To real life with Mike and Jason.

We're glad you're here.

We're in episode four already of season three and joined as always by Pastor Mike.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good to see you, Jason.

Glad to be here with you on this beautiful almost triple digit day.

Is it really going to be that hot?

I think it said 96.

That's not 100.

I guess I'll take the four degrees.

Yeah.

Last week we talked about what it means to trust God when life feels unstable.

As we're walking through this season talking about all about anxiety, you know, we discussed last week about practical trust.

And it's not waiting until everything feels right, but it's about really seeking God and walking with God, even when our emotions don't necessarily line up with what we know in our head to be true.

I know God's there, but why don't I feel it?

What's wrong with me?

And so we talked about faith not being passive, but a choice to keep going when nothing else makes sense.

And so today, and we teased this a little bit last week, but today we're going to look at something really that feeds anxiety at the root, and it does it in a little bit different way.

It's not from the outside where we think about anxiety being caused by situations and the external things, but really we're looking internal today and we're going to be talking about lies, the lies that we believe.

And so for many of us, anxiety always doesn't necessarily always come from facts, but it comes from the thoughts that we let take root.

The lies about who we are, the lies about our future, the lies even about our understanding of who God is.

And again, it doesn't change who he is.

But I think oftentimes we have it wrong in our head.

We believe things that aren't true.

And it could sound like, as I was thinking through it this week, and I'll talk through in another part in a little bit here, we'll talk about specific, some common lies that I've heard and I know you've heard, but it could maybe it sounds like me thinking or believing that I'm not good enough.

And we understand from a biblical perspective that none of us are, especially when it comes to salvation, only God's good.

But that depressive thought of, it'll never matter, Nothing will ever get better.

God doesn't care about me.

Nothing will ever change.

And that's really what we're going to spend some time talking about today.

And we're going to reference Romans 12:2, which I know We've referenced probably, probably every season so far, season one, two, and three, but about God.

It says, let God transform you into a new person.

Changing the way you think, transform, you know, the way we think.

And so the way we think matters.

All of us have believed that something was true that wasn't.

Maybe we picked it up from childhood.

It's one of those things that I think of.

We.

You grow up as a kid and you lose a tooth and you get that dollar into your pillow and you're excited for Christmas because Santa Claus and Elf on the Shelf.

But then at some point you come to the realization that, and I apologize to any of the listeners, maybe that this is news to you, but that the Elf on the Shelf is not real and Santa doesn't exist.

We come to realize that maybe what I thought was true in the past wasn't.

And oftentimes it can come from pain, disappointment, or comparison.

Right.

But what we think we know often shapes how we see things.

So as we kick this off, I guess I'll ask you, Pastor Mike, maybe you can walk us through this a little bit.

Do lies matter?

Yeah.

And definitely thinking about this whole topic and anxiety and the lies that we believe.

You posted the thought that anxieties are fueled oftentimes not by facts, but by the lies that we believe.

And you just gave a whole litany of things, present, past, even future.

I always reminded of that.

There's, like a poster.

It says, worry works.

97% of the things we worry about never come to pass.

And that's so true.

I love the verse that you sent to build off today.

Romans 12:2 says, Let God transform you into a new person by the changing of the way that you think.

And it's so important because like you said, we oftentimes don't think the right way.

Charles Spurgeon, he said, our anxiety doesn't empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but it only empties today of its strengths and dealing with the lies of the enemy.

And we'll get into that.

That's why it's so important to know the truth of God's word.

Because if we don't, we're done.

We're undone, you might say.

And the question is, why is that so important?

And we get this from Romans 12:2, because whatever comes into your mind is ultimately going to come out of your life.

I think it wasn't.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, so a thought and you reap an action.

So an act, and you reap a habit.

So a habit you reap character So a character and you reap a destiny.

And what we think is so important.

We've said this, I think in previous podcasts.

You can have a positive life if you're constantly thinking negative thoughts.

And I think a guy that we listened to a member in staff meetings a couple of years ago, he would always say, your life is always moving in the direction of your strongest thoughts.

And so when you think of why lies matter, we look at it really from a biblical standpoint of what we would say is mental strongholds.

And you gave us the passage to look at today was 2nd Corinthians 10, 4, 5.

And in the NLT translation it says, for the weapons of our warfare, they're not carnal, but they're mighty in God for the pulling down of strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

And I think if we could unpack that those few verses, people would understand how important truth is and the impact that lies have upon our life.

And how do we, how did it get there?

I think is an important thing, right?

Because in this passage it talks about the a high or a lofty thing.

And I want you to, as a listener, think about what I'm about to say here because it'll this podcast, I was telling Jason that, man, we might need to do two or three podcasts just on this one topic, because it really to me is the difference between success in the Christian life and failure was about the things that we're talking about.

These are the utmost important things because they impact our day to day life.

We're not talking about our Sunday worship or Wednesday or you know, some Bible study that we go to.

I'm talking about your day to day life and how you live in the victory or the defeat that you're going to experience on a day to day basis.

So my point with that is in, in the Greek language, this word for higher, lofty, whatever you have as the word in your translation, it means partition.

And if I could get you to think about that for a second, what is a partition?

A partition is a room divider, right?

Yeah, it divides, it separates content.

And so Paul is saying that there's a blockage in our mind.

Romans 7, he goes, the wishing to do goods there, but the ability to pour, perform it, I don't even know.

And so it's not God that raises up a partition, it's the enemy that raises up a partition in our minds.

And so we're we think about this mentally.

And again, the enemy sets up partitions in our mind so that we don't know or we don't believe, or we don't trust the word of God or that God's word can't even get through into our minds.

You, you gave a, an example.

We'll get into a little bit of Adam and Eve in the garden there.

But I think if you take that and you think about a partition and you think about what is the result of a partition.

Okay, So I think we get that, that there's a partition between truth and a lie.

God's word is truth.

It'll always be truth.

It's 100% truth.

But we are inundated and surrounded by lies we tell ourselves, lies we tell other people lies.

It's just part of this world.

So thinking about the result of, of this partition or lofty thing is in, in scripture, it's double mindedness.

I want you to think about that.

Double mindedness.

What do we mean?

Two ways of thinking.

Right.

So that's stronghold.

We have two ways of thinking.

And James tells us, you cannot please God if you are double minded.

If you got one foot in God and one foot in the world.

He said, he who makes himself a friend with the world is an enemy with God.

Yeah.

And it says double minded.

Man is unstable.

And not one way, but all.

Yeah, all of his ways.

Yeah.

There's two contrasting thoughts, you could say, or two competing thoughts in our mind simultaneously.

And what's that going to lead to in all of our lives?

Double mindedness.

As we look at this, I think of Adam and Eve and it really would draw that out and then turn it back to you in this.

I think just to set the stage in this, when we think about Adam and Eve in the Garden of eden in Genesis 2:15.

Let me read this to you from the NLT.

It says, the Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and to watch over it.

But the Lord God warned him.

He said, you may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden except the tree of the Knowledge of Good and evil.

If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.

So God told that to Adam.

But here's the point.

He didn't tell it to Eve.

Eve hadn't been created yet.

So Eve is going to learn about what God said from Adam, her husband.

Which means that it wasn't directly from God.

It was indirect.

She was not an eyewitness to what God had said.

That makes her or anyone like her subject Then to deception.

The devil knew that he couldn't deceive Adam because Adam would go, no, that's not what God said.

God said this, I was there, I talked with him.

But he could say that to Eve because Eve's going, I hear what you're saying and it sounds like what Adam said to me when he was explaining it.

And so she was prey to the deception or the partition, the double mindedness in that.

Because he appealed in part of her brain to something that she liked, but also said, oh, in that day you're not going to die.

The fear and the penalty that God said for disobedience.

And so it brought her to a place of going.

And so she went with her feelings at that point.

And that's why the Bible says it was Eve who was deceived, but it was Adam who sinned.

So the point, lies distort reality and they impact our behavior, they impact our emotion, and ultimately what we saw here in the garden, they impact our faith.

So how could then, if we think of lies and we live in a time, I think today that even the word lie is, it's not objective, it's subjective.

Because truth to different people means different things.

We live in an age where we've got obviously social media, we've got Twitter x and Instagram, TikTok and all these things.

And we could see two of the, I mean, you and I, if we believed, if we took different outlooks on life, we could see the same exact event occur but come away with two different facts.

And you said that lies distort reality.

But isn't it interesting that we're seeing that?

But not only does it distort reality, it shapes how we view things and not just politically, religiously, just with relationships with people.

But isn't it interesting that it's often behavior driven too, and emotional?

So it kind of goes hand in hand there.

Yeah.

And to your point, we're only going to be freed by truth.

You'll never be freed by a lie.

And again, or like you said, not what you believe to be true.

Like people say, I have my truth.

Yeah, you have the subjective.

Right.

But Jesus says there's only one truth, right?

And that's God's truth.

And so he.

That's why he can say in John 8, the truth you will know and the truth will set you free.

It's absolute, it's not subjective.

God's truth is completely absolute.

And so I think that's why we start from a place of why do we keep going back to God's word, because it is the standard of truth.

So if we want to try and tackle the issue of anxiety, do we want to tackle the issue of addiction from last season?

Do we want to tackle the issue of how should I approach my view on life, how should I vote?

And all of those things?

You have to have some standard of truth.

And that's why we keep going back to the fact that God's Word is that standard of truth.

So if we want the solution for anxiety, where do we find it?

And that's, again, why we keep going back to Scripture, because it's not new.

Solomon would talk a lot about this.

There's nothing new under the sun.

Right.

What we struggle with today has been struggled with for a long time.

From the beginning of time, really.

I think anxiety, as we're talking through this, it begins with believing a lie.

Not necessarily encountering the truth, but believing a lie and running with it.

And then we perpetuate that lie in our head and we keep building on that lie.

And then that changes the way we see different things, which just contributes to a lot of our issues, especially when it comes to anxiety.

Let's talk about some common lives we believe.

Because I think, as I was looking through this, there's probably about four, I think.

And you'll know you've heard a lot more, you've been around in ministry a lot longer, and I like to point that out every episode.

But I feel old every time I listen to you.

Yes, that's the kind of friend I am.

Thank you.

Yeah.

But what are some common lies?

We believe because if we can get to a place where we start to understand how lies work.

And really, the important thing is, can we look at ourselves objectively and see where we have bought into lies?

And I'm not talking about just the audience.

You, me, all of us, because we're all subject to believing lies.

We're all sinful.

We all struggle.

But I think one of the.

One of the lies I hear commonly.

And again, you'll have to pitch in in these, just from the things you've heard.

But the big one is I'm alone.

They just.

I feel alone.

I feel like no one's there.

No one shows up in the quiet moments.

No one calls.

No one.

No one's there when I'm walking through something hard and it just feels like I'll always be alone.

And I think that if we look at that biblically, that obviously God doesn't say that apart from Him.

Sure, we are alone, but in him we're never alone.

Hebrews 13:5 reminds us of that, that he'll never leave us, he'll never forsake us, he'll never abandon us.

We see the same thing in Isaiah 41:10, don't be afraid, for I am with you.

And so I love the fact that as a Christian, God's presence isn't based on my feelings in the moment.

Because to be honest with you, I could feel one way today, and then I could just feel different tomorrow.

My feelings are.

They're all over the place.

Or they can be.

I'm just talking about in general.

But his presence isn't necessarily based on my feelings.

It's based on who he is.

It's his promise.

And so I think that's a big one that I saw is the I'm alone.

Would you agree?

Have you heard those kinds of.

In that statement, at least as far as one of the lies we believe?

Yeah.

And I think the key point, you know, for me in that you quoted Hebrews.

I think of Matthew 28, where Jesus says, go into the world, make disciples.

And at the end he says, and I'll be with you always.

Because if you think about it, all religion, even the Jews, had the temple, and the temple was in Jerusalem.

And the way to connect with God is you had to go to the Temple.

God was in the holy of holies, right?

And so everybody makes a trek back to Jerusalem, or whatever your faith is, you have whatever place they choose to go to your worship.

But here we have Jesus telling us, no, the further you get away from Jerusalem doesn't change the fact that I'm with you.

I'm with you every step of the way.

And I love that knowledge.

Amen.

Lie number two, I will never be okay.

It'll never be okay.

And I think this lie tries to convince us that nothing will change.

And usually we say this when we're in the middle of a trial.

We're in the middle of something big, difficult.

We're in the middle of something tough.

And that the anxiety, the depression, the situation, whatever, it is permanent.

And it's interesting, as I was thinking through this, because of my own testimony, my father took his own life.

And I think of.

And as a veteran, it's definitely an issue in the veteran population, but suicide is a big deal.

Sure.

But almost 100% of the time, just in my experience, these two lies are the big ones.

With somebody struggling with anxiety, I'm alone, and it'll never get any better.

I'll never be okay.

And.

And seriously, almost, I Just can't think of a person I've talked to that I've.

Whether it was in the service with my own father or even as I've been a pastor.

Those are very.

Are two of the most common things I hear in somebody struggling with thoughts of hurting themselves is I'm alone and it'll never be okay.

And I love, like Romans 8:28, for instance.

I'm reminded of that it talks about and God works all things together for good for those that love Him.

And it doesn't mean that everything feels good, but it means that even through the struggles, even through the trials, that he has a redemptive plan.

Through that he still has a plan and I'm not alone and that there's hope.

But it's not a hope and something I can provide myself.

And that's the point.

It's a hope in who God is.

He is the hope.

He is a standard.

Because if my eyes are on me, I'm going to be depressed because I mess up, because I'm not really in this sense of good.

I'm not good.

We all sin.

We all fall short of God's standards.

So I think line number two is a big one too, is that I'll never be okay mentality.

Amen.

Lie number three, God doesn't care.

We talked a little bit about this last week, too, and this even plays into the addiction piece.

But we talked about the praying and praying.

And it feels like our prayers bounce off the ceiling or those unanswered prayers.

The pain still lingers or haven't been healed.

It can be easy to find ourselves in a place where we start to really question God and we have anxiety about our situation.

And again, more scripture, 1st Peter 5, 7, says to cast those things on God, on Jesus, for he cares for us, that he is not a distant, cold creator.

He doesn't have a distance, cold response, that he's personal, that he's present, that he does love you.

He does love me.

He does love those that are listening to us.

But he calls us to himself.

He invites us to bring it to Him.

Amen.

Not because he has to, because he wants to.

You go back to Genesis.

And that's one of the things that's just.

If I'm to be completely honest, it's just so much greater than my mind can comprehend than when God was forming Adam, he already knew what the cost was going to be.

He knew Adam was going to sin.

He wasn't surprised.

It's not like he said, oh, what happened?

What are we going to do about this.

He knew and as soon as Adam sinned, he already knew he was going to come to, to save his creation.

So he's a deeply personal God's deeply personal.

His love so much greater than we can comprehend.

But we convince ourselves that he doesn't care.

And it's exactly the opposite, I think, of that.

No, it's true.

It reminds me of Jesus own words there in Matthew 11:28.

He says, Come to me all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens.

He says, and I'll give you rest.

He said, take my yoke upon you and let me teach you, because I'm humble.

So he's telling us about himself.

I'm humble and, and I'm gentle of heart.

And I think that's important for our listeners to know that Jesus is telling us his heart and the type of person that he is.

And he says, and I'm gentle at heart.

And he says, and you will find rest for your souls.

He says, for take my yoke, it's easy to bear, and my burden.

He says, I give you his light.

God doesn't put more stuff on us.

It's we in our own mind.

We put more stuff on us.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

And then lastly, and there's obviously many more than this, like you said, this could have been three.

Three episodes for sure.

The last one, I have to fix this.

The statement I have to fix this is one I think guys often struggle with a lot, is we like to try and fix, solve problems.

And the truth is that Proverbs 3, 5, 6 kind of gives us a different path.

We can't fix it all is the point.

Yeah, but it says, trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Don't depend, do not depend on your own understanding, but seek him.

Seek God's will in all you do, and then he'll show you which path to take.

And I think it's important.

Remember, if you're struggling with that, I've got to fix this situation.

I can do it.

I got myself in this, I'm going to get myself out.

That's the point.

You're not the solution.

I'm not the solution.

We were never married or meant rather to carry it all.

But God is the one who will provide the ability and he'll do these things.

He's in control.

And really that's good news because I just destroy things if I try and do things in my own ability.

But to be able to rest, like you said, to rest in God, there's so much freedom in that and oftentimes that idea of I have to fix it just fuels anxiety.

And we don't really fix anything.

We just make things worse.

And I think so many people can relate to that.

As man, every time I try and do something, it just makes it worse.

And then we get into the I'm not going to be okay.

It's always going to be this way.

And so these lies start feeding upon themselves.

And so really what I would encourage anybody listening today is just really think through this, reflect on this.

If your hope is in Christ today and you're struggling with anxiety, think through these things.

What are the lies that I'm telling myself?

And it's going to take some time before the Lord.

It's going to take prayer.

It's going to take really putting it at the feet of the cross and saying, God, search my heart here, help me understand.

And if your hope and trust isn't in Christ today, then you can have, you can know that peace, that freedom that only God can provide.

The world will never provide it.

There'll never be a medication, never be a drug, there'll never be a politician, another person that can provide a true peace that God can provide.

Because we're constantly living in opposition of who we were created to be in Him.

And let me ask you this then.

Are there some ways that we could fight back with.

Fight back against these lies that we tell ourselves, but with truth?

Yeah, and you brought it up.

Great verse for our listeners to go back to.

I'm not even going to read it again, but Romans 12:2.

And here's the point.

We have to learn to think biblically.

We don't naturally think biblically, so, you know, we have to learn to think biblically.

We know how to think, so think of that.

We have to think biblically so we know how to think.

We think.

We know how to think because biblical thinking is right thinking.

And when you think biblically, guess what?

It'll straighten out our problems.

Second Peter one says, by his divine power, God's given us everything that we need for living a godly life.

He everything.

Right?

We've received all this by coming to know him, the One who called us to Himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence, and because of his glory and excellence, he has given us.

Here's the key to this whole thing.

Great and precious promises.

These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world's corruption caused by human desire.

Or you could easily just put lies, the lies of the world.

So how do we do it.

So you have to lay the lies of the world next to the truth of God.

You quoted Proverbs 3, 5, and 6.

Lean not on your own understanding, but all your ways.

Acknowledge him and he'll direct your path.

And if I give our listeners one, one last verse, man, hold on to this.

Make this.

You know, I tell our church family all the time, get into the word of God and let the word of God get into you.

That.

And I would say that for everything that we're dealing with in this podcast today.

But Colossians, chapter 3, verses 16 and 17.

To me, this is the answer for everything here.

Let the message about Christ in all its richness fill your lives.

Teach and counsel each other with all wisdom that he gives.

Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts.

And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative.

The Lord Jesus giving thanks through him to God the Father.

To me, that's meant.

It just sums up the whole podcast in a couple of verses.

Yeah, amen.

And then just again, being in God's word is so important.

Like you said, giving scripture after scripture, because the Bible says a lot about these things.

It says a lot about depression, anxiety, and the solutions to it.

Yeah, it's like Carrie says, you get in the Word and then read the Word, sing the word, memorize the Word again.

What do we love about worship?

Especially the worship that we get to.

Just the word worship was to turn and worship is to get our eyes in the sense off of ourself and get among God and how freeing that is for us.

Yeah.

Amen.

Amen.

Before we wrap up here today.

And again, this is such a deep topic.

If you have questions, if there's things we didn't answer, please just email them to us.

RealLifeCCBakersfield.com we'd love to hear from you.

If there's enough questions, we'll just do another episode, kind of going through some of those, too.

So we definitely want.

We want to be a resource to you, but your ultimate resource is your creator.

So pick up a Bible, open it up.

A lot of Bibles in the back have areas where it'll say, hey, anxiety.

And it points you to verses.

I hand this out to our youth, these sheets that have those things that, man, if you're struggling with doubt, here's some verses.

And that's so important because you're meeting this emotion that you're going through, this real thing that you're feeling right now, whether it's anxiety, depression, then you're going Right.

To what does God's word say about it?

And so that's speaking truth into your life, but it's not your truth, it's God's truth.

And so can't do this apart from from who God is and from a relationship with him.

So that's definitely our encouragement for you.

Now, when we talked earlier about anxiety, causing the lies we believe, causing fear, causing us, causing it to impact our behavior, causing it to impact our relationships, that's what we're going to dive into next week is how does the anxiety that we deal with, especially if it's unchecked, especially if it doesn't, if we don't work on it, if we don't admit it, if we don't start doing something about it, does it start impacting our relationships with other people?

And it absolutely does.

And that's what we're going to spend time next week talking about.

Mike, is there anything that you wanted to add before we close this episode?

No, I just, like I said, I think you hit it is put your hope in God, put your trust in God, and as he says, you will not be disappointed.

Amen.

Thanks again for listening to Real Life with Mike and Jason.

If this episode helped you, one of the best things you can do is send it to somebody.

And again, it's not us.

If you could just sit down with the person and take.

Maybe the Lord encouraged you through this episode and just encourages you to open your Bible and sit down with somebody, that's awesome.

But if somebody's in need of help in your life and just reach out to them, pray for them more than anything and reach out to them and help them navigate through the truth of God's word yourself.

So we look forward to talking with you next week and thank you for joining us.