1. Mindset

As some point, every single one of us believed something to be true only to later discover that it was completely false. A classic example would be [spoiler alert] the existence of Santa Claus. For many people when they were younger, they believed with all their heart in this existence of Santa. Their entire understanding of Christmas was based upon the jolly elf delivering presents to every child in the world in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer. However at some point the crushing truth came out that mom and dad were playing the role of St. Nick (even eating the cookies). This crushing reality triggered an entire re-wiring of your young mind; you literally changed the way you think about Christmas!  As people put their faith in King Jesus, the way they view the world begins to radically change; views on people, relationships, money, politics, meaning and purpose...it all begins to change.  The problem is sometimes we get hung up on certain ways of thinking that don't want to change, we call those barriers strongholds. A stronghold could be something like bitterness, control, jealousy, fear or anger. These strongholds are real and legitimate roadblocks to keeping us from living the life Jesus offers. In this new sermon series we are going to study the apostle Paul's teaching on how to breakthrough these strongholds in our lives and thus change the way we think. Here's what he teaches: "For though we live in the world we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." ~ 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 Check out this first sermon in this summer long journey of learning how to demolish a variety of different strongholds we all struggle with in our everyday lives.