Rise Above Myself

Well, my name is René. I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. Good morning. Great to have you all here. Well this last week, we got to celebrate something because, as Mark said earlier in announcements, this was a major, major, major, major week in the history of Twin Lakes Church. We call it phase one of our 2020 vision initiative, stepping out in faith to reach the next generation.

And if you're relatively new to the church, let me just kind of contextualize this for you. For years, in fact since 1971, on our master plan was a children's ministry building that never got built. And instead, for decades, what stood there instead of a building was just an empty sand volleyball court. And then about three years ago, we began, if you'll remember, we began asking you to pray about whether or not the Lord would want us to move forward with this building.

We had a lot of desserts in homes. How many? 30, 40 desserts in different homes where we kind of laid out the plans. At that time, the plans were just pictures on a piece of paper. And we said, let's pray about it as a church. Do we want to move forward? And then we said we're going to seek God's direction on Thanksgiving weekend 2013. And we had kids bring piggy banks in. Teenagers brought empty Pringles boxes full of change they've been saving, and adults brought in pledges and gifts.

And in that one weekend, over 10 million came in in gifts and pledges both for this building and a building over in India that we are also building for children as a part of this same project. And then we had to build a building. We went through a lot of ups and downs with that, both in construction and also we were within one swing vote, as you'll recall, at the water board about whether or not we could proceed. And then it was like a dream come true when this last Tuesday night, as hundreds of you who were there know, we cut the ribbon and had the official grand opening of this facility.

Now you've heard the story. Watch the scenes that go with that story. Look at the screen. Before the world was made, before you spoke it to me. You were the king of kings. Yeah, you were, yeah, you were. And now you're reigning still and thrown above all things. Angels and saints cry out, we join them as we sing. Glory to God, glory to God, glory to God forever. Glory to God, glory to God, glory to God forever, yeah. We sing glory to God, glory to God, glory to God forever. Glory to God, glory to God, glory to God forever.

Take my life and let it be all for you and for your glory. Take my life and let it be yours. We sing glory to God, glory to God, glory to God forever. Amen, isn't that thrilling? Praise God. Wow. If you have not seen it yet, you have got to take a walk down there and walk through the building because it's just beautiful. But would you join me right now just in a prayer of dedication for this building? Let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, we do glorify you because you did this amazing thing and it was our privilege to be used by you. And now we simply ask that you would bless the ministry in that place for generations. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. And at the end of May, Lord willing, I will be in India for the grand opening of the partner building with this one that we also funded with that same offering. I'm very excited about bringing back some pics and video for you from the grand opening of your building in India too. And I just want you to know how much you are so, so appreciated for your support.

Well, I was looking through my files this week and I found some notes and an old People Magazine article on Chris Farley. How many of you remember Chris Farley? The comedian and movie actor, very, very, very funny, hilarious guy, Saturday Night Live. But as you might remember, Chris died at a very young age of a drug overdose. And just in case you're thinking, yeah, kind of typical Hollywood tragedy, what he really needed was Jesus. You might not know this, Chris was your brother in Christ.

Chris was very active in his church. He said, well, he called himself a Christian. Chris went to church every single weekend when he was at home in Chicago. And if he was filming on location, then he found a church to go to on location on Sunday mornings. He also looked for midweek services to attend every single week. He also went to a 12-step group meeting every single week. He also kept one of his favorite prayers in his wallet that he would pull out a lot and read to remind himself about the Lord. He also proudly wore a cross around his neck. I mean, Chris was a Christian.

Told People Magazine, I freely confess I am addicted to lust, to booze, to drugs. I want, watch this, I want to be a good Christian. But I'm a hedonist. He was kind of making light of it there. But the truth is he really did try to change. For years, his closest friend told People Magazine he wanted more than anything to be sober. Yet with all of that, it was only 33 when he died. And as I read that article, honestly, I started to be haunted with a question I've been asking myself all week long. Why is it so hard, even for believers, to change?

And you know, we could talk about Chris Farley, but let's make the very quick bridge into you and me. All of us have something in our lives that we want to change, and we've been trying more than anything else to change. And we're still not there. Why is it so hard to change? Well, let's talk about it. I want to invite you to grab your message notes that look like this. They're in the bulletins that you were handed when you came in. Rise is the name of the series that we wrap up today.

We started this on Easter weekend talking about how Easter is all about the resurrection power that's in you to rise above. And this morning I want to talk about how to rise above myself. My own temptations. My own addictions. My own weaknesses. My own compulsions. I want to look at seven weapons of self-destruction. You might not relate to, you know, lust and booze and drugs, the things that tripped up Chris Farley, but my guess is you're going to relate to one of these seven. They're in the Bible, and the good news is there's also a whole chapter in the Bible about how to overcome them.

We're going to do something different than what we normally do. We're going to do an overview of an entire chapter of the Bible. Romans 8, we're going to look at the entire thing. It's one of the greatest chapters in the Bible. You're going to be taking lots of notes today. So in fact, do me a favor, what hand do you write with, your left or your right hand? Whatever it is, hold that hand up. And now what you want to do is kind of shake it like this, get the blood circulation going, because I don't want you to cramp up. You're going to be writing a lot.

And the reason I want you to write this down is I really believe that you can use this. How do I know? Because what I'm going to be doing this morning is basically paraphrasing a message I first heard years ago that really made a difference in my life in terms of myself overcoming some of my own compulsions and addictions and anxieties. So I know this is going to help you out to grab a pencil and a pew in front of you, grab those notes, and let's start writing about those seven weapons of self-destruction, ways that we sabotage ourselves.

And the first one is shame. Shame feeling like I'm no good and I'll never be good enough. And shame leads to you giving up. Shame, in fact, leads to you thinking, I'm going to even leave my faith because of my shame. It drains your joy. And related to this is the second weapon of self-destruction, what they call in 12-step groups stinking thinking. Have you ever heard that phrase before? Right? Stinking thinking, where you self-sabotage with your self-talk. You're always thinking negative things, self-destructive things, stinking thinking. I'm a loser anyway. And so I may as well give it to this bad habit or whatever.

And that ties into the third weapon of self-destruction, compulsions. You can call them lusts like Chris Farley did. You can call them habits. You can call them impulses. But they're the things in your life that you feel like, I just have to do it. When you're tempted, you're just like, that's it. I know it's wrong, but I can't help myself. The fourth weapon of self-destruction is fear. Some of you can't relate to any of the ones that have come before, but you sure relate to this one. Fear about your future. Fear about what's going on in the world. Fear that keeps you up at night. Fear is a huge destroyer of happiness. Fear, unless you get control of fear, it will destroy your life.

The fifth is hopelessness. And that comes after fear. Where you get so afraid and so discouraged, you want to give up. And if you feel hopeless right now about your marriage or hopeless about even getting married or hopeless about your finances or you feel hopeless about your health, what happens is you just want to give up and say, my life is over. Sixth is bitterness. Bitterness. See, life is unfair. Have you learned that yet? Life's unfair. And we don't all get the same thing out of life. Some people in some way, you look at them and you feel like they got a better deal than you. They got a better situation than you.

When the cards were dealt, you know, you're happy with some of your cards, but like you feel like you got a couple of cards in there that just aren't fair and you look at somebody else and you go, how come they got better cards than me? And that can lead you to getting jealous and envious and bitter or some people hurt you. Sometimes intentionally and you can either get better or bitter. And bitterness is a cancer that will eat you alive. And then finally, the seventh weapon of self-destruction is insecurity. You feel insecure and if you don't learn how to deal with insecurity in your life, you're going to say stupid things. You're going to do stupid stuff. When you're insecure, it causes so much anxiety about life.

So how do you overcome these seven weapons of self-destruction? Well, the classic Bible passage for this is Romans chapter seven and Romans chapter eight. In Romans chapter seven, Paul talks about his own self-destructive thoughts and tendencies and sounding perhaps a little bit like Chris Farley, he closes Romans seven by saying, what a miserable person I am. I've tried everything and nothing helps. Who will free me from this life dominated by sin? Now watch this because there's a key word here and the key word is who. Who will free me? Not what will free me? The answer is not a program. The answer is a person and this is so key to understanding all of what follows in Romans eight because watch this.

So many of us Christians try to be better people, try to change our behavior and we feel like it's a what. There must be a system. There must be a to-do list and I am speaking on this with passion because for 20 years of my Christian life, at least I was constantly looking for the system. But the power to change is not a what, it's a who. It's not a system, it's the spirit. And in the next chapter, Romans eight, it talks all about this and you cannot understand Romans eight without understanding one thing. It's all about what you can do and how you can change through the work of the Holy Spirit.

In this chapter alone, the Holy Spirit is mentioned nearly 20 times. It is all about the Holy Spirit and here's the key verse. It's this part of verse 11. This is really the theme verse to our whole rise series and you'll see what I mean when you read this with me together. Let's read this all together, all in unison. "The Spirit of him who raised Christ Jesus from the dead lives in you." Say lives in me, lives in me. In other words, you are not alone. You're not on the journey to become a better person, a better Christian to change your behavior alone. You have the powerful life-giving personal Holy Spirit living inside of you.

And I just have to say, the church background that I personally come from, it was a wonderful church, but we just did not talk a lot about the Holy Spirit. And when I say not a lot, I mean like never. And so the whole idea of the Holy Spirit kind of freaked me out a little bit. You know, it's like I got Jesus and I got God the Father and all the Holy Spirit people are kind of whoa, a little bit off, you know, the wagon. And to make things worse, when I was a kid, they called the Holy Spirit the Holy Ghost. And so that was even weirder, right? Anybody relate to this, right? And so you're like, "I just don't even want to think about the Holy Spirit." But the result was this.

Here's the way I thought of the Christian life and see if you can relate to this. I knew that you cannot get saved through your own efforts, right? You can't work your way to heaven. And so to be saved, to have your sins forgiven so that you can go to heaven when you die, what happens is you accept Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior and then you're saved by this amazing work of the Spirit. But from that point on, after you're saved, it's all up to you again. Okay, now that I'm saved, how do I get better? Just try harder.

So the upshot was for one instant when you accept Jesus, there's a supernatural spiritual thing that happens, but for all the rest of the Christian life, it's up to you, my friend. But the Bible says that's actually not true. You have the indwelling Holy Spirit. So who's the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is not an "it." The Holy Spirit is not a force. The Holy Spirit is a person, the third person of the Trinity. It's the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And when you believe in Jesus, when you just very simply, in childlike faith, say "yes" to God, you don't have to do anything else for the Holy Spirit to come live inside of you.

The Holy Spirit, God's Spirit in other words, comes to live inside of you. And understanding this makes such a huge difference to the quality of your Christian life. Let me put it this way, I'll tell you a story. This past Thursday, I had the privilege of speaking at the Pregnancy Resource Center's benefit banquet down at the Coconut Grove, and I spoke with my good friend of many, many years, Brian Sussman. Now Brian is a broadcaster. Brian is now doing morning drive at KSFO in San Francisco. He's actually won multiple Emmy Awards. But years ago, some of you know, before I went into ministry, I was a broadcaster. That was my major in college and so on.

And one of the first radio stations I worked at was a radio station in Reno where I was doing morning drive at this FM station. And every morning, Brian, who was at that point the weather guy at a TV station in Reno, would phone in to the radio station with the weather forecast. He would call it in live, right after the news. So here's what happened. Every hour on the hour, six, seven, eight, nine, there was the local and international news cast that was read by our newscaster. His name was Tim Allen. And Tim would do the news. And then I had to come on and my air name was René Charles.

Because that's my middle name and if I said René Schlepfer, people would look at the radio and go, "Gesundheit, did he just sneeze?" So I had to do something. So Tim Allen would finish with the news and my role was to say, "Hey, thanks a lot, Tim, and let's check on weather right now. Here's Brian." Kind of do a live toss to Brian who would give the weather forecast on the phone. The problem was I was notoriously late to the six o'clock news and I often wouldn't be there when it came time for Tim to do the toss to me and then to Brian.

And so Tim had to do it himself and he hated to do it because he's like, "It's not my job." You look up to the controller and I wasn't there. He'd go, "Well, here's Brian with the forecast because René's not here. Do this passive aggressive thing." So I said, "Listen, Tim, here's what to do. If I have... I'm going to try to be there on time. But if I happen not to be there, I'm going to cut about 15 alternate tape, pre-recorded taped intros into the weather. And so if I'm not there, you just push the button and I'll come on with some variation of, "All right. Well, let's check the weather with Brian Sussman." How's it going, Brian? Just something like that.

I said, "Just hit the tape and it'll be fine. Brian does the weather, then we'll go into some music." What could possibly go wrong? Well, I discovered what? When the very next day, I was once again late, just barely, like 60 seconds. And so I was listening to Tim doing the news while I'm driving down Highway 50, getting ready to pull into the radio station. And Tim gets to the end of the news cast and he goes, "That's K-N-I-S News. I'm Tim Allen." And he hits the tape and I say, "Thanks a lot, Tim. And now let's check on weather with Brian." And Brian comes on live, not knowing, but it's taped.

He was fooled. And he says, "Thanks, René. But first, how was your weekend?" So there's a little dead air. And then I could tell Tim's like, "Sir's René, right? He just punches the next tape." And you hear my voice again doing some variation on, "All right, well, let's check on the weather with Brian." And so Brian thought, "Oh, René's trying to be funny." So he keeps going, "No, but first, how was your weekend?" And I go, "And let's check on the weather forecast with Brian." So I'm driving in and sweat's starting to come out of my forehead as I'm hearing this endless loop.

Here's Brian with the weather. "No, I got to hear about your weekend first. Checking on weather with Brian. Give me some weekend info first." And here's the weather. How's it going, Brian? Tell me about your weekend! And it only ends when I skid into the parking lot, run into the control room, turn on the live mic and say, "I had a great weekend. How about that forecast, Brian?" You know, live radio right there. But listen, here's my point, and I do have one.

For a lot of people, that's a metaphor for their relationship with God, if you can call it a relationship. It's just based on cold, dead commandments pre-recorded thousands of years ago. And no matter what they say to God, they seem to hear the same thing from God on a pre-recorded endless message loop. "I feel guilty, God. Try harder. I feel like I can't feel you, God. Try harder. Sometimes I feel like I'm a bad person, God. Well, let's try harder, try harder, try..." It's all a variation of "try harder." Man, that's not a relationship. That's something cold. That's something dead.

And the Bible says you have something much better than an endless loop of pre-recorded commands. First of all, you have the living and active Word of God. But better still, it's illuminated for you by the personal guidance of the indwelling Holy Spirit. And once you start thinking of your Christian life this way, everything begins to change. So how can I be set free from me? How can I conquer those seven weapons of self-destruction? Listen, I'm going to look at seven mental habits from Romans 8, but don't think, "Okay, seven mental habits. I'm going to write this down and I'm going to try harder to do all this myself." Do this. That's the living Holy Spirit to help you develop these mental habits.

And we'll go through these very quickly. First, remember the gospel. That's always the starting point. I got to remind myself every day of what Jesus did for me. This is how the Holy Spirit sets me free from shame. Look at the way Romans 8 starts out, verse 1. And let's read this together. Let me hear you. So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. I want you to circle the phrase "belong to Christ Jesus" because the whole passage is talking about people who belong to Him, who've given their lives to Jesus. But notice, it does not say, "After I become a Christian, I won't sin." You're still going to sin.

It doesn't say, "I won't make mistakes." You're still going to make mistakes. It doesn't say, "I won't fail and look stupid." You're still going to fail and look stupid. It says, "You're under no condemnation." I want you to say those two words out loud with me. Say it. Say, "No condemnation." That's what's true of you. God no longer condemns you. God no longer judges you for your sin, even that sin. The one that just leapt to your mind right now. Why not? Because He doesn't have to judge you because Jesus was judged. He doesn't have to condemn you because Jesus took your condemnation.

Somebody after church one time was just crying to me and said, "I just keep failing." She said, "I feel like such a bad Christian." But I said, "I want you to imagine a scale from one to ten. And if ten means total acceptance, how would you rate your acceptance with God right now? What does God think of you?" And she said, "Probably like a two or a three on the scale. Maybe a four on my best days." And let me add, you don't have to shout it out, but honestly, how would you answer that question? Well, according to the truth that's in this scripture, in God's sight, you are a ten.

And not just on your good days, not just back when you were a good boy or a good girl, on your worst days. You are a ten in God's sight. A ten because of Christ there's now no condemnation. That doesn't mean God doesn't look at you when you misbehave or when you sin or make stupid decisions and go, "You know what? We're going to lead that person out of that because he doesn't want you to mess up your life." But you have no reason to walk around in shame because there's now no condemnation for you. Say that with me again. There's now no condemnation.

Listen, whatever you want to change in your life, if you're serious about it, you have got to start where God wants you to start. Listen very carefully. And if you want to change some behavior, God's word says he actually doesn't want you to change with, to start with the behavior. He actually wants you to start with these mental habits, seeing yourself in your life accurately. See, here's the truth. The way I act is determined by the way I feel and the way I feel is determined by the way I think. Do you see that? And so what you have to do if you want to change the way you act is you change the way you feel, which is changed by the way you think.

And so you start with this truth. You preach the gospel to yourself every day. And then the second mental habit is this. I ask the Holy Spirit to help me change my mindset. Change my mindset. I literally say, "Holy Spirit, Spirit of God who lives in me, replace my bad thoughts, my self-destructive thoughts with constructive positive thoughts." This is how the Holy Spirit frees me from stinking thinking. And look at what this says, Romans 8, 5, and 6. This sounds so contemporary, doesn't it? It says, "Those who live according to the sinful nature, the destructive nature, have their what, their minds set on what that nature desires. But those who live in accordance with the Spirit," there's the Holy Spirit again, "have their what, minds set on what the Spirit desires."

It's all about mindset. You can set your mindset positively. You can set your mindset negatively. And the result, depending on that choice that you make, is completely different. The next part of the verse talks about this, "The mind of the sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace." Show of hands, how many of you would like life and peace, abundant life and deep peace? So would I. And it's all about your mindset. And I just want to get back to you. This is one of the reasons that we put together this free book, Rise, that coordinates with this series.

Today is day 21. If you start on day 21, the rest of this book is all about verses from Romans chapter 8. It's so that daily you read verses and you pray a prayer and have a scriptural affirmation about what is true of you and God so that your mindset is changed. There's still some free booklets available at the info desk. Pick one up if you don't have one. This is the principle of replacement. The principle of replacement. Have you heard of this before? Anytime you want to change something in your life and you're serious about changing it, you don't resist it, you replace it.

Because somebody said whatever you resist persists. In other words, whatever you focus on gets your attention and whatever gets your attention gets you. And so if you're trying to change something and you go, "I better not do that thing. I better not do that thing," you're still focusing on it. And so you're going to fall right back into it again. What you got to do is change your focus and I'm seeing some blank stares. So let me give you this example. Mark, could you hand me that donut that's right up there? The Mark has very, very, in a profound and admirable way, been resisting eating. That's good because my illustration would have been lost, Mark.

But here's what I want you to do. These are fresh donuts. We picked these up about an hour ago, right? They're still kind of a little bit warm there. Let's just imagine this. Let's say I put this donut down there and let's say I'm trying to cut back on donuts. And let's kind of zoom in, let's put a donut on screen there too. And so I've got this big, fat, juicy donut. And it's just sitting up right here and the glaze is still warm. It's kind of dripping off the side. But I want to cut back on donuts. So what I do is I look at that and I go, "I don't want that donut. I'm smelling the yeasty, fresh, almost kind of crispy cream smell, freshly baked glaze dripping, fresh, tummy warming donut. I don't want that."

You know what I'm going to do if that's how I try to resist it? I am going to just power down as many donuts as I possibly can. You know something funny after the first service? I'm not kidding you. Marco Lincoln just told me they sold out of donuts at the coffee shop, completely sold out. You know if I really want to resist the donut, what am I going to do? I'm going to look away and I'm going to look at you guys and lose my appetite. No. But that's what you want to do if you want to quit anything. You don't keep looking at it and going, "I shouldn't think about that pornography. I shouldn't smoke that cigarette that makes me feel warm inside. You get cool outside." You know you don't think about when you're trying to stop. You change your thoughts and you distract yourself. You change your focus. That's the principle of replacement. Does that make sense?

Who wants the donut by the way? Who like right now is going, "I can't stand it anymore." I'm going to give it to some of these UCSD students that are sitting there. Your hand went up like right away. So that's good. "Oh ye of little willpower." Anyway. And here's the thing. Remember, now that you're a believer, you have a helper. Even replacement is not about willpower, right? What you can do is, I want to suggest this. Say Spirit of God who lives inside of me, give me replacement ideas. Give me replacement ideas.

You say, "What are you talking about?" I tend to wake up in the middle of the night with thoughts of anxiety. Anxiety, I've talked about it before. This is something I struggle with. I mean like on a clinical level, taking anti-anxiety meds and it's wound me up in the doctor's office with anxiety attacks and so on. So it's something I've read a lot of books about and just one of those thorns in the flesh that we all have. But it's great because his strength is made perfect in my weakness, right? So I wake up in the middle of the night with anxiety and what I've learned I have to do is say, "God, give me replacement thoughts."

Now he's not going to override my will and just go, "Okay, I'm just going to replace it." But he's going to give me alternatives that he offers me and that it's my choice to think of those alternatives or not. And I find that happens every time now that I've asked him to do that. Lord, Holy Spirit, I'm going to give you access to my mind 24 hours a day when I start thinking those anxious thoughts help me to be aware of replacement ideas that you're giving me. And he does, middle of the night. How about thinking about the beach today? How about thinking about Disneyland? How about thinking about your upcoming grandchild? And then I can go, "Okay," and start thinking about that and have a restful night's sleep in just a few minutes again, or I can go, "No, no, no. I got to think about what's worrying me, what's concerning me." And the same exact thing can happen to you.

You ask the Holy Spirit to give you some replacement ideas. I invite you, Lord, to suggest good thoughts to me. Then, very quickly, the third mental habit is this. I ask the Holy Spirit to help me realize I can say no. And this is how the Holy Spirit sets me free from compulsions. Did you know that before you knew the Lord, it was all about your willpower, but did you know that now you have a greater power? The same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead? Look at verse 9, "But you are not controlled by your sinful nature." You're not some puppet to your compulsions, but you're controlled by the Spirit. If you have the Spirit of God living in you, you might say, "Well, that's a big if, do I?"

I used to think the Spirit of God came later, except Jesus, and then somehow later, mystically, the Holy Spirit comes into my life. But actually, the Bible says no. Ephesians 1 says, "Having believed, you were sealed in him with a promised Holy Spirit." When you ask God into your life, you get all of God. God's a trinity and can't be divided. So you get Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the Father. They all come in and they're part of your life. And Paul says, "Because I have this, I now have a new ability to say no. So dear brothers, you have no obligations anymore to your old sinful nature to do what it's going to beg you to do." I don't know why, but this verse was one of those verses in my life that just made the light bulb go on.

Because of the words, "no obligations." Can you say those words out loud with me? No obligations. There's no condemnation. Now there's no obligation. For some reason, I've been laboring under the delusion that every time I got tempted by one of those really, those habitual sins that I couldn't seem to get out of my life, it was basically like as good as done. I had to give in. But this is, you're not a slave to that. You have no obligation to give in. You have no obligation to even listen to what your old nature begs you to do because you have a new ability to say no.

And then the fourth mental habit is this. Ask the spirit to help me see God as my father. See God as my father whenever I'm afraid. This is how God's spirit sets me free from fear. This is rich. The Bible says this, Romans 8, 14. Those who are led by God's spirit, there's the Holy Spirit again, are God's children. And the spirit that God has given you does not make you slaves and cause you to be afraid. In said the spirit makes you God's children. Stop right there for a second. You heard Adrian talk about this verse earlier.

So this says the spirit makes you God's children. That's good news because you don't make you God's children. It's not because of anything you deserve. The spirit makes you God's child. But it says it doesn't make you a slave again and cause you to be afraid. But you know what, for much of my Christian life I felt like a slave and I was afraid of God. I thought of God as a father a lot but as angry dad. Can you picture it? Angry dad who is upset with his kids and he's always at the boiling point about to explode if my kid doesn't stop misbehaving again. And as his son I was afraid all the time.

But look at the way the Bible characterizes your father. And by the spirit's power, there it is again, we cry out to God, father my father. And this is actually the Aramaic word abba. It means daddy, papa. It's the purest word of intimacy that a small child has. Often the very first word a child would learn in that culture. We cry out to God papa, to God papa, to God abba. Because God's spirit joins himself to our spirits to declare that we are God's children. Let me just ask you this. What are you afraid of? What are you afraid of right now? Some of you, that's the self-sabotaging weakness you struggle with. You know you read these things.

The biggest fear that people have in life is speaking in front of a large crowd or dying or heights or spiders. You know what I think the biggest fear that people have is because this is related to all the other fears. This is what's underneath every other fear you have. The fear of losing control. The fear of being out of control. So what feels out of your control right now in your life? Well when you feel like that, I want you to picture this, a little baby in his or her father's hands. Because spiritually that's you. And so when you start to feel afraid things are going out of control, you remember the truth about you is that you're in your loving father's hands and he's going to take care of you. He's going to take care of you.

And then the fifth thing we learned from Romans 8, ask the spirit to help me focus on the long term. There's a very famous study done by Harvard that found out the more long term your thinking is the more successful you're going to be in life. And this is where Christians have it hands down because when we say long term we're not thinking about, you know, like 40 or 50 years ahead. We're thinking about trillions of years because when Christians say long term they think about eternity. And this is how God's spirit sets me free from hopelessness. In Romans 8, 17 it talks about this.

Since we are his children we will possess, circle the word will, that's a promise. It's not now. We do, but we will possess long term the blessings he keeps for his people. And also we will possess with Christ what God has kept for him for if we share Christ's suffering we will also share his glory. Now look at this last sentence. I consider that what we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us, cannot be compared at all. Mother Teresa once famously said, "In heaven all the suffering of this life will be like one night in a bad hotel." I love that. So you focus on the long term.

The sixth habit, trust that God is good and in control. And this is how God's spirit sets me free from bitterness. God is good and he's in control. And look at how good. This is mind spinning. The Holy Spirit is praying for me it says here. No matter what I'm going through it says the spirit helps us with our weaknesses. We don't even know how to pray as we should. But the spirit himself speaks to God for us and even begs God for us with deep feelings that words cannot explain. So no matter what you're going through, it's cool when somebody tells you, "You know I've been praying for you." I always appreciate that.

But you know what's super cool is no matter what you're going through the Holy Spirit's praying for you. How cool is that? And not only that, God is using whatever you're going through for good. Classic verse we looked at last week and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who've been called according to his purpose. It's not all good, but God will use it all for good because God is for me. Did you know that? Did you know God's for you, not against you? He's for you, not against you. Verse 31, "So what can we say about such a wonderful thing as this? If God is for us, who could ever be against us?"

Another way to say that is that God wants you to succeed. He doesn't want you to fail. Now his definition of success might be a little bit different than your definition, but he doesn't want you to crash and burn. He wants you to succeed. He is for you. And finally, number four, "God will give me what I need." Verse 32, "And since God did not spare even his own son, but gave him up for us all," won't God, who gave us Christ, also give us everything else? If God loved you enough to die on the cross for your sins through his son, don't you think that he's going to help you with your anxiety or your finances or your pain? There is nothing in life that God doesn't pray about, isn't going to work through, isn't going to supply your needs through.

God, there's nothing so small in your life going on that God doesn't care about it. If you have a stomachache, God cares about it and knows about it. And then finally, before I say the last habit you need to develop, let me suggest this. This week, take these notes home, put them on your mirror in your bathroom or on your fridge or the visor in your car, so every day you can remind yourself to ask the Spirit of God to help you practice these seven habits that defeat the habits of self-destruction. And then the seventh habit destroys the seventh enemy, which is insecurity. Because when you feel insecure, it really messes up your life.

And the worst kind of insecurity is rejection. Some of you have felt it, maybe from your friends, maybe from kids on the schoolyard, maybe from parents, maybe from loved ones, maybe even from a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a spouse. Nothing hurts more than rejection. But there's one thing I can tell you. God is never going to reject you. And the seventh mental habit is to ask the Spirit to help me know God never stops loving me. Trust that God will never, never stop loving you. You may lose a lot of things in life, but you'll never lose God's love.

I'm going to put the last three verses on the screen and let's wrap up by reading these out loud together. Let me hear you read these with gusto Romans 8, 38 through 39. Here we go. I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from His love. Death can't and life can't. The angels can't and the demons can't. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of hell can't keep God's love away. Whether we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Do you believe that?

That's what's true of you. All seven of these mental habits, you know, we started by asking, why is it so hard even for believers to overcome self-destructive habits? I don't know anything about the struggle Chris Farley had and these things are complicated, but I know from observation of myself and others, one common problem is we start with the behavior that we want to stop. And the big idea here, if there's a common thread, is to change yourself. You must first change your mental habits, your mental habits by the power of the Spirit. And this is all true of those who belong to Christ. And so my question is, do you belong to Christ? You say, I'm not sure. Well, here's a chance to make sure. I'm going to pray a prayer and if it resonates with where your heart's at, you can pray it along with me. Let's bow our heads and then we'll sing one final song together.

Dear Jesus, I can never understand all of your word, but I get the idea that there's no condemnation because of what you've done on the cross. And so when I feel ashamed, help me to remember that. And now, Holy Spirit, because you've come into my life, I ask you now to give me better thoughts. I want to switch mindsets. And help me to remember I'm not obligated to give into those compulsions anymore. And help me to focus on my father and not my fears. And on the long term, not the short term. And if I ever start to get bitter and feel life is unfair, help me remember you're good and you are in control, not the people who are hurting me. And most of all, thank you that you'll never reject me. You will never stop loving me. And with our heads still bowed, if you've never invited Jesus into your heart, just pray something like this. Jesus, I want you to be my Lord, my Savior, the manager of my life. I don't understand it all, but I want to trust in you completely. I want to live in your love for the rest of my life. In your name I pray, Amen.