Villains: Part 1

Hello, Incredible Master Moms. I am so excited that you are tuning in for our brand new series called Villains. We are going to get into some crazy good content, so just get ready to go. It's going to be incredible. But first, you might be wondering who am I listening to right now? I do not recognize this woman's voice. That is because I am not Hannah Keeley. I am Katie Lopez. I have been working on the Mom Master University team team for almost over 10 years now. It has been a long time. I am usually in web development, marketing, content creation. I am always, always behind the scenes. If you've been to some of our live events, you have seen me maybe with a headset backstage. But this month I am a guest coach. I'm so excited. I have been training under Hannah for over 10 years, like I said, training as a coach to be able to finally bring you some content. I am so, so excited. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. These are Villains I am talking about that I have personally overcome that God has given me some crazy revelation on and I want to bring it to you this month. So it's going to be great. It's October. It's spooky month. So get ready for some Villains.

Welcome to Mom Mastery University. The education every mom should have had, but moms didn't. I'm Hannah Keeley, America's number one mom coach and class is now in session.

A little about me before we get started. I'm a pastor. I am used to a live congregation. So go ahead and give me some amens and yes, girl, preach it. I gotta pretend that they're there. I'm used to a live congregation, not a recording device. So just be patient with me. I am a pastor. I'm a mom of two kids. I am a special needs mom. I have a big heart for the special needs mom community. I actually have my own campus in my Master university called Special needs Moms. Join it if you need some support. I'm there for you, girl. Yeah, I'm married to a wonderful man. We've been married for almost over nine years now, so he's wonderful. He's a pastor too. We pastor together. Couples that pastor together, they stay together for sure. But yeah, that's me. That's Katie Lopez. Let's go ahead and dive into the content. I'm so excited. Guys, this is Villains. Every single coaching, we are going to be talking about one villain, how it applies to our lives, what the word says about it and how to defeat it. Because we're not just going to talk about the villains here. We're going to talk about how to defeat them. So let's get started. Our key verse for this series comes from First John 2, 16, 17. It says, for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but of this world. So we see Jesus being tempted in the Bible, at some point, Jesus is tempted by the devil. This is the one time he faces temptation in his life and the devil comes to him and he uses three different temptations. You see him once saying, hey, you're hungry, Eat this bread. When he was in the middle of fasting, you see him saying, test God. Test God to see if he will really save you. You know, jump off this cliff and test God. Then the devil says, look at all of this. You can have all of this. Just command it. And that's when he says, get away from me, Satan. So what's interesting to me about the correlation between this story and this passage, our key verse is that think about it from the devil's perspective, okay? He is talking to Jesus and he has one opportunity to tempt him into sin. And so if you are. If you. If this is like the super bowl, you are going to bring the best that you've got. And Satan actually brings three different types of temptations. That is the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. So we have to consider here, if that is what the enemy is going to use against Jesus, his one shot at Jesus. Shouldn't we take these temptations seriously? The lust of the flesh, the pride of life, and the lust of the eyes. So we're gonna take those seriously. And these are our villains. So going back to our key verse, it says that these things are not of the Father. They have. They are of the world. And you've probably heard that statement before. This is of the world. These things are of the world. The sin is of the world. And I want to challenge you for a moment. Do we know what that means? Do we know what it means to be of the world, the world? See, we have physical values and we have spiritual values. There are things of the spirit and there are things of the physical of this world. And what tends to happen is we take our physical values, the things of this world that we desire, and we hold them above the spiritual values. And that is when we start to get involved in sin and temptation. And that's when things start to take a turn. So what are we instructed to do with the things of the world, the worldly temptations, the worldly sins, the things of the world that are surrounding us. It says in Romans 12:2, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable and perfect. So let's looking at this verse, what is the goal here? What are we trying to achieve by following this instruction? It is to discern what is the will of God to have that discernment between. Wait, is this of God or is this of the world? Is this something that I'm being called to out of temptation, or is this something I'm being called to because of the Holy Spirit? Now, when we go back and forth between worldly temptations and spiritual things, like we spend our weeks giving in to lust, we spend our week giving in to gluttony, to temptations, to anger even. And then we go to church and we're like, wow, yeah, I need to get that right. I need to get that right. I'm going to do this right. And then we go back the next week and take part in the same temptations and sin. We start to lose that discernment that we're supposed to have with what is the will of God and what is of the world. So, so here the goal is to be able to discern what is of the world, what is of God. So here's the question here. How can we be surrounded by the world but not take part in it? I mean, I preach the same message to our congregation, and I actually tend to preach more to young people and teenagers and young adults. And I talk to them about how are you in your schools or in your school, small groups and surrounded by things of the world and you don't give into that temptation. That's really hard. But it doesn't stop at that age. You know, we think we're going to grow out of it. We think once we're out of school, once we're out of those teen years, we're not going to care what people think. We're not going to care about who we're surrounded with. But it actually gets worse, you know, as we grow, as we mature, as we're. We're thrust into new life circumstances. Like, for example, I was not expecting to be a special needs mom. That is not what I was expecting. And it took a very big toll on me. And I could have gone one way, which is, you know, giving up, maybe just giving up on this whole motherhood thing, not even trying. But what the. What I was handed my life, circumstances where God has called me to be, I could also choose to do it the kingdom way rather than the world way. So the question is, if we are in the world, how are we supposed to not take part of the things of this world? So John 15, 18, 19. These are Jesus's words here. We got to listen to those red letters. Am I right? It says, if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before. It hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own, but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of this world. Say I am chosen out of this world. I hope you said it. Because you are chosen out of this world, therefore the world hates you. Super encouraging, right? So we're not going to take part of this world, therefore everyone's going to hate you. What does that mean? What is Jesus trying to tell us here? It's that if we were to conform to every sin of the world, then that is the message that is being screamed at us. From social media to our friends, from our friends groups, to everybody we interact with. The world is screaming at us. Just do it the world's way. Wouldn't it be easier not realizing that those things of the world can actually lead us to a very dark place of sin? So we're gonna tackle those things of the world. Going back to our first passage. What is of the world that we shouldn't take part in? Number one, lust of the eyes. Number two, lust of the flesh. Number three, the pride of life. These are the killers. These are the villains. This is the weapon the actual devil decided would be best to use with Jesus and failed. Obviously, these are the villains. So we're gonna tackle these one by one in this course. Our first villain, lust the eyes. We're talking lust of the eyes here. And the villain that I chose to best represent the lust of the eyes is the very one, the only, the Evil Queen herself. If you maybe weren't a Disney nut, maybe you don't watch classic Disney movies. That's okay. Although they are good. There is a movie called Snow White, if you remember the. I'm wishing for the one I love. That's the one I'm talking about. Not the 1 million remakes that they've done, but the classic Snow White. We see an evil queen here in her character. She is. She's gorgeous, she's beautiful, she has power. But she also has this mirror that she refers to as slave. And the magic mirror. Did you remember it as her saying, mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest one of them all? That's not what she says. For some reason, we all think that's what she said. She didn't. She said, slave, in the magic mirror, something, something, something, who is the fairest of them all? I don't have the whole quote. She says, slave, in the magic mirror, tell me who the fairest one of them all is. And for the longest time, that mirror said, it's you. You are the fairest of them all. So she looked in the mirror and she saw what she wanted to see, and she was satisfied. That's all she needed. But the one day that the magic mirror is like, hey, hold on. There is this woman. She's beautiful, she's sweet. She sings to animals and birds and bugs, and her name is Snow White. This immediately causes her to lose everything. She. First she loses her mind, then she starts to. To lose power because she's so caught up in this temptation of, I need to deal with this Snow White. I need to get rid of her. And then she becomes a murderer, basically. Almost. She failed. She tried to kill Snow White. So what starts off as an innocent looking in the mirror and saying, who is the fairest of them all? And she didn't get to see the exact response that she wanted. It set her off completely. And I think she represents the lust of the eyes perfectly. What she's looking for is something desperately to make her happy. And this isn't a new sin. This isn't a new idea that just popped in to our minds. Lust of the eyes. This is actually something that goes back to the Garden of Eden. If you think about it, the fruit that Eve sees the enemy, talks to her and says, look at this fruit. Doesn't that look good? You could actually. What? What if God is hiding something from you? You could actually be like him. Take the fruit. Take the fruit. And what caused her to sin, to introduce sin into this world? It was the lust of the eyes. It started and then it developed into pride and. And, you know, it became this whole story with Adam and Eve. But it started with the lust of the eyes, which is so interesting to me. See, there is this pattern. See, believe and sin. So you see the thing. You see your neighbor's new car. You see the Instagram model who is posting her workouts, and then you believe the idea that, wait, I should have that car or I should have that body. I see the mom who is balancing her Kids out perfectly, has her own business, absolutely rocking at life. And it wasn't wrong that I saw her. That's not the problem here, is that I then begin to believe something. I believe a thought here that says I'm not good enough after seeing her. And then it doesn't stop at see and believe. Then there's sin. Then there's sin. Because when you believe a lie from the enemy, it's never going to stop at that. It's going to control your actions in some way. Whether that's you buy the car that you don't need to be buying right now financially, or you start to starve yourself to try to get the body that you want, which isn't what we were designed to do. Then there is a sin aspect of that story. It never stops at the belief. See, the eyes are the gateway to the mind. The mind influences the heart and the heart controls the actions. If we give it permission to. And we don't realize that lust of the eyes is an actual problem, an actual sin. You know, some people take that lightly. Like, it's just. It's just I'm looking at her and I'm jealous. It's not going to cause me any harm. But eventually, if it's not controlled, it's going to influence your actions. Which we cannot give the heart permission to control our actions because it says in the word, like, the heart is deceitful. We're not supposed to listen to our feelings. There is this whole message of just listen to your heart. Listen to your heart. I will go to my grave telling my kids, do not listen to your heart, baby boy. Do not listen to your heart because the heart is deceitful. You're going to feel feelings at some point, but if you listen to it constantly, you are closing yourself off from the truth of the word of God and listening to your own human desires, your own fleshly desires, which are never coming from a good place, usually of the world. So I think about. I don't know his name. I might get in trouble for this. But the person that has a conference to announce the new Apple device, the new iPhone, the new iPad, the imac, the I this, I that I, you. I mean, I don't know. Always a new Apple device. And he's on stage and he's talking about it. I don't have my phone here to show you here. IPad. He's talking about it and he's saying it has this feature, these specs, this thing, that thing, it's brand new. Even though they just released One last month. It's brand new. It's so much better. You're gonna love it. You should buy it. Give me a thousand dollars and sure, like every once in a while, I'm a techie girl, I'll update my devices. I don't mind that, but. But I don't need every new phone constantly. That's a little bit of an addiction, in my opinion. I don't need every phone constantly. I don't need to constantly upgrade my phone. If my phone is operating well, and I don't necessarily have the budget to buy a new phone, I don't need the new phone. However, after these conferences, why is it that my phone starts to work slower? I mean, people do say that this is a thing, you know, you. They somehow program their devices to work a little bit less efficiently. The camera isn't as good, the. The speed isn't as good. You know, like they. They start to not work as well. And people say that this is a tactic to get you to buy you a new phone. Now, I do not know if this is a conspiracy. I do not know if this is the truth or not. It's just how it feels. After a while, that thing starts to slow down. But that is often how the lust of the eyes works for us. The second we see that thing that we don't necessarily need, we never actually maybe wanted in the first place, we see that thing and we start to believe something about it. Like, that should be mine. I should have that. I need that. How did I ever go this long without that? Then what God has already given us starts to not be enough. We see the woman with the perfect body. We see the mom who is balancing everything perfectly. We see the person with the life that maybe looks better than my own. And all of a sudden, every good thing, every perfect thing he has already blessed us with isn't enough. And I personally don't believe that's the posture that we need to take with the things that we see. So what happens with the lust of the eyes? There's a pattern here. And if we see the pattern, we can stop the pattern. So first, the lust of the eyes starts to distort. So let's take for example, a mom in the park walking her kid. She's got the perfect body. She's got the perfect hair. Her kids are so well behaved. She's actually wearing really, really expensive clothes. And so it kind of like hits us from all different angles. Like, wow, she's wealthy. Wow, she's happy. Wow, she's fit. We See something, and then we start to see it in a distorted way. We don't see it as just another person who is blessed and another friend or another, you know, person just living their life. We see that, and it. We all of a sudden have it distorted in our mind. Like, oh, I don't like that person. All of a sudden, like my own life is being distorted. And that is not the heart of the Father. That is not the posture we need to take. So there's distortion and then there's distraction. We all of a sudden, we become distracted from what God is doing in our own lives and what God has already blessed us with immensely. I don't look and see the healthy body that gave birth to two children. I don't see the wonderful kids God has given me. I don't see the blessings and opportunities he has given me. All of a sudden, I see that. And now it's not enough. I am distracted. I'm distracted from when my place in this world should be of the kingdom of a worshiper honoring everything God has given me. But now I'm distracted. So there's distortion, distraction, and then divert. The enemy wants to divert your attention from what God is doing in your own life and put it on other people telling you it's not enough. And then he debilitates you. All of a sudden, you become controlled by your beliefs. Your heart starts to tell you how to act, and we're debilitated. If we could just have stopped that at the distortion part to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Actually, hold on. Look at every good thing God has given me. Why don't I go bless this person? Why don't I go tell this person, hey, you are amazing. You look amazing. You're doing amazing. Go off, girlfriend. Like, be an encourager. That's life giving to you. It's life giving to her. But no, we're now at the point of debilitation. And then the enemy starts to defeat you. Then you become defeated. Then you start to think, I don't even want to wake up and go to the park with my kids because I'm not enough. And then the last step of the lust of the eyes is destroy. Where the enemy has destroyed a perfectly good life that God has given you just from your eyes. It's crazy how that works. It's crazy. But what's interesting is it's not an eye problem. So let me ask you the question. Should I have not looked at this woman in the park? Should I have just told her, like, walk away, walk away before I start to hate myself. No, it's not an eye problem. It's a heart posture. We don't need to worry about what we're looking at. We need to worry about what's going on in here. And I think about my son, Wyatt. He's so. He is in speech therapy, is. He's starting ABA therapy. He had a diagnosis of autism, and we have been working with him to communicate. He's a wonderful child, has so gifts, so many strength, so many abilities. But he's currently non verbal. So we're teaching him how to communicate, how to ask for more, how to ask for water or food, you know, the basics. He's doing something right now, though. When he sees something that he wants, he doesn't know how to tell us, wow, I really want that. He believes that the best way to get what he wants is to scream bloody murder. Like, I'm. I'm not gonna show you what it sounds like because, you know, I might blow your speakers out. But he screams. And it always has to do with a pack of gummies. This boy loves his gummies. So say I need a snack. Say I need a little, like, you know, just a little something. I get my little pack of gummies and why it sees me and he looks at me and he was never asking for gummies in the first place, but he looks at me and he sees the gummies and he sees me like, oh, no. Oh no, you shouldn't have seen that. And he just screams. And the place that I go to is, oh, I should have hidden it better. I should have never let him see this. And sometimes we act that same way, like we think, oh, let me delete all my social media platforms so I don't see, see anybody who I think is better than me. We, you know, have a friend who is talking about this new job opportunity and we're like, you know, you don't have to be talking so much about this opportunity because it's going to make us all jealous. That is not the answer here. Because it's not an eye problem. It's a hard posture. We need to be able to see people who are blessed and bless them and also turn around and look back into our own lives and say, wow, God has blessed me too. We don't need to go down the path of distortion, distraction, diversion, debilitation, to being defeated, to being destroyed. We don't need to go through all of that. We need to see that as the enemy's cheat code he takes to ruin a believer. And we need to Stop it before the distortion starts. You know, it would be easy for us to go to that place of. I'm just. I don't want to see it because I don't want to feel so badly about my own life. But that's not the way the world works. It ultimately becomes about control over your own thoughts. We need to take control over this, not worry about where our eyes are. Now if your eyes are on something sinful. Yeah. Take care of that. But we don't need to be careful about looking at something that's going to cause us to be envious. We need to work on our own thought process so the enemy can't attack us with the lust of the eyes. Paul has this incredible passage in First Corinthians 9:27. It says, But I discipline my body and I keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. So he says, I discipline my body. But there are some translations out there that actually say I beat up my body. I like violently beat up my own body. And this isn't about self harm. What he's saying here is, if there is anything in my body that causes me to sin, I'm gonna beat it out of me. It doesn't bel. And it's not gonna be comfortable, but I'm going to beat it out of me, out of my mind. I'm gonna. You know when you go to the gym and, and you work out. I took some time off the gym a few months ago and I just started going back and it's painful. That first workout, oh my goodness. I was sitting in bed like I'm never going to take another break from the gym ever again because the pain of getting back to it is terrible. I couldn't walk. I was just in bed. So it's in the same way. You know, that's not a fun pain, but it's a pain that's necessary to, to be better. So Paul is saying, I discipline. I beat out of my body anything that causes me to sin. And we need to react the same way with our thoughts. Put it in training. Put our thoughts in the gym. Practice gratitude. Practice control. If you start to feel that distortion coming up, you're looking at the slave in the magic mirror and you start to feel those envious feelings that the distortion, we need to control it. What we need to do is speak the truth to it. So taking Paul's words of beating it out of me, disciplining my body, it's time to ask yourself the question, am I going to knock myself out or am I going to knock myself out? Let me explain. So many times the world will approach sin in a way that's like, knock yourself out. Spend the money, tell the lie, act poorly to this person. Binge all you want. Binge all you want, knock yourself out. It's all about feeling good. That is not. That is not the message that God is trying to bring to us. Because that posture brings destruction. Paul is saying, no, knock yourself out. That worldly side of you. Beat it out of you. So the only thing that's left are spiritual values, because that is the ultimate way to freedom. So are you gonna knock yourself out or are you going to knock yourself out? Let's ask ourselves that question. In Titus 2:11, 13, it says, for the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. Praise God. It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age while we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. So what do we need here? It's not that complicated. We need the grace of God because it teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions. We need to see ourselves as who we are, which is set free from the world. Jesus said, I have chosen you out of this world. In that passage, he was talking to his disciples. But we can also be his disciples. We are his disciples. We are here to share the good news, to share the gospel, to bring others into the kingdom. We need to consider ourselves chosen out of this world. So it's time to step out of this world and learn how to say no to ungodliness, to put on righteousness. So what are the steps? Because I never leave a message with. Just try this. You know, you always need kind of a framework of how to get started. If this is maybe something you've never really considered, maybe you're realizing now that the lust of the eyes is something that has actually been bothering you and maybe even destroying you for a very long time. How do we do it? Where do we get started? There are three steps. One, repentance. That has gotten such a bad reputation, that word repentance, because people use it as like, repent of your sins, you're going to hell. But repentance is beautiful. Is beautiful. It's a posture of saying, God, I am so sorry that I have let myself go to this place. I'm sorry that these temptations have taken over me and distracted me from you. It's that conversation with him. But I also believe there's a side to repentance that needs to be verbal. And God has given you like minded believers, whether they're in your family, whether they're here inside my master university, we are always here for you girl. Talk to somebody, tell them the struggle you have been going through. Be like, I've repented but I need to talk to somebody about my repentance. This is something I'm struggling with and they can be your accountability person. You need to bring others in. So check this verse out. It says in First John 1:9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So praise God, he has forgiven us. But if you notice here, that's not where it stops. He also says we are cleansed, meaning we don't have to wear that sin anymore. After the confession part, the repentance part, we're forgiven. But not just forgiven. Totally clean. We don't have to live with it anymore. Next is reflect. This is an important one because it's kind of a two parter. We need to reflect on our heart. Where is our heart? Is our heart in that dark place of greed and lust and envy? Or is our heart in a place of gratitude? Gratitude answers so many problems. Try to put on gratitude starting today. Even if you need to pause this right now and be like God. I want to stay from a place of gratitude. What do you have right now to be thankful for? If you're telling me, I don't think I have anything. I don't know you personally. You know, I'm sure I've seen your name or your post in my master university. But you know, we haven't spoken. I don't know your life story, but I can tell you this, you do have something to be grateful for. You woke up today. God has given you gifts. He's given you a family. Whether that's your family or a home or a job. He has given you good things. And if you're having a hard time seeing it right now, it's not because God has not given you good things, but because the enemy has distracted you from seeing the good. Don't let him do that. Don't let him do it. So reflect on where your heart is coming from, but also reflect on the good things God has given you. Take a moment. Go on a gratitude walk. Like even if genuinely on the worst day ever, go on a walk. God, thank you for that breeze. Thank you for those neighbors, thank you for that bird. Just be grateful. And then from that flows so much gratitude, because you're training yourself. Remember, you're knocking yourself out. You're taking your thoughts to the gym. You are training yourself on the art of gratitude. Proverbs 4:23 says, Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the springs of life. What comes from the heart is very important. So we need to constantly reflect and say, where's the posture of my heart today? Lastly, reignite. I guarantee there is somebody here listening to this message who may be struggling with one of our villains. Lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, pride of life. And I'm going to continue this series talking about those other two, so don't miss out. But I guarantee there is somebody here that all they need right now is for their relationship with God to be reignited. Maybe you have stopped trusting Him. Maybe you have stopped believing that he has given you blessings and good things. Maybe you don't even know if he's on your side. Maybe you're even questioning, is this faith thing even working? Is it worth it? And there's no shame in feeling that way and feeling defeated. In fact, I believe that if that is where your heart is coming from, it is so important that you are listening to this right now, that you are diving into the word of God, that you are seeking truth, because God is going to meet you right where you are at, and he's going to show you. But I think that there is a relationship here with him that needs to be reignited. Matthew 26:41 says, Keep watch and pray so that you will not give into temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak. And I want to partner that with this idea of reigniting a relationship with God. Start talking with him more. Pray more. Read the Word of God. You know, we say all the time that, you know, God is a relationship. It's not all about religion. It's about relationship, too. But a relationship requires communication, attention, time. For those of you who are married, you know that that's true. You can't just ignore your spouse all day or say, if you're ignored all day, you're going to say, something's wrong here. Hello, it's this. God is. God is a being who wants a relationship with you. God is real. He's active and he's moving and he wants a relationship with you. So you are in a relationship with God. But we need to act like it. We need to communicate with him, talk with him, tell him what you're grateful for. You know, some of my favorite prayers in the morning is just like, God, thank you for this, thank you for that. It is just the perfect place to start the day from to go throughout the day with a place of gratitude. So we're going to reignite and we're going to keep watch and pray so that you will not give into temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak. Guys, that was part one of our series, villains, and I am so excited to kick off part two next week. So don't go anywhere. Get your workbooks, fill them out, take the quiz, post about it in our Facebook group. And hey, just a reminder, you know you can join a campus, right? Right. Go to campuses in Mom Master University. Start a campus and get these conversations started. Start a faith campus. Join 1. There are women in this university who want to do life with you. So make sure you're involved. And I can't wait to see you for part two.

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