I Need A Change (Part 1) | Ron Carpenter

How many of you have at least one area of your life you could really use some change? Okay, how does that happen? How does change come about? Where does it take place? We talk about it, we sing about it, we go hear people lecture on it, but very few people do it. So how is it I actually get my life unstuck? If you would. Matthew 22, verses 34 through 40. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees and the Pharisees and Sadducees, these, all these seas, they were very religious groups and Jesus scorched them and they hated Jesus for it. But they were all about a rule and Jesus was all about a relationship. So they butted heads because those are contradictions. So the question, excuse me. They gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him, saying, teacher, where is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. May I say it again? You shall love the your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and the great commandment. Lord, bless the reading of your word in Jesus name. And everybody said, amen. It's our custom to tell our neighbor, here we go. So touch both neighbors say, here we go neighbor, here we go. Thank you Lord. Give me a few minutes to work. This one of the things that has always bothered me and I've probably. If you listened to the last 10 years of my teaching, you would hear a common thread. I do now. A lot of instruction about what the Bible has to say about the mind. If you can't get your mind right, the chances of everything else getting right, they're very slim. We have given a lot of false religions the ability to take a step forward. Because preachers, especially Christian preachers, have not talked nearly enough about what the Bible says concerning your mind. We're so spiritual. You are a spirit, you are a soul and you are a body. You have this body, it's a shell, it holds you during your time on earth. It's not the real you, it houses you. You have a spirit that comes from God, your born again nature. Those of you that just accepted Jesus, the Bible says you have just, you've just been made alive unto God. But we have a soulish realm. Our soul is our mind, our will, our intellect, our emotions, our experiences, and that's called our soul. And something really odd happened in this scripture you say, what does Love the Lord your God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul. What does it have to do with change? You said, this is a message about change. When they were questioning Jesus, Jesus responded, love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. Here's the problem. Soul is mind.

Your soul is your mind, your will and your emotions. So Jesus is saying, love the Lord your God with all your mind and all your mind. Why did he say mind twice?

That's weird.

Love me with all your heart and.

Love me with all your mind, and love me with all your mind.

That had to be an eyebrow raiser to everybody who was listening because actually.

It doesn't make sense because he just repeated himself.

But actually, Jesus stated the word mind.

Twice is because your mind has two basic functions.

Your mind remembers and your mind imagines. And I don't care how smart you are, and you may have more degrees.

On the wall than a thermometer.

But your mind does two things. Your mind remembers like a file cabinet if you're old school, or like a.

Computer chip if you're Silicon Valley school.

It has a memory and it has the ability to imagine. That's what your mind does. And Jesus said, I not only want you to love me with your heart, your heart is the seat of your passions. He said, I want you to love me with all your passion, all the passion that you have, all the energy that you have. I want you to love me first. And then he says, but I want you to also love me with your memory, and I want you to love me with your imagination. I want. I want you to remember the goodness of God in every part of your life. And then I want you to imagine what I can do, because I am the God that can do exceedingly, abundantly, above and beyond what you could ask or think. Some of us never see God do anything because we never imagine anything. The problem is, your memory is about the size of a closet.

Your imagination is the size of a universe. But most of us live in the closet.

We live in the file cabinet or in the computer chip of everything that has happened to us that is painful. What they did when they left, how they did it, who betrayed me, who hurt me, who walked out on me, who abandoned me, who abused me, who didn't do me right. We live in the little room of the memory of our past. And the fact is, I cannot get my life unstuck until I get my head unstuck. The way to change is it has.

To start in the mind first.

Here is the thread that runs through.

So much of my teaching. You would hear it repeatedly.

The Bible says, as a man thinketh.

As a man thinketh in his heart.

In other words, the truths that you embrace. The Bible says, so is he. So as a man thinketh, so is he. There are 800,000 words in this book. There's about 2,000 pages. And this Bible only says that there's one action that defines my reality, and it's my thinking. As a man thinketh, so is thinking is the action verb. Is is the state of being verb. So my reality is a direct result, a direct derivative of everything that I embraced to be true. So whatever it is I've embraced in my thought, life becomes the reality that defines me. So when we see stuff we don't like, we want to put our hands on the thing we don't like and change it. When you don't understand it is a direct product of the way you think. So if I really want to change, I don't put my hand on it. I put my hand on my head and say, God, change my thinking. Because if I change my thinking, I can change anything. I can change my marriage. If I change the way I think about marriage. Come on. I can change my economy. If I change the way I think about money, I'm losing all my amens right now. I can change my relationships. If I change the way I think about relationships, I can change my home. If I change the way I think about home, I can change my children. If I change the way I think about children, I can change my attitude. If I change the way I think about people. But we want to change the stuff first and get it right. But keep the same thinking and God can change everything around you, and your thinking will bring it right back to where it was. If there's chaos in me, then give it time.

There'll be chaos in my house, and give it time.

There'll be chaos in my staff and.

There'Ll be chaos in the church because.

It will affect everything and everyone connected to me. Why? If it's on the inside of me. So if I want to change it in here, I've got to change it in here. Are you getting what I'm saying? So far as a man thinketh, so is he. We don't want want to embrace this because the responsibility is too great. And in church, it's real popular to.

Blame stuff on a devil. We don't want to blame stuff on our mindset.

Let me tell you how Ron Carpenter ended up here.

It wasn't no devil.

Ron Carpenter ended up here because he.

Thought himself all the way here.

You're here because I saw you before you got here.

You ought to see what I'm seeing next. You can't live above what you know. You cannot live. You cannot rise above your level of revelation. So we're talking about tomorrow. We're going to change my. You know, I always hear the big service is Christmas service. Where I came from, the big service was New Year's. We never could get any traction at Christmas. New Year's was nuts. And if you ever notice New Year's, I'm gonna. I'm gonna get a new life, and it's gonna be a brand new. I'm gonna get a new marriage, and I'm gonna get a new boss, and I'm gonna have a new job, and I'm gonna have a new. No, you ain't. It's the same old world. Your husband gonna smell always like he smelled, his feet gonna stink like they always stink. Your boss gonna have the same attitude, and your office is gonna be the same color. It ain't all changing because January 1st hit the calendar. But it can be a brand new you. I might not change all it, but I can change me.

And if I change me, eventually may will change it. But I have to start by changing.

The way I think.

So wherever I want to go in life, my mind has to go there first. So as a man thinketh, so is he. Then I've got to be able to get my mind out there, which means you're always going to be thinking farther than you really are. Car. It's called preparation.

I remember finally when I went to the prom and I was old enough to drive. I remember my dad was going to let me drive his car. Didn't want to drive mine. My dad was going to let me drive his car. I remember I got in it for prom night and I had on a tux and everything. And I got in and it was out of gas. So I had to immediately, before I went and picked up my date, I had to drive to the gas station. And I'm standing in a small town, small country town in a tuxedo, pumping gas. And it's amazing how I felt because I start answering questions people ain't even asking me. So I'm sitting there pumping gas. Somebody pulls up. Suddenly looking at me. I'm like, I'm going to the prom.

But I could feel it. They obviously knew I didn't get Dressed like that to go to the gas station. But that's kind of the way you.

Got to operate in your mind. In other words, you're living here, but.

You'Re dressed for there. I'm not dressed for where I'm at. I've got my mind dressed in a place where I'm headed. Don't look at where I am right now, because if you could get in my head and see what I see and know what I'm thinking, you would know where I'm going. You know why I talk like I talk and why I act like I'm acting? Why? Because my mind sees a place greater than where I am right now, and I'm getting ready for it. Somebody just wave at me and say, amen. Can I keep going?

Now, your mind basically has memory. And for intents and purposes, right now it has imagine, memory and imagination. So Paul said, forgetting those things which are behind. I press forgetting those things which are behind. I always wondered about that scripture. I taught it a little bit in Influencers. I want to bog down a little bit more. The Bible doesn't say, everything painful in your life develops selective amnesia. The word forget right there means to willfully. Unnotice means. In other words, the painful things of life are not a part of your focus. That's what people do. They live in the small room of their memory and they forfeit the world of their imagination that they can dream about. And they live trapped in that small room. And they're in their twenties and the calendar turns and in their thirties and the calendar turns and in their forties and then the calendar turns. And they've lived their whole life in regret from something that happened way back here. And they stayed locked in that room. I can experience anything I want to experience in my mind. I can be 36,000 miles in the feet in an airplane. 35 miles, 35,000ft in the air in an airplane. We can be flying and I can be heading across the country and I can begin to think about my grandbabies, babies. And a warmth will come up in my heart. A smile will come in my face. I'll think about something stupid they did. And I'm sitting there in a chair laughing. And the person next to me looks like I'm talking to myself and laughing. What am I doing? I'm not where my body is. I'm where my head is. Wherever your head is, that's where you are, not where your body is.

I can change my mind and start.

Thinking to the last person that did me wrong. The last person that hurt me, all of a sudden my blood pressure is going up, my hands are getting sweaty, my countenance has changed.

And I'm in an airplane. I'm not in a fight, I'm in an airplane.

But I'm experiencing it in my mind.

And I can go anywhere I want to go in my mind. I can experience any feeling I want to feel.

That's why the Bible says whatever's noble, whatever's pure, whatever is praiseworthy, think on.

It's not the thoughts that randomly shoot.

Through your head, it's where your thoughts rest. Those of you saying, okay, you're bringing me the Bible, but I'm a data guy, I'm a tech, I'm a science guy, I need some. It is scientific proof that when you have a thought in your head, you have 30 seconds to deal with it. Because after 30 seconds, it's followed by feeling. When the feeling sets in, then you've got to fight the thought and the feeling. The feeling is a whole lot tougher to fight. That's why the Bible says I take every thought and make it captive. I make it obey. I take every thought and take it into captivity to the obedience of Christ. In other words, I say, did God send that thought in my head? No. Then I take it captive. Because you're not in control of every thought that flies through, but you're in troll. You're in control of the thoughts that you meditate on.

And when you go to every hurtful experience, pull out the file cabinet and you focus on it, then the feelings follow. And we call that fear, we call that anxiety, we call it depression. I do know that there are chemical imbalances. I get all that. But I just want to challenge some of you who are always anxious. Where are your thoughts?

Resting.

Just let me challenge you. Some of you that are always scared, where is your mindset? Where's your mindset? Because where I set my thoughts, my feelings follow. And I can think about, experience and feel anything I want to in my head. Because your head has memory, your head has imagination. Now, not everything do you need to forget some things.

You need to remember victories, breakthroughs, triumphs.

Whenever you went through a trial and God gave you the victory, whenever you had a prayer and God answered it, whenever you had a mountain and God moved it, you need to remember that. Even God told Israel said, put stones of remembrance right here. And whenever you see an enemy you don't think you can win, come back and look at these stones and remember, I'm the Lord, your God that brought you out of Egypt with a mighty hand. So some things you remember, you've got to be able to use both to your advantage.

Let me show you. David.

Everybody knows David and Goliath, but go read the narrative today.

Watch what's happening. Memory. Imagination. So here's David, 12 years old with a slingshot.

Walking toward.

Philistine's greatest military machine.

He's not just a big man, he is a militia all by himself.

And here's a 12 year old walking toward him.

How does he do that?

I'll tell you how. Memory. I've killed a lion. I've killed a bear.

Then he switches from memory to imagination. He says, you come at me with a sword and a spear, but I come at you in the name of the Lord, God of hosts, who has given you into my hands this day. He imagined himself holding Goliath's head in his hand. He went from remembering every victory to imagining holding his hand in his head. And he let go of the rock and everything that he had his mind set on came to pass. I'm telling you, if you can get your mind to go there, it's just a matter of your time. And matter of time your life will follow suit around and high five three. People say you can change today. You can change today. Oh, hallelujah. Hallelujah.

I gotta quit. Your mind is programmed that if you.

Do not give it an imagination to.

Pursue, it is programmed to immediately retreat to memory.

So if you do not give it a tomorrow to concentrate and focus on because your mind is like a drill.

Bit, there's something called the law of focus. I don't have time to unpack that. The law of focus eliminates distractions.

And when you can make your mind, you don't think focus is hard.

Try to think on one thing for 10 minutes without breaking that thought. Focus is hard. But if you can focus, your mind is like a drill bit. You will hit oil if you can focus. Because I don't think the enemy has to stop you. I just think he has to distract you. Because broken focus kills every dream. I'm about to go buy my own CD and go home and listen to it.