You Are Valuable

We have a treat today because our guest speaker, Chip Ingram, doesn't need a whole lot of introduction for many of us in this room. If you've been around Santa Cruz for a while, you know that he has been an author, teacher, and pastor for over 35 years, a significant amount of those years spent at Santa Cruz Bible Church, and then also some years later at Venture Church in Las Gatos. All along, Chip served as the CEO and teaching pastor of Living on the Edge, which is an international teaching and discipleship ministry. He's written over 20 books, including this one, Discover Your True Self. We're using this as a companion book for this series in Ephesians. We have run out of them, but we will have more next weekend if you would like to pick one of these up. I highly recommend it to you. Chip, perhaps most significantly, has been married to his wife Teresa for 44 years, and together they have four children and 12 grandchildren. So you are blessed. Your quiver is full, and let's give a very warm Twin Lakes welcome. Great to see you back here in Santa Cruz, Chip.

Thank you, my brother. It's fun. It's really been fun. What a joy to be back at Santa Cruz. Before I start, I just want to say, Santa Cruz, the journey, the people, the environment, all of it has so shaped our lives so positively. I mean, many people may think it's weird, but those of you that live here and that we have, we know it's weird, but in a good way. And I just want to thank too, I still remember the phone call where René was praying about coming, and I was trying to convince him to come. We need reinforcements. And he came 30 years ago. René came here, and he and his wife, what an impact. The team, you all, what God has done, really, really, really special.

So hey, I've put some sermon notes together. If you want to pull those out, we're going to dig right in. And we're going to talk about discovering your true self, and the title of this message is that you're valuable. And before we get going, go ahead and pull that out and get a pen. You'll probably need it. I want to start with a quick story of a friend. I've changed the name so that if his sister ever hears this, she will not be offended. But a good friend of many, many, many years ago, his parents are immigrants from Southeast Asia. They came here, didn't speak English, no jobs. They came here, I mean, fleeing from a very hostile situation.

And when they got here, like many immigrants, they got a job at a mini mart to sort of learn English, saw the great opportunity, and eventually started a really small little family company that cost hours and hours and hours just to put food on the table. But they had a son and a daughter, and they were passionate about one thing: that their kids would have a better life. And you don't have to be in America long to discover that education is a real key. And the mom especially was like a tiger mom of all tiger moms. And he said, you know, we would go to school, we did our homework, then we had another hour or more, even as little kids all the way through.

By the time we were in third grade, my mom hired a tutor and we started practicing for the ACT and SAT so we would be prepared for really great universities, not just well. As were not good enough in our home. And he said the only sort of break we got, because we did that on every Saturday, there was like six hours of tutoring from third grade on. But Saturday there was a Bible teaching church, had a youth group, it was a lot of fun. And she thought we ought to have two hours of socialization. And so he said, you know, here's a sincere mom wanting the very best for her kids coming out of a very different culture. But we were like now American kids and we weren't having any fun.

And we struggled with feeling resentful. Fast forward, he said, my sister obviously was a little brighter than me, although he did extraordinarily well. She got a perfect score on the ACT and a perfect score on the SAT. If that was your goal in life, she accomplished it. She went to a prestigious university that you would all know and a very graduate school that you would all know, among the very, very top, got a great job, great money, and then changed her address multiple times so her mother could never find out where she lives and have any more communication as long as she lives.

He said, my sister and I grew up in an environment where your value was based on how well you did in school. He later came to Christ out of that youth group, and we're still friends, and he's now training people that are doing amazing work in Southeast Asia. He understood his mom's heart and motives and was able to forgive her and the family. But for the sister, it was, you don't love me, you only love what I accomplished. And I want to suggest that as radical as that story is, we all have that disease at small or big levels.

In his classic book, The Search for Significant, Dr. Robert Mehe writes this, I put it in your notes because I think you want to read it later. From life's outset, we find ourselves on the prowl, searching to satisfy some inner unexplained yearning. Our hunger causes us to search for people who will love us. Our desire for acceptance pressures us to perform for the praise of others. Boy, that rings true, doesn't it? Our desire to be loved and accepted is a symptom of a deeper need. The need that governs our behavior and is the primary source of our emotional pain are often unrecognized. It's our need for self-worth.

Don't confuse this with just a little bit of self-esteem. This is the idea that you actually matter and are valuable, not because of how you look, not because of where you live, not because of what you've accomplished, not because of where your kids are in school or out of school or if they made the traveling team, not because of the kind of clothes you wear, the sort of house you have, the car you drive, but just for you. Even in your weakest moments, he goes on to say, since the fall of mankind, man has often failed to turn to God for the truth about himself, and instead he's looked to others to meet this inescapable need for self-worth.

It goes like this: I am, this is how we think, I am what others say I am. He reasoned, I will find my value in their opinion of me. Now at the bottom, I put a little formula, because whether you're seven or 77, all of us in this room and all the people outside of this room and anybody that happens to be breathing in the world, even in different cultures, to some huge degree, you view you are valuable on this formula. Your performance, plus what other people think of you, starts out from our family of origin, really young. Some of you got praised for being funny, some for being smart, some for being athletic, some for being a hard worker, some for being holy, whatever.

And you learned from your family, and some came from great families, and others from not so good families. Some you didn't have a mom, you didn't have a dad, and some it was their fault, and some it was unavoidable. But all that mix in your life, it imprinted on your soul, and your little mind started to create, when I do this or say this, when I achieve that, or when I look like this, I get acceptance. And when I get acceptance and affirmation, it feels a lot like love. And so that's how you've learned to find it.

Now many of you in this room are followers of Jesus, I would probably guess the great majority of us. And you know that something dramatic happened in your life when you received Christ, and the Spirit of God came into your life. And the theme of Ephesians is that you're in Christ, and your new identity is you're loved by God, you're accepted just like you are because of what Christ has done. But I want to ask you a question and ask you to be honest. At the bottom of your notes, I wrote, in what or whom do you tend to find your identity apart from Christ? We all do it. Is it work? Is it your looks? Is it success? Are you just... Is it money? Is it how your kids reflect on you? Is it popularity?

Are you kind of one of those who secretly or not so secretly, you're on TikTok and Facebook and this and this and this and that, and when you get a lot of likes, you feel kind of really, really good? When you don't get many, you get really, really bad. And you make sure that the world needs to know having a latte. And I hired these three beautiful women to stand behind me, you know, or vice versa. I'm just messing with you. Right? We all do that. My dad was a great athlete. I learned early on, you better be good in sports. My dad was a wounded World War II veteran. Guam, Iwo Jima, Purple Heart, lost all of his buddies, came back deeply damaged, but loved me deeply.

And his love language is, I want you to be successful. So when I got four A's and a B, he sat me down and said, we need to talk about that B. What happened? I thought it was pretty good. When I went two for four in baseball, because he was a great baseball player, the St. Louis Browns tried to get him to quit college and come play pro ball. And it would be like, Dad, I went two for four. Son, how many times have I told you? When that curveball comes in, you can't step in the bucket. That's why you grounded out to the shortstop. I used to dread the moment I had after every little league game, because I knew I was going to get ripped about what I didn't do right.

So guess what happened? I became a workaholic at 12. I became an overachiever. I became type A. I became super, super focused. By the time I was 12, I lent my parents $3,000 at 6% in interest. I had seven jobs, two paper routes. By the time I was 12, I decided when I graduate from high school, I'll have a pretty girlfriend. I'll be one of the top of my class and have a basketball scholarship. That's really hard when you're five foot two and as a freshman. And I became this driven workaholic nut. And the challenge with that is the mantra that if you're successful, or if you look good, or whatever that message is, even if you achieve it, it doesn't deliver.

Because deep in your soul, what you long for is what I long for more than anything else in the world. Someone to look into your eyes and see who you really are and accept you and love you just for you. And of course, that's what God did for us and that's what Jesus has done. But I'd like you to think about which one of those do you default to? And not like, oh, I feel really guilty. I don't want to go there. How about, I like to get maybe honest because I do go there. What I know under pressure, I find myself gravitating to work or going to get a workout. Some of you go to the refrigerator. Some of you it's alcohol or drugs or sex addiction or shopping. Those aren't your problems. Those are only symptoms.

At the core of your being and mine is how you see yourself. It will dictate 90% of the emotional, the addictions, and the relational issues in your life. And that's why if we can ever come to see ourselves the way God sees us and embrace that and get it from our head to our heart, it's amazing how some of those things you struggle with little by little will dissipate. Well, I want to do a little bit of diagnosis and we're going to look at Ephesians 1:7–10. And I'm going to teach you what God says why you're valuable. Not the person next to you, not if you change, not if you lose some weight, not if your patent comes through, not if you go public, not if your kid makes a traveling team, just you in the chair, where you're at with all your stuff and all your insecurities, just like everybody else in the room.

And so the diagnosis is this. Our personal search for significance is our attempt and our need for success and approval. And we usually take two sort of railroad tractors through two options because in your life and in my life, if you're a breathing human being, you fear rejection and you feel failure. We all do. I mean, after 44 years of marriage, if I can do certain things and I can see the look on my wife's face that feel, oh man, I hate that. Or last service, I went out early and spent another hour or so to revise my notes because I went over three minutes last night, three and a half really. And so I was going to really do better. I went over 10 in the last service. I completely, you know, and I'm a perfectionist. I don't like that about me, but you should be laughing because you know why you're laughing? Because you're just like me.

But here's the two ways we cope with this. One is called compulsion, perfectionism, workaholism, driven to succeed, obsessed with their outward appearance, manipulation and use of people for personal achievement. And what it is is it's that part of some of us. You want to prove you're okay. You want to prove your achievement or by what you accomplish or by how you look. And that's why you can't mess up. You can't be human. You can't make mistakes. Or if you do, then you have to pose and cover them and make excuses or blame someone else. The other one is called withdrawal. This is another technique. It accomplishes the same things. You fear rejection. You feel failure. Avoid failure. Avoid risk. You gravitate towards people who are comfortable and kind. You avoid relationships that demand vulnerability.

You appear easygoing, laid back. But often you're running from potential situations or relationships that might not succeed. For these people, it's really hard to be intimate. It's really hard to let the walls down. Because see, down deep in your heart, since the fall, it's not a personality issue. It's not even a family issue. Everyone on the face of the earth is deeply, deeply insecure. Your fear is that you'll be found out. And if anyone ever knew the kind of thoughts you have, the kind of dreams you have, the kind of lusts you have, the kind of attitudes you have, the real you completely unvarnished, you're convinced they would reject you. And the fact of the matter is, is we all have stuff.

But what that produces is four things that I would like you to jot down. Number one, we become slaves. I have battled being a slave to pleasing people all my life. I've been in the faith for 50 years and I've made a lot, a lot, a lot of progress. But if I told you I've got it licked, I would be lying. One of the things I pray during the worship times every time, and this may sound sacrilegious, Lord, will you give me your love for these people? Number one, would you help me be clear? And in a holy sense, would you help me not give a rip what anyone thinks? Because if I do, I won't say what you want me to say. I won't say the hard thing. And if I don't have your love for them, then what I'll do is I'll perform in such a way that I want to preach a message where they like me. And boy, boy, that's sick.

And so you can be a slave. So what are you a slave to? You a slave to work? You're a slave, you always have to work out? Are you a slave to your kids? Are you a slave to people pleasing? Are you a slave to some addiction? I mean, we all do this. But it goes beyond being a slave, we become actors. Because once we learn what's pleasing, it's then we begin to project and pretend that we're more loving than we are, or we're more successful than we are, or we post pictures that present the idealized life, but not the real one. And we talk about our kids in glowing terms, like none of them have struggles, and all of our grandkids basically were imported from heaven.

And you get those grandmas pulling those pictures out, "Katie, bar the door, believe me." Hey, when they start that stuff, I got 12, and I found myself by the time... I've looked back, my dad so loved me, but he was so damaged. And I just... And I learned to be a very sweet, nice guy around a girl. I learned to cuss and act like the baddest dude in the world in the locker room. And I learned to be the all-American boy with teachers and people in the public eye. And you know, I don't know about you, but I can handle a lot of people's struggles and sins, and they've got this problem or that problem. I'm just not good with hypocrites. Anyone struggle with that?

They said this, they live like this, they say this, they live like that. I hate hypocrites. I think one of the greatest challenges and painful things in my life to realize I was the biggest hypocrite that I knew. I had to remember who I was in these different situations. And when you're from an alcoholic family, you learn really quickly when things might blow up. And so your antenna gets really, really good. So I learned to read people and learn to be different people in different situations. And you put your head on the pillow and you don't even know who you are. Because that's the third thing that happens. The real you has never seen.

The real you has never seen. There's this projection, there's this picture, there's this posting, there's this attitude. You drop your kids off like this, you talk to the other ladies like this, you're, you know, in the business men over here, you play some sports with some guys, pose, pose, pose, pose, pose, all these holograms. And then you have some real hurt and real pain. And it's hard to be honest with anyone because you've been lying to them all. And you're alone. The epidemic in America is loneliness. The average man has not one single deep, honest, authentic friendship that he can just totally be straight with. And when you have loneliness, guess what? You will find something to feed that. And it's usually not healthy.

And it's even worse. It's not just that you become a slave and an actor. And the real you has never seen. The real you never gets loved. Because see, what happens is that you can you learn with some of us have gotten really good at this. I mean, you can't even do it in ministry. Boy, he's a hardworking person, or he does this, or he does that. And so the affirmation you get for the ways that you project yourself, affirmation is nice, but it's different from love. And what you realize is this person that they're loving isn't the real you. And what God wants you to know is that that is all a part of a fallen world.

And I think my son and his family are here. It's always interesting to share these kind of messages because I think of this is what my dad passed on to me. And I can look as hard as I try it. I pass it on to him and his brothers and their sister. And I'm not sure what all he's passing on to his family. But I'm just hoping my dysfunctions dissipate as it goes through the line. But if you don't stop it, they don't dissipate, they grow. And to the third and fourth generation, the sins of the Father get passed on. Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly.

Notice in your notes John 8:31–32, Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed, they've come to Christ, they believe he's the Messiah. Conditional clause, if you continue or abide in my word, then you're truly my disciples. And you'll know by way of experience the truth and the truth will set you free. Jesus has come. There are all these realities. There's all this messaging. There's reality TV. There's all there's AI now. There's deep fake. There's all kind of messages. And Jesus cuts through it and says, I came. I created all that there is. You're the object of my affection. I paid for your sin. I rose from the dead. I have eternal life. It's not about this little thing called time. There is an eternity and I love you and I want you.

Here's the deal. You need to receive what I've said is true about me, about the Father, about you, about your sin, about forgiveness, and about walking with me. And as you do that, here's what's going to happen. You will experientially see yourself more and more. And by my word and my power and in the context of the community of God's people, I will actually start changing you from the inside out and the real you shows up and you'll be free.

My most overwhelming experience of my salvation, I still remember in the first few months was I was 18 years old. I had never read the Bible. I had given up on church. But some athletes who loved Jesus, modeled it, cared for me, and were bold enough to share with me. And I still remember feeling loved. I just remember walking into a locker room and thinking, I don't have to play that part of having a real conversation with a very beautiful young high school girl and feeling, I don't have to just sweet talk her and pretend this or pretend that. Don't you want to be free? I mean, don't you really?

We're going to learn from Ephesians 1, following up on last week. First and foremost, you are wanted, you're chosen, accepted, appreciated by God, the most important person in your life. The text says, "Praise be to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless." I don't know if you ever remember, you know, when I was a little kid, they would, you know, you have two captains and they would choose sides. And I was like, I mean, I was so short, so small, so skinny, just a runt. And I always played with older guys. And it's like, you know, this person, this person, this person, this person. You get down to the last two people like, would just someone choose me? Can I just play?

And out of the eight billion people, whosoever would believe God says, I choose you. I want you in my family. I want on the back, I want you in my family. I love you. I'm for you. You're chosen. You're wanted. Not only that, you've been adopted. That means God is your father. I don't care what kind of father you had or didn't have. Our view of God is really determined in great degrees for good or bad by our fathers. For those of us as fathers, that is just scary. But good fathers protect and provide and they cherish children. And then we get to our verse here. "In Him, Jesus, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our transgressions, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished on us." Write the word in your notes, "Redeemed." You have been purchased out of the slave market of sin by Jesus as His infinitely precious and treasured possession.

It's what redemption is. If you were in that Ephesians church and this was read, and you're hearing this for the first time, you become a follower of Jesus and, you know, all your buddies are hanging out at the temple of Diana. It was the sex capital of the known world. She's the goddess of love. You want heterosexual love. You want homosexual love. You want bisexual love. We've got prostitutes. I mean, it was like Vegas on steroids. And you've now come to know Jesus and you're asking, "Where's your value? Is value your sex appeal? Is value, you know, the company you own? Is it where you work? Is it..." And then you hear, "You've been redeemed?"

And your mind would immediately go to the marketplace called the Agora. And when you went down, down, and there was the Agora, it was a market. You could buy lots of things, but in the center portion of the market, there was a little platform and they would have slaves. And Paul takes the word of buying a slave out of the slave market into freedom and says, you and I have been in the slave market of sin from the moment we were born. It's amazing. Some of my grandkids are very old and some of them are still pretty young. The youngest one is four. And then the next is six and eight and almost 10. But it's amazing. I didn't do like... I said, you know, it's like when Noah was born, he was early and then Ayrton is a real little one. Like Ayrton is like 18 months getting two years old. "Come here, bud. If you're going to get along with your brothers and sisters, I got to teach you how to be selfish, okay? So if there's two cookies, get them both. If you get one, ask for another one and punch your brother or sister if they take one even after you've had your own."

I went... I took them through training. Did anyone have to teach your grandkids or little ones to be selfish? It's in us, people. You don't have to... I mean, it's in us. And we just get more sophisticated. It doesn't matter how much you get or I get, you want more. You envy, you steal, you lie, you lust. Should I go through the rest of the commands? So we're prisoners. You're a prisoner of anything you're addicted to. The approval of people, being codependent, your work, sex, alcohol, drugs, shopping, food, name it. But those are just the symptoms. And so here's what he says, when Christ came, fully man, fully God, lives a perfect life, when he hung upon the cross. The moment he said, "My God, my God, why are you forsaking me?" He said it because at that specific moment something happened in the triunity of the Godhead that never happened before.

The Father turned his face away from the Son and your sin and my sin and the sin of all people of all time was placed on Christ. He who knew no sin became sin or literally a sin offering that we might become the righteousness of God. And he poured the just wrath and anger for sin and the penalty and the pain on Jesus who took it for you and took it for me. And he absorbed it. It's called atonement. He covered it. How? What's the text say? He redeemed us by his blood. And what happened? We are forgiven. The word literally means to be loose from a binding. We are loosed or forgiven from our trespasses all the times we knew what was right to do and didn't do it. We still do that every day, don't we? Or you know, you ought to do something and you refuse to do it. And how did he do it? He, by the riches of his grace, that he lavished upon us.

Let me, I'll give you a picture because I want to get this into your head, but I want to get it into your emotions. Okay? Because some of you, not your words, if I watched your behavior, if I had a video camera for a week, record all your words and watch all your interactions, your behavior would tell me you don't love you and you don't think you're very valuable. Even some of you who say words like where you're arrogant and you think you're more valuable and you puff up and you pose and do all that, that's because you're desperately insecure. Sorry. And some of you that look at your feet and you know, I can't do anything and I'm not really worthy and I don't really want to try, you know why? Because you're arrogant. Arrogant? Yeah. Where's your focus? It's on you. You can be arrogant high or arrogant low. God calls us to a sober self-assessment, an accurate view.

But what I can tell you is that if you could grasp, you are already valuable. Okay? Quick picture. Pretend I'm an illusionist. I'm going to create a box. Can you see it? It's invisible. And inside this box, it has a price tag. What's inside this little box is $1,000. Okay? It's going to float. Ready? It's floating. Don't take your eyes off this. I have a second box. Inside this box cost $1,000. Box number one, box number two. Let's make a deal. Okay. Now, I can't tell you what's in the box. I can just tell you this retails for $1,000. This retails for $1,000,000. I can't tell you what's in the box, but you get to choose. Do you want box number one or do you want box number two? How many people want box number one? How many people want box number two? Brilliant. The most, excuse me. Let me get my phone out. René, smartest group I've ever been with. No. Why? Why box number two? Because the cost of something always determines a value.

So what are you worth? Not if, not because. Not what anyone's ever told you. In the eyes of the eternal God of the universe, you are worth the precious blood of the life of his son. This word for redemption, he purchased you, resulting in your forgiveness out of the slave market of sin and into freedom and in relationship with your heavenly father. And the moment that happened, the Spirit of God, when you in the empty hands of faith at a moment of time said, I'm so done with running my own life and posing and trying to be this and be that, I'm going to recognize that I fall short, I have sinned, I've done things wrong, I lost, I got all kind of stuff inside. I'm sick of it.

And you said that you would forgive me if I would just come and in the empty hands of faith ask you on the basis of what you did on the cross Jesus to forgive me. You said you would forgive me, you would come into my life, you would seal me with your spirit, you would deposit spiritual gifts, you would give me inheritance, you'd make me a part of a forever family, you'd have a purpose for my life, and you would change me from the inside out from this moment through all eternity. I'm doing that right now. If you're a follower of Jesus, that's what it means to be Christian by the way. That's how valuable you are. Can you imagine what would happen if that ever got from here to here? Where it got to be the lens of your relationships? How you thought about life?

Well in the next section, the results here are that you're free and that you're valuable. But redemption isn't the end. The next section can be a little twisty and a little complicated. So I'm going to tell you what it says and I'm just going to read it because it has all these clauses that modify other clauses that modify other clauses. So you're redeemed, right? You've been bought back, you're a part of God's family. So that's the what that's happened. Now the question is why? Apart from and because of how much he loves you, but you're not just redeemed out of, you're redeemed for. And what he's going to say is that in how God has worked his plan, in his economy, of his worldview and purposes for all man in eternity, he's going to say you've been redeemed and then he's going to reveal the word is mystery, but it just means a secret.

No one knew it before. Not mysterious. He's going to reveal his will that he had why Jesus came and why he came at this very special time in world history called the fullness of time to fill all purpose in him. And the fact that he's going to fulfill this purpose is that Jesus once and for all is going to make things right and literally cause all things to be reconciled to himself. And let me just show you where that is in all wisdom and insight. The word for wisdom here is knowledge which sees into the heart of things and insight is that which leads to proper action. So Jesus gives us an accurate picture of what he wants to do in us and through us of his purposes. And what are that he made known to us the mystery of his will modified by what according to the kind intention that was purposed in him.

It's the motivation with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of time. It happened in the first century at this moment because of Roman roads and coin a Greek and peace and a number of reasons why Jesus came at just the right time. And it's in the summing up of all things in Christ things both in heaven and on earth. In other words, you are valuable and you are free and you have been redeemed for a purpose and it's a very, very big purpose. The purpose is that whatever Jesus did in his human body walking around the earth he's saying you are now a co-heir, a co-labor, a son, a daughter, and a partner.

So Jesus came to explain the father. What's he really like? People need to look at your life and explains. This is what God is like. Jesus fed the poor. Jesus cared for the marginalized. Jesus overcame prejudice and cultures. Jesus would care for the people who didn't understand. Jesus boldly confronted injustice. Jesus shared the message of reconciliation, the gospel, the great commission. Jesus modeled loving the Lord his God with his heart, his mind and soul, his strength, the great commandment and Jesus modeled for us the great compassion where he loved even the least of these. And you have been redeemed, bought out of to join a new team that has a new purpose so that all the earth might know of the love of Christ as you share the gospel that they might see an individual with all your perfections that imperfectly but significantly loves God more than stuff, more than pleasing people that loves others the way you love yourself and a person that despite your social status most all of us here I spent a lot of time going around the world we are so blessed so rich so comfortable and where you start looking with new eyes with people that don't have the people that need a little extra grace with people that aren't accepted.

People at work, people in the neighborhood like hiring a Hispanic pastor to say with all the people that don't know Jesus that speak another language this church says you know what we're going to do we're going to hire some. How many of you in here speak Spanish fluently? Can I raise your hand? Okay, very few. So we're if you're going to care about the Hispanic population which is massive those three people in this one row good luck. But if you really care you put some money in the offering and you figure out how to befriend some friends and you start a ministry. But guess what? There's athletes that don't know Christ right? There's dancers that don't know Christ. There's business people that don't know Christ. There's people in the strawberry fields that don't know Christ. Guess what? You are God's answer to the Santa Cruz county area and beyond. Why? Because you've been redeemed. You don't have to pose, you don't have to pretend, you don't have to act, you are new, you are valuable and you are needed and you are worthy.

As you look at the couple pictures I'll give you one, I guess what I would call it's a tool. First of all, can I thank you for your participation in our time together? I could not be more serious. Your body language, your heads, your eyes, you know what I can tell you what the spirit of God there's a massive number of people who say you are inside you're going yes yes yes that's what I want for me and the question is like well how how how I'm glad you ask. You have to replace those warp mirrors that you have from childhood all the way through and messages of our culture with the truth of God's word. My wife and I, because of our backgrounds and because of our warp mirrors, within about nine months we went to a great Christian counselor happened to be a pastor who taught us actually write down your misbeliefs, write a stop sign, say them out loud and then say stop and then put on the back of the card the truth and then we put a passage with it.

I'm in seminary like I'm going to help people learn about God and my marriage is not working. I have this beautiful wife that can't receive love and she makes me nuts and she has this over the top workaholic wacko guy and I make her nuts. So we went and got help and for two years we have ended up with about 21 or 25 of these cards about that's how many lies we believed. Teresa eventually wrote them on some cards and we give them to people but this is just an example and we would read the misbelief, turn the card over and read the truth. Here's what I can tell you it doesn't happen overnight but as we did that and to this day I still have cards at home they're just different lies that I believe later in life.

Lie number one: I must avoid failure at all cost. I must work harder and longer and be successful and prove I'm not a failure. That was my internal mantra. I didn't know I believed that but my behavior said it. Teresa's was I must avoid failure at all cost. It's better not to try than to fail. If people really get to know me they will reject me. Lie, stop, truth: I am now a righteous person in God's sight since I've trusted Christ's redemptive sacrifice for me. I am covered by the robe of his purity and goodness. Also, since I have a new nature I'm a good person in my general practice of life as I continue to grow in Christ. It's just a beginning but I encourage you to either cut those out, write those on the side of a card, put them next to your bed, read them three or four times in the morning, three or four times at night.

And if it starts to help then create what are start asking God what other lies are they and what are the truths and part of I think what they did with the book being available is we put a lot of our cards in there so we give you a way to get there. Up on the screen is a code. This costs money for other people but not for Twin Lakes church in our journey. My passion has been to help Christians live like Christians and what I found is if they didn't ever figure out who they are, a sober self-assessment, what your gifts are, what your work style is, how you lead, what kind of teams you need to be on, what your passions are, if you don't ever figure those out you'll pose the rest of your life.

And so if you take a picture of that QR code it's a 20 or 25 minute little what do you call those things? Not an inventory. Now help me, assessment sister. Thanks for being here today. And so it'll and literally we've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars over six and a half years and we've tested it with over 20,000 people. It is really accurate and I just want to give it to you just as a first step to say oh wow this is the kind of team I'm on this is pretty pretty really close to these weren't my spiritual gifts are here's how I'm wired and so you could start living out of that.

If you're here today and something resonated and you're not absolutely certain that you would spend eternity with Jesus forever and ever and you like to be free of your insecurities and have eternal life forever and ever could I ask you to pray with me? Lord, I didn't grow up in church. I wish I would have heard and known this. I spent so many years posing. God, will you please speak to those that are here that you know that are ready on this day to say to you, Lord Jesus, I'm tired of running. Right now in this building at this moment, I am turning from controlling my life in my way to you. I'm asking right now, Lord Jesus, will you forgive me and cleanse me solely based on what you did on the cross, not what I can do? And today I believe you died in my place and you paid for my sin and that you defeated Satan and death and sin's power. I want to be your son. I want to be your daughter. Will you come into my life right now? And if you prayed that with me, then you need to verbalize that with someone you came with or come up front and talk to a pastor or a friend or go out. I think right outside of the doors there's people that love you and you're going to go on an amazing great journey not to be confused with easy, just free, just valuable, just worthy, just life itself. Amen.