All right. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Valley Creek. We are so glad you're here. Whatever campus you're at today, welcome to Valley Creek. Last week, we had a great week of prayer and fasting. We felt like God invited us to take a week to set it aside, to call out to Him for an awakening, turning our hearts to Him. I just want to tell you on this backside, after we walked through that together, I've heard so many stories from so many people having encounters and experiences with God.

God was speaking, God was moving, God was bringing breakthroughs. I want to tell you how grateful I am to you as a church for being willing to go on that journey. You see, if you're newer with us, one of the things that I want you to understand is we are just a people who follow God. Whatever He tells us to do, whenever He tells us to do, however He tells us to do it, that is the heart position of who we are as a church. We are on a journey with God, both as individuals and as a people. There's this little phrase that we use. We've used it for years. It's just a reference from the Old Testament. We just say, "We want to follow the cloud." You say, "Well, I've heard that around here. What does that actually mean?" Well, when God set the Israelites free from Egyptian slavery, He wanted to bring them to the Promised Land, He gave them a cloud to follow. This ever personal, intimately present cloud that was His presence. When it moved, they moved. When it stopped, they stopped. 

Where it went, they went. They followed the cloud one next step at a time, and they got to the Promised Land in Jesus' name. That's who we are as a people. We follow God. We move with Him. Where He goes, we go. We believe that wherever we're going is better than where we have been. If we will just follow Him, when He leads, He is leading us to the best possible life reality we can ever experience. If you're new and you see me say, "Hey, I'm calling everybody in the church to this prayer and fasting, because that's what we believe God is doing," that's where all that comes from in our heart is we just want to follow God. I celebrate you. I celebrate what God is doing. We want to start a new series today called Yahweh: The Lord Your God. For the next couple of weeks, I just want to talk about God. 

I just want to talk about who He is and what He is like. You say, "Yahweh, what is that?" It is the personal name of God that He reveals to us. This is Yahweh written in Hebrew, the original language. If either of those two things stress you out, stay with us for the next couple of weeks. I'll explain it to you. But for the next couple of weeks, we're just going to talk about God. If you were here a few weeks ago, I shared this verse with you. I said, this was a verse that God really put heavy on my heart. It's Paul, and he says, "When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaim to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the spirit's power so that your faith might not rest on man's wisdom, but on God's power." 

Paul says, when I show up, I am there to talk about Jesus and only Jesus. I've resolved to know nothing except Jesus, who He is, what He is like, and what He has done. That is the testimony about God that I want you to know. We don't want all of this to be about vision and inspiration and rally and encouragement and logic and reason. No, we want it to be about Jesus, because when Jesus is declared, the Spirit's power is demonstrated. We're just going to talk about God. You see, every summer when I take my study break, I ask God like, "Okay, God, what do you want to talk about? What do you want us to study? What do you want the series to be for the next few months?" Usually, I get this great download from the Lord and He gives me kind of a direction that we're going to go, and then we can kind of follow Him through that. This summer, as I was praying and I was studying, I wasn't getting anything and I was starting to panic. Honestly, I was starting to freak out. I was like, "God, I'm about to go back and I've got to get up there and talk to everybody." 

"What are we going to talk about?" Finally, I just felt like the Lord, still a small voice, just said, "Just tell them about me." That's it. "Just tell them about me." Now, if I can be real honest with you, that brings a lot of weakness, fear, and trembling into my heart, because how do you put God into words? How do you take the everlasting, infinite, almighty, sovereign, holy God and bring Him down into words that make sense to us so we can grasp it. We're asking God to reveal Himself to us that we might know Him better. You see, this has always been the heart of our church. In fact, if you're newer and you see our logo and you're like, "Yeah, that's just cool. Did you make that on ChatGPT or something? Where did that come from?" 

No. It has, actually, a lot of meaning to it. We say we're a Jesus-focused, Spirit-filled, life-giving church. That Jesus is the narrow gate that leads to an ever widening life. Jesus-focused. We're more focused on what Jesus has done for us than what we have to do for Him. Spirit-filled. We want to walk in the character and the power of Jesus. Life-giving, we're on mission to receive and release the life of God wherever we go. But it all starts here, Jesus-focused. We don't want to be world-focused or self-focused or flesh-focused. We want to be Jesus-focused. Focused on what He has done for us, not what we have to do for Him. I mean, do you remember when Jesus is about to go to the cross, and He looks at all the disciples, and He says, "Hey guys, I'm about to go to the cross and all of you are going to deny me." Peter, in only the way that Peter can do steps forward in front of them all and raises His hand, and says, "Not me, Lord. I don't know what all these yahoos are going to be doing, but not me. I ain't going to deny you. I will die with you, Jesus, if I have to." 

In that moment, Peter makes the classic mistake that you and I make all the time. He was more focused on his faithfulness towards God instead of God's faithfulness towards him. A few hours later, he denied Jesus three times to a servant girl. What he should have done is step forward, and said, "Lord, I have no idea what's going to happen tonight, but I know this. You will never deny me.” See, compare that to John, one of Jesus' other disciples who writes the Book of John. John, when he writes about himself, he never calls himself John. He only calls himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” You might say that is the most arrogant disciple in all of Scripture. No, John understood what a Jesus-focused life was like. He didn't write “the disciple whom loved Jesus.” He wrote “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” That's why John was the only one of the disciples standing at the foot of the cross. 

Because he wasn't focused on his love for God, he was focused on God's love for him. That is a Jesus-focused dynamic. In fact, it says, "If we are faithless, He will remain faithful." Our problem is we're often focused on our faith, our measure of faith. How much faith do I have? How do I grow my faith? I have a lack of faith. I need more faith. Well, the more you focus on your faith, the less of it you're going to have, but the more you focus on God's faithfulness, the more you will be full of faith. We need to focus on Him and what He has done. For the next few weeks, as we just talk about God, we're just going to talk about God. That means there's not going to be all these big applications for you to apply to your life. At the end of every message, I always try to have something that you can like, walk out that week. This is not going to be like that, but make no mistake about this. It doesn't mean there's not going to be places for you to respond. 

I mean, do you remember when Isaiah is taken to the throne room of heaven? He sees God sitting on His throne, high and lifted up and the train of His robe fills the temple and there is smoke and fire and the angels are declaring, "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of His glory." At the sound of their voice, the temple is shaking and Isaiah sees that. He falls to his knees, and he says, "Woe is me for I'm a man of unclean lips." He repents and he confesses. Then God says, "Who will go from me?" He stands up, and he says, "Here I am, Lord, send me." You see, if we would have asked Isaiah before he was taken to the throne room, if he needed to confess and repent of anything, or if he needed to get more involved in the mission of God, he would have said, "I'm great. I'm a prophet of God." 

"I'm telling everybody else, woe to them for the life that they live. I'm good, clean hands, pure heart right here." I’m on mission with God. Then, he sees God and like a dead man, he falls to the ground and he realizes there is so much more to respond to God than I am even aware of. There'll be plenty of places for you to respond to God. I'm kind of going in reverse order in this series, because here's the application for all of us. If you're like, "What is it that you're actually hoping in this series?" My hope in this series is that you'll simply "Fix your thoughts on Jesus." That's it. That you'll fix your thoughts on Jesus. As we have been reading through the New Testament together, I have been so impacted by how many times the Bible tells us to think on God, have the mind of Christ, set your mind on things above, not earthly things, repent, change your mind for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. 

Fix your thoughts on Jesus. Why? Because if we ever are going to change in this life, we have to become conscious of God. We have to think on Him and meditate on Him and dwell on Him and focus on Him and literally fix our thoughts to think on God, to think about God, to think of God, to think with God. We need to fill our minds with the thoughts of God and He will fill our life with the life of God. See, whatever you're thinking about, your life becomes full of that reality. If you fix your thoughts on Jesus, your life will become full of the reality of Jesus. But, if your thoughts are fixed on the world, your life will become full of the reality of the world. One of the greatest freedoms that God has given you is the ability to decide what you're going to think about. Make no mistake about it. He has given you a free will and your will, you get to decide what you're going to think about. 

It wouldn't say “fix your thoughts” if you didn't have the ability or the power to do it. God doesn't set you up to fail. A lot of us are convinced that we are a slave to our own thoughts. We're in bondage to our own thoughts. I can't determine what I think about. Well, this tells me otherwise. Yes, you may have created loops and patterns that your life naturally runs in that you've trained your brain to think on, but every one of those patterns can be broken and be changed. Yes, there are rogue thoughts that float into our mind like a cloud passing by, but you can let them go and choose not to fix your thoughts on them, and say, "That is not of the Lord. I do not want to think on it. God, give me grace to let it go." If we're ever going to change, we have to learn to fix our thoughts on Jesus. In fact, David says, "I have set the Lord (Yahweh)." Every time you see the Lord capitalized in your Bible, it's the word Yahweh, the personal name of God. Again, don't stress. We'll get there in the next couple of weeks. 

This is your reasoning to have to keep coming back because I'm not explaining this to you today, but "I've set the Lord (Yahweh) always before me because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken." "I've set the Lord always before me." What does that mean? Means he was always conscious of God. He was always thinking on God, meditating on, dwelling, thinking on, thinking about, thinking of, thinking with God. God consumed his thoughts. He wasn't shaken. David, who had some of the worst circumstances and situations of anyone we can think of. He wasn't shaken. He didn't fall apart. He wasn't overwhelmed. He didn't give up. Why? Because he was consumed with conscious thoughts of who God was. In fact, Jesus says, "The greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your mind." Now, there's a lot we could say about that, but certainly loving God with your mind includes thinking on Him, thinking of Him, thinking about Him, and thinking with Him. 

This is why it says, "Now set your mind and your heart to seek the Lord (Yahweh) your God." Set your mind, fix your thoughts, decide what you're going to dwell on because you have a free will and you get to decide what you think about in your mind. Set your mind to seek the Lord. Think on Him, be conscious of Him, be aware of Him as He truly is. Are you with me on this? I mean, look at this verse, "In his pride the wicked does not seek Him (Yahweh); in all his thoughts, there is no room for God." This verse defines what a wicked person is like. It doesn't say a wicked person is a terrorist, a pedophile, a murderer. It says a wicked person is a person who has no room in his thoughts for God. 

In other words, worldly thinking will lead to wicked living. Here's my question, do you have room in your thoughts for God? See, the question is not, is God with you? It's, are you aware that He already is? The question is, are you conscious of God? Do you think on God? Like, outside of this one 30-minute window where we talk about all this stuff together in the week, do you think on God? Do you set Him before you? Are you aware of Him? Are you conscious of Him in any way? Maybe the question that's even beneath that question is, when you do think of God, do you think of Him rightly?

When you do think of God, are you thinking thoughts that are worthy of Him? You see, the most important thing about you is what you think of God. What comes into your mind when you think about God is literally the most important thing about you. Your thoughts lead your life and whatever you think about God is going to dramatically affect any and every area of your life. In fact, if we understood the thoughts you have about God, we could predict your future and your destiny. That's how much it shapes your life. If I asked you for a second to just close your eyes and say, okay, what comes into your mind when you think about God? Who do you think God is? What do you think God is like? What turns in your mind when you think about God? 

Not the churchy answer, not what you think I would want you to say or what the person next to you would expect you to say. What do you genuinely think? Maybe when you think about God, you think He's angry. Maybe you think He's distant. Maybe you think God is stingy or tolerant or condemning. Maybe you think He's compassionate and loving and gracious. I don't know. But whatever you think about God is the most important thing about you, "For as he thinks in his heart, so is he." As you think about God, so your life will be. It shapes every reality of who you are. If you think God is angry, then think of how much that shapes your life unconsciously. Then, you live in fear. 

You're trying to, perform to earn, to strive, to do the right thing, to make it happen because you never want God to bring the hammer down on you. If you think God is distant, oh, I promise you, you don't pray. Because why would I pray to a God who is somewhere so far away, I'm not even sure He can hear me. If He's distant, I feel alone and I'm by myself and I'm trying to fill this void in my heart. If you think God is stingy, you have a broken relationship with money. No way around it. You either love money or you're terrified of losing money. But, if you think God is stingy, you've got to provide for yourself. If you think God is tolerant, you think all roads lead to heaven and every religion is the same and anyone can do what they want. Love is love, man, as long as it makes you happy. If you think God is condemning, you're probably a very judgmental person. 

You tell everyone else what is right and wrong and good and bad and should and shouldn't because you're constantly telling yourself that. Are you catching me on this? What you think about God shapes every area of your life, whether you're conscious of it or whether you're unconscious of it. A great question to ask yourself is where did your thoughts about God come from? Keep chasing the rabbit. Why do you think that way? The church you grew up in or didn't grow up in, your grandma, your abusive dad, a situation or circumstance that has left you so disappointed and bitter and offended at this life, a Marvel movie, the news. You've got to ask yourself the question. You have a view of God. Where did it come from? I mean, look at what Paul says. He says, "You must no longer live as the Gentiles," the world does, "in the futility of their thinking." Worthless thoughts. 

"They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more." If you want a verse that helps you understand the brokenness of the world in this season, it's this one. Why? Broken thinking leads to a continual lust for more. When I have wicked thoughts, worldly thoughts, it leads me to a wicked life where I become ignorant. I'm darkened. I'm lost. I can't see anything else that is true and real. If I have a broken view of God, I will have a broken view of everything else, because only He gets to define what is good and true and right. If I don't think on Him, I now start defining what is good and what is true and what is right. 

Futility, worthless thoughts separate us from the life of God. Why? Because whatever you're thinking about, your life will become full of that reality. If I think of the world, my life will become full of the world. But, when I think on God, my life will be full of God. Are you with me on this? See, the problem for so many of us is we create a God in our image and our likeness. We were made in the image and likeness of God, but then we take God in our thoughts and we make Him into our image and our likeness. We want a God we can control, a God we can understand, a God that has no mystery, a God that we can put in a box, a God that there better not be, “is it this or is it that?” Yes, we don't want a God like that. We want a God that picks this or that. We form Him into our image. 

"What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you visit him? For you have made him a little lower than the angels and you have crowned him with glory and honor." Catch this. The Psalmist is saying, "What is man that you are mindful of him?” Mindful. God's mind is full of thoughts of you. David says, "How precious are your thoughts of me, O God? They are so vast when I count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand." God has so many thoughts of you, you couldn't count them up. They are more than the grains of sand, not in your little backyard beach thing; in the world. His mind is full of you. Is your mind full of Him? "You have made him a little lower than the angels." God made us a little lower than the angels, and He crowned us with glory and honor. 

The problem is, is then we take God and we make Him a little lower than us. We make God in our image and our likeness. Here's what I mean by that. If you're a Democrat, you're convinced God is a Democrat. If you're a Republican, you're convinced God is a Republican. If you're a liberal, you know God's liberal. If you're a conservative, oh, you know, God is conservative. If you're really into the climate change thing, you know, God is all about climate change. That's His main issue in heaven. Nothing else matters. If you're a capitalist, you think God is like, “go baby, drill, baby, drill” kind of thing. I'm probably stepping on your toes and it should be stepping on your toes because you've just made God lower than you. You've decided that whoever you are must be who God is. That's not how it works. We were made in His image and His likeness. 

We don't make Him in our image and our likeness. That's when it gets really broken. When we make God in our image and our likeness, doing all the things we do, liking all the things we like, agreeing with our – we make – we're like God agrees with my theology. Oh, be so careful people, right. “Well, He does agree with my theology.” It's what we think. Some of you are, you're literally, that's what you're thinking. You're like, “I've got it figured out.” Just be careful because then you're removing the glory and honor from Him. The God who holds the water of the earth in the hollow of His hands, the God who measures the heavens with the span or the width of His hand, the God who holds all the dust of the world in baskets, the God who measures the mountains on scales.

He is not lower than you and He isn't made in your image and your likeness. You were made in His image and His likeness, and He's given you some of His glory and some of His honor for this time and this place. I mean, have you ever met somebody, and then realized your view of them was completely different than who they actually are? I have a friend, and before I met him, I thought he was a total jerk. To me, he was, he was arrogant. He was obnoxious. He was like just too much, all of it. Then, I met him. He wasn't anything like that. He was kind and compassionate and funny and full of life. I remember thinking, “You're nothing like what I thought you were.” Where did I get those thoughts? From what other people had said about him. Isn't that interesting? I didn't actually know him, but I already had a view of him from what other people had told me. 

This is why gossip is such a big deal in Scripture, because it doesn't give us just a bad view of other people. It actually gives us a bad view of God. Or, some of you don't know this, but Colleen's dad set us up on a blind date. Okay. Anytime she's ever mad at me, I always remind her dad hand-picked her for me. If she's got a problem, take it up with him. But, her dad ran a school and I wanted to take this one class. In this school – I was like 23 and the school was full of 40- and 50-year-old foreign exchange students whose English was their second language. They were like twice my age, they didn't speak English, and they were very eccentric. Her dad comes and he asks me. He says, "Hey, I have a daughter and I want to know if you'd be willing to take her out on a blind date and I'll pay for it." Now, piece all of that together in your mind. 

I had a very clear view of who this woman was, but I was young and hungry for food. I said, "Yes." When I picked her up and she got in the car, she wasn't anything like I thought she was. She was kind and soft and so smart and beautiful. We went out on an eight-hour blind date, and I went home that night and I knew I was going to marry her. I had a distorted view of who she was until I actually met her. How many times is that us with God? We have this broken view and we don't even realize it. Listen to me. 2 Corinthians 10, that famous passage that talks about spiritual warfare. Okay. This is spiritual warfare. 

"We demolish arguments and every pretension," which means an exalted opinion, "that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." Spiritual warfare is not chasing demons. Spiritual warfare is choosing to tear down the arguments and the exalted opinions that we have that are contrary to the knowledge of God, and we take those thoughts and we bring them obedient to Jesus. In other words, we take a thought that is not true about God, and we bring it into submission and surrender to who He is. That is spiritual warfare. It's not chasing demons. It's choosing to say, "I refuse to have any thought that does not agree with who God is. I refuse to have any thought in my head that is not true about God. Every exalted opinion. 

When I think my opinion, when I make Him in my image and my likeness and the arguments I hear from those around me about who God is and who He isn't, those are the thoughts. I say, "Nope, I'm bringing them into submission even if my circumstances and situation don't feel it in this time, in this place." Remember Satan is only empowered through human agreement. If you believe a lie, you empower the liar. This is why spiritual warfare is in the mind. It's in the mind. It's refusing to agree with him here because that's where then he has authority. I mean, you think of Adam and Eve in the Garden, what was their problem? They had a wrong view of God. Satan comes to them and said, "Did God really say don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Because God knows if you do, you will then be like Him.” In other words, their thought was, “God's holding out on us.” 

“God is good, but He's not fully good to me.” That's the broken thought. If you would ask Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 and 2, "Did they think God is good?" "Absolutely. God is good." But there was somewhere in their thought that they didn't believe he was good to them. I need to now do this for myself. Do you see how that goes? Then, destruction takes place. In fact, this is why it says, "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." A renewed mind will lead to a transformed life, because your thoughts lead your life. We can't afford to think one thought in our mind that is not true or accurate about who God is. In fact, I love this. It says, "The fool says in his heart, there is no God." See if you can catch this. On one end of the spectrum is a fool and the fool says, "There is no God. Even if there was, He's not worth getting to know."

On the other end of the spectrum is another fool. This fool says, "I know everything there is to know about God. I've studied it for years. I've been in church. I know all the stories." These people use big words like sovereignty, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, holy, infinite. You're like, "What do those mean?" Exactly, but somewhere right in the middle is the humble heart that says, "I know God and I want to know so much more about Him. I have discovered God and I want to discover so much more about Him. God has revealed Himself to me and I hope He reveals so much more to me." In the middle is Moses and David saying, "Show me Your glory.” “One thing I ask, this is what I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord forever." 

I am not so foolish as to think there is not a God. I am not so foolish as to think I know everything there is to know about God. I know God and I want to know Him more. See, you can know God without knowing a lot about Him. You can know a lot about Him without knowing Him. You can know God without knowing a lot about Him, and you can know a lot about Him without knowing Him. You say, "What does that mean?" The thief on the cross knew Jesus, but He didn't know much about Him, but that very day, he was in paradise. The Pharisees knew all about God, yet when Jesus is standing in front of them, they clearly didn't know Him. We want to know about God and we want to know God. Discovering God isn't all that hard. It just requires you seeking with all your heart. 

You with me on this? Let me try to pull it all together in this. One day Jesus and the disciples are traveling along and Jesus looks at the disciples, and he says, "Hey, who do the people say that I am?" He says, "What do the people think about Me? Like, not their churchy Israelite school answers, but what do they really think about Me?" The disciples say, "Well, some say you're like John the Baptist. Others say you're Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” In other words, “Some people think you're a holy man. Some people think you speak for God. Some people think you're a great teacher of life." Then, Jesus looks at them, and He says, "But what about you? Who do you say that I am? What's in your mind when you think about Me?” Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." 

Jesus replied, "Blessed are you for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven." Jesus looks at the disciples, and He says, "That's great that you know what everyone else thinks about Me, but what do you think about Me? Because how you view Me determines everything in your life. Who do you think I am?" Peter says, "You are the Christ. You are God. You are everything. You are eternal and infinite and holy and righteous and good. You are Yahweh. You are the great I am. You are life itself." "Blessed are you for that answer, and this wasn't revealed to you by man, but by My Father in heaven." In other words, everything that can be known about God is only available to be known because He has chosen to reveal it to us. We can only know God because He has decided to reveal Himself to us. 

Divine revelation is how you actually get to know the divine. It's not man and it's not man's logic, and it's not man's ways and it's not man's wisdom. It's a divine revelation that is given to you by God. He gives it to anyone and everyone who really wants to know Him. Every time He gives you more revelation about who He is, you're blessed, happy, joyful, prosperous, successful, shalom, peace, comprehensive, flourishing in your life. This is the question, who do you think He is? The interesting thing about this question is, you don't get to live on what someone else thinks about Him. You don't get to live on what your spouse thinks about Him. You don't get to live on what your grandma thinks about Him. You don't get to live on what your kids think about Him. You don't get to live on what your parents think about Him.

You won't stand before God one day, and He says, "Who do you think I am?" You don't get to say "My wife always said you were…" Sadly, that's how a lot of us live our life. We think the very fact that we're in orbit of a person who's spiritual means we're good with God. Don't worry about being good with God. Be worried about broken thinking that leads to a darkened living that leads for a continual lust and a desire for more. This ignorance and this foolishness that shows up in my heart because I don't have the thoughts of God in my mind. That's the concern. Here's your questions for this week. I want you to write these down. If you don't normally bring anything to write anything down with, can I just ask you, what you hoping when you walk out of here? Do you really think you're going to retain anything? My encouragement to you would come expecting that God is going to speak to me. 

Don't write anything down. Don't care what I have to say, but God is in here and He's speaking to you. Who do you think God is? Why do you think that? How do you know it's true? That's how I want us to just start this series. Who do you think God is? Not the churchy answer. You're not turning this in for homework or extra credit. Who do you genuinely think God is? Find 15 minutes this week and sit down in the quiet and just ask yourself that question and still yourself. When the churchy answer comes, push it away. What do I really think about who God is? Why do I think that? Where did that thought originate from? Track it back. If you sit for a few minutes and you ask the Holy Spirit to show you, you'll be amazed and you'll be like, "I think God doesn't care and it's because when I was 9, my grandma died and I made an agreement at that point in time that God doesn't care." 

Since you've been 9 years old and you're 59 today, you believe that thought for 50 years and that's shaped your life. Why do you think that? Then, how do you know it's true? Isn't it really important for the things that we declare to be so that we know they're actually real, that they're actually trustworthy? Think of how many times – some of you, you'll go through contracts and different business deals and, educational courses, you will like, every jot and tittle to make sure it is accurate and right and true. Then, your eternal reality, we just take it on a whim. As opposed to saying, "How do I know that what I think about God is true?" See, here's the interesting thing. The sun rises, whether you believe in it or not. The wind blows wherever it wants, even though you don't know where it comes from or where it's going. 

All the rivers flow to the sea and yet the sea is never full. God is real, whether you believe in Him or not, whether you can understand Him or not, and whether He makes sense to you or not. My thoughts about God don't change who God is. They change everything about who I am. You can't think one thought that changes the unchanging God, but you can decide to change your thoughts, so they're in agreement with who the unchanging God is, and that will change everything about your life. Who do you think God is? I would just submit to you that I think He wants to reveal more of Himself to you. He is looking for the hearts and the minds that are saying, "God, I don't want to believe a lie. I don't want to be deceived by darkness." 

I don't want to be ignorant in my understanding. God, I know – I mean, I'm saying this – I know I have thoughts in my mind that aren't in agreement with who God is. I want those to be uncovered so they can be repented of, so they can be submitted and surrendered, so that I can once again be free. Because I don't want any thought that I have to be in agreement with darkness and empower the liar to lead me in the way of destruction. I want to think the thoughts of God, so the reality of God and the life of God can overflow in my world. You with me on this? Yahweh is His name and He is the Lord, your God. May you continue to see Him for who He truly is. May your mind be full of the thoughts of God. Close your eyes. 

Let me just ask you, what is the Holy Spirit, God Himself, trying to say to you today? What is He whispering in your heart or in your mind? See, what happens sometimes when we actually start to think about God, very quickly, we can become overwhelmed. Very quickly, we can catch a glimpse of His infinite nature and His majesty and His magnitude in it. It almost stresses us out and overwhelms us, so we push it away. But God is saying, “Don't push it away, lean into it and let Me be God. Embrace the mystery that I am bigger than you are able to comprehend and understand.”

Because you wouldn't want a God that's so small that you could understand Him fully in the first place. What do you think about God? I bet you, He has some things He wants to process with you in that, to say, "Hey, I am so much better than you think." That's what I want you to leave with today, that He is so much better than you think. The question is, do you have the courage to let go of whatever framework you've built about who God is and let Him build a new framework of who He truly is? Holy Spirit, come work in our hearts this week. Help us think on You in a way that is worthy of who You truly are. We love You, Lord. You are good, and You are good to us. In Your name, Amen.