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Since 2000 Every Man Ministries has been activating men worldwide to live out their truest identity in Christ through its discipleship resources, live events, and steaming platform.
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Storms Expose Your View of God 0:00 Welcome to the men's global livestream. If you have a Bible, I want you to hold 2 spots. 1 in 2nd Corinthians 10 and the other in Psalm 141, which is gonna be our main text, the0:12 whole Psalm. And if you have the downloaded notes, the verses, and fill ins will be there. They will also be on the screen if you're taking notes in a journal. We are in part0:24 3 of our series called Whatever the Weather, and the big idea is simple. It's just that life will serve up some unexpected and some unwelcome storms in your life. And when0:36 that happens, it's gonna expose your view of God. And it's also gonna expose what your relationship with God is like. And what we are saying in this0:48 series and what we're learning and what we're reminding ourselves of is this, that God's man knows that even when his circumstances change,0:59 right, God's character, God's presence, God's promises, God's plan, and and listen, God's attitude toward you do not change.1:11 If you're succeeding and you're riding a wave of abundance, God's attitude toward you isn't different than if you were in the valley1:23 and suffering defeat and going through relentless difficulty. God's character doesn't change in your adversity or in your prosperity. And because that is1:35 true, the goal, whatever the weather, whatever circumstances that you find yourself in, God's man does not stop worshiping, praying, seeking,1:47 trusting, believing, and acting in faith, with his circumstances. He always is fixed and steady. Right? And a lot of times circumstances1:59 can push us off our mark for a bit, but we have to come back to the center, whatever the weather, and continue to be God's man and continue worshiping, seeking,2:10 trusting, believing, and acting in faith. Alright? To be consistent. And and so in part 3, what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at probably the most difficult kind2:23 of personal storm. It's the toughest, to weather. And to get us thinking in the right direction, I want you to think about a2:34 saying, where when we're talking about maybe if someone claims something outrageous or says something questionable, we will say to another person, consider the source.2:48 Right? I mean, think tabloid newspapers, right? They make the most outrageous claims about aliens and about animal people and you see these2:59 pictures and they make wild claims about famous people, dead people who died, but they're on some island and we didn't know about it. Anyway, when we look3:11 at the headline there, we consider the source, right, and respond appropriately. We don't we don't get too excited about the headline on a on a tabloid newspaper. We really don't3:23 attach a lot of significant significance to it. Intriguing, interesting, cool, if that's true. But we consider the source and we sort of respond inappropriately. We don't really get a3:35 whole lot of energy about that because we know the source is not so credible. Right? Now when adversity strikes, we do the same thing,3:47 right? Something unwelcome happened to us, something unplanned happens to us, and we consider the source and we respond appropriately.3:58 Now, 1 source could be circumstances outside of our control. And when we give each other advice, usually if something happens to somebody and the circumstances are beyond their control,4:10 we tell them, Hey, don't take it personally. That's outside your control. Right? Have you ever said that to someone to just kinda like, hey. Don't, you know, don't take this personally. Don't4:22 don't take responsibility for that because you couldn't control that anyway. That just happened to you. But then there's another type of consideration where4:34 we consider the source, and it's a whole different process. When people in our lives are the source of our adversity or are the source of our injury or are the source4:46 of pain coming into our lives, that's different. And the reason it's different is because there was a connection to the people who heard us.4:58 Maybe there was an assumption. Maybe there were experiences, expectations that make it personal. Right? So when when circumstances out of our control5:10 happen, we consider the source, and we don't really attach, you know, ourselves personally to that. Right? We can distance ourselves from that and kind of weather that circumstance. But when5:21 someone hurts or injures or abuses us personally, alright, that's different. It affects us deeply. And when that happens,5:34 you have to figure out how to work through the the psychological and spiritual warfare because maybe this person who hers, we thought we thought they loved god.5:46 You know? We thought they loved us. Maybe we had them idealized. Maybe we thought they would never do that, and it happens. And, man, that really rocks our world5:58 and and messes with our headspace. Right? So what we're gonna do in this session is we're gonna see in Psalm 1 41, the man of God, David,6:09 responding to pain and hurt in his life, a circumstance he never would have scripted, but it's happened. And people are the source of his6:22 adversity, and we're going to see him open up, a personal armory of good responses that for a God's man is a great model, for us.6:33 Because the fact of the matter is is that is that we will have injury and and stormy weather as a result of things outside of our control, and we're also gonna have things happen to us that are6:45 connected to people, and and we're gonna have to learn how to get through that. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna restate our theme verse, then we're gonna look at responding6:57 spiritually to adversity. And then we're gonna look at Psalm 1 41 and watch how you can't keep a God's man down, and it's going to be cool. Alright. Let's go to the top of our notes, our7:09 downloaded notes. 1st Thessalonians chapter 5 verses 16 through 18. Let's read that together. Rejoice always. Pray continually. Give thanks in all7:21 circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. That's our theme verse for our series, Whatever the Weather, whether we're in prosperity or adversity,7:32 we are always rejoicing. Whether we are in prosperity or adversity, we're praying continually. Whether we are in prosperity or adversity, we're giving thanks to God and we're worshiping because that's7:44 God's will. God's man always does these things because God's character and attitude toward him doesn't change with circumstances. Okay? So there's our headline.7:56 There's our basis. There's our foundation. But now let's kinda get our thinking in terms of how we are supposed to defend ourselves and stay in that8:08 place described in 1st Thessalonians 5 16 through 18. And in 2nd Corinthians 10, it gives us a clue for how to kinda defend that space and stayWage War with Spiritual Weapons 8:20 consistent. This is what it says. For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not weapon the weapons of the world. On the8:31 contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments in every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take8:43 captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. So what we see in God's word is that we're living in a broken, fallen, unjust8:55 world, right, where bad things happen. Negative circumstances happen. Trauma happens to us and we can react and respond in 19:07 of 2 ways. We can respond in a worldly way or a godly way and that's really kind of the 1st thing that I want us to unpack, especially when it relates to pain that's caused9:19 by other people. When people are the source of the pain in your life, number 1, you've got to pursue a godly response. Write that down. Versus what? A worldly9:30 response. Okay? In the passage, it says, we do not wage war as the world does. Right? The name for world in the Greek is cosmos, means culture. It's what everybody else9:42 does, but you're not everybody else. Right? That's why this passage is like, hey. You know what? You do spiritual warfare, and you respond and react to the things that happen to you.9:54 Not like culture does, not like broken male culture does, not what your feelings tell you to do because the world will tell you, hey, just go with your heart. Go with your you gotta respond in a different10:06 way, and you gotta think right about what's going on. You're God's man. Alright? You're not cultural man. And then secondly, we learn from the passage, we10:18 gotta put to use our spiritual weapons versus what? Neglect them. You know, that's 1 of the the the most unbelievable things as I travel the world and as I speak to men10:30 is that they're going into battle with no training and ignorance with respect to their spiritual weapons. The Bible says that we have an armory of10:42 spiritual weapons, and those weapons are designed to to protect and insulate us from listening to10:54 thoughts and lies that are coming at us as we engage circumstances. You know, in war, comms communication is so important, right? That's why you have tactical11:06 field combat guys who are directing comms and directing ordinances, and comms is so important in battle. Well, in a spiritual battle, the kind11:17 when people hurt you, right, that will ignite a spiritual battle, that will get in your head, that will create thoughts. There's also an enemy out there that's11:29 lobbying mortar rounds of lies at you and trying to get you to panic and to and to do things in concert with false beliefs about the11:41 situation or false beliefs about the person or false beliefs about what the solution is, and you have to destroy those things. You have to you have spiritual weapons that are good for11:53 the demolishing of strongholds, patterns of thinking that will lead to emotional, spiritual, maybe even physical death. So we gotta put to use our spiritual12:05 weapons. Number 3, I must protect how I think. And this is all kind of a domino versus what? Allow those destructive thoughts. You know, when trauma happens12:17 related to someone hurting us, someone abusing us, someone undermining us, someone betraying us, man, isn't it amazing where your mind goes? How many12:28 destructive thoughts come into your mind? How you can retaliate? How you can injure another person? How you can respond to it? How you can feel better when you feel bad12:40 because of the hurt that's been caused. All of these thoughts flood your head, and we have to have to step up in that moment, and we kinda have to raise that shield of faith,12:52 and we have to respond spiritually to those and not allow those destructive thoughts to enter and to take root. Because if they take root, then they13:04 spawn and they produce fruit. The fruit of destruction in our lives. So when you're the victim of personal attack, personal hurt, personal injury13:16 in your in your world, you gotta pursue a godly response. Don't act like the world does. You gotta put to use your spiritual weapons. You gotta protect how you think. And then 4th,13:28 according to the passage, you gotta battle for inner control. You notice the language here. Paul says, we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take13:39 captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. You know, it it puts in my mind like a passport station, you know, where you're coming to the border of a country. You're about to go in, but then13:51 you have to go through that passport control and then and then you get inspected. You know, the guy in the little box, you know, he's like, you know, come on up. And you gotta show your papers and then he looks at it and14:02 he asks you questions. How long are you gonna be here? What's your purpose for being here? And then if he thinks that you're not a threat, then he stamps your passport. Guys, we gotta manage our14:14 minds, like that like that border passport control person. You cannot let terror filled thoughts coming from14:26 the liar and the terrorist, Satan, come just freely into your mind. You have to stop them at the border as soon as they present themselves, and you have to to go,14:38 okay. Okay. That there's a thought. But where does that thought come from? And what's its purpose? And what happens if I let it in and it goes from here to14:49 here? And then if it doesn't pass the test, we kick it out in the name of Jesus. How do you do that? Right? Well, typically thoughts that15:01 present themselves as possible suggestions and responses that present themselves at the border of your mind, easy evaluation. Will this, if I listen to it or take it in,15:14 will that result in me showing love for God and love for people? It's a simple filter. And if that doesn't happen, right, we can just say directly15:26 to the presenter of that thought, whether it's our flesh or the devil or the world, we can say, it is written, I will love the Lord my God with15:38 all my heart, all my soul, all my strength, and with all my mind, and I, in the name of Jesus, I reject that thought. You see, guys, we are what we think and we do15:50 what we think. Our behaviors reflect our beliefs. We have to battle for inner control, especially when someone close to16:01 us hurts us. Someone we thought loved God hurts us. Someone we had built up and put on a pedestal hurts us or abandons us16:13 or ignores us. It's gonna happen. And when it does, we have to fight with spiritual weapons. Pursue a godly response. Put those weapons to work.16:25 Right? A prayer and the word and verbalizing what our position is. Protecting how we think and prevailing in the battle for inner control. So16:37 when people hurt us, we have to defend our insides. Talks about that in Proverbs 4 23. If you're got your notes, just read it out loud with me. It says this, above all else, guard your16:48 heart for everything you do flows from it. Right? So we have to really protect the center. When the Bible speaks about the heart, it's talking about17:00 your thoughts, your affections, your emotions, your will, your passions. Right? Out of which we live. Right? Your outside17:12 story is a reflection of your inside heart story, your self perceptions, your thoughts, your affections, your feelings. And17:24 you've gotta guard that with all the spiritual power that God has provided because everything you do flows from your heart. The Bible says, your insides will make17:36 its way to your outside. So, man, this is a a real smart lesson in spiritual warfare. There are many of the guys right now of the thousands of guys that are watching this right now. There are there are hundreds, maybe17:47 thousands that have relational conflicts right now. You've been injured. Maybe you've been through a terrible, terrible divorce. Maybe a business partner stuck it to17:59 you and left you holding the bag and with nothing. Right? Maybe you have a friend who who just betrayed you. You know, I don't know what the nature of maybe you had a a person in18:11 ministry, person who you sought loved God and served God. They just they just did something where it's just like, woah. You know, everything you thought about them is now all in question. What do you18:23 do? Alright? You gotta guard your heart. Because because they did that or because their your circumstances or relationship came, God has not changed. Alright?18:35 His promises haven't changed. His plan, his presence. He sees you. He's near you. He's involved in this. And because he's god, sovereign, able, and wise with capacity and care,18:48 he can redeem this and make it go to work for your good. So we gotta fight. Now, in Psalm 1 41, David is specifically19:00 addressing hurt by others. Okay? Not hurt that has fallen upon him outside of control, but hurt by others. And I want you to see how19:12 you can't keep a god's man down. David is the man after god's own heart, and we gotta watch what he does. It's in scripture, both his humanity and both19:24 his spirit filled responses. It's so awesome. So let's go to the text. Let's go to Psalm 1 41, and the 1st thing we see in Psalm 41 41 verses 1 and 2 is this, you go to19:35 God immediately. Go to God immediately. Something happens. Man, your brain's gonna go your focus is gonna go somewhere. But you gotta go to God immediately.19:47 Look at what David says in response to getting heard. He says, I call to you, Lord. Come quickly to me. Hear me when I call to you. And may my prayer be set before you like incense.Go to God and Guard Your Mouth 20:00 May the lifting of my hands be like the evening sacrifice. Alright? Now, 2 things I want you, to notice here. And the 1st thing is20:12 is David's desire for fast resolution. Of course he wants that, right? When you're in pain, you want relief. Unfortunately, when people20:24 injure you, it's not like you can take a couple aspirin or a couple pain tablets and the pain will go away. Actually, it's probably gonna be a process, but it it's it20:36 feels like an emergency. And and have you ever noticed that emergencies in our lives are not emergencies in heaven? So he knows20:48 that he's gotta go to God immediately, and he responds like we all respond. But then he kinda turns a corner and he says, may my prayer before you be like incense.21:00 K? Now you have to understand the context for the use of that picture. Incense was used to deodorize21:12 the foul stench of burning animals when they had sacrifice, right, in the Old Testament. So they would have they would be burning21:24 animals. They would be making sacrifices as a form of worship. And and simultaneously, right alongside of that was incense that was kind of deodorizing21:36 that that foul stench of a burning animal. Now here's the correlation. David's injured by people. If he's not praying, that prayer isn't acting like21:47 incense in his circumstances. Pull the prayer out. What does he have? He has the burning foul stench of his circumstances alone. And by itself, it will make21:59 him nauseous. Right? There are some of you that are listening to me right now. You're in the middle of just the foulest circumstance. I mean, it it smells22:11 to high heaven, but you're not praying. Right? And you're not you're not you're in it by yourself, and it's making you sick to your stomachs, and it's making you sick, and you're you're you're caving. And what you22:23 need is you need something to cover that. Right? Right in there to deodorize that stench of what's going on. And the only way to do that is by talking to god who22:35 will cover. Right? God because God's bigger than the foul stench of your circumstance. God's bigger. So God alone can cover that. Prayer is like that22:47 incense that covers foul circumstances. So that's why we gotta go to god immediately. And then he says, may the lifting of my hands be like the evening sacrifice. You know,22:59 anytime you lift your hands, right, it's a posture of surrender where we would wanna control everything that's happening to protect23:11 ourselves. Because when you're injured, you wanna protect yourself. You don't want that to happen again. Well, we have to lift our hands in prayer, and we have to surrender control to God. God23:23 knows what he's doing. God's in control. God's over, and God's able. Why don't you say that to yourself? Let's just say it together. God is over, and God is able. So God's over our23:35 circumstances. He's able. And when we worship and when we pray, it acts as a cover, which if we don't worship and we pray, all we're stuck with is23:46 the nauseating stench that just makes us nauseous. But with worship and prayer, right, we go to God immediately in worship and prayer, and we start to focus on God, it covers our23:58 circumstances. The sec now now, before I go to the 2nd thing, I want you to see what it says in the Bible, that we have a choice. Look at what it says in Psalm 40 verse 4. It says, blessed is the 1 who trusts24:10 in the Lord, who does not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false gods. See, in the moment when you get injured by another person, in the moment you can turn to yourself, you24:22 can turn to your feelings, you can turn to your fears, you can turn to advice from people who don't know God, and that's the same as turning to false gods. All of those are not God24:34 big g. Right? So you have 2 choices. Things happen to us. We can go immediately to God. He can be our 1st call. Or we can press the pause button and then go to false24:45 gods, little g, whatever those false gods are. It's whatever you're trusting in. Trusting in yourself, not God. Trusting in your feelings, not God. Trusting your fears,24:57 not God. Trusting in the opinions of people who do not know God, not God. Right? So how do you how do you how do you stay on your feet? Why is a God's25:09 man? You can't keep him down. He goes to God immediately no matter what happens. It's going to be okay. Number 2, as we go down Psalm 1 41, the 2nd thing we see David do is he asks god25:21 to guard his mouth. Now, the tendency when others hurt you is to mouth off. Right? We want others to feel25:34 the pain that we're feeling. Look at what David says in Psalm 1 41 verse 3. He says, set a guard over my mouth, Lord.25:46 Keep watch over the door of my lips. What is he asking god to do? Right? He's like, god, give me the power and25:58 strength not to surrender my mouth and my lips and my tongue, right, to revenge, self pity,26:10 blame, rage. See, all of us know what this means, and all of us can respect David's prayer.26:22 He's he's responding. He's reacting. He's going to God. Right? He needs God's presence and through worship and prayer. And then as he's praying, he's like, hey. And and help me26:34 watch my mouth. There are some of you right now watching this. This is exactly the prayer that you need to pray because you know what? You're surrendering control of your mouth. You're sad and you're26:45 angry and you're in pain, and you want other the other person to feel what you feel. And so you're letting them have it. Right?26:58 Or maybe you're you're blaming. Right? Or maybe you're just raging. Right? None of that is going to help27:11 you stay steady in your faith, keep you close to God, and see his redemptive power. In fact, it cuts it off. So we go to god immediately. 2nd, we guard our mouth. Look27:23 at the self control that, is is put into a picture in Proverbs 25 verse 28. It says this, like a city whose walls are broken through27:35 is a person who lacks self control. You know what the number 1 sign is that you have self control? Your mouth. If you could27:47 control your tongue, the Bible says, you can control the whole body. Right? And the devil wants to use our tongue. God,28:00 when you're hurt, he wants you to press the pause button on your tongue. Right? If you have been injured by another person, alright, here's my28:11 coaching to you from scripture. Leave more unsaid than spoken and do your talking to God. Alright?28:23 Talk to God, and we're gonna get into this in just a sec. But leave more unsaid than spoken because the filter may or may not work. So like David, we ask28:35 ourselves, hey, God, set a guard over my mouth. Keep watch over the door of my lips. We gotta ask the Holy Spirit to fill us and give us that self control control over our tongue28:47 and lips. Alright? So go to God immediately. Guard your mouth. Let's go down to the next verse and see what David does in response to people hurting him. Alright? The 3rd thing that we see is he he gives28:59 up the urge to retaliate. Right? Versus versus give it life or pour gas on it. Says this in verse 4.29:11 He says, do not let my heart be drawn to what is evil so that I take part in wicked deeds along with those who are evildoers. Do29:23 not let me eat, their delicacies. You see what David's doing? He's asking God. He's like, God, I don't I don't wanna be like them. Alright? I don't wanna be like the29:35 people who cause me this grief, you know, and he doesn't want to respond evil for evil. Right? If you've been injured by a person or you're have29:46 relational fracture right now, or even the future, someone, injures you, don't do to them what they did to you. Set your own standard, for your own conduct. Don't sink30:00 to evil's level when fighting personal evil. Alright? Don't sink to evil's level when fighting personal evil. Right? You're not gonna be able to stayShow more In this video 0:00 Storms Expose Your View of God8:18 Wage War with Spiritual Weapons19:52 Go to God and Guard Your Mouth30:04 Resist Revenge, Seek Godly Counsel41:20 Direct Anger to God, Fix Eyes on HimComments No comments yet. Start the conversation.
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