Trails of Thought - Introduction

Hey, Go Church family, welcome back for another month of our podcast series.

We're so excited to be here.

My name is Gilbert and I'm here with Pastor Matt Hattaball.

Hey everybody.

And like we promised, we're here with someone else this month.

We're here with Lara.

Hi everyone.

Hi Lara.

Hi Lara.

Hello.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

I'm so happy that I'm here with you.

Yeah, it's fun to have other people.

We want to keep doing this, introduce other voices.

And I'm just excited about the message, this series that we're getting into, because it's

really going to help us all grow spiritually.

That's right.

Because at Go Church, we talk about values and when we say it's your place, we don't

mean it's Pastor Matt's place or my place only, it's your place to love, grow and go.

And that's also why we want to have more people with us on these podcasts, is because we want

the voices that are in Go Church to come out and to be able to go from love, to grow, to

go.

We want everyone to experience the unconditional love of God, to grow in His love and to go

out into your world with His love.

Yeah.

Go Church is your place to grow and part of growing is being released in giftings.

And I am happy and very, very blessed that people saw things in me that I didn't see

in myself and they empowered me to exercise and develop in those gifts.

And so that's what we want to do at Go Church.

We want to create spaces for that and that's why Laura is on us on the podcast with us.

That's right.

We're so excited and this month we're actually going to get into a series called Trails of

Thought and I'm sure it's going to be a lot of fun for us.

The discussions are going to be excellent and also very challenging because this is

a subject that we all need work on and we all need constant consistent work on.

Yeah.

But before we get into the theme of the month and really introduce the series, we want to

talk to you a little bit about Go Church and who Go Church is.

We just said it.

We said it's your place to love, grow and go.

But I will also say that Go Church is a Bible-based, Spirit-filled and groups-based church.

We're also for the most part an English-speaking church and we cater to English speakers.

We're looking for you.

If you're in Lebanon and you're an English speaker and you don't happen to be in a church,

swing by.

If you are an Arabic speaker or a French speaker or an Armenian speaker, we still welcome you

and we're so happy to meet you and we want to welcome anyone and everyone who feels called

to be part of this church.

What I will say as well is that we're introducing a new series and every month we do this.

If you're new to Go Church and this is the first time you're listening to our podcast,

welcome.

We're so glad to have you.

What we are doing today is we're introducing a new series for the month, which is a teaching

series.

It's a message, whatever you want to call it.

We're actually digging deeper into this subject for the whole month.

This is the first Sunday of the month.

This coming Sunday we have our big Sunday gathering.

I'm excited about the big Sunday.

We're so excited.

It's always fun.

It's always fun.

We get together as a whole church.

What we do is come together to celebrate, to worship the Lord together, to bring our

offerings, to take part in communion together and to hear the message, which we're going

to dig deeper into over the course of this month.

Yeah.

In these series, while they have different titles, they have different themes, we're

really aiming at doing one thing and that's causing opportunity for us to change into

his image, to grow.

While they have maybe different graphics, different titles, they're all in a theme of

causing us to look at ourselves, look at him and make changes so that we make more room

for him to work in our life.

That's right.

Like I mentioned, we have different kinds of meetings and actually why we have different

kinds of meetings is because that's what we see in scripture.

Our church is based on scripture in scripture.

This is what we're looking to model.

This is what we're trying to do as we build the church.

We see in the early church that most of the church meetings happened in home groups and

small groups all over the city, even though there would be some elders over the whole

church in the region or the town and there would be a pastor over them.

We see that most meetings happen in small groups and in homes.

You see Paul in his epistles always saying, greet the church that is in this person's

house or that person's house.

Most of our meetings actually look like that, small groups.

We meet in groups that we call grow groups.

We used to say by faith that grow groups are happening all over Lebanon.

Now grow groups are happening all over Lebanon.

That's right.

Grow groups are happening all over Lebanon.

We have grow groups on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays at the moment.

They're happening in Ashrafiyah, Sinat-fil.

Now we have grow groups for kids.

Oh, that's amazing.

We have grow groups for kids and they have a lot more fun than the adults.

We also have groups in Biblos and Sheka.

We're really happy to see this growth in the church.

We're really happy to see more places for people to come into and just get into fellowship

and come into their place where they're supposed to be.

We're so glad about it.

I'm actually at the moment part of the Sinat-fil grow group and Lara is actually with me.

Yes, so am I.

How's the grow group experience been for you so far?

It's amazing.

It's the one day I wait for the whole week, the time with the grow group.

We dig deeper in the message and we hear about practical ways to implement what we're hearing

and we pray with each other if anyone has any prayers.

It's amazing.

It's great.

Yeah.

We have a great time.

The practical part is really the thing that makes the difference because it's one thing

to have a lot of knowledge, but the Bible says that knowledge puffs up.

The problem with being puffed up is just a small pin will deflate all of that.

If knowledge puffs up, love builds up.

As a church, we want to not just experience love, but grow in love because love is going

to build us up and make us able, there's a theme, to go out and really make a difference.

So grow groups are an opportunity for us to look and say, how can we practically apply

these truths to our life?

Yeah.

Another thing I love about grow groups is that this is our place to build real, genuine

friendships and relationships that we can carry in our lives.

So grow groups shouldn't be a place where you come once a week and leave and then you

come next week and you leave.

It should be your church family.

It should be the people you look forward to spending time with.

I would encourage you this week or next week, whenever you come and leave from grow groups,

reach out to someone.

Say hi to someone.

People are, we're all looking for quality friendships in our lives and you wouldn't

imagine the quality of people that you have around you in these groups.

So I encourage you.

I encourage you to reach out and...

If you think about this in the New Testament, we see, and there's, I don't take this the

wrong way.

There's nothing wrong with having organized meetings and we see there's some organized

meetings, sometimes very spontaneous meetings, meetings, but really the New Testament is

full of relationships.

Look at the letters that Paul wrote and at the beginning and end of those letters, especially

he would talk about, hey, make sure you talk to this person and tell them I said hi.

And hey, I wanted to let you know that this person who you know, this is what's happening

with them.

There's relationships are part of the life of a follower of Jesus.

And that's really what we were talking about in September.

The follow me message is it's not just events and it's not just actions, it's relationships

and those relationships are an exchange and that's how we care for one another.

Yeah.

So this gets me thinking of the letter that Paul wrote to Philemon.

And at the end of the letter, he says, hey, prepare a room for me.

I'm coming to stay over.

So if you don't have friendships that are that deep in a girl group, there's a problem.

You should be able to tell your friends, hey, I'm coming over this week and prepare a room

for me.

I'm joking, but I'm not joking.

I really pray for all of us to come up together and for us to build a perfect bond of unity

and love.

And that happens through friendships.

It doesn't only happen when we sit there and get all serious and try to figure things out

in scripture, try to figure out what the Lord's saying to me, but honor the relationships

that the Lord put in our lives and work on those relationships because that's the Lord's

will for our lives too, to be able to develop these friendships.

And that's key.

That's really important.

It's actually one of our key, how do I say values, attributes in our girl groups and

that's the care element.

We care for one another.

It's not that the leader cares for me, the leader is supposed to reach out to me.

No, we are supposed to reach out to each other and build genuine relationships, genuine friendships,

offer help.

And the last thing that I do want to say about girl groups is we don't come to attend church.

We don't come to sit in a chair and hear what someone has to say.

We're all coming to bring our supply.

We're all coming to participate in church and build the Lord's church.

So I want to ask you this question.

How are you helping in your girl groups?

Are you helping by bringing food?

Are you helping by setting the space up?

Are you helping by inviting others?

Are you taking part of the discussion that the leader is trying to carry through?

So are you helping with the welcome?

Are you helping with the discussion portions?

Are you helping with reading scripture?

If you're not, I would encourage you to actively take part of something, to actively come with

a mentality of wanting to help, wanting to contribute, wanting to build this up and serve

your brothers and sisters in that girl group.

And there's something very special about that because you reap what you sow.

And when you sow friendship, when you sow service, you know, when you put yourself in

a position where you are serving the word of God, you can also reap more of that.

And you know, just before we started, Lara was talking about the Bible reading plan that

we do as a church altogether.

And Lara, you were saying that, you know, you were encouraged every single day to share

something, right?

And so every single day I, you know, I pick my Bible reading plan up in the morning and

I see that Lara commented and Lara, you know, shared an amazing reflection about the chapter.

And what did you say is happening now after you've been pushing yourself to do this?

As I said, I, it started with the committing to the Lord and to myself that I will write

every day and that, that helped me to read the Bible plan every day.

And now I just, I just love like reading and then reflecting on it and it happens automatically.

And I feel I'm so blessed with what others are writing as their reflections.

And I keep, honestly, a lot of people are coming to me and telling me, we can't wait

for what you're writing.

I have one of them.

From, from Go Church.

And I even at the Turkey conference, I met from the global Go Church family of people

as well.

And it has been amazing.

Awesome.

Praise God.

See, that's, that's what I mean by you reap what you sow, you know, you're sowing words,

like you're, you're sharing your revelation, you're sharing your reflections.

And I'm just convinced that you get more by doing that.

But you notice that you said something key.

You said it started with a commitment that you made.

And that's kind of the key of our whole follow me message from last month was everything

springs out of this quality decision.

I'm going to make a decision.

Jesus has already made his decision.

He's, he's already committed.

The thing that needs to happen now is I have to, I have to respond.

When you make a quality decision, when you make that commitment, then you make space

for Jesus to come in.

And, you know, I love the way you phrased it.

Now you have these, this, this river flowing out of you.

Well, how did that start?

It started with your decision, your commitment.

And we want everyone at the Go Church family to do that.

Yes.

Praise God.

Hallelujah.

I want to hear a lot more about Lara's revelation and the things that, that are really in Lara's

heart over the course of this month and this podcast.

So we're very, very excited.

Another announcement point I do want to make is I want to talk a little bit about our believers

gatherings.

And I'm sure many of you who are listening have already been part, have already come

or attended our believers gatherings.

But I don't want to let that go.

I want to talk about a little bit because it's so important that we come to our believers

gatherings expecting something.

If you notice, I am not referring to them as worship nights.

I'm not referring to them as music sets.

I'm referring to them as believers gatherings because it's not about the worship team and

it's not about the music.

The worship team and the music, everything there, the sound equipment, the lyrics on

the screen, the word, all of these natural elements that are present are designed to

help and support the environment to create a room for the Lord to manifest his presence.

And that's what we're trying to do.

We want to experience the presence of the Lord.

We want to be able to experience his manifestations, the manifestations of his goodness in operation.

We want to hear from him.

We want to see him move.

We want time to, like Acts chapter 13 says, we want to minister to the Lord.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

So we're not only coming to think about what we're going to hear, what we're going to say,

but we're coming and believing that we're bringing our praises to him and we're opening

ourselves up to him.

And in return, he's revealing more of himself to us, that we're getting a revelation of

his love, that we're getting an understanding of what he's called us to do and where he's

called us to go.

And so I just want to encourage you to do that.

Amen.

Amen.

So Lara, how's your experience been with the believers gathering so far?

What you said applies to me.

I changed the, like, it stopped being worship night.

It's a gathering of all the believers together.

It's ministry time where we do worship, where we pray.

And again, it's one of the days that I wait during the month.

And I do come now expecting to hear from the Lord, to receive and to praise him and glorify

him.

And it's an amazing time for anyone in our Go Church family to come and be a part of.

They will be blessed and they will bless others.

That's awesome.

Yes.

We're also very excited to have you on the worship team.

Amen.

Very excited.

Our worship team is growing.

We're very happy about that.

Thank God.

Praise God.

So moving on from Go Church announcements, I have one more announcement I do want to

make.

RBTC.

RBTC.

Lara couldn't wait.

Me neither.

So this week, actually, we have RBTC.

What is it called?

Jump into Ramah.

Jump into Ramah.

Pastor Mike, can you tell us a little bit about it?

I'm so excited about this.

Jump into Ramah is something that if, you know, for the people that have applied and

have been accepted as students, are going to be, we're going to have two days, Friday

and Saturday night, where we get to look at what to expect over the next level of study.

There's 21 modules that the students are going to go through.

We're bringing in guest ministers from all around the world that are going to come in

and it'll be intensive training times.

Training, not necessarily just teaching.

And so Ramah is not a, Ramah is a center of excellence where we train leaders, spiritual

leaders, supportive leaders, and even people that want to act as what we would call societal

leaders, agents of change in their communities.

But we do that not just by knowledge.

Again, going back to the follow me message, you know, it's not just about accumulating

knowledge, but it is training a person for ministry to follow after the call of God on

their life, to discover the purpose that God has for us and to be equipped to fulfill that

purpose.

Praise God.

I'm excited.

You know, I'm enrolled, so I'm very much looking forward to being part of this experience.

You just can't hear enough if you're around Pastor Matt or Chance or Joseph, you know,

that's all they're going to talk about.

Ramah, Ramah, Ramah.

So let's see what this is about.

I know that, you know, there's so much that we're going to get out of this.

And the goal is to come back and strengthen our churches.

It is.

But it comes back to the same thing that we keep talking about, which is the relationship

aspect and, you know, Ramah unlocks a world of relationships with people literally on

every continent that are pursuing the plan of God.

Now the Lord's doing things through lots of different ministries.

This is just one.

But these relationships that we have allow us to bring in experienced anointed ministers

to come and just pour into the students.

And we'll do that in extended times together on weekends and modules.

And if you're hearing this and think, man, I wish I would have known about that or I

wish I would have said that, you know, messages reach out.

We want to know about that.

We want to know about your interest.

Registration closed in September.

But if you message me, I can probably help you.

Wasta.

No Wasta at Ramah.

I read my mind.

Just love.

Just love.

That's good.

That's really good.

So for those of you who've been waiting eagerly to listen to the theme, this is the point

we're going to start talking about trails of thought.

Trails of thought.

I'm actually really excited because this is a theme, a subject that I wanted to cover

since last year.

Yeah, something that, you know, I've been talking about since last year and I just had,

you know, had it on my heart.

You know, there's some things I've seen about faith and fear and how those things are, I

wouldn't say connected, but, you know, equal and opposite almost.

And I really, I'm excited to talk about it.

But honestly, for, you know, for you listening, if you wonder how much time goes into preparing

these messages, literally sometimes a, you know, more than a year, we'll talk about things

you and I have talked about trails of thought on and off since, a little more than a year

actually.

Yeah, that's right.

You know, Pastor Matt loves barbecue and, you know, I think everyone knows that, but

it's worth mentioning on the podcast.

But actually the reason I'm mentioning that is because we always talk about different

cuts of meat, you know, and like I'm starting to discover all of these things that, you

know, Pastor Matt is a seasoned, you know, expert in basically.

And you know, different cuts of meat and the way you're going to prepare them require different

levels of marination sometimes, you know, sometimes things need to sit a little longer,

I need to marinate.

And some things, you know, get ready a lot faster and they're just good to go and they're

just amazing as they are.

And some things just require a little more marination.

And you know, sometimes things take more time to get ready.

And that's the case sometimes with messages and with series that, you know, these things

need to, you know, take a little bit of time to sit and digest and really see what we're

trying to extract because it's not about what we share, it's about what you as a listener,

what you are receiving and what you will apply in your lives.

So the measure of our success is how much you grow and how much you change.

So let me introduce this.

And the way I will introduce it is talk about, you know, what we've covered so far this year.

So since summer, we've been talking about Able, Able To and Charged.

These are three messages which, you know, three series which were amazing.

And actually, the Able series is the reason Lara is able to be here right now and she

feels like comfortable to be part of the podcast.

So that's a testimony in of itself.

That's true.

Yes.

Praise God.

Praise God.

We're happy to have you here.

Thank you.

I'm happy to be here.

And basically, if you notice, a lot of these subjects involve the spirit of man.

We're emphasizing the spirit of man, you know, which when we were born again, we are a new

creature in Christ.

Second Corinthians 517 says that all things have passed away.

Behold, all things have now become new.

And obviously, we're not talking about the external appearance because it's not like

all of a sudden I go from looking the way I looked having a six pack.

But thanks for mentioning that.

It's a morbid reminder.

But yeah, the reality is that my inner man changed and we're focusing a lot on who I

really am.

Who I really am is not my body.

My body is changing.

My body is aging.

But who I really am is the spirit man within.

But you know, it's a two edged sword, right?

Because we can spend too much time emphasizing spirit, spirit, spirit, which is amazing,

which requires emphasis, but then neglecting all the other parts.

And it's so important not to neglect the other parts because 1st Thessalonians chapter 5

verse 23 says that we are a spirit, we are a soul, and we are a body.

These are three components of our being and they're designed to work together.

They're designed to work together and it's also, it's really important if we're going

to grow spiritually and apply the truth of scripture to our life to develop an understanding

that we are a spirit, that we have a soul, and we live in a body.

The Bible says in Hebrews that only the word of God can really divide between soul and

spirit.

But there is a distinction and we apply the truth of God's word to see that, understand

it, and then apply some control.

And that's what Paul talks about in Corinthians where he says, I do this.

I do this with my body.

I'm doing this, actively doing this with my mind, which is what we're going to talk about.

Yeah, that's really good.

That's right.

So the point here is that a lot of people go too far in the wrong direction, in either

direction, right?

So as Christians, when we start changing, when we're born again, our spirits are made

new, our focus starts changing, our love, our affections, our desires start changing

and we start focusing on things that are not seen.

And that's what 2 Corinthians 4 says in verse 18, that the things that are seen are temporary

and pass away, but the things that are not seen are eternal.

And these are things that we're supposed to focus on.

1 John chapter 2 talks about us not loving the things of the world.

1 John 2 · chapter mention

We shouldn't love the things of the world.

We shouldn't put our focus and our energy on things that are passing away, but we should

put our energy towards things that are eternal because the things that are passing away,

John, it's quite stern language.

He says that they are enmity with God.

They are like enemies with God.

And we start noticing this about people that once we have this new treasure, like Jesus

says that you sold everything and you found this pearl of great price and you start seeing

people around you like bothered and thinking about day to day things that frankly start

not to matter to you anymore.

So obviously you notice that people, a lot of people are too far into the flesh, right?

They're thinking too much about what's happening right now, what's going to happen tomorrow,

what's going to happen next week.

You know, like I've been in situations where we I've seen people complain about things

that haven't even happened to them yet and you find them doing that.

But on the other hand, there's there's another extreme, right, which is neglecting the body,

neglecting the soul and just thinking about spirit and being and being stuck in that way.

So actually in Colossians chapter two, Paul is addressing addressing the subject.

You know, he's addressing this, this, this, this theme or this point called asceticism.

Pastor Matt, tell us a little bit about that.

Well, why don't you pull up that verse?

Asceticism really just is a fancy and probably very hard for me to spell word that means

to deny oneself to in and in the denial of natural things to assume that it means that

you're very spiritual or very godly.

And Paul actually is I'll let you read it, but Paul's very, very bold to the church in

Colossi.

He says, don't let people deceive you and think that just by denying yourself these things

that you have suddenly achieved some upper level of spirituality.

Why?

Because it's the message of the gospel that Jesus has created or he's redeemed us and

then we have been created into his image.

That's that second Corinthians five 17 verse you quoted.

So my righteousness can't be based on how much I deny myself.

Yeah.

So let me, let me read the verse since I pulled it up.

It's Colossians chapter two, verse 20, Paul saying, therefore, if you died with Christ

from the basic principles of the world, why is the living in the world?

You subject yourselves to regulations, do not touch, do not taste, do not handle, which

all concern things which perish with the using.

According to the commandments and doctrines of men, these things indeed have an appearance

of wisdom and self-imposed religion, false humility and neglect of the body, but are

of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.

Right.

Which, I mean, this is, this is really key.

If you, if you want to, if you want to advance in the things of God, you can see you have

to move beyond just outward appearances.

And Paul makes that, that point.

You can deny yourself all these things and still indulge in the flesh.

That this, this humility per se, you know, per se he calls false.

Yep.

And actually, if you think about it, if you deny your mind, you deny your, your body,

you're not going to be very effective for God, are you?

No.

Like you're just gonna, you know, you can't go out and so you can do love grow and then

you can't do go.

You know what I mean?

And that's not what we want to be doing.

We want to go is such an important part of why we're still here on earth.

You know, we're not, we're not here to just enjoy the blessing.

I'd much rather be up in heaven.

You know, the streets are made of gold.

I don't think any city in the world, you know, we don't see that in any other place, but

the point of why we're here is to be effective for the Lord.

So you know, we don't want to neglect our body.

We don't want to neglect our mind and our, you know, how we use our mind.

We want to optimize those and work on those in order to be effective for the Lord.

You know, if we talk about the body, Paul actually says that, you know, he says, do

you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?

So our bodies are key and critical to actually fulfill what Jesus is trying to do in the

earth because we are here in our bodies.

If you don't have your body, you're not here on earth anymore.

That's exactly right.

You know, second Corinthians five says that you're either present in your body and absent

from the Lord or you're present with the Lord and absent from your body.

So if you don't take care of your body, you can't continue doing the things that the Lord's

asking you to do.

So in that vein and in that, in that reason, we can't deny our minds and we can't deny

our bodies and we have to watch over them and we have to govern them in the right way.

And actually that's, that's why I want to read the, the purpose for the series this

month and this is it.

The Bible teaches that we are a three part being spirit, soul and body, and that these

parts are all designed to work together.

We want everyone in the Go Church family to learn to allow our spirit to direct our thoughts

and to govern our lives and actions according to the law of love.

So according to this, based on this purpose, we don't want to deny our soul.

We don't want to deny our bodies, but we want to govern them and direct them according to

our spirit and according to the word of God, which is in our spirit.

Yeah, that word govern and direct is really key.

You know, it's do something with versus just be passive and whatever, whatever it wants

to do.

I mean, I'm pretty sure that my body will eat just as much gelato as I put in front

of us.

I mean, I don't, you know, I've, I need to grow in, in that.

What kind of growth?

No, I need, I need to, I need to develop better governance on how much ice cream I eat.

But you know, the, the main scripture that we're going to look at, we're not going to

talk about dieting.

We're going to talk about the mind, but the main scripture here is really key.

And I guess we have enough time to kind of review this in Romans chapter, Romans chapter

eight.

I love the eighth chapter of Romans and in any translation, you know, I think I probably

love Romans chapter eight and Swahili if I could understand it.

It's just, it is a beautiful passage about the life of the follower of Jesus filled with

the spirit.

And, but verse five, he says, for those who live according to the flesh, set their minds

on things of the flesh.

And this is what you're talking about.

There's there's a, a, three parts and we need to develop ourselves so that we're putting

the first thing first.

And we are using the truth of God's word to discipline ourselves so that we can be used

of him.

Why?

Because we're here for a purpose.

And Gilbert has this thing that he says that the basic package in heaven is better than

anything you can have on earth.

I've never heard that before.

I thought that was, that's awesome.

The basic package.

I don't know, I don't know that there's different packages.

I'm not sure that you can support that in scripture, but I think it's true anyway.

What's included in the basic package?

Presence of the Lord.

You're there like everything that you talk about when it comes to experiencing the riches

of his glory on earth.

You're literally like in the presence of God.

And those are just the basics.

One person said it this way that when you get to heaven, you experience three levels

of surprise.

The first level of surprise is you see someone and you think, wow, they're there, they're

here.

And then you start looking around and you're surprised that some other people are not there

that you thought would be there.

And then the last level of surprise is you're there.

That's funny.

But go ahead and let's read the rest of the main scripture.

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh.

But those who live according to the spirit, the things of the spirit.

Why?

Because to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

Do you have that in another translation?

Yeah, I have it in the Young's Literal Translation.

And I really enjoy this translation.

It's not easy to read because it's translated word for word from Greek.

So it doesn't always make sense in English, but if you are able to speak multiple languages,

which a lot of Lebanese people do, you can understand that people think differently in

different languages.

And so you can appreciate the YLT a little more actually.

And in verse six of the YLT, so actually let me read it verses five and six.

It says this, 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.

Verse six just hits me, you know, and it says, for the mind of the flesh is death and the

mind of the spirit, life and peace.

So you see that Paul is literally talking about the three part being in here, right?

He's saying the mind of the flesh lead somewhere and then the mind of the spirit lead somewhere

else.

I know that a lot of translations capitalize the word spirit, but in this context, it's

obvious he's talking about the spirit within, which is obviously in communion with the Holy

Spirit.

But there is what strikes me about this.

And this is something we're going to talk about is that you see two paths.

So you see two trails, right?

There's the path of the carnal mind and that leads to death and there's the path of the

spiritual mind and that leads to life and peace.

You know, maybe it doesn't sit well with a lot of, you know, hyper spiritual people who

think that, oh, the mind has nothing to do with it, you know, but this is what Paul's

saying literally that the way you govern your mind will determine the outcome in your life.

That's exactly right.

The work of redemption that we receive in our spirit can be stopped and even, you know,

I wanted to use the wrong word there, stunted.

What I mean is it can be cut short and not grow to its full potential because we continue

to think on the wrong things.

Thinking on the things of God, the way God thinks about things, keeping our mind governed

by the Spirit leads to life and peace.

Romans chapter eight, life and peace.

Everybody wants that.

Yay, life and peace.

But to think flesh ruled, that word carnal, that means ruled by the flesh.

The flesh is what?

The flesh is the part that likes fried chicken and ice cream.

If I let that dominate my mind, then I'm going to go away from life and peace.

So what I do with my mind matters.

In fact, I would challenge you if you've ever heard yourself say, you know, sometimes I

just can't control what I think about.

These thoughts come in my mind and I just, you know, I wish I could, but I just can't.

I can't.

Yes, you can.

Your mind is yours.

You know, your mind will only think about things that you let it.

Yeah.

And it will think about things if you let it.

But you can control what your mind thinks about.

That's so powerful.

That's so powerful.

I do want to mention that point or emphasize that point that your mind leads you places.

Your mind does take you places.

Actually in the book of James in chapter one and verse 15, he says that when desire is

conceived, so when it's fully formed, it gives birth to sin.

And sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death.

So the first part of the wrong trail or, you know, taking the first step on that trail

is something that happens before you even take a step.

It starts in your mind.

You know, where you can see that is in Genesis chapter three.

Genesis chapter three, Adam and Eve, they've got one rule.

One rule.

Don't eat this.

The Bible says that the devil comes as a serpent and says, what?

Eat this?

No, he says, hey, did God really say, you know, and what is that whole passage?

If you go back and look at it, won't take time to go through it now, but you go back

and look at it.

The devil is influencing thought and thought occurred way before action.

That's right.

That's right.

So we're actually, I want to say we're running out of time.

We're beyond time.

We're over time, but we've had a great time introducing this and I'm so excited to get

into the, this is going to be a great study.

It's going to be a lot of fun and it's going to be, you know, the more honest you are with

yourself, the more you're going to be able to do something about it.

Because at the end, we're talking about your mind.

No one is in your mind but you.

And if you want results, this is a way to get it.

We're actually talking about that.

I do want to say one more thing, which is I want to refer back to our series on crazy

faith.

When pastor Matt Beamer was sharing the series, he talked about, you know, to go to crazy

faith, you need to start with baby faith.

But in order to really live in that crazy faith and to see amazing things happen, you

need to unlock this God given imagination of yours.

And this is what the goal is ultimately.

The goal is to keep our minds on the right things so that God can do what he wants to

do through our spirit, our soul and our bodies.

So the trail of thought should be spirit to soul to body.

It shouldn't be body to soul leading to death.

And that's something that we're trying to correct over the course of this month and

identify in ourselves.

So the key points for this month, we're going to talk about over the three weeks is week

one, we're going to talk about trails of fear.

So we're going to talk about the carnal mind and what it looks like.

What does a carnal mind look like?

Hopefully, you know, in week one, we're going to be able to really take an honest assessment

of ourselves and how we've been and what needs to change.

And week two, we're going to talk about trails of faith, or we can also call that this spiritual

mind.

So what does that look like?

And how can we get there?

And part three, we're going to talk about the love solution.

You know, when we say love, we know that God is love.

So ultimately, we're talking about the God solution.

Amen.

But it's so important to be God minded.

And that's what we're really going to home in on in week three, the the God minded solution,

if you want.

So, so that's it.

I'm so excited to get into this with you this month, and we're going to have a great month.

Yeah, and if you've made it this far in the day and no one's told you, we want you to

know that 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.