Identity Crisis | Week 4 | Bill Bush

Jeremiah right here, wanna show. Jeremiah 17 says this, the human heart is the most deceitful of all things and desperately wicked. And it says, who really knows how bad it is?

So if we look at ourselves and we look at people and say, follow your heart, follow your heart, follow your heart, the bible's saying, that's a horrible mistake because your heart lies to you.

That's what sin really did. We said we're born into a sinful broken world. We think it's we're just born with a propensity to do dumb things. It's deeper than that. It says we are born with a heart that actually deceives our ourselves. And the other thing you understand about heart

when scripture is when we hear heart, you just think feelings. The biblical times, the culture, what this word really meant, heart was not just the center of your feelings. That was your guts. Matter of fact, we still have a throw from that. Hey, I had a gut feeling. That's

what it really meant. It was your guts was just the center of feeling. But that would be terrible to continue today because Valentine's cards would be really gross. The heart was where kind of your emotion met your intellect. It's basically where emotion and thought makes a plan.

And and and so what the Bible is saying is because we are born into this lie that Adam and Eve bought, we're born into this concept that we just tend to naturally believe the lie that I have to go discover who I am. And life is about enjoying that. And we think our identity is something we have to go discover

when the reality is you do not discover your identity. It's something to be recovered.

Because when Adam and fell for the lie, Satan said, hey, what you really need to be all you could be. If you really wanna have a good life, you want you need to not listen to God's word. So the first thing he did is don't trust God. Did God really say don't do this?

Got doubt, and then when he planned it, he says, if you go do this, you'll be like God. Well, if you read the creation story, we are created to be image bearers. We're to be mirrors to reflect God. It says we were already created in God's image. We were created to be like God.

So Satan was promising them something they already had. But what he meant with that temptation was something a little bit more. It wasn't really you'll be God, is you won't need God. You can there's something God's holding out on you. Basically, there is something about who you need to be and what you can experience

that God will be in your way if you believe him. And we are born into that reality, every one of us. It's called idolatry. We have a natural tendency to go that way and we have a natural tendency to listen to our hearts and the problem is our heart lies. Our heart is bought into that brokenness. We are broken mirrors now.

And the only way to find who you are is you are either in Adam, which is that Adam, we follow the lie, or you are in Christ. Everything else about us, your personality, the things that make you different and unique, which God has created us, we're all very unique, that's the frame of the mirror.

But we're still supposed to be mirrors. We might have unique frames, but our identity is to reflect the image of God. And when we follow our heart, we will definitely go away from that. And so that's kind of the big idea for today to talk about this identity crisis thing. It's simply this, when we make desire

our definition, it leads to a dead end.

When we make desire because that's a better word than feeling. Desire is kinda like what the heart means in the Bible. It's it's this this idea that you feel something, but you also kinda see it. There's like you see the pathway. The desire meets a plan. It meets your thoughts. And so it says, hey. This desire makes me say, that seems like the right way to go. That seems to make sense. That's kinda how I'm wired. That's kinda what I long for. That's kinda what I desire.

And it's interesting when you think about that, it says it's kinda like your feeling, your thought, your passion,

it meets the desire. In other words, I'm gonna go back to a verse we've read, Proverbs fourteen twelve. Says this, there's a path before each person that seems right, but in the end,

it ends in death. This is saying the path, it's that's really the desires of your heart. You you you have a desire and your intellect works. And it says that it the way it works is with our broken world, you long for something, you desire something, you look in your logic and the way our brains work. It says, this seems to be a right way to go. This seems like this will work.

And God's saying there's a lot of things in our life that'll seem like it's a good path. It'll seem like it's right. You will have this desire to go, and I'm telling you, I will kill you if you go down that way. No. That's not what God is saying.

He's saying, I'm telling you, you're not gonna find what you think down that road. You might be happy in the moment. You might experience years of like, this is awesome. But when your life ends, when you come to the end of it, you realize it was a dead end. It was a dead end.

Every one of us struggles with that. That's the topic of today. Every one of us struggles with wanting to define ourselves by our desires,

define ourselves by the longings of our heart, Design, hey, this is my I gotta go for my heart. I gotta listen to my heart because that's the dream of my heart. And the problem is it's a lie. It's a lie.

James talks about it in James one. I don't have time to read it. Go read it. But James one talks about where does sin come from? The action. And he says it starts with a desire,

a longing in your heart. A way I'm wired this way. You can even be born this way. I'm born with a desire to go down this road, and and you have this longing. He goes, the problem is you start to make a plan. That's the heart in the bible. The heart. You start to come up with a pathway, and you pursue it. And he says, once you start to have a desire that you pursue, it says now sin is born. Sin is I've now broken. I've I've basically, like Adam and Eve, grabbed the fruit. I said, I am not gonna do what God said to do. I'm gonna do what I wanna do, and I'm gonna do it my way. You can even go after something God said to do, but you do it the wrong way.

And you are now birthed into sin. And he says, once sin has happened, it says it grows. And what it means by that is you lean into it more. And you lean into it more, it just keeps going.

That's the path. That's this wrong path, and that's what we need to understand how it works. So what I really wanna spend a few moments in showing you the pattern and how to avoid the pattern is I wanna look at another passage, but I wanna read you this quote because I think this passage in James and what I'm trying to talk about can be summed up in this quote from Mark Deaver. It says this,

sin once tolerated seeks to be accepted, and sin once accepted seeks to be celebrated. So what he's trying to say is the sin, the way the path that seems right to us, the desire of our heart, we seek to tolerate it. Make it okay. I'm gonna go for it. It's okay for me.

But there's something weird about us as humans, and you can see it in our society that once we accept something, we seek to get others to accept it.

That's why there's so many weird things out there that the church now the world's saying, I can't believe you Christians believe this. You know why? Because everybody says, so what? I disagree with you. What's the big deal?

Because this is what I think is right, and I need you to tell me that what I'm doing is right too. Otherwise, you're intolerant. My dad warned me. He died in 2003, and he said, son, the biggest battle you're gonna face moving forward as a pastor is that the world has redefined what the word tolerance means.

He goes, when I went off to war, I got out of a a hole in the ground and charged beaches

and and fought for freedom. It was for for it to be a place where we have the freedom of ideas and we have tolerance of one another. Tolerance used to mean, I will go put my life on the line for the freedom for you to think you're right and for the freedom for me to say, I think you're wrong and going to hell.

But I will not abuse you because of our difference. Now tolerance is, if you don't think my way is right, you're intolerant. That's this quote happening. You need to accept it. And then once it gets accepted, it then seeks to be partied about. Let's celebrate it.

And I'd add one line to this that comes from leadership and from practical experience is what gets celebrated gets repeated. You know that. If you're a leader in an organization, if you have some values in your organization and you want people to repeat those values, what do you do?

You reward it. You celebrate it. You celebrate the things that you want to be repeated. Except for birthdays. We don't like our birthdays being repeated, but we continue to celebrate them. That's the exception to the rule.

But so what happens is we tolerate, then we wanna accept it, then once it's accepted, you seek to celebrate it. Once something starts to get celebrated, it grows. The sin, it grows, and it takes on more of a life.

And that's what we see in Romans chapter one. I know we went through Romans for the last for months starting back before before Christmas. But Romans one, we were in that way before Christmas. But I wanna look at this part of Romans again in chapter one because it lays out this pattern very clearly.

It does. And and and it and it gives examples of it. But in Romans chapter one, it starts off in verse 18

and it says this, but God shows his anger from heavens against all sinful wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.

They know the truth about God because he's made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. We suppress truth. Remember he said there's a way that seems right? Our brokenness, our hearts, we lie to us, and then our intellect

kinda sees things and puts it in a way that it seems to make sense, but we're missing the whole point. He goes, yes, they knew God, but they wouldn't worship him as God. Here's the real problem. This is why we suppress truth. We don't wanna worship God.

We wanna be God.

They wouldn't worship him or even give him thanks. And they began to think of foolish ideas about what God was like.

See, that's like once you have the plan that seems right to you, once you have the plan, we do this as Christians too. Once we have something that says, if God's word says don't do it that way, we start to change who God is rather than change where we're going.

And that's where you get fights within the church. You have people like, well, now God wouldn't really do this. It's okay. It's like, but that's not what his word says. We're right back to the original line. Satan's like, did God really say that?

And then he says, and as a result, their minds became dark and confused. That's where you start to see a path that completely makes sense in a dark and confused way. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools.

And instead of worshiping the glorious ever living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people, birds, and animals, and reptiles. We don't worship those things, but the whole idea was they start to worship because we're built to worship something. That's our identity. We're built to be an image bearers of God. Our identity is really found in that. So when we worship other things, yeah, it might not just be a statue.

What it's really saying is we look for something else to put the value in. We look for something else to find our identity in. We look for something else. That's why your identity is recovered, not discovered.

Even if you're trying to discover it through something that the bible doesn't say is bad, like having a job is good, being a spouse is good, being a parent is good. Those are all missional things God's blessed us with and called us to. But if you find your identity in it, what he's really trying to say is you've replaced an actual creator

to find meaning in the created things. That's the idolatry. So idolatry is when you take anything, even a good thing, and make it the god thing, that's a bad thing. So if you even try to find your identity in anything in creation, including and especially from within your heart, creation has been distorted by sin.

So you, even if it's a good thing, it's a distorted good thing, and it's still cheap because we were created to be in the image of God, not in the image of the creation. And that's why anything you go after that's of the created world is gonna be a dead end.

Even if it feels great right now, even if it seems like you experienced a wonderful life your whole life, you're gonna come to a dead end when you realize you missed the whole point.

You missed it all. You missed the whole point. That's what he's kinda saying. So what does God do? So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. His answer was, okay. Fine. I love you. I have grace. I'm gonna go ahead. Find out for yourself.

As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other's bodies. This is interesting. The rest of this part is I find it interesting throughout all if you study history throughout all culture, whenever we start to find identity and create things, whenever we start to live in the distortion,

whenever we start to listen to our hearts,

sex and sexuality is the first thing that gets distorted.

It's the first thing. I'll explain why in a little while. They traded the truth about God for a lie, so they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the creator himself. That's one of the reasons why we go through sex and sexuality.

We replace God with us. And what's one of the most pleasurable things? Where do we find really identity? In relationship, in the sense of family, in sexuality. That's the next biggest thing to try to find who you are in.

Who is worthy, the crazy who is worthy of eternal praise, amen. It's almost like he was, hey, this is getting kinda heavy, so I'm gonna stop. God's worthy of eternal praise, remember that, amen. Woo hoo. Alright, let's back to the dark stuff. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires.

Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex instead and indulge in sex with each other.

And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and the result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved.

Since they thought And you know what that Is God cursing them? No. He's trying to say, you're gonna go down this dead end road. It's not gonna give you what you think it is, and you're gonna have issues, but you're gonna blame those issues on something else. You're gonna be stuck in this thinking.

So since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness.

Sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception. See, he's saying it's not just about the sexual thing. The point of this passage is not the sexual distortion. It's not the gender distortion. That's not the point. That's an illustration.

This is that was in his time the best illustration he could give of what happens when you follow the heart. What happens when you find your identity in your heart.

What happens when you find your identity in in your natural cravings and longings that you're born into? He's saying this is an example. It's not the point. Because he goes on to say there's all kinds of other things that happen when we follow this pattern. And it's this we we he says we have sin, greed, hate, envy,

murder, quarreling, deceptive. He's like all sin is really coming out of this. Malicious behavior and gossip. They're backstabbers, Seahawks fans, haters of God.

Dallas Mavericks fans instead of Suns. Go Suns. Sorry, I just did it in there. This gets really intense, so I gotta kinda lighten the load here every minute. They're insolent, proud, boastful. See, think we all fit into something in that category.

And he goes, they invent new ways of sinning. So, hey, there's one I didn't even list, but, man, you guys are creative. You took the creative image I put you. I'm a creative God. I made you creative. We put our creativity towards other ways to rebel against god and ruin our lives.

And then he goes, they do new ways of sinning, and then the final thing is, and they disobey their parents. I always thought that was odd, that that was the exclamation point on all this.

That of all of this stuff, you're murderers, you're slanderers, you're this. And you know what? You don't even listen to your mother or your father.

It does show you that God does take serious the command honor thy father and mother.

Matter of fact, I have way too long of a sermon, but I just thought of this, so I'm gonna say it. If you're looking to marry someone, watch how they treat their parents.

Especially ladies, watch how a guy treats his mom. That'll tell you more than the words that come out of his mouth. End of end of mini sermon.

They refuse to understand. That's what I'm Refuse to understand means there could be understanding, but we're so blocked into this way of thinking that if you look at God's way, that seems ridiculous to you.

Break their promises are heartless and have no mercy. They know God's justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyways. And here's the part that this goes with this quote, worse yet, they encourage others to do them too. You celebrate it.

And when you start celebrating it, it starts growing because people want to be encouraged. They're like, yeah, I wanna be part of the club. I wanna be a part of this. I wanna do this. And what he's saying is, are you finding your identity in the creator or in anything in creation?

Because if you do, you're gonna chase after your heart and your heart lies. And you're gonna find a path that you think seems right. And here's the problem, when that path disagrees with what God says, you have a dilemma. You have a dilemma.

And we're in a society and a world that we have a fight about some of this stuff even within the church.

Now like I said, chapter two verse one, go read chapter two. He goes, and you know what? Now he's talking to the Christians. He says, and you think they should be judged and you wanna condemn them and act this way. He goes, guess what? You're no better. We do these same things.

But what we like to do is react to the sins that gross us out or bother us more so we make it about them. We turn the sinner into the enemy instead of the enemy who's the enemy.

And the sinner, the people that are trapped are prisoners of war. You go get prisoners of war, you help them be free. The gospel mission we've been given is we are to be great crashers, not gatekeepers.

And many of us as Christians think we're a gatekeeper of truth, and we like to condemn anyone who sins in a way that we don't like when chapter two goes on to say, we do the same things, it just plays out differently,

and yet we condemn them, and we wanna bomb the prisoners of war, stay behind our gates, our fortress mentality, when we're not supposed to be the gatekeepers, we're supposed to go crash the gates and bring the love of Christ. But we get stuck in our world. And so what's happening is is Clayton,

our our young adults pastor, I was talking about this, and he actually said something wise. I was shocked. So I said I should share it with everybody.

He says, you know what I've noticed with the same topic with young adults because some of the you know, the the greatest illustration I gotta take a moment to talk about, the sexuality thing because I think that is a hot topic. It was then, it still is today, and there's a reason and it will continue to be. But he said, I was talking about it, he says, well here's what I see happening.

The enemy likes to create a false enemy. So we get busy fighting this other enemy, so we don't pay attention to what the real enemy is actually doing. And that's what's going on. When this idea of following your heart, finding your destiny and your desires, trying to define yourself by your desires,

trying to run after that. We all do that. We have to fight that. But when it comes to sex, sexuality, gender, and all of that topic that's a hot topic right now, that is being blasted and fought. Even Christians are fighting with Christians. 54% of American Christians think that sexuality doesn't matter to God.

That if if if you wanna live in a homosexual lifestyle, well, actually, gay is what to be called, or or you want to identify as a different gender, all of those things. All I'm lumping in everything that has to with sexuality. I would even lump in heterosexuality.

I wanna just sleep around, or I wanna live with my boyfriend or girlfriend. All of that is a distortion of what God meant the family, gender, and sexuality to be all about. And 55%

of Christians say, I don't know what the big deal is. If two people love each other, if you really feel this way, you were born. Like if God created you and you were born that way, why would he tell you not to be that way?

Well, if you read your bible, God says we're born with lots of things that we long for that are not accurate. We live in a broken, mere world. So just because you're born that way doesn't make it right. Every one of us is born with longing, desires, and things that do not jive with the image of God at all.

And that's why Paul said, I long to be released from this earthly tent. Because he loved the Lord, but he also knew I still carry on the shadow of my old self that makes me long and I fight. That's why in Ephesians six, says, put on the full armor of God and know the enemy's tactics and be ready to stand firm against him because you will constantly be barraged

to go after things that were actually born inside of us. The problem is I'm fighting an enemy out there that's trying to draw out the enemy that's still within.

And what's happening is that quote, is our society now as we've taken things at God says, that's not what I intended.

Let me use sexuality as an example. Guys, this isn't the point. I want you to remember this. The big idea applies to all of us. I'm using the hot topic to explain it because there's three people in this room I'm talking to right now. First, some of you are actually struggling with sexuality issues

that don't jive with what God says, what his word says. And you're struggling with it. To you, I say this, you're not the enemy. God's not your enemy. But the truth in love is what we need to speak. And if you notice that when Jesus says speak the truth in love, the key thing is truth. You use love. Love

is not avoiding truth that you need to know. And the truth is this, that thing you're struggling with is not who you are. That is not your identity. It was never meant to be. But here's what makes this issue such a hot topic today is years ago, somehow the world took that dot of sexual

sexuality and gender and and people having thoughts and desires and longings and being born into these longings and cravings and and stuff that's different than what God says

and said, that's not just a dot that you struggle with. We've done what my dad said. People take the dot where they're at, draw a circle around it, and call it a bull's eye. And what we've done is what the enemy did to distract us and get us as Christians to fight amongst ourselves because it seems mean

to have somebody be born with a longing and then tell them you can't do that. Well, when you make it an identity, now if you say God doesn't want this for you, you say God doesn't want me.

If you would trust me, I would tell you that's a lie. You've listened to a lie. And that lie builds on this lie that builds on that. That's the path that seems right to man. It's not true.

And that goes to the other two types of people, and you don't struggle with those issues, but there's the ones I call the cruise ship Christian.

And you're the ones that say, well, I'd be mean to tell someone, I can't stand on this, so what's wrong with it if two people love each other? If two you think it's okay and you think you're being loving. Guys, if someone is hitting on a dead end and you say nothing, that is the opposite of love.

To love someone doesn't mean you affirm everything they do. You know that naturally as a parent.

But that's where this twisted thinking, it says our thinking gets clouded and it seems we think we're wise, we think we figured it out, But we get bizarro world because in the sexuality, especially the gender issue, they're letting like five year olds decide what their gender's gonna be. And we think that's wise.

I guarantee you, if you are a parent that's doing that, you are not letting them decide if they think they should go to school anymore. You're not letting them decide what they're gonna eat every meal.

See how the the the thinking gets clouded, and the Christians are the ones with our heads stuck in the sand? Think with real logic. Let's go to the science. Let's go to the math. Let's go to the actual reality. Why would you let a kid make a decision like that that they don't even understand

when you won't let them make other decisions that are a lot less complicated? Because our thinking has been skewed and we've been told that this is the way to go. And if you're struggling with that, know you think you're helping your child. It's a dead end. And I love you enough to tell you, you are not the enemy.

You are struggling with the same thing we all are. It's just that your battle hurts a lot worse because it's way more personal because we have a world that's now celebrated this thing. But for those of us that are Christians that want to avoid the truth,

you think let's just be loving your cruise ship, man. You think we're cruising the seas to just have a party, and you go, get on the boat, who cares what you live like? Let's conga line for Jesus and then go back to your room to whatever. I don't really wanna know what your life's like. We'll all have fun.

But then some of us in this room are exactly what chapter two's warning about in Romans. You're a battleship. You think your call is to find an enemy to sink them. And you think the battle is you know what the real problem is? This homosexual agenda,

this liberal thing. Yeah, that is a battle. There is an agenda, you're making all apostrophe, and so all you wanna do is you're mad at the people that are struggling with the sin. You're mad at the people that are just like you.

And that's what's really turned the world against Christianity is when we act that way. Yeah, you got the truth part light, but you don't understand love and you don't understand the mission. They're not the enemy, they're the prisoners of war.

We all are. You know what we're supposed to be? A coast guard cutter. Anyone in the coast guard, here's your one chance to get a story that you're the hero. Good job, Coast Guard. You get your mission. They're armed. They have weapons. They defend. They'll call out lawlessness, but the priority is to protect people.

The priority is to find people in sinking vessels and make sure you save the lives. That's what we should be. So if you're here struggling with this, you've probably felt like you either feel affirmed by cruise ship Christians or totally blown out of the water by battleship Christians. Those are both wrong.

But I'm telling you, your identity is not your sexuality because once you believe that, now you believe I could never have contentment in life. I can never find joy and purpose in life. I can never be me if I don't live this out. That's the second lie.

God says that's a dead end. You'll never find what you think you're looking for down that road. I'll be honest, if you stand against this, you say, I'm gonna honor God. I'm gonna go after what God wants for family, sexuality.

It's gonna be a fight the rest of your life. You don't pray gay away. You just don't. It's like there's there's there's things in my life that just doesn't go away.

We'll see how that works in a minute. But just to give you a few numbers, like to to show you numbers of why that quote, what Romans one says about what gets celebrated gets repeated, things grow. And and and like there's there was a a study done in 2021 by Gallup that says, how do people identify sexually by generation?

And the the traditionalist born before 1946, about point eight identify as a nontraditional, like, you know, gay or, you know, transgender or whatever. It's just nontraditional. Only point 8%. Baby boomers born between '46 and '64 is 2.6%.

Gen x, my generation, the greatest generation ever because we had the greatest music when we were in high school,

is 4.2%. The millennials born between '81 and '96 is 10.5. And the current generation starting to they're little or they're really starting to enter into adulthood, the Gen Z born between 1997 and 2003, 20.8%. Now here's what's weird about this. A lot of people say this is growing

because there's always been a lot more people that struggled and it was just in society. It was shameful, so you hide it. There's always a little bit of that. But that's how people currently identify. So you don't find the older generations this, well now that it's okay, I'm coming out. It's rapidly growing

because it's being celebrated.

It's not just because people always were and they needed to come out, because there was a study done in Sweden. You think it's just because of persecution, first of all, alternate lifestyles has not been persecuted in this country for a long time. It's flipped a while ago.

It's actually celebrant. We know that. Our high schoolers, so you talk to any one of our youth pastors, I go, it's hard because it is cheered to accept that I'm gonna take on a different lifestyle. It's exactly what the Bible says is happening.

And so you're thinking, okay, if it's not the shame of hiding and the guilt, people thought things would be better. But we have known historically in this country that if people that struggle with sexual identity,

which you shouldn't find your identity in it, that's really what I think the struggle is. But when you struggle with with with thinking, I want this alternate. I'm struggling with my gender. I'm struggling with my sexual

what I'm attracted to. I'm struggling with that. They find that they they find that people that are struggling with that have like about six to eight times the rate of depression and suicide as other people. And the answer has always been, well, because they've had to hide in fear and shame.

Well, then you gotta explain Sweden and the Nordic because they went all inclusive decades ago. Matter of fact, what I just said, I would be put in jail if I was preaching this in Sweden. In 2009, it's a hate speech law.

I can't say this if I was a pastor there. I would be jailed. So not only did they go all in celebrating and accepting it, they're so accepting. They're so past this issue. There is no persecution at all. Matter of fact, you are persecuted. You're in trouble if you would disagree.

And guess what their suicide and depression rate is amongst people of alternate lifestyles to this day? Four to six times the average of everyone else.

Why?

Why if you really say people that have done gender altering surgery, the percentage keeps going up and up and up and people trying to reverse it and going back the other way. Because they've discovered this did not answer the thing in my heart I thought it would.

What if instead of me being mean to you, what if what I'm sharing you right now is I have loved you more than anyone else in your life because I'm sharing with you how much God loves you. And he's saying it's a dead end. And when we just affirm as Christians, as cruise ship Christians, we are not helping.

But when we just make everybody who's different than us the enemy and blast them out of this water like a battleship, we are not helping. It's the truth in love and that's really what it's talking about here. It's like that is a problem. That's the number one, but we all struggle with this issue

of following our heart, finding our identity, saying, well, I'm born this way. I was born just because you're born that way doesn't make it right. So what is the way? What's the way we should go? John fourteen:six

simply says this,

Jesus told him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the father except through me. It's interesting. When they're talking about how do you find life? How do you find a relationship with God? How where are we really what were we built to be? And he says the only way back to recover who you are, to really not only recover this relationship with God, but recover life as it's meant to be lived,

is it goes through Jesus. And he's the way, the truth, and the life. I believe, especially if you read all the New Testament scripture, he said it in this order on purpose. The order matters.

It starts with the way, then it goes to the truth, and then that produces the life. What does that mean? What is the way? The Proverbs passage said there's a path. The other way to translate that word is way. It says there's a way that seems right to us.

And we go after this way that way. And it comes because we put truth first. We have this truth in our head saying, I think this makes sense in my falling distorted thinking, so I go down this way. Jesus says, I am the way.

So you think there's all these paths and ways and you're finding the right way for you. When Jesus goes, no, no, no, no, I'm not talking about being the way of I am a way. I might be a better way. He's saying I am the only way. Because the way isn't a path at all. The way is a person.

So trying to run and find this path for your life of how you're built and how you were born and how you, The whole idea is the lie.

That's the worst part. That's the real enemy. More than even those desires and those longings that God says you don't want that. The whole lie that that's who you are, that's the lie. That's the worst, most insidious lie. Because it'll shut your brain off.

And you will be convinced that me telling you this way is wrong is hate speech, like the rest of the world is saying. It's love speech. Because I need every one of us to address this lie in our lives. The way is Christ. The way is God the Son took on the form of a man forever now.

So he's felt great high priest. He's felt what we feel. He gets tired. Understands what it's like to be a human. And then he came and he got on a cross and died for the very things that we've replaced him with for us. He died for you and me to save and recover our identities.

Ain't that weird? He died for me for the things that I did to replace him with. That's love. And it starts there. Any relationship with God, no matter what your struggle is today, no matter where you're at, it starts with meeting Jesus at the cross and understanding that God loves you more than you love you.

That God knows you more than you know you. And you have to know the love. It's not the other way around.

A lot of us, that's what legalism is so bad. That's why we turn into battleship Christians. And the opposite result is to be a cruise ship Christian. It's because we don't get it that it starts with the love of Christ. You you won't trust his truth if you don't see his love. And when you understand that he died for you

when the things you did separate you from him, you've offended him. He died so you can get past this. That's why it's so bad when you then embrace the very thing he died for and says, this is who I am. And God's like, that's not who you are. You're made in my image. And I've died to help you get that back. And

when you understand I am the way and there is no other way but me. The path that seems right is always wrong if that path and that way isn't the person of Jesus Christ, period. When you understand how much he loves you,

you now can look at his truth, his word, and go, if you love me that much, I'm gonna believe what else he said. And as I accept his truth and I grow in his truth and I step out in faith in his truth,

I now experience life the way it was meant to be. It's not I do the truth to get the love. It's not I live for his love. And that's what a lot of you people think. Like, you're telling me if I don't change my ways, that's what I hate when Christians get mad, if we have a couple come in here, you know what, if you're living together, you're doing the same problem.

You're doing the same thing. You need to confront that in your life. That is a perversion and a distortion of what sexuality was meant to be. Same exact problem. But here's what makes it harder for those of you that are maybe struggling with with with being gay.

If you come to church and you're holding hands with someone, it's obvious. If you're heterosexual, I have no idea if you're married or not. But it's still the same issue.

We're supposed to be mirrors. Right? Guess what? A mirror can only reflect something if it has a light source in front of it.

So even if you believe in Jesus and your mirror has been put back together, but you face it towards the dark, you're still not reflecting anything. Paul talks about that. And then it really goes back to do I trust the way? Do I understand that Jesus loves me so much that I'll turn towards his truth?

And when you take that tough step to do this from his love, not for it, you'll start to experience life. Which what I mean is is guys to make a step especially going back to the illustration, if it's a sexuality and a gender thing, you choose to walk in the truth of what God intended marriage, gender, sex, sexuality to be,

it's going to still be a battle the rest of your life.

It will. Why?

It's why sex and gender always ends up distorted so quickly. Because God created it for a purpose. Male and female says it wasn't good for man to be alone. There's something about male and female that truly completes the image of God.

God created us as an illustration to reflect his image, to be a mirror, So it needs to be male and female. He created marriage to be a way to propagate, to be creative, to create more people, and and and and to have this process that projects the image of God as creator.

The family unit is also the building block, and it's an example with with mom, dad, you know, husband, wife, God. You have an example of the triune nature of God. See, sex and sexuality is not just about a biological need or a feeling or the need for companionship and someone just to love. He has a specific purpose

in what family is, in what gender is, in what marriage is, and in what sex is. There is a specific illustrative purpose that God means. And when we take away that illustration, make it about what we want, I just want someone to spend time with, I want someone I'm attracted to sexually,

and I want if you believe that that's all it needs to be, then yeah, Christians are mean for saying that God says that's not the right way to go. But if it really is meant for a different purpose and you distort the purpose, and the purpose was to illustrate the very image of God, you're now distorting the very image of God, you're committing

idolatry, and then you've made it your identity. And you're in a dead end trap.

But if you embrace the way, turn to the truth and start experiencing life, those desires will still be there. But what happens is I embrace that love and turn towards the truth and get involved. That's why I say don't just come sit in a row, sit in circles,

is the more I pour into what God's heart is, the more I turn towards him, the more I have a community engaged, the the desires for the wrong thing are still there. But they start to get smaller in comparison to the delight of the Lord.

You still gotta fight that back because you get alone, you get tired, you get disconnected, you get stressed out. It is so easy to wanna go back. But what you wanna do is lean into the real life so in comparison the old life starts to look smaller. That's what one more verse to read, Psalms thirty seven four says this,

Take delight in the Lord and he will give you your heart's desires.

Like, woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. You've just been preaching for forty nine minutes and that doesn't that just contradict exactly what you've been talking about? He'll give you heart's desires, and you say, don't follow your heart? Yes, I did. But this is the problem when Christians cherry pick a verse. You should always read what's above it and below it. In this case, all you need is one line above it to understand the context.

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart's desires. That means as you do this, this changes something in your heart.

This changes it. In other words, let me give you the Bill Bush modern paraphrase of what this verse is saying. I'll put it up on the screen here. It's very wise. If I want what God wants, I'll always get what I want. That's

what he's saying. As you delight in God's ways, that starts to fill your heart, And those bad desires start to shrink in comparison, and you can lean in. So the promise here, guys, that thing that you're struggling with,

even if it's like I said, there's the alternative lifestyle, but some of you have a pornography issue. Some of you are living together. Some of you have a sexual addiction. Some of you are going about it in a heterosexual normative way, you're distorting it, and you can't imagine life letting go of that.

And some of you has nothing to do with sexuality. You have the same problem with something else. You can't imagine life letting go of seeing yourself as only a mom. Your identity as a mom. Some of you can't let go of the idea of seeing yourself as your job. But when you take delight in the Lord,

your heart starts to change. And then as you pray and go towards that, God gives you that. And that's how you win. That's how life is lived. But if you keep drawing a circle around the dot of what you want and calling it who you are, you're gonna get angry and mad and miss it.

So before I tell a story to close this out, let me give you four questions to ask yourself to know, am I struggling with something in my life with this? Am I struggling with going after my heart and making it my identity?

And here's the questions. First two, are you willing to compromise biblical truth for what you want?

Secondly, will you or do you become angry if you can't do it, don't get it if it's something you're chasing after, or are shown that God says it's not the way to go? Some of you, some of the stuff I just said in here, you are angry right now. You're angry with me. I love you enough that I'm okay, I'll be your punching bag.

I'm not throat punching today. Today is a really firm hug.

Because this is what happens. That's why do you think when you see people, they get confronted by the gospel, some people get violently angry at it. Because it gets down to the real issue. It's not about your attractions. It's not about how you see yourself.

It's are you gonna trust God or are you gonna try to be God? That is the bottom line of it. Third question, do you value it over people? This is what I see a lot of us, what I call the battleship Christians in this room. We don't understand the actual

issue. We just see sins and we judge them and we evaluate the people that do the worst thing than I or the enemy. And we care more about the truth of them being wrong than the truth of they're not the problem, they're they're the mission.

A lot of Facebook fights on that one. And then finally, does it push you closer to God or pull you further away? That's it. Where are you at on this? Do you mind if I just tell one more story, personal story? It's good. We still got a few more minutes. Way better than yesterday. Went way long.

The reason I think the sexuality thing is such a hot topic with this is, like I said, the way God created sex is so powerful. Gender, sexuality, and the act, the the craving, the desire for it, it's nuclear power. But just like nuclear power can light a city or it can level a city depending on how you use it.

When we get our twisted thinking and we chase after our hearts, we will run after distortions of what God meant it to be because it is so powerful. It has such a strong draw that that's why we go there so often. And not just in what I say alternative, I'm talking about any kind of distortion from what God meant to sex.

And I know this for a fact because back when we started Rock Point twenty years ago, right after we got started, it'd grown just enough, it was really stressful, cast out all my retirement, had a group of people, a lot of problems, not really much salary, poor, we're stressed financially.

And my wife, we had two kids, they were little. And you know what you did? We said, you know what the greatest idea to do when you're stretched financially, you're poor, you're stressed out with each other, you're tired, you're not really spending a lot of time together? We thought, you know what the great answer would be? Let's add another kid to that,

which we did. And what I figured out is that started to cause even more stress and more issues, and especially in my wife and I's sexual relationship. You see, I now know twenty years later what we didn't know back then. It's more common knowledge, but we've discovered

through that process twenty years, finally figured out that my wife suffers from every time she has a child, postpartum depression. And it got worse with each kid. So my third kid, it was the worst. We had stepped out into the scary moment. We are stressed financially.

There's all this pressure. And then God does have a sense of humor because he wired me that when I get stressed and really tired and and and feel a lot of pressure, for me, a release is to be physical with my spouse. My wife is exactly the opposite.

That when she gets stressed out and tired, it's like, I'm not even sure I wanna look at you right now. This little tear come down my cheek. That became a problem. I had been exposed to pornography by a friend when I was younger,

which I now look back and realize kinda already started to distort my idea. And I had turned sex into a coping mechanism rather than a blessing, so I went to it. And you know, in the right way, healthy way with you, it's a great way, but when it starts to become a problem, it can be an unhealthy thing.

A good thing can be a bad thing. And I was fighting with my wife because I felt like I wanted to have more sex, I wanted to do that. I was running to that

and she was fighting it, it was stressing us, and one night she would go to this ladies night thing every night, every once a week, and I'm sitting here working on my computer and a little pop up came up, bad filters. I looked at that, I'm like, I'm not gonna pay for pornography,

but I figured out that this thing called the Internet can be used for incredible You could find stuff that you don't pay for. And I started to dabble in a journey of looking at it, taking care of myself. I felt like I knew this was wrong being a pastor. I knew that this is a distortion.

But here's where the twisted thinking starts to come. At least I'm not fighting with my wife now.

And I can almost think of a justification. I need this. We were meant for this. It's not happening. There is no other alternative other than cheat on my wife and I thought, well that's the worst step. So this went on for months.

But here's what scared me. Here's where I know the power of sexuality and why when you struggle with an alternative style, it is so hard to hear that this isn't God's plan for you. It changed my personality quickly. First of all, the way I viewed sex. My wife could tell when we did have sex that

we were there, but I wasn't there with her. But the worst part is the way I treated my children. And what really scared me is one night my son came in and interrupted me when she was gone and I knew I only had so much time till she gets back

And I berated him. He's only like two and a half years old, three. Daddy, I need a drink of water. I just let it out angry. And I sat there and said, where did that come from? I'm telling you guys, sex is nuclear. It is powerful. It will distort your thinking faster than anything on the planet.

And God meant it to be powerful in the right context. It's supposed to light up your marriage, not level a city.

And so I struggled, and then I said, you know, I'll just won't do it anymore. I won't do it. So

finally, I agreed I ended up talking to someone. I ended up getting this book, Every Man's Battle, Stephen Arderbern. I started studying it, reading it, started to go after it, make that stand against it with the Lord, you know, look for the way to fight this, but I didn't wanna tell my wife or anything. And after, you know, and I had spent like four months, I'm like, I've been clean for like four, four to five months.

But the book was still sitting on my desk because I'd refer back to it and stuff. She came in and saw it one day and looked at that and started reading it. And bless my wife, she looks up she just assumed I had that to help other people.

And as she read the way the brain works with this and what it can do to twist it, guys, especially especially with pornography, man. You thought I was just talking about alternate lifestyles that you disagree with. This is a powerful one, guys. It changes your brain chemistry. It alters things.

And it did. And she's like, wow, I never thought of it this way. She goes, but you don't have this problem, do you? Well, at that moment I knew, well, I could technically say currently right now, no. But I know what she meant. Do you even struggle in these ways? I said no.

Walked out of the room. Went to get something in the garage. And you think I've throat punched you guys sometimes? The Holy Spirit, he did full on hockey jersey, pulled it up over my shoulders, had me in the corner, and the refs weren't stopping it. My goons didn't come to save me. I just got hammered.

And I said, this is a defining moment in your life, Bill. You've hidden this, you've went down this road, but you've never lied to your wife's face. Something told me this was a line I did not want to cross. So I walked back in and said, just lied to you. I haven't done anything about it for months,

but I have struggled with this. And I'm not blaming you. I'm just saying I'm trying to unpackage this strong sexual desire and then our issues not having it, and I've made a bad choice. And now I feel like that choice is now making me. It was a way that seemed right, but in the end it led to death.

Bless my wife, she showed me grace. She reflected the love of Christ. She was honest about her hurt, but the best word she said to me was this, we are going to have victory over this problem. She said we instead of me.

If your spouse admits, and I didn't just say guys go because when I said something gets celebrated, it gets repeated. We've normalized pornography as a normal thing in this culture. And guess who the greatest, fastest growing segment of the population is by having pornography issues? Women. Because now we said it's fine.

So it could be you ladies too, not just guys.

But if your spouse admits something to you,

you can be hurt, but if you really want victory for you and your spouse, say this is a we stuff. Not just, well, go fix your disgusting self and then I'll think about it.

And what I'm telling you is did I instantly have the problem? No.

Ever since they put filters and stuff, I have accountability guys that this stuff goes to. I have every device I have locked down completely. I even did that when the point you had to use their kind of version of the online, which sucks, it's slow, it's a problem, it's hard to get things done, but I know that I know that that is always lurking wanting to get out. But

the thing that helps me is the delight in the Lord helps me to see that that longing, even if it pulls me, it's now pulling me away that I know is a dead end. My encouragement to you no matter what your issue is with the longing of your heart, stop listening to the lie. Embrace the way in the love of Jesus

and allow that to turn you towards his truth and let that unlock the life. As he said, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. That's my prayer for you.

And just to circle back around because I know this is a hot topic, if you are in this room and you have wrestled with, struggled with, or in any way are struggling with your sexual identity,

You might be mad at me, and I don't know how I can prove any other way than to say I love you. God loves you. And the mission he gave my life is not to stand here and tell you how perverted you are. The mission he gave me is to say how precious you are.

But God wants you to find the way of life, not affirm you in the way of death. That's not love. It's not love.

And I don't know what else I can say, so let's pray. Father God, thank you Lord. I thank you that you do love us the way you do. And Lord, my prayer is simple for me, everyone in this room, anyone online. Search our hearts. Reveal to us in the ways in which we're letting our desires be the definition of who we are.

Let us see the dead end road that that is And may we turn to you as the way, your love, your sacrifice, and embrace you and the power of your spirit and the help of other people that love you. And may we turn to your truth and start to take delight in you.

As we take delight in you, may we then have desires of our heart that are your desires and see the incredible blessing of you opening those up to us. I pray it in the mighty name of Jesus, amen. Amen. Hey, thank you guys.