An Unstoppable Mindset

Last week we shared a few things about vision, about one things, and held things and broken things and all in all, I think I did a way too high, pie in the sky flyby of how you should shape your life. I know you all hate that because you wrote that on your surveys. So, this week and the next few weeks, I’m going to change that. But in order to even get into the introduction for today, I have to recap what this church’s vision is because we’re beginning to turn on the juice and it’s going to be unstoppable. You’re going to try to get off, but you can’t because it’ll have you hooked. The reason I want to recap what the vision of this church is, is to pass it into your lives and make it part of your lifelong vision. Whether that is to be a professional student, to become a doctor, a lawyer, an artist, a conman, whatever it is, part of your vision is to transfer your relationship with Christ to other people. Why and what does that mean? It means, let’s stop living inside a damp, dark Christian closet because I am really tired of hearing democrats and republicans spewing pseudo ethics spun into religious rhetoric and passing it off as a faith that should be believed. I met somebody the other day and the person who introduced me to this person introduces me as, “This is Jonathan Kwon, he’s my pastor.” And this person, not the one making the introduction says to me at the end of the conversation, “wow, you’re really a Southern Baptist pastor? But you’re so socially liberal?” I try to be cool, because I didn’t want this person to know that I am a registered, card carrying Republican and said, “The true conservatives are the most liberal.” Which probably made no sense to that person; however, I am essentially saying this to all of you. If you believe the Bible, like I believe the Bible, that is fundamentally, that is, it says what it means and means what it says depending on the type of literature you’re reading, then you’re going to be theologically conservative and therefore socially liberal. This is what it means to be Christian—it means that we enjoy a relationship with God, if we want, at the expense of God, and He wants us to call Him all the time and He wants us to introduce people who have nobody to call on, to Him. This will, in turn, change the status quo of the world and the people in the spheres of your lives, one by one, by one and become an unstoppable, never ending movement. This is what the church envisions for not only me, but each and every one of you. With that being said, I want to introduce how we will get at this practically over the next three weeks. I encourage all of you to be here to take notes because you can’t even get this at Harvard Business School. Today, I want to reframe your mindsets—because, I’m going to be honest and make some of you mad, you’re weak minded… It’s okay, that’s a forgivable offense, just ask anybody who knows me—I’m weak minded too. I can’t say no to a good party. There are no megaminds here. But we can have an unstoppable mindset if we so choose. Next week, we’re going to talk about how to form partnerships that are unstoppable. The reason why most people fail, even if they have unstoppable mindsets, is because they don’t have partners to live that mindset out with. I think I have 4 points next week. Woohoo. Right, stop cheering. Then finally, the last week of January, what it means to be an unstoppable idiot, yes, it was inspired by the Green Day song, “American Idiot.” I think I don’t need to say much more than that. The unstoppable mindset exists in two fractions of life—the personal and the communal. We have to have a mindset in both areas to really have a full view of our lives because we live both personal lives (within our neurosis) and in community (where everybody talks behind our back in regards to our short comings). You see, having a vision is great in your mind and on paper, but it’s kind of useless without an action. But in order to act, we usually have to find our one thing that gives us the impetus to act. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then you have to listen to the last two podcasts on the website. Please. So now, let’s say we have both those things, a vision for your life and more importantly the impetus to act on that vision, that’s great; however life isn’t that simple, nor is it that easy—so we get slammed by a roadblock. I call my roadblock seminary. You may call it something else. What happens when get slammed by a roadblock—that’s right, we stop and then do nothing and then stagnate, then we become fat and then we get lazy and then we die—we die unhappy, and we die longing that there would be more to life, we die cursing God about the opportunities that you didn’t get. Yeah, that’s how it usually goes. You don’t need to lie to me. I’ve been there and done that. The only way to keep going in life when you hit a roadblock is if we become unstoppable and it begins with our mindsets. Let’s go to Mark 8. 34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul? 38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” – Mark 8:34-38 I know there’s no space for this in your notes, but I want you to write this down: DON’T LIVE IN THE CLOSET! This is what Jesus says here in Mark 8:34-38. That’s my translation anyways. If anybody starts getting technical about what your cross is and what the gospel means, tell that person, Jesus wants us to live what we say we believe. That’s not in the notes either, but write it down anyways. To become unstoppable personally we must be willing to lose our lives. That’s the first blank. Are you willing to lose your life? When we chose to become Christian, we essentially chose to give up whatever menial ambitions we had for life for a life greater than the one we thought we could live. And you know what the biggest problem in our mindset is when it comes to this decisions—we’re so ashamed of it, that we’d rather not live the way we say we believe. I’m not talking about sinning here because everyone sins and we all don’t represent God in the best way all the time, and that’s totally okay, we need to be realistic about that instead of trying to hide it. We need to fess up to our shortcomings and call ourselves out and say, “my bad, I’m sorry” and actually start working towards fixing it, rather than hiding the mental venereal disease or sinful burden. Sorry, you had to hear it like that. But we need to be honest. But what I’m talking about is the fact that in our minds we are so weak that we can’t Tebow without turning red in the face. Yes, that’s the sad part. We don’t want to offend anybody because we try to get closer to God, so we don’t. What a joke. What a weakness and this is how Mark says we lose our souls that we can’t ever get back. Now, then comes communal mindsets. Let’s go to Acts. 42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. – Acts 2:42-47 To become an unstoppable community we must devote ourselves to teaching, fellowship and praying for one another. We have to be a mindset, as individuals living in a community that embraces what the Bible says. I don’t know why you’re here, but I’m hoping that you’re here so that you can listen to what the Bible says because I don’t teach new material ever, it’s always the same material—the B-I-B-L-E and I hope you go and talk trash about me and how I did the Bible a disservice today and then send me harsh, critical emails about how I can do better teaching the Bible so I can hang it up in my office and stare at it. But also, I know this is going to kill you all, but fellowship, we talked a little about this last week, can we get to know people well and grow with them instead of living on the shallow end? I know I don’t do this well, and this causes me to have a weak communal mindset and the reason I don’t do this well is because I have enough crazy people in my life that I want to harm, every time they want to meet with me, but you all need more of that in your life. Yes, I really said that. But we should be having fellowship with each other that we are comfortable enough to say something like that as long as nobody disappears. Just kidding. But do you see what’s happening here in the Book of Acts? Yes, the disciples are teaching the Bible, having fellowship and praying for one another and it was beginning to change the fabric of everybody’s lives. If you don’t know or you don’t remember, this is not like the United States of America where the only people persecuted were the Native Americans who were here first. This was 1st century Rome where, you were persecuted if you didn’t worship the Emperor. To have a mindset that is unstoppable personally and communally, we need to understand three things about our mindset towards other people. First, our mindset must “welcome everyone.” So when I say that, I don’t mean “everyone” as is your stalker or somebody who is trying to kill you or abuse you. You don’t welcome them, and if they welcome themselves tell me, we’ll get some guys to put on some black leather gloves and handle it—and I forget, most of you didn’t watch the OJ trial on TV like I did. Anyways. When I say “welcome everyone” we must have a mindset not predisposed on judging by the cover. In psychology, there is notion of “first impressions,” you may have heard of it. Haha. But basically what we do, and this is a mindset thing, is we take “thin slices” of experience and then composite our own reality based on those “thin slices” and almost instantaneously formulate a judgment on somebody or something and thus close most people out of our lives. I do this all the time and so do you. If you didn’t go to this church and I met you on the street, I would have judged you and given you the “please drop dead” or “get out of my way” look and as unwelcoming as that is, we do it all the time. We are stopped by this non-welcoming of everybody when we do this. I read the story of how Bill and Hillary Clinton first met; they locked eyes across Yale’s law library, until Hillary broke the silent flirtation and marched straight over to Bill. “Look, if you’re going to keep staring at me, and I’m going to keep staring back, we might as well be introduced. I’m Hillary Rodham. What’s your name?” Bill couldn’t remember his own name. Now if that had been the end of the story, wow, that would have changed the course of history. Let’s read what it says in Revelation, almost the last verse of the Bible, chapter 22. The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price. – Revelation 22:17 If somebody wants to be a part of your life, you should welcome them because, while they have nothing to offer you, as you are already saved because of the blood of Jesus, that person may be offered a brand new life because of your influence, because your mindset was welcoming. You know what it feels like not to be welcomed, why would you stop yourself from welcoming everyone else? I want you to circle the word, “bride” and next to it, write the word, “me.” I say “come.” Remember, I want to make this note—don’t welcome people who you know are trying to hurt you! I know you girls have a penchant for doing this. I’m going to call it out straight, you all are nice girls and you are attracted to bad boys because you think you’re going to fix that fool. Guess what, it ain’t happening like that, if you have a bad boy that needs to be fixed, you bring him to church, I’ll have somebody fix him for you. Oh, do you see on the bottom right hand corner of your notes, there are questions, that’s for your reflection. I know I do fly overs and have little practical applications, so I’m telling you to write up your own after I give you an outline of how to do it. See I’m incorporating your surveys. Second, Have the mindset to Meet the Need. Let’s read 1st Corinthians 12. 21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”22 On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, 24 which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, 25 that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. – 1 Corinthians 12:21-26 I want you to underline in verse 25, but that the members may have the same care for one another. You all have some type of vision, which probably, if I’m not mistaken, is in line with your talents, abilities and skills. If you’re still sitting here thinking you’re going to be a mathematician when you can’t do mental math, let’s find a new career path. When we welcome people into our lives and have the mindset to welcome people, they will, if they have in their mindsets to welcome others into their lives, the ability to fulfill the needs of those they welcomed and vice verse, those people fulfill your own needs. I know it sounds un-American and altogether communist. But this is the mindset of an unstoppable person. An unstoppable person is unstoppable because his or her community fills in for his or her shortcomings. America says do it on your own and that’s wrong. God never intended it that way. When we meet the needs of others, no matter how crazy it may seem, you will have your needs met. At the end of the day, when we have the mindset to meet a need, we have the openness to receive that same care from another. You can’t expect somebody to give you respect or fulfill your needs if you don’t fulfill theirs at the same level. This is a mindset thing. Some of us just want to take and take and take. So we have some takers, they just take and they want to be served. They want to complain how it doesn’t meet standards. They want to moan about how unpresentable it is—what about you stop complaining about it and do something about it. Most of the complaints I get about me, is how about how I failed to “meet some need” that they would have met if they were me and I usually say something like this, “then go do it and stop wasting your time with me.” If you see something you can do, because it is in your scope to do it, then do it. Then watch how that frees up somebody to do something in a weird chain reaction to free something up for you, in your life. I know it sounds like a karma principle, but it’s not. It’s Biblical. It’s a mindset. You have to understand, you are indispensable. You can circle that word in verse 22. Write this down, I know there’s no space for it in your notes, but find a place for it, “I may be weak, but I am an indispensible tool being used by God.” Believe it, because it’s true. Number three, Be willing to welcome change. We are so easily stopped because we refuse to change. If we refuse to change, we will be left in the Stone Age and then we will die in a fabulous extinction. I made my career on change and my ability to change and have been unstoppable. I’ve seen a lot of careers end because they were unwilling to change and I simply took their job from them. It’s like when you see somebody in the 21st century refuse to use a computer. Yes, there are still people out there who refuse to operate computers. When we are unwilling to welcome change, we stop ourselves. I can compare this to a relationship if the job thing is still too abstract for some of you—if you are in a relationship and unwilling to change your behavior, like taking showers in the morning and brushing your teeth, then your relationship will not last long. Or if you refuse to change the pattern of your life, you will stop growing in that life, your life will stop. When I say pattern of your life, I am talking about your mentality. 1 Samuel 10. 6 Then the Spirit of the LORD will rush upon you, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man. 7 Now when these signs meet you, do what your hand finds to do, for God is with you…. 9 When he turned his back to leave Samuel, God gave him another heart. – 1 Samuel 10:6-7, 9 The prophet Samuel was anointing Saul, the first king of Israel, and he essentially says, things are changing for you, “go and do what you gotta do regarding this change.” I want you to underline that in your notes: “do what your hand finds to do, for God is with you….” If you don’t know what’s happening, it’s that Saul is going from commoner to royalty, he is essentially becoming the head priest of Israel. When we change, God gives us another heart, or a new heart. We all know that when God is with us because our mindsets are of change, we become unstoppable. If we want to see the vision God planted in our hearts come to fruition we have to start by having an unstoppable mindset. Let’s pray.