Okay, you can open your Bibles to Hebrews 10 as you do. I just want to draw attention. If you've ever been to a service at a local church, if you've ever been in a service where the worship team is really demonstrative and they're expressive in their worship, and then everyone else is standing there like this. Have you ever been in that setting before?
Have you noticed that there's a difference in this house and worship? I want to draw attention to it's not just because of the worship leaders, it's because of the worship leaders, okay? And we can talk all day about the skill and the ability and the artful leading from the musicians and worship leaders and singers, but what makes us distinct as a house is the hunger of our hearts, and that you actually get to be worshipers when no one is watching. And when you come into a corporate setting, there's worship that billows out of your heart, and that's what actually makes this place one of his favorite places.
And I just said, that's what we're believing for, that this community, this house, that this, even this room would be one of his favorite places in all the earth. Can we just believe for that? I want to believe for that. What if he had one of his favorite places was in New Brighton, like St.
Anthony Village, Minnesota, and it was one of his favorite places in the earth? What if, right? What moves in his heart when we come together and worship? Okay.
Before we jump into the word, I do have one final announcement. And so could you put up that screen for owner's business meeting? Listen, okay, I know there's a notebook and it says business. And in some of the announcements we've said finances, okay?
And everybody's like not showing up to that meeting, but I have to tell you that this meeting is going to be incredible, okay? And you're gonna miss out if you're not there, okay? So how many of you were here on Vision Sunday? Probably half of you, because half of us show up to church every week, okay?
No. Listen, that was not a dig, it's just the facts, all right? Okay. It's like, nobody's coming now.
Everybody's offended. Unaffinable hearts. Okay, listen. Vision Sunday, we really see this owner's business meeting.
Just call it an owner's meeting, because it really is like a second half of Vision Sunday where the one, two, three, four alignment word, we're just gonna expound on that. We get to celebrate what God has been up to as a community. And maybe some of you guys are going, man, can I even come? Am I an owner?
Am I giving enough money or often? Just if you want to come, just come, okay? We're not gonna be checking out the door, okay? Of anything, actually, nothing.
We'll be checking out the door. You'll just be given donuts and coffee at the door, all right? So come on Saturday, it's gonna be amazing. We get to provide updates, celebrate together.
And if you call every day you're home, you're gonna wanna be there this Saturday. All right, here we go. And you're very consistent in your attendance. Ha ha ha.
Um, it just, right. We talked about the body and we've been talking about spiritual body, your identity in Jesus. And over the last couple months, we've just been diving into Jesus, died on a cross, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven. And we get, because of that, we get new natures, we get to become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.
I just picture all the things that we get because of what Jesus did. Now we're citizens of heaven. We're new creations. We're no longer orphans or slaves.
He's seated us with Christ in heavenly places. He's given us dominion, power and authority. We have every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. He's made us overcomers and conquerors.
He's setting us free from the law of sin and death. He's chosen us. We're born again. He's making us imitators of Jesus.
When we lay hands on the sick, they will recover. All of these truths are true about us because of what Jesus did. And we've been in this series talking about who are you now because of what Jesus did. And one of the things that we've learned is that all these things are true.
And we've been talking about spirit, soul and body that you are a spirit. You have a soul and you live in a body. You are a spirit. You have a soul and you live in a body.
And a couple weeks ago, we talked about the body and God's what God thinks about your body, how you interact with your body, how you relate with your body. And so this is part one of a week of a message called soul. So part one, there's going to be part two. There's going to be a two be continued tonight.
But as we're in Hebrews 10, I just want to read there. Hebrews 10, verse 14. We're going to start in verse 12. Says, but when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.
Waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. So the writer of Hebrews says, the priest in the Old Testament what they would do is they'd make sacrifices and their work was never finished. There was never like a chair in the temple because they had to keep on making sacrifices over and over again because people kept on sinning.
People just kept on sinning over and over and over again. So they had to keep on making sacrifices over and over and over again. And then Jesus comes in and once and for all, he makes one sacrifice for our sins. He has sins in heaven, applies his blood to the mercy seat.
And then what does he do? He takes a seat in the temple. In other words, it's finished, it's done. The work is done.
You don't have to try to earn it anymore. You don't have to try to make a bunch of sacrifices. There's people in our city right now that are literally sacrificing animals that follow other gods and other religions and they're sacrificing animals. For the gods, they're sacrificing food.
They're buying potato chips and offering them altars and Oreos and they're offering them as food offerings to gods in our city. That's happening right now. And we don't have to do that. I'm so glad.
I don't have to go to the grocery store. I don't have to offer pigeons. I don't have to offer little lambs and bulls because Jesus finished the work. Isn't that great?
That's good news. Okay. And then the writer of Hebrews says this, you've been perfected for all time. Whoa.
So he's perfected us. How has he perfected us spiritually in the spirit? So on the spirit level, that's who I really, that's my true identity, in the spirit, he's perfected me, made me the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. That's awesome.
But how many of you know that when you're in everyday life and you're struggling and things aren't lining up and you're not being who you are according to the spirit, that it can create confusion and frustration and unbelief if you're not able to understand that you are a spirit, that you have a soul and you live in a body. Listen, when you don't understand that you are three parts, things get confusing because when you read the scriptures and you go all of those things that you just read, all of those things that I was reading that we've been seeing with Christ and we're new creations and we're citizens of heaven. It's like, I don't feel like a citizen of heaven today. I don't feel like a new creation.
I don't feel like a citizen that is actually operating in my identity. I don't feel seated with Christ. I don't feel like I have dominion, power, and authority. The guy didn't get healed.
And I don't feel like I have every spiritual blessing. I don't feel like I'm chosen today or that I have a divine nature. I don't feel like I'm an imitator of Jesus. I don't, man, I for sure didn't see the sick well today.
Huh. And so we live in this tension. And I love what the writer of Hebrews says. Look at this, what he says.
He says, have been perfected for all time. Those who are being sanctified. What? You've perfected me and I'm still in process.
That's what that just says. That's what it says. You've perfected me and you're consecrating me or setting me apart. You've perfected me and you're making me different or holy.
That's what that says. So this is the storyline of every follower of Jesus is that we've been perfected but we're in process. How many of you have church heard? You don't have to raise your hand, okay?
Listen, a lot of us have church heard, okay? And do you wanna know why there's so much hypocrisy in the church? Because you might be perfected in the spirit. You might be born again.
But how many of you know that we're in process? And we have a soul that's not perfect. Our spirit's perfect but there's a lot of people that are in process and they're not doing very good at being in the process. Just to be honest, right?
So we have to understand that as we come into everyday life, we need to understand, yeah, that's true about my spirit but I have a soul and the soul is this, the mind, will and emotions. This is like a foundational night, okay? This is really important for you to understand. You have a soul which means you have a thought life.
You have desires, you have longings and you have emotions, that's what the soul is, okay? So what I wanna talk about just briefly is give a foundation for what the soul is and then we're gonna go into, does God have a soul? That's a really good question. And then we're gonna go into what I wanna talk about is how does it work?
Like how does the soul interact with our spirit and body? How does it actually flow in life, okay? So it's really important that we understand this so that we understand ourselves. You need to know you.
You need to get you or you're gonna have problems with you, okay? I like how I said that. Like you need to know, that was a good. Okay.
What is the soul? Your mind. So your soul is how you think. How many of you are like beavers and golden retrievers and otters?
You know what I'm talking about? No, everybody's like, nope. I didn't take that personality test, okay? ENTJs or IFJs, lots of letters, Myers-Briggs, yes.
That's part of your, it's your personality. And you know what that is? It's how you process information. How you think it's your thought life and your personality, your imagination, that's your mind, your imagination, your creativity, all of those elements are making up your mind and your thought life, okay?
Next is your will, it's your desire. It's your longings. You know what the world says is that you are what you desire. That's what the world says.
You are what you desire. So you are attracted to same sex, opposite sex, both sexes, both genders. And as that's your experience, you are actually defined and your identity is what you desire. So that's actually who you are.
What you want to consume is who you are. That's what culture says. That you are your soul. And the Lord is going, no, no, no, no, no, just because you have longings doesn't mean that that's your identity.
And so often we're actually lining ourselves up with what we feel or what we want and what we desire. And we're missing what God has actually purchased. He's purchased an identity for us. Not according to what the world says about us, but according to what he's done and what he's accomplished, right?
And so we have these desires, these longings, and they're good. Some of the desires are great and they're amazing. And some of them are like, wow, that's a desire from sin. And that's actually rooted in self rather than in love.
That's rooted in fear rather than in love, right? Your will is your resistance or acceptance to be controlled, your fight or your flight. And then we have emotions. How you feel, it's your tears.
When you feel discouraged or happy or sad or disgust or surprise, anger, shame, embarrassment, we know what emotions are, right? And so we have these elements, these are our soul. And one thing that I think is so fascinating is we talked about the body and how it's very unique, right? We talked about the human eye and the fingerprints and the voice and how it's like no other person in all of history, all those things, you are unique in your body.
But how many of you know that you're unique in your soul? That each of you have uniqueness in your soul, your personality, what you think is funny? Some of you, we wouldn't connect on humor, okay? And that's okay, there's this uniqueness that we have.
There's a uniqueness around, some of you have this brilliant mind with math and numbers. And the board will attest, that our financial board will attest, it's not my strength, okay? And that's why we have them, right? Thank you, Lord.
Tiffany is like pointing at people on the board. Like, yup, he's not good with it, is he? No, he is good at it, yes. Yeah, Greg is amazing with numbers.
But listen, listen, we all have these gifts that are different and they're unique, right? And we get to steward these gifts. And what I love about that is that you can steward these gifts that God has deposited in you and you can grow in them and you can grow them for the Lord and for the kingdom of heaven. It's like Stephen is using a gift and he could use his gift for himself.
He could use his prime for himself. Is that not right? He could try to get, he could try to have his talent get him fame. But he's using his gift as a gift to the Lord.
And what I'm not saying is if he did pop music, then he's doing it for himself. You can do pop music and it be for the Lord too, okay? It's not just like a worship thing, all right? There's the sacred secular thing that's getting destroyed.
That line is destroyed. Because he wants in to be in every day. He wants in the every day, he doesn't want just on Sundays, right? That's not how he rolls.
He's part of all of our days, all of the little details, okay? Okay, I didn't plan on talking about that. But there's uniqueness, what I'm saying is that there's uniqueness around your soul and the Lord loves that uniqueness and he uses it in really significant ways, okay? So, well, just picture this.
I think this is significant. We can be unified, like John 17, Jesus prays that we would be one as the Father and him are one. Is that right? He prays that prayer.
And when I look at some of you, I have nothing in common with you. Some of you, I don't have anything that would make us connected in life. And the only thing that's the commonality that we have is the Spirit of God, is our love for him. There's a common love in the Holy Spirit inside of us.
And that's why we're sitting in the same room. There's so many reasons why we wouldn't be sitting in the same room, but we're sitting in the same room and we're unifying together because of the Spirit, right? And so the uniqueness of our souls and the uniqueness of our bodies and the uniqueness of our experiences is every reason to not be unified. And especially in a city that is more and more polarized, there's actually one man that will unify us and it's him.
He's the one that will unify us and getting his heart will unify us and we get to express, this is what's beautiful, we get to express him through the uniqueness of our souls, through the uniqueness of how we think, how we process all of our gift sets and our personalities. So what happens is his identity, I just picture God saying be fruitful and multiply and have dominion. And he's picturing all of the millions and millions of people walking around uniquely themselves, but with the Spirit of God inside of them. And so they express his image different.
There's an expressing of the image of God that you are all called to, but it's going to look like him and look like you together. And it's so, it's unique and it doesn't make any sense. And this is why a lot of times people think that they want to be like the people that they see upfront and you need to leave every single service wanting to be you with him. I wanna say that again, you need to leave every awakening service awakened to not try to be like someone else, but be you with him, you be with him, you be with him and you be you.
Don't try to be like a leader that you see upfront, don't try to be like a worship leader, don't try to put a mic in your hand, no, you get to be the businessman that is doing sales and you get to be the businessman doing sales with all of the brilliance of people skills that you have and you get to be yourself with him and if we were all trying to be like someone else, it would be bad for the body. But we line ourselves up under the head. How many of you know that the body of Christ has a head? And Jesus is the head, he's the thinker.
We just do this stuff, we are the limbs and he's the brains. So whenever he says we go, we express in our uniqueness throughout the earth, okay? All right, what I wanna do is I wanna talk about the Lord and take a stab at trying to answer it as God, have a soul. It almost feels weird to even ask the question, like yeah, you have a soul.
And there's only one place in the Bible that says that he has a soul and it's in Leviticus 26 in terms of the Father. And Leviticus 26 says that his soul abhors evil. That was the only place I could find where it says that the Lord has a soul, okay? But when I look at the Father, I see those three things present.
I see a thought life, I see emotions and I see desires. He designed us to be like him. I love that, I love that. So how is he, God has a thought life, right?
Turn in your Bible to 1 Corinthians 2, 11. 1 Corinthians 2, 11. We're on our home stretch here, if you're hot. It's crazy, it's February and it's just steamy in here.
Yeah, all right, 1 Corinthians 2, 11. Paul is, he's talking about how by the spirit, God reveals things to us and he's prepared things for us and the spirit's gonna reveal those things to us. It says these things, God has revealed to us through the spirit, for the spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. Whoa, okay, I'm gonna continue to read.
Verse 11, for who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him. So also no one comprehends or understands the thoughts of God except the spirit of God. Paul starts giving commentary on how we operate and how we work as humans, do you see that? He's going, hey, this is what happens.
You have thoughts and if you ever been able to take a thought, like we did this actually at class this Wednesday, I want you to close your eyes. And I want you to picture an interaction that you had with a person today. Just picture an interaction that you had with a person. And I want you to remember that.
And I want you to start observing that. And I want you to take that memory or that image and turn it into being black and white in your imagination. And I want you to actually take that scene and slow it down into slow motion and notice details in that memory. What's happening as you're doing that?
You can look up. What's happening as you're doing that? This is another tool to show you you are not your thoughts. Because you can literally take your thoughts and examine them and change them and manipulate them.
So you just adjusted that reality, that idea, and you could take it and examine it and comprehend it or understand it. And so what our spirit does is takes our thoughts and brings understanding. And we can actually be separate from our thoughts and look at them. How many of you have ever had a bad day?
And you're just having a rough day, but your perspective is probably the biggest problem. It's not even the circumstances, it's actually my attitude. And you're able to notice it and you go, wait a second, what's happening here? And you pause and you notice something's off.
And you take the thought and you go, I'm going to name God, what is going on here? Is there a lie that I'm believing that's actually making me feel this way? And what you're doing is you're allowing the Holy Spirit to come in and bring comprehension and understanding to your thought life. And then you can agree with him to change your thoughts.
And that's how the Holy Spirit works, is he actually loves changing the way that we think. That's something that he's really good at, okay? Is it not wild to think that God has the thought life? You know, in Psalm 139 says that his thoughts are about me, are more than the particles and like the pebbles of sand on a beach.
Just for me, he has that many thoughts. I truly am, I truly, I don't know what the number would be of his thoughts about me. He has a thought life about you. Multiply that times eight billion.
What? That is mind-boggling. His thought life is so expansive. How many thoughts he has, right?
And who's the one that searches all of his thoughts out? Person, Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit searches all of the depths of his thought life and understands all of them and comprehends them. And guess who's inside of you?
The Holy Spirit. So God has trillions of thoughts about you. And then he says, I'm gonna give you the one that actually gets it. I'm gonna give you the one that actually understands all of the Father's thoughts about you.
And I'm gonna give him to you as a gift. He's a person and you get to have him live inside of you. You're a temple of the Holy Spirit now. He's gonna live inside of you.
Wow, what a gift. Thank you Lord. I'm so glad you're in me, right? That is so good.
I'm so happy about that. Okay, so the Lord has a thought life. Number two, he has desires. First Timothy two, four, it says that he desires that all people would be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.
Man, that is unbelievable that God has desires that he know is gonna be unmet. Can you believe that? When the Lord said, I'm gonna put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden, he signed up to have a desire that all would know him knowing that many wouldn't. That is so meek and humble of him to actually sign up to have desires unmet.
Do you know some of us, when we don't get what we want, we get fleshy? Oh no. It's just a failed expectation. I'm just having a hard day, right?
And we get all upset. Cause we aren't getting what we want. How many of you know that the Lord has these desires? And he knows that he's not gonna have the fullness of what he desires and yet he's still perfect love.
And he's still perfect patience and humility and kindness and gentleness and he doesn't have a bad day. That's amazing. You don't have a bad day? No, I don't.
Wow, that's great. You mean circumstances don't dictate how your day is gonna go? You mean other people around you aren't the ones that decide whether you're gonna have a good day? You mean even when you don't feel up for it?
That doesn't actually dictate whether you're gonna have a good day or not? Yeah. Okay. Emotions.
God has emotions. Psalm 711, it says, God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation every day. Whoa. You feel indignation and anger every single day.
He is perfect love and because he's perfect love, he hates all of the sin that's been done against us. All the sins that have been done against the least of these, he has indignation and wrath and anger and even hatred for all of the sins that have been done against his children. Pre-children of God or children of God, he hates all of the sins that are done against the sins of man. It's the sons of man.
And he says, I'm gonna pour out my wrath and my indignation on all of it. Like whoa. That doesn't seem like the nice, good, new, like gospel, Jesus, your love and your amazing and your new testament. No, no, no, no, he's the Old Testament God.
And he's gonna pour out wrath on sin. But guess what? He already did. There's a day coming where he's gonna actually pour out wrath on sin in its entirety, but he already did it to Jesus so that all who come to repentance can actually have all of their sins removed as far as the east is from the west and they don't have to suffer with any wrath or indignation, right?
And so that's why Jesus says forgive them. They know not what they do and we follow in the footsteps of Jesus with our oppressors and we go, Father, forgive them that they wouldn't actually suffer under the indignation and wrath of God. Would you actually bring them into relationship with you so that they could actually be forgiven of all their sins past, present and future? God has the emotion of joy and gladness.
The Lord your God is in your midst. A mighty one who will save. We were talking about mighty to save. He will rejoice over you with gladness.
He will quiet you with his love. He will exalt over you with loud singing. I just picture God rejoicing and full of joy with gladness. Can you imagine God's face just glad?
He's just a glad God. Just a happy, like your demeanor. It's so glad Lord, right? You look at him and it's like, what's, why is he so glad?
Okay. And then he's going, I'm gonna sing over you. I'm gonna exalt over you. I'm literally God singing over us.
Do you think when Jesus or the Father sings over you? Listen, do you think they sing like a bunch of monks in the Himalayans? Do you think that's what they sound like? Oh, no, no, no.
Do you think that's what when the Lord sings over you? What would it sound like for the God that is glad to sing over you? Oh my goodness, I wanna know. I wanna just use my imagination to picture him singing over me.
Perfect love getting expressed through a song over me. Wow, God, you have emotions. You're not a one-dimensional caricature flannel graph. Listen, he's not a flannel graph.
He's three-dimensional, four-dimensional. I don't know how many dimensions he is, but he's got a lot of them and he's a person, okay? This is encouraging because then he understands that we have emotions. So he gets it, when you have emotions, he gets it.
And he understands, he understands the feelings. He understands the emotions. And what's beautiful about it is that all of his emotions come from a place of perfection. So in his anger, he doesn't sin, right?
And in his love, there's not compromise. He's actually fully perfect in all of his emotions and his desires and longings and thoughts. Okay, this is how it plays out. We're at Home Stretch again, okay?
Home Stretch. Listen, I know it's warm, but just like, we're gonna wake up, all right? This is important because this is, you need to understand to you, okay? You need to get you.
This is how it works, okay? So what happens is we have this identity and then we have our soul, our mind-well and emotions, and then that gets expressed through our bodies, okay? Through what we say, where we go, what we do with our hands and our fingers and all that stuff, okay? So there's choices that we make and there's a flow here.
I'm talking about like a pipeline, all right? We do things according to our understanding of who we are. There goes my notes. What am I gonna do?
I'm just kidding. So I wanna give an example of how God operates. This is how God operates. He's perfect love.
So he's love. That's his identity. Everybody say love. That's his identity.
Then he has a thought or an idea. And he has an idea and his idea is, I want them with me where I am. That's his idea that he has. And then he has a desire.
I desire that all would come to the knowledge of truth, right? And then he has compassion and he looks at all of us. And he has compassion and love. And what does he do, John 3 16, for God so loved out of his identity that he gave his only son.
So he takes action, right? And that's the flow of identity. What's the next thing? I wanna give an example of him, or give an example of us and operating in our identity.
So you're a worshipper, right? You go to work Monday mornings and you have an idea. Work is worship. You have this idea.
Work is worship, okay? And then you go, man, I have this idea and I have this desire that you would be honored and that you would be made much of with my work, right? Then from that place, I decide I'm gonna show up to work early. Oh man.
I'm gonna not press this news button and I'm gonna actually show up to work early. Wow, because I'm a worshipper, right? Okay, this is something else, this is the other spectrum. Let's say you're a saleswoman, you're a saleswoman and you've been killing it.
You're the top five in your international company. You're the top five in sales, all right? You're a high performer. And as a high performer, it's become part of your identity.
So your identity is I'm a high performer. In your soul, you live in a man's world. Is that right? And because you live in a man's world, there's this desire that you have that you would be respected by your colleagues, right?
And so I have this desire to be respected by my colleagues as seen as an equal because there's a gender gap and our female businesswomen have to go over hurdles that men don't have to go over, right? And so there's these practical things. It's not something that's made up, it's actually these real dynamics that every businesswoman has to face, okay? And so there's this desire for respect but there's this drive of I will be seen and known, right?
And I'm gonna show up to work early and I'm gonna grind. And I'm the top 5% in my company until someone starts spreading rumors about me and I start losing accounts. And now I'm in the bottom 25th percentile and I have to go back into this zone, a motion zone and go, what do I do with this? Because I'm having emotions and I feel embarrassment.
I feel anger and I have a choice. Am I going to deal with this identity of a high performer? Am I going to break up with that identity? Or am I actually gonna hold onto that identity and protect it?
And oftentimes I think a lot of us are protecting false identities and we don't wanna actually face it but we have false identities in our performance and what we can produce in our gift set, in our souls and all those things, they're actually lying to us about our identity. And this is what you do, you start going, okay, I have to work harder. Or I get bitter and I quit, right? So I've had enough of this, I'm too discouraged and I get depressed and discouraged and I just am done.
Or, see, it's flight or fight, right? Or I'm gonna show up even earlier and I'm gonna grind harder so that you actually see me because I desire to be known because I want to be known as a high performer, right? This is how it works in our daily life. It flows from identity through our mind-willing emotions and then we make decisions and we move, okay?
God is calling us as a people into alignment, aligning under our identity that He's purchased. And I believe that this is something that just gets worked out and there's gonna be part two of like how do we see transformation in our souls? How do we see this actually play out in everyday life? And so it's important for us though to name and notice.
There's something off here. I wonder if it's attached to a false identity that's actually not true. Let's all stand, I just wanna respond to the Lord. God has given us these identities in the gospel that actually gets to be expressed through our unique souls and our personalities so that on the exterior, we can reveal His image, okay?
We are image bearers that get to reveal just like Jesus. He was the exact image imprint. Jesus published who God is through His body and through His life, right? And so Jesus expresses, this is who I am.
He does that, but He does that from His identity. Getting expressed through His unique personality and humor, and all of the elements of like, Jesus had a personality, okay? And then it gets expressed as this is what God is like. Are you revealing what God is like with your unique personality?
Lord, I just thank you that you have called us as image bearers. Lord, I thank you that you care for our souls, that we can cast all our anxieties on you because you care. Lord, I thank you that the peace of God which transcends all understanding, all of what we think in our brains, it actually guards our minds. Lord, we thank you that your spirit guides us into thinking truth, thinking right thoughts.
Lord, we thank you that you're the good shepherd that restores our souls. You are such a good leader, and we love following you and lining up with your spirit. Holy Spirit, we wanna fall in line one, two, three, four. We wanna come in alignment with our souls and our bodies under your leadership in the spirit.
In Jesus name, amen, amen. Amen, there's people up front that would love to pray with you after the service, if you wanna receive prayer.