Reframing Our Thoughts

So we are in a series, I'll tell you, a heavy series, a challenging series for me because I realize that this is something I'm battling. It's based on a book by Craig Groeschel called Winning the War in Your Mind, and it's about the battle for our thoughts, because most of life's battles are won and lost in the mind. How many of you could be right now in the middle of a pretty decent life, but you find yourself complaining? Like, things are going pretty well. Things are going, I mean, everything seems to be working for you, but you complain.

Because here's the deal, the mind is a battlefield, and most of life's battles are won and lost in the mind. So even if life is going pretty well for us, we find things because that's the battle. We find things that we're battling. We're about ourselves, about our life, about little things. We forget to see what is around us.

So the way we live is a result of the thoughts we think. I gave you that as a point in week one. The way we live is a result of the thoughts we think. What comes out of our life is a result of the way we think in our minds, and what comes into our minds comes out in our life, and we cannot have a positive life if we have a negative mindset. So we look at the Apostle Paul, who is the master at battling thoughts because he battled them all the time.

As one of the most prestigious leaders in the Bible, most anointed man in the Bible, wrote most of the New Testament, we see a man that battled his thoughts. And here's what he said, for though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not weapons of this world. In fact, he's got another scripture that says that we don't battle flesh and blood, right? Because there's something bigger going on, right, in this world.

And that's what the devil likes to do. He likes to attack our thoughts. He says the weapons we fight with are not weapons of this world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds, those fortresses that are set up in your mind and in your heart, your mind which goes to your heart, and it sets up things in your mind. And we have the power to demolish those things.

And we demolish every argument and every pretension that sets itself up against Against the knowledge of who God truly is, and we take captive every thought. We have the power to take captive those thoughts and to make them obedient to Christ. We can wrangle them in, we can make them obedient, we can beat it into submission. Even Paul says that in another scripture. I have to beat myself into submission to think the way I need to think.

So the title of this series, or this message in this series, is Destroying Negative Thoughts. We're going to destroy the negative thoughts because the way we think often comes out in our life. So we're going to battle those negative thoughts. And to recap, we have millions, billions probably, of these neuro-pathways in our brain that we probably developed from childhood based on a situation or experience. And we've created thought patterns.

Our brain has created thought patterns, has created paths in our brain to think a certain way. That's why the more you think a thought, the easier it is to think that thought again. So if you have a negative thought, it's easier to think that negative thought again if we do it again and again and again. But if we think positive things, we can think those positive thoughts over and over again until it rewires, it reforms our brain, our minds. And that's the point here.

Because science and God work together. Psychology and God work together. Because God understands our minds better than anybody else, right? We might have all the knowledge, and we might have the psychologist and the therapist and all these people that know. But really what it comes down to is that God has a way to fix our thoughts and our mind process.

And he shows us here. And so I want to talk about a statement, just introduce you. Most of you probably have heard of this, and certainly it's a common term. But if you haven't, we have this thing called cognitive bias. A cognitive bias.

And there's seven different cognitive bias. And I'm not going to go into that. I might go into that another time, maybe online or something, about the different cognitive bias that we face in our life. But we have this thing called cognitive bias, and it's a filter that's placed on our mind. And a cognitive bias is a mistake, is a simple definition of that.

It's a mistaken reasoning based on personal experiences and preferences. A mental filter that impacts. The Way That You Think. Something inside of you, something that you experience, maybe from an early age, that impacts the way you think. Here's another way of saying it.

A deviation from a norm or a rationality and judgment because of a personal experience. A framework of filtering our thinking that is not based on fact or might not see a situation accurately. For instance, let me just give you a couple of examples. Maybe you had a trauma in your childhood. Maybe you had an abusive father.

And you grow up, and you're a woman or what have you, and your father was abusive and he wasn't a very good father. So in your mind, you're thinking, bad father. Every time you hear father, you hear something bad. And therefore, you cannot trust men. You think all men, even though all men aren't abusive, all men aren't negative, all men aren't mean, you might have that thought pattern that processes automatically because of the pathways that have been formed in your mind based on your experience.

It's called cognitive bias. Or maybe you grew up with parents that said, all rich people are bad. You know, all rich people, it's not good to be rich. And you're kind of successful in your own life, and you're struggling with that because am I supposed to be making money? Am I supposed to be successful?

Because there's a cognitive bias that's taking place. So the filters you have shape how you see life. Change the filter, change how you feel. Think about social media, for instance. When you have a filter, it changes the way you feel, right?

Whether that's negative or positive. I mean, you put the filter on there, and sometimes there's a negative filter. You know, you've got those filters or those things that throw funny faces on you and stuff like that, and it changes the perspective of a nice picture, right? Or vice versa. We filter things.

In the same way, cognitive bias, we want to shape what we see through the filter of our understanding. So we change the filter, we change the way we feel. It's a default filter, in fact, in our mind, because our minds are pre-wired to think a certain way based on these experiences. So we don't even know that these thought processes are taking place. We don't know that they're happening.

It's not the... It's not the... that It's the filter. That's why you can have two people that are in a very similar or the same situation and they respond in two different ways. Say you have a boss or you have some type of leader and they're giving you constructive criticism or you're in the office and they say something or they're meeting with you and they say something about.

So you can see it two different ways. One person could be like, how dare they? I worked so hard. I've done this, you know, all my life. I put all my time in it and I'm not even, you know, I'm overqualified for this job.

Anyway, how dare he says that to me? How dare? I'm just, I'm just done. I can't. Or somebody else could receive the same criticism and it comes out as, oh, I'm so glad that you told me, you know, there are some things that I can work on.

Maybe all of it isn't true, but at least I can appreciate the concern and the care to help me grow. And you can change that. Maybe, maybe you're, you're, you're new to church or you come into church and, and, and, and two people can have the exact same experience in church. And one person can say, wow, this place is full of hypocrites. This place is a terrible place.

There, there's, you know, I can't be here because that I don't like being here and I don't want, I don't feel anything. Right. And then the other person says, I really feel God here. I feel his presence. It's an amazing experience.

You can have two different people with the very same experience respond in different ways. And maybe you're, you, you, uh, let's just take the vaccine. For instance, you can have the same data come out about the vaccine and there's two different responses about that. Some people are like, uh, the, the vaccine is the answer and it's going to, you know, help and it's going to improve. And then others are like, I don't know about this vaccine.

And I saw these reports and I, I, I'm not quite sure about that. And, and, and some people even think, oh, this is the mark of the beast and, and we have chips in our, and there's putting a chip in us. And, uh, uh, just bear with me. It is a joke. Okay.

And I got, I get that's a place that we don't want to go in church, but, but, um, but, but, but that's why two people can respond differently to the same situation because of cognitive bias. In fact, this happened in scripture. Moses sends 12 spies out in Numbers 13 and 14 to look at the land of Canaan. It was a... Land Flowing With Milk and Honey.

It was a place that God had promised them, a place that God wanted to take them. So he sends out these 12 spies. Ten of them come back, and they have this same experience, and they're like, this is a terrible idea. This is a terrible place. The land will devour us.

It's not a good idea. And these Canaanites are huge. We're like grasshoppers in their eyes, but in the same situation we have Joshua and Caleb of those that come back and say, we can do it. We can take them. God has given us this land.

God has given us this promise, and it is ours for the taking. Let's go in. So they had the same experience. They had the same eyes on the same situation, but had different thought processes of what that meant. It's not that the facts are different.

It's the filter. Not just the filter. It's the frame. It's the frame. Same situation, but it's how you frame it.

How you frame it determines how you see it. I want to talk about framing. There's a tool called reframing in psychology. So with framing, Tim's going to put me a picture up here. Here's how this term or this idea of framing situations.

So you can see framing, as in the light of something, or just think of a picture up here, and we have this ominous storm taking place, and all this stuff's happening. And I want you to take your frame out, and you can either frame it on this side of the picture. Like, life is tough. Life is terrible. The storm is coming in the distance.

Or we can frame it in light of, you know, it's a good day. It's sunny out. The storm will pass. But how we frame our situation, it can be the same picture. It can be the same idea.

But how we frame it determines the outcome in life. How we frame the situation. So we want to practice a tool called reframing. Reframing is creating a different way of looking at a situation or relationship by changing its meaning. To change its meaning.

So if we frame something a certain way, we can actually reframe our thoughts. Taking navigate. Taking in negative thoughts is a habit. It's something that we do over and over again. We've built a habit of taking in negative thoughts, but if we can reframe those with positive things, that there is sun on the other side, there is beautiful trees over on this side of it, we can reframe it.

For instance, let me just give you something. You can start your day by saying, this is going to be a really bad day. Because yesterday was a bad day. Tomorrow is going to be a bad day. And I'm sure today is going to be a bad day because I've had so many bad days.

And you're going to start off your day by framing your situation in light of that thinking. But instead, you can wake up and say, this is a new day. This is a day that God has made. Let me rejoice and be glad. And I am glad the sun is up because yesterday was dark, but I don't have to be there anymore.

God is bringing me through and he's brought me through before and he can continue to be. And I'm excited for a new day. I'm excited. And today is an amazing day. We frame it differently because you can't control what happens to you.

You can't control the circumstances that are around you that's out of your control, but you can control how it's framed. You can reframe. You have the power to reframe. You have the power to demolish strongholds by reframing what's going on in your life. Let me ask you this.

Do you find yourself thinking you wanted something in life that you, and it just, your experience now is the opposite? Like you've always, you thought by now you would be in a certain place, in a certain position, in a certain area in life, and you're like super disappointed because things, or maybe you worked hard on your degree. You paid a lot of money for it and you did all the right licensures and you went through all the right programs and you connected with all the right people. But for some reason today, you find you're in a job, you're overqualified for, and that you're in a place and in a field that you never thought you would be. Do you feel like that?

Or maybe you dreamed you'd have a great marriage, that you would be here by this point. In fact, you did all the right things. You lived a pure life. You waited. You met your high school sweetheart.

You married your high school sweetheart. But today, you find yourself divorced and you never, ever, ever thought you would be where you are today. Maybe it's a financial situation, or maybe it's about your kids, I never thought I would have kids, or maybe your kids are in a place that you never thought they would be in, or you'd be in a position in a company by now, you'd be promoted to a certain position by now, but it hasn't happened, or you expected something way different and way better, but right now you find yourself in a place that you didn't expect to be. If that's your thought, then the Apostle Paul had this very same thought. He had dreamed of preaching in Rome.

He had dreamed of being able to stand before the political system, and the centerpiece of the world in that day, to preach the gospel of Christ. It was his vision, it was his dream, it was what he was aiming for, but instead he finds himself in Rome in a prison, under house arrest, alone, begging for his friends to come and be with him. He never thought he would be in this situation. He knew exactly how we felt. He knew exactly how you felt.

Paul could have framed his situation this way from the new Weiner's version, the NWV. He could have said this, now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me really sucks. And as a result of the hell I've been through, I'm quitting my salt group and I'm never coming back to church again. He could have framed things that way, but instead he looked past that and saw the bigger picture. See, this is how we reframe our thoughts.

Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. Like me being in prison, people are hearing about this. It goes, as a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard. I'm still ministering to Rome. The whole palace guard that everyone else that I am in chains for Christ.

So Paul was like, what most people think is bad, I'm framing it good because this is actually good. And I'm being an influence because I have a Roman guard that comes in here every eight hours and has to watch over me. And guess what I do, get to do the whole time. I get to preach to them and I get to tell them about Jesus and I give him an opportunity to know, and I'm seeding the gospel out because it might seem like I'm in prison. It might seem that I'm in the lawn.

It might seem that everybody has left me and I don't have anybody around me right now and I'm facing death, but man, I get an opportunity to preach the gospel to as many people as possible in the situation I am because he has reframed the situation. He goes on in verse 14, he says, and because of my chains, most of my brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear. See, bad things happen to us guys. It's just inevitable. Bad things happen outside of our control.

The stuff happens, health happens, economy happens, financial situations happens, a car situation, your car breaks down, you get in a car accident, whatever. Your house, you know, I've always got stuff in my house that breaks down when you don't want it to, you know, your refrigerator goes bad. You know, things happen, things happen, but in general, life is pretty decent. But we focus on those things and we forget about all the big context of what's going on in our life and in our world, that things are pretty good considering. I might be in the situation, but things are pretty good considering.

So we're going to reframe our stories and our relationships and I want to give you three things real quick here that we can do. Three things real quick and then we'll close. The first thing is you need to thank God for what didn't happen. A lot of bad things happen, but we need to thank God for the bad things that didn't happen or could have happened. Focus on the good and thank God for those things.

There's a story of a girl in college who told her parents and she said, Mom, Dad, she came home. She says, I need you to sit down. I got to share some news with you. It's not going to be, it's really, really bad news, but I've got to share this with you. I went to a party.

I got drunk. I met a guy and I brought him back to my apartment and I made a really, really, really bad decision. And now I'm pregnant. And, but the good news is, hold on, the good news is, he's going off of probation in a year. Okay.

And, and he will start looking for a job after his rehab. And, and, and, and we've considered marrying me, but, but he can't afford it. And his heart, he's lifting up many and bad things. And so he's moving. He's moving there.

And then she says, actually, none of that is true. I just got a D on my chemistry exam. And I wanted you to know that it could be much worse. So a situation can always be much worse if we put it in perspective. Maybe you missed a goal at work and you didn't meet a bonus and you didn't meet a promotion and you were thinking, you know, this was going to happen.

Think of it like this. I am, you know, I didn't hit that goal. I didn't hit that financial level or whatever it is. But thank God that I have a job in an economy that's going south. And there's a lot of people out there that could have lost their job and don't have jobs.

Or if you get in a car accident, you have a fender bender or whatever, and you're frustrated about the expense that's going to go into it, as I do, I tend to be frustrated about those things. Instead of saying, thank God that I'm not hurt or somebody else isn't hurt, it could be a lot worse. First, take a broader look at the situation. And you realize that it is not as bad as you think it is because we're focusing on the things. We need to thank God that what it couldn't be could have been.

So thank God for what didn't happen. And secondly, we need to pre-frame it. Pre-frame things. Meaning before you even enter out into something, you need to set a pre-frame of thinking that will help you live out your day and live out things. Our thoughts and our frames shape what we experience.

Instead of going in our days and in our weeks with negative, we always want to start out with positive. Instead of coming, let's just say you have a work project and you're not looking forward to it. You know, you're like, oh man, I got to go in. I don't like my boss. I don't like this team I've got.

It's a really, really heavy load. If you're waking up in the morning and you're pre-framing it that way, guess what? You're going to go into that work situation. You're going to have a miserable day, right? Instead say, well, I'm glad that I have this project.

I'm glad that I have this experience for me. And it's fun and it's challenging, you know? And I'm going to go in here with this attitude that it's going to be fun and challenging and something that shapes me. And you can go in and you can pre-frame it that way. Or you say, I can't stand to go to these events.

I have to go to them all the time with my kids and this and that. Instead of thinking about that, say, you know, this is an opportunity to be with my family. It's an opportunity to spend time with people. And I want to go here and I'm going to enjoy this. Even though I'm not comfortable being outside in a carnival, I'm going to go out there and just be out there and just enjoy the time together.

I was with the teens the other day playing spike ball. We were playing spike ball in the backyard at Christina's house, and at first I'm like, I don't want to play spike ball. I don't feel like getting out there. I'm tired and stuff. Instead, I pre-framed it.

I said, you know what? I want to have a good time. I'm going to go out there and throw some spike ball around with the guys. And I had a ball with them, just to enjoy that, because I pre-framed it before. If I went in there like, oh, I don't want to do anything.

They're going to be like, pastor, you're not really acting right, you know? But I went in there with excitement. They were like teaching me and all this stuff, and it was just a lot of fun. You know, this is how you do it, because I never played spike ball before. And we were having a great time as they picked on me over and over again.

So we thank God for what didn't happen, and we pre-frame our situation so that we walk in with a positive attitude. And then, thirdly, we look for the goodness. You have to look for it. If God is good, we've got to look for the goodness in our situations. We've got to, because He works out the good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, right?

So there is good. If God's nature is good, we need to look for the good. We can either be a vulture or a hummingbird. A vulture, what do they do? They fly around and look for dead things.

They look for roadkill. They look for things that are disgusting and dead, right? But a hummingbird looks for sweet things. And we need to be hummingbirds. We need to buzz around being hummingbirds looking for the honey, looking for the sweet things, looking for the things in life that is good.

If we want to see the bad, we're going to see the negative in life, the challenges of life. Then guess what? Life is going to be a challenge. Life is going to be negative. But if we want to see the good, we see positive.

Instead of seeing the challenges, we see the opportunities, and we dive into the opportunities. So this idea of cognitive reframing, cognitive reframing is a phrase therapists use to empower you to decide the meaning of a situation. It's to empower yourself to decide the meaning of a situation. As Christians, it's to cheer your friends. the Let Jesus help you decide.

Let Jesus help you decide the situation. Let Jesus help you reframe the situation. Not that we reframe the situation, but Jesus does that. Let me just share with you as the musicians come back up, I'm going to share just a little bit about this year and give you an example of cognitive reframing. I've spent a lot of time with a lot of different pastors over over the past year, and it's really been a tough time for a lot of churches.

People not coming to church, people not coming back to church has happened with us. There's people we haven't seen since the pandemic started, and financial situations went down, and there's just a lot of negativity and understandable. And it's been a tough year as a pastor, frankly. I mean, I've struggled. People would say reopening to church is dangerous.

And then others would say if you don't reopen to church, you don't have enough faith. You have to balance those ideas. Or if you wear a mask, you're a flaming liberal, you know. Or if you don't wear a mask, then you're dangerous and you don't care about people. So you're dealing with that as a pastor in an organization like this.

And then there's the racial tension that's taking place, and nobody's got that right. Let's just be honest. We're all over the place. We're fighting each other. There's this hatred.

And none of us have that right. None of us have figured that out. We're all making bad decisions on both sides of the aisle. And it's just a time. There's a lot of tension.

And then there's the political division that's taking place. It's just like wham, wham, wham, wham, wham, one after the other, you know. And just the negativity and the framing of that and how are we ever going to make it? How are we going to make it through? And unfortunately for many ministries, they're just not going to make it for that reason.

Instead, let's reframe. I could easily go that direction. I could say, you know, 2020 was a bad year and we're never going to get out of this. Or I can choose to reframe my situation and say, and look at what God has done in 2020 and 2021 so far. And let me share with you.

I've had more time to spend with my wife and children because we've been together, my kids being out of school, I've been able to go on adventures with them, go hiking with them, take them places, spend time at the beach with them, spend a little more time than otherwise I probably wouldn't have because of school and activities and stuff like that. I've been able to spend more time with God, just seeking Him, Him changing me, revealing stuff in my life, helping me grow in areas that I need to grow and encouraging me and other people have come into my life because us pastors have had some time to reflect on our ministries. We've been encouraging each other and sticking up for each other and I've made some friendships in ministry, even here in the local area, that I wouldn't have had otherwise if I hadn't been in this situation. For our church, we've seen more growth in a single season than we've ever seen since the history of Salt Church in a single season, which sees more people come to church. In fact, when I'm talking to these pastors, I'm like, you know, our volunteer team has grown, our attendance has actually been okay, we've gotten back up and other people are still where they are and I'm like, you know, I have nothing to be sad about.

We've had three different location changes which would have devastated a church and I'm not saying it wasn't hard transitioning from one building to another that's completely different, but I could focus on that, the issues, or I could focus on, man, you guys are amazing because y'all show up and y'all show off our Lord every time you're here. And we've moved from the school to MOCA, Museum of Contemporary Art, where we thought we were going to be until we had a building and then they shut down and then they said no churches back to MOCA. So we moved over to a hotel and then we got the word that the hotel wasn't going to open and then we had to move here real quickly and make things happen like overnight here and you guys continued to show up. You didn't let a building define our ministry and stability of physical things. Let's define our ministry because we have an awesome church that loves the Lord.

Yes, shaken and broken people, but we come together. On behalf of our Lord Jesus Christ to glorify Him. That He be glorified. And not only that, we've started an online environment that's reaching people. We've had salvation through our online environment.

We've had people connect over in other parts of the nation. Louisiana, Tennessee, California, even Germany. People connecting all over, connecting with us. And we see a bright future for Salt Church as a result. We've been able to shift.

We've been able to move people around. We've been able to kind of dissect ourselves a little bit to be healthy and stronger. And we're just excited about a future because we are reframing 2020. And we've reframed 2020. And if God works in all things for good, we need to reject unhealthy default frames that we have.

That I'm a loser. I'm a failure. That I'm not smart. Or whatever it might be. To actively interpret things by reframing.

To form thought patterns in our mind. To abolish strongholds. Not interpret God through our circumstances, which is what we often do. But to interpret my circumstances through the goodness of God. That God is a good God.

And God is a great God, in fact. He's a great Father. He's a great Savior. And He's a great friend. And He wants to help us control the things.

He's given us the power to control the things. Because you can't control what happens to you, but you can't control how it's framed. And He gives us the power to abolish strongholds. Do not conform to the patterns of this world. But be transformed by the renewing, renewing of our mind.

Father, we pray today with all heads bowed and all eyes closed. We pray that you would help us reframe our thoughts. That you give us everything. Everything that we need to abolish the strongholds in our lives, God, that You'd help us form new patterns to surround ourselves with healthy people, to surround ourselves in healthy environments, to do away with the things that have pulled us in directions that we don't want to go, instead of saying, well, I can't help the things I do, and I do them without even knowing, instead we say, I'm going to do something about them, Lord, because You've given me the power to demolish, to destroy, the strongholds in my life, and I'm going to take hold of those things that demolishes those things in my life, Lord Jesus. Give us the power, give us the strength, Lord, give us the resolve to pull through, Lord, because we are a broken people, but we are being pieced back and mended together by the power of Your Holy Spirit, and You working through Your church, and You working through Your kingdom, Lord.

So God, give us everything that You have, Lord, because You are better than life, Lord. You are better than life. You are better than this world. You are better than anything this world has to offer, because it is better with You, God. And our thoughts, and our minds, and our hearts are set on the kingdom.

We're set on You, Lord. We desire to live for You, to seek You, God, to know You more, to become more like You, because we don't want to be like the world, Lord. We do not want to be conformed to this world. We want to be conformed to You, God, who is our Savior, who is our King, who loves us despite our issues, despite our thoughts, Lord. And You have come to redeem us, and give us hope, and give us life.

So we claim that today, Lord. And in that same spirit, there are those here today who have not made a decision for Jesus. And I invite you today, and this is, let's just make this a very, this is a very sacred, sacred moment. Maybe God's been pulling at your heart. Today's God's been pulling at your heart.

You're like, you know, I didn't, I don't know about God. I don't know about Jesus. Or I fell away from Jesus, and I kind of knew about Him, and I went to church, whatever. Let me tell you something. It doesn't matter if you went to church.

It doesn't matter what your family did. It doesn't matter any of that, whether you've fallen from God or whatever. He doesn't care about any of your past. He doesn't have any of that stuff, or things you're currently dealing with. He just wants you.

He says, I won't worry about that stuff later. Let's, let, I just, I just want you. I want you to surrender to me. Because He is indeed a Savior and a King. And if that's you today, I want you just to, Paul says, if you confess with your mouth, you've got to confess it, and you believe in your heart that Jesus came to save you, you will be saved.

Because sin has taken a hold of us. Our lives are full. We have this thing called a sinful nature. There's sin in our lives, and that's why we do the things we don't want to do because we're sinful. But what Jesus did, what God did, it says, I'm going to send my son, my only son, and I'm going to put him on a cross.

I'm going to nail him on a cross, so by the perfect sacrifice, I can have a relationship with these people that are so far from me that I can't even look at because of their sin. And Jesus, you're going to be the covering of that sin, and through you, I can know them, and I can love them, and I can have a relationship with them. And if that's you today, I want you to confess that to Jesus wherever you are in your spiritual walk. You need to confess that by just praying this with me. Jesus, I believe that you are the Son of God and that you died on the cross because I'm a sinner.

And I can't do it on my own. I've tried, Lord, but I can't. I can't do it. I can't fix this problem. But I believe that you came to this world, you lived, you died, and you rose again, proving that you were God and you conquered death, hell, and the grave.

So today, Jesus, become my friend. Come into my heart. Holy Spirit, enter my life. Guide me. Be with me.

Teach me. Show me. Today I live for you from this day forward. In your name.