God Thoughts Make Me Brave

[podcast]http://www.revkwon.com/podcast/Being_Brave-With_God_Thoughts.mp3[/podcast]

This morning I want to talk about how bravery comes from having God thoughts. I didn’t say good thoughts, because good thoughts are always so fickle and so fleeting. I said, “bravery is reinforced by having God thoughts.” I think you should all write that down. Here’s what I mean by that because while I don’t think it needs any explanation, you need to have one. God thoughts are ideas of who God is in your life. You see, in the Bible we see people become brave when they have ideas of who God is in their lives. I want to open to 2 Kings 6:8-16. This is one of my most favorite stories in the Bible. It gives me the courage to be brave when I know there is no reason to be brave, at all.

⁸ When the king of Aram was at war with Israel, he would confer with his officers and say, “We will mobilize our forces at such and such a place.” ⁹ But immediately Elisha, the man of God, would warn the king of Israel, “Do not go near that place, for the Arameans are planning to mobilize their troops there.” ¹⁰ So the king of Israel would send word to the place indicated by the man of God. Time and again Elisha warned the king, so that he would be on the alert there. ¹¹ The king of Aram became very upset over this. He called his officers together and demanded, “Which of you is the traitor? Who has been informing the king of Israel of my plans?” ¹² “It’s not us, my lord the king,” one of the officers replied. “Elisha, the prophet in Israel, tells the king of Israel even the words you speak in the privacy of your bedroom!” ¹³ “Go and find out where he is,” the king commanded, “so I can send troops to seize him.” And the report came back: “Elisha is at Dothan.” ¹⁴ So one night the king of Aram sent a great army with many chariots and horses to surround the city. ¹⁵ When the servant of the man of God got up early the next morning and went outside, there were troops, horses, and chariots everywhere. “Oh, sir, what will we do now?” the young man cried to Elisha. ¹⁶ “Don’t be afraid!” Elisha told him. “For there are more on our side than on theirs!” ¹⁷ Then Elisha prayed, “O Lord, open his eyes and let him see!” The Lord opened the young man’s eyes, and when he looked up, he saw that the hillside around Elisha was filled with horses and chariots of fire.

Let’s read verse 16 again. When we have God thoughts, our eyes become open to what God is doing around us. I can do a whole sermon on this passage, but I’m not going to do that today. You see, we’re talking about how having God Thoughts makes us brave. Elisha did incredible things as a prophet because he was brave. Elisha was brave because he constantly had God thoughts. Do you see the correlation? I said this last week in our introduction to our series, “Being Brave” but I’ll say it again—the one characteristic shared by all Bible characters was faith in God. We said it was faith in God that made people brave and do things that they normally wouldn’t.

I even said that this year, this 2015, is the year we will be extraordinarily brave because we’re going to have so much faith in God, that we will be witnesses to the awesome and incredible things God is doing in our lives. Tell me somebody in this room believes that. I believe that. I just said that. So I want to introduce to you something we haven’t done at this church in quite some time. I want to introduce you all to this idea called the “Locked-In.” When I was growing up there would be these things called “Locked-Ins” where we would lock ourselves in the church, get on our faces and sing songs to Jesus and pray to Jesus with the purpose and goal of changing our worlds. A lot of us have never experienced that, so in February, Feb 20, it’s a Friday night, we will be Locking ourselves in here at 70 school street to do just that—plan on changing our worlds. I haven’t shared this with any of your small group leaders yet but I’m going to share with all of you right now, in February, once I have taught you to be brave because Jesus mandates it from all of us this year, we’re going to pick a verse in a series called, “Your Verse” and start to live out that verse.

My verse comes from Joshua 24:15 and it goes like this: But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD. It’s going to be such an awesome series because that series will teach you to keep God thoughts whenever you need them like a boost of energy. It’s going to be such an awesome lock in. We’ll discover how just one verse will change your life. You’re probably asking how in the world does all of this relate to having God thoughts so that I can be brave? I want to go to our Bible passage now and we’re going to read it together.

Philippians 4. We’re going to be reading from the MSG version of the Bible today.

My dear, dear friends! I love you so much. I do want the very best for you. You make me feel such joy, fill me with such pride. Don’t waver. Stay on track, steady in God. I urge Euodia and Syntyche to iron out their differences and make up. God doesn’t want his children holding grudges. And, oh, yes, Syzygus, since you’re right there to help them work things out, do your best with them. These women worked for the Message hand in hand with Clement and me, and with the other veterans—worked as hard as any of us. Remember, their names are also in the Book of Life. Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could show up any minute! Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.

Did you guys catch that? Let’s go to it: “Don’t waver. Stay on track, steady in God.” Come on, let’s say it together: “Don’t waver. Stay on track, steady in God.” Did you realize that every week you get a Bible memory verse to help you every single week so that you don’t waver, so you stay on track, steady in God. Did you realize that was the reason for doing memory verses? This is our memory verse for this week, “Don’t waver. Stay on track, steady in God.” Sometimes, what we don’t realize about bravery is that when we’re steady in God, we sort of don’t even have a choice to be anything other than brave. It’s kind of amazing how that works. What people don’t realize about me is that I’m not a really good public speaker. I often stumble over my words, I’m sparse with my details, and I can’t really carry a fun story. But when I speak for God, I’m a totally different person.

The verses that empower me help stay steady in what I’m doing for God. I’m not preaching to you this morning because I like hearing myself speak. I’m preaching to you this morning because the God thoughts in my head and in my heart allow me to be brave enough to share this good news with you. We need to stay steady in God with God thoughts. Here’s the reason we need to have God thoughts, so we don’t end up like Euodia and Syntyche. They were fighting. I’m not talking about just plain, ole fighting either.

I’m talking about grudges, hair pulling, and when people stepped in between their fights, it hurt everybody. The fighting got so bad that other people had to sort it out for them. When we don’t have God thoughts, then we don’t have any God in us. We lose the reason we were created. The worst thing in the world is to live a life without purpose. If you don’t know why you’re alive you have no reason to be brave. But that’s beside the point that I want to make today. Look at what’s going on here—when we don’t have God thoughts, not only do we fall apart in our relationships, but the work that we’ve accomplished so bravely, well, it sort of just falls apart and it becomes a waste. That’s exactly what we don’t want. Ever. I’m going to give you two ways we can stay steady in God.

First, Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Let me explain to you what that means—it means that whatever we’re doing, we’re thinking about God when were’ doing it. Do you really want to know why this women fight? It’s because they’re both complainers. If at least one of them wasn’t a complainer, then they’d get over it. But since them both complain about their self-absorbed selves, they can’t celebrate. When we they can’t celebrate God, they become less brave because they’re afraid of what they’re complaining about. Have you ever thought about what you complain about? You complain about things that make you afraid. Just think about it—it’s not things you hate doing, its things that you hate doing because you’re afraid of doing them because of something or someone.

Second thing you’re going to do is, “Instead of worrying, pray.” Paul says that when we pray a sense of God’s wholeness, everything come together for good will come and settle you down. I don’t even have to preach this because it preaches itself. We need to pray to have God thoughts. Worrying comes from non-God thoughts. Praying leads to thinking about things of God. I want to wrap up the sermon today right here. If you want to be brave, you need to have God thoughts. The reason you want to think about God and the things of God is because if you don’t, you have no reason to be brave where God sends you.

When we look at the last days of Jesus, we find him constantly asking God, the Father, “please take this cup away.” But at the end of his ask Jesus is always going, “if it’s your will, then it’ll be done.” Jesus would never have died on the cross had he not been having God Thoughts. There would be no place for that bravery to come from. The Apostle Paul or any other disciple of Jesus’ would not have preached the gospel if he or she wasn’t having God thoughts, there would be no reason to share good news. I challenge you this week to fill your minds and meditate on God thoughts. I want you to do that and you’ll see chariots of fire just like Elisha did. When you do, then you’ll know why you were brave. Let’s pray.