. And the

fear that they found has met them because they have started locking themselves into

this pattern of behavior. Constant thoughts produce patterns of behavior. Now that's a

made up example but I know of a story where this woman became convinced that she had cancer

and she went to her doctor and said, she was afraid, afraid that she had had cancer, that

she had cancer. She went to her doctor and asked to be examined. They ran all these tests,

didn't find anything and she didn't believe them. And for a year she went to different

specialists asking them to search for cancer in her body and they found it.

Under the initial tests. Yes. They found cancer in her body. It's a great, I shouldn't say

it's a great, it's a sad example of what we're talking about here. A person can get in their

head and go places that the Lord doesn't want them to go. They can get on the path where

they find a bear, they find unemployment, they find cancer. Why? Because what they have

feared has came and met them. That's right. I never knew that it's biblical because what

you were saying about the job, the unemployment, I've been through that but it stopped with

me at the thought process where I was going to actually start doing bad at my job. Thank

God that I have Jesus. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord that it was a fear at my job that

they're starting to downsize. So everyone was afraid. Everyone was thinking the same

thing but yeah, I understand completely. Yeah, because at that point what really makes sense

is I need to make myself more valuable. Exactly. Right? So I'm going to bring new ideas and

stand out but fear will cause us to disappear into the shadow and we're not going to miss

you because we didn't even notice you were here. Especially what you said about being

in your room and your thought process taking you to unemployment, everyone's social pariah,

everyone talking about you. It could all happen because of fear. Yeah, because you know it

was a shot could be sitting in his room thinking about these things and then he's imagining

a conversation that never has happened. Oh, did you hear what happened? Did you hear what

happened to John? No, because nothing happened to Josh. I was just sitting in his room thinking

on the wrong trail. That's right. That's right. You know, sometimes the solution is not, you

know, talking to the mountain because that mountain is never in your way. You're just

on the wrong path. Sometimes you just got to turn around and get back on the right path.

That's right. And it's that easy. And actually going back to 1 Peter chapter 5 verses 7 and

1 Peter 5:7

8, I do want to go back to, I do want to read it again and read it from chapter 6. So first

of all, it says, you know, casting all your cares upon him because he cares for you. And

the, you know, the word care can also be translated anxiety. And once I, you know, I was like,

I was trying to settle with myself, Lord, Lord, what is anxiety? What is what is actually

like? How do I categorize anxiety? He said it's a it's a low grade chronic fear, you

know, and it's just it's another, you know, for lack of better words, almost a disease,

but it's just low grade and it's chronic and it's something that stays, you know. So it

is it is a kind of fear. And the fact is, the reality is, the trail of fear is, you

know, is always accompanied by I'm on my own. You know, what if this happens to me? My situation

is unique. This this is the worst thing ever. And so at some point, you know, your unhealthy

trail of thought takes you down this dangerous trail of fear, which makes you susceptible

to. You know, hurt the wrong things coming to you because whatever you fear meets you.

But the opposite of that is on the trail of faith. It's you know, I refuse to carry this.

I don't want to carry this fear, Lord, you carry it. I don't I'm not going to hold this

anxiety. You hold it. And in this verse, you see that. Cast all your cares upon him. I

like this word cast is like throw, you know, with all your strength, just throw it and

offload it. And and the and the reality is either you're holding on to fear or you're

holding on to this or you're giving it to God to hold on to himself. Yeah. And verse

six, so going back to this verse six says, therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty

hand of God so that he may exalt you in due time, casting all your cares upon him because

he cares for you. The reality is fear leads to pride. That's right. Because what a great

picture because the the the fear that you have now you need to justify, oh, this this

thing that I'm holding is the biggest thing in the world. You don't even understand what

I have. You have no idea what you know what I'm going through. I'm the only person I haven't

met anyone who has what I'm dealing with. And the reality is humble yourself. Yes. Humble

yourself like be in a position where I don't want to be on this path. Please get me off

this path. I don't want to hold this. It's too heavy for me. That's so that's so good.

How how foolish is pride really? Yeah. The Lord. What's that verse? He cares for you.

So if there is a legitimate concern. He he will not just care about it, he will take

care of it. And the the foolishness of pride is no, I got to carry this myself. Yeah. Yeah,

that's right. So just before we run out of time, I actually want to introduce the Bible

illustration that we want to talk about during our girl groups this week. And that is the

illustration of Mark chapter four, verses 35 through to 41. And let me let me just,

you know, throw some some context to this. This is the the time where, you know, Jesus

tells his disciples, you know, come, let's cross over, you know, the Sea of Galilee and

go across the Sea of Galilee. And and then they get on a boat and they go across the

water, Jesus is sleeping. And, you know, a lot of us have read the story about the storm,

and what happens in that moment in time. And the the goal of the discussion is to talk

about the trails of thoughts of the different people who are on the boat, you know, especially

the it starts with so let me just pull up that that verse, or that passage. So it's

Mark chapter four. So on the same day when evening had come, he said to them, let us

cross over to the other side. So Jesus is telling you, we're crossing over to the other

side. Jesus never said anything his father didn't tell him to say. That's, that's how

on point he was with the things he said. And that's why the the letters in in the Bible

of Jesus speaking are in red. Yes, because they're, they're covered by the blood of

Jesus, you know, these are covenant words, literally. And he says, let us cross over

to the other side. And, and when they had left the multitude, they took him along in

the boat, as he was, and other little boats were also with him, and a great windstorm

arose. And the waves beat into the boat so that it was already filling. But he was in

the stern asleep on a pillow, and they awoke him and said to him, teacher, do you not care

that we are perishing? Then he arose and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, peace be still.

And the wind ceased and there was great calm. But he said to them, why are you so fearful?

How is it that you have no faith? And they feared exceedingly and said to one another,

who can this be that even the wind and the sea obey him? So there's so much to pull

out of this. There's so much.

I like I like the the challenge here in the grow groups is to really, you know, kind of

get in the boat and look at the different trails, the people in the boat are on. Because

they're in one boat, but they're all on different trails. Yeah, you know, don't you care that

we perish? You know, some one of these guys are in there like, I'm never going to see

my mama again.

That was me.

There's you know, there's all this there's all this stuff happening in the boat. And

you know, Jesus just sleeping, right? Because we're going to the other side, one way or

the other, we're just going to the other side. And but you make a point here that even when

the storm finishes, the fear is still there. Like the weather changed. Jesus rebukes the

storm, the weather changes. The Bible says that the disciples feared greatly. Like that's

what trail are they on again?

Yeah. I mean, what astounds me here, especially we talked about this word care, you know,

cast all your cares on him because he cares for you. The first question they wake him

up and say, do not care that we're perishing. It's not like, Lord, help us. You know, it's

literally, do you not care? So like, the question is, is molded in fear. Because the question

is, you know, don't you see what we're going through? Don't you see where we are? Don't

you appreciate the severity of the issue? Don't you see the things that are happening? Jesus

saw nothing but the other side. That's all Jesus saw. Let's go to the other side. He

knew his end. He had a confident expectation of the good end. He had that. And that's the

mentality he had. So he never saw the storm. He never thought the storm was a factor to

take him off the track where he was supposed to go. That's the trail of fear. The trail

of fear was point A to point B. Sorry, the trail of faith was point A to point B. But

the trail of fear was point A to the middle of the sea. And we're all going to die. You

know, this is this is the reality. Actually, like, rather than, you know, talk about this,

because we're going to talk about this in our Groger's. I just thought of this, you

know, funny moment. Back in June, I had some travel for work and I went to, you know, different

places across Europe. And I took so many flights that those those few weeks. And there was

one flight where, you know, I was leaving a place and there was just like a storm coming

again. And so I'm in the plane, you know, we're taking off. I'm sitting there like just,

you know, hanging out, being all spiritual, reading my Bible, whatever, whatever that

looks like. I'm just I'm just messing. But I'm sitting there and, you know, we start,

you know, take off and we go up and, you know, obviously, it's pretty dark around because,

you know, you're flying through a storm out of the storm to get somewhere else. And I'm

just sitting there being spiritual, you know, looking at looking at the storm outside and

like, you know, the plane bounces a little bit and I just start reading Psalm 91, you

know, he who dwells in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow

of the Almighty. Turn my Bible and being all spiritual going to Psalm 27, you know, the

Lord is my light and my salvation. Who shall I fear the Lord of the strength in my life

of whom shall I be afraid? And I'm sitting there every time it bounces, you know, I read

it a little louder to myself and then their kids three rows back every time the you know,

the plane bounces, they're like, yeah, that's exactly right. That's you know, they're having

a great time. Yeah, this is fun. It's like a roller coaster. I'm sitting there like,

oh, Lord, yes, I can't wait to see the blue sky above the storm. Yes, Lord, all spiritual,

you know, he who dwells in the secret. And the reality is who's being more spiritual

near the kids. Yeah, because those kids are carefree. That's right. That's right. They're

they're not spending any time on the trail that, oh, this could be the bump that takes

us back to the ground. Yeah. And we all perish. They're just like, yay, fun. I would challenge

I would challenge us this week to really look at what trail we're spending time on. You

know, what are we what are we spending time thinking about? And because like we said,

you know, you can get someplace in your head while you're just sitting there in your room.

But is that what the Bible says about you? Is that what the Bible says about that that

we should be believing and saying about ourselves? How are we governing our mind? Really? Fear

we should treat fear, even the low grade chronic fear. We should treat it like like an intruder

in your house. Like if you got up in the middle of the night out of bed, you go to the bathroom,

come out and think, I want to drink water and you go into the living room and there's

some stranger just in your house looking through your things. What would you do? Get him out

of the house, right? You wouldn't say, well, guess I got a new roommate. The same thing

is true with fear. We shouldn't just, you know, be struck with a feeling of fear that

this this thing's going to happen to me. What if this thing's happening? No, you should

treat it like an intruder in your house. Hey, this is your house. Get out of here. You have

no place here. This is not your place. And the more serious we get with that, the more

we mind the things of the spirit. To be carnally minded, to be ruled by the flesh is death.

To be ruled by the things of the spirit, to let our mind be governed by the things of

the spirit is life and peace. That's right. So in closing, I do want to ask these two

questions and these are reflection questions and we have to be honest with ourselves and

we've all been there. We've we may have all done this in our lives, but it's important

to think about this. What decisions have you taken in your life which have been based in

fear and what thoughts have you been holding on to based on fear? These are genuine questions

and I always try to do this in my life which is like I will not take a decision when I'm

under pressure or when I'm being pressured to take a decision. I will not take a decision

based on lack. I will not take a decision based on any form of fear in my life. And

obviously this is what I'm striving to. I'm not saying I'm doing that perfectly in my

life, but this is something I'm aware of. I will never take a turn in my life or choose

to go down a path or choose to take any other road which is based in a decision of fear.

So you know, oh I need to take this job now because otherwise I'm gonna die. So I need

to move to like the other end of the world and leave my church and leave my family and

leave my thing because I'm gonna die. Oh we all need to you know the situation in Lebanon

is terrible. We all need to leave like now, now like evacuate the country like now, now

it's terrible. These are fear based decisions you know. I can tell you that those are the

kind of things that you know maybe I've had in my life but what about you? What are the

decisions? What are the pressures that are trying to take you down the trail of fear?

These are things that we need to think about and we need to recognize these thought patterns

in our lives so that we can resist them. With that we're out of time.

We are out of time. There's so much more to dig into and obviously we'll do that in the

grow groups but you know this is right where we live because I don't care who you are or

how long you've been walking with the Lord. These kind of opportunities to take the wrong

trail of thought can come to everybody and it's up to us to apply the truth of God's

word and govern what we let our mind think about. Your mind is your mind and it will

only think about what you let it. So if the temptation to say oh we're out here in the

middle of the lake Jesus we're gonna all perish don't you care, don't you care, hey recognize

that's the wrong trail stop turn around go the other direction give no place to fear.

And like we always say if you made it this far today and didn't hear it you can hear

it from us we love you and we're praying for you. God bless you.

Thank you for listening to this message. We want everyone to experience the unconditional

love of God, grow in His love and go with His love to the rest of their world. We invite

you to connect with us at one of our groups for our next gathering. And if no one told

you yet today we love you and believe God's very best for you.