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Identity Crisis | Week 4 | Bill Bush · Rewind

Rock Point Church

82 min

Pastor Bill Bush · May 17, 2022 · 5 min read · 82 min listen

The big idea

When we make our desire our definition, it leads to a dead end — our identity is not discovered from within our hearts but recovered through Christ.

In this message

The big idea
Point 1 of 7The heart is deceitful, so "follow your heart" is bad advice.
Point 2 of 7Identity is recovered, not discovered — the lie goes back to Eden.

Point 3 of 7The path that seems right leads to a dead end.
Point 4 of 7Romans 1 shows the pattern: suppressing truth, worshiping creation, and being abandoned to distorted desires.
Point 5 of 7We are called to be a coast guard, not a cruise ship or a battleship, toward people struggling with identity.
Point 6 of 7Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life — in that order.
Point 7 of 7Delighting in the Lord reshapes our desires so the old life shrinks by comparison.
Take it into your week
Transcript

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Scripture in this message

Jeremiah 17
Proverbs 14:12
James 1
Romans 1
Romans 1:18
Romans 2:1

Rewind AI drafted the Big Idea and some point headings shown here from the sermon transcript. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Pastor Bill Bush · May 17, 2022 · 82 min watch · 2 min read

Identity Crisis | Week 4 | Bill Bush

In this message

Big Idea
Key points
Application

Scripture in this message

Jeremiah 17
Proverbs 14:12
James 1
Romans 1
Romans 1:18
Romans 2:1

Big Idea Key points Application

Big Idea

When we make our desire our definition, it leads to a dead end — our identity is not discovered from within our hearts but recovered through Christ.

Our hearts are deceitful and will always show us a path that seems right but ends in death. True identity was never meant to be discovered by following our feelings and longings — it is recovered only in Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life. As we take delight in Him, our disordered desires shrink and we find the life we were actually made for.

Key points

1
1The heart is deceitful, so "follow your heart" is bad advice.
Pastor Bill opens by questioning the cultural mantra to follow your heart and turns to Jeremiah 17, which calls the human heart deceitful above all things. He explains that in biblical times "heart" meant where emotion and intellect meet to form a plan, not just feelings, so a deceived heart produces a deceived plan for life.
2
2Identity is recovered, not discovered — the lie goes back to Eden.
Pastor Bill retells the temptation of Adam and Eve, showing that Satan promised them something they already had (being made in God's image) by convincing them God was holding out on them. Ever since, humanity has believed the lie that we must discover who we are rather than recover the identity we already have as image-bearers, or mirrors, of God.
3
3The path that seems right leads to a dead end.
Working from Proverbs 14:12 and James 1, Pastor Bill explains how desire meets intellect to form a plan that feels right but is actually broken, birthing sin that grows the more we lean into it. He quotes Mark Dever's line that sin once tolerated seeks to be accepted, and once accepted seeks to be celebrated, adding that what gets celebrated gets repeated.
4
4Romans 1 shows the pattern: suppressing truth, worshiping creation, and being abandoned to distorted desires.
Pastor Bill walks through Romans 1:18 and following, showing that people know God but refuse to worship Him, so they worship created things instead — and sexuality is often the first thing to get distorted because it's tied so closely to identity and relationship. He stresses the sexual sin listed isn't the point of the passage but an illustration of what happens whenever anyone finds identity in creation rather than the Creator.
5
5We are called to be a coast guard, not a cruise ship or a battleship, toward people struggling with identity.
Pastor Bill critiques "cruise ship Christians" who affirm anything to avoid conflict and "battleship Christians" who treat struggling people as the enemy, using Romans 2 to show that Christians do the same things just differently. He tells people struggling with sexual identity directly that they are not the enemy, using statistics on rising self-identification and unchanged suicide/depression rates (even in accepting Sweden) to argue the distortion itself, not shame, is the real problem.
6
6Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life — in that order.
Pastor Bill unpacks John 14:6, arguing the order matters: Jesus is not a path we find on our own but a person we must trust, and only after resting in His love can we receive His truth and then experience life. He illustrates this with the mirror image — a restored mirror still reflects nothing if it isn't turned toward the light.
7
7Delighting in the Lord reshapes our desires so the old life shrinks by comparison.
Using Psalm 37:4, Pastor Bill explains that delighting in God doesn't mean ignoring desire but transforming it, paraphrasing the verse as, if I want what God wants, I'll always get what I want. He shares his own struggle with pornography as a coping mechanism during a stressful season, and how confessing to his wife and pursuing accountability let him lean into real life instead of the coping mechanism.

Application

Pastor Bill's charge is to stop listening to the lie that your longing is your identity, and embrace Jesus as the way that leads to His truth and then to real life.

Stop finding identity in your desires
Whatever you're chasing — sexuality, a job, being a parent — recognize that any identity built on creation rather than the Creator is a dead end, even if it feels good for a season.
Ask the four diagnostic questions
Ask whether you're willing to compromise biblical truth for what you want, whether you get angry when told no, whether you value the thing over people, and whether it pushes you toward or away from God.
Stop being a cruise ship or a battleship Christian
Don't affirm everything to avoid conflict, and don't treat people struggling with sin as the enemy; be a coast guard that speaks truth in love while working to rescue and protect people.
Turn toward Jesus as the way before the truth
Let His love come first so you can trust His truth, rather than trying to fix your behavior to earn love — bring your struggle into the light with community and accountability, as Pastor Bill did with his wife.
Take delight in the Lord
Lean into prayer, God's word, and community so your heart actually changes and wrong desires shrink in comparison to the life God offers, rather than white-knuckling avoidance alone.

Take it into your week

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“Well, the bible kinda answers that question in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah right here, wanna show. Jeremiah 17 says this, the human heart is the most deceitful of all things and desperately wicked”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

Sign in to track your progress through this devotional.

Day 1

There is a quiet lie most of us have absorbed without ever hearing it stated out loud: that the strongest, most honest version of ourselves is the one who follows wherever the heart leads. It sounds like freedom. It sounds like courage. But Pastor Bill pointed to a verse that cuts through that assumption with surprising gentleness — Jeremiah 17:9, where God simply says the heart is deceitful above all things. Not occasionally misleading. Not wrong in a few edge cases. Deceitful. The very organ we are told to trust most is the one most in need of outside correction. That is not an insult to being human. It is an honest diagnosis, and honest diagnoses are actually good news because they point toward real healing. If our hearts were perfectly reliable guides, we would not need a Savior — we would just need better self-awareness. But the gospel begins with the recognition that something deeper than behavior is broken and that no amount of looking inward can fix it. Today is not about cataloging every way your heart has misled you. It is simply about sitting with this honest starting point: I need a truth that comes from outside of me, and I am grateful one exists.

For reflection

In what area of your life have you been treating your own desires as the final word — and what might it look like to hold that area more openly before God?

Pray

Pray for the humility and courage to trust God's Word over your own instincts in the specific area that came to mind today.

Day 2

Proverbs 14:12 contains one of the most understated warnings in all of Scripture: there is a way that seems right, but its end is the way of death. Notice what the verse does not say. It does not say the path seems obviously wrong. It does not say we stumble onto it carelessly. It says the path seems right — reasonable, natural, even wise by the standards we are using. That is what makes it dangerous. Pastor Bill pressed on this in the sermon: when we use our desires as the map, we can build an entire life on a direction that feels like north but is slowly moving us south. The word "seems" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Our perception of rightness is shaped by what we have told ourselves, what our culture celebrates, and what we most want to be true. None of those things are bad in themselves, but none of them are reliable enough on their own to navigate a life. The good news hiding in this verse is that if there is a way that only seems right, there is also a way that actually is right. That is the path Proverbs keeps pointing toward — not the path of perfect performance, but the path of wisdom that begins with knowing and trusting God.

For reflection

Is there a choice or direction in your life right now that feels right primarily because you want it to be — and what would it look like to invite Scripture into that evaluation?

Pray

Pray for discernment to recognize where your reasoning may be shaped more by desire than by truth, and ask God to illuminate the path that is actually right.

Day 3

Romans 1 is one of the most sobering passages in the New Testament, and Pastor Bill handled it carefully for good reason. Paul describes a progression that starts not with outward behavior but with a quiet interior move: suppressing the truth about God and redirecting worship toward created things. That word — created things — is worth sitting with. A created thing can be anything: a relationship, a career, a sense of identity, a body, a dream. None of those things are evil in themselves. But the moment one of them takes the place meant for God, something in us begins to distort. Paul is not writing about people who fell off a cliff one afternoon. He is describing a gradual drift — exchange worship, lose clarity, pursue what feels natural, sink deeper. What makes this passage feel heavy can also make it feel hopeful: if the problem begins with where we direct our worship, the solution is available at the same address. Turning worship back toward God is not a behavior fix; it is a root fix. And that is exactly what Pastor Bill was pointing toward — not try harder, but turn back. The door to that turning is the love of Christ, who died for the very things we have used to replace Him.

For reflection

What created thing — good in itself — are you most tempted to look to for a sense of identity or worth that only God can actually provide?

Pray

Pray for the Holy Spirit to gently expose any area where something good has quietly taken a place that belongs to God, and ask for grace to reorder your worship.

Day 4

Pastor Bill noted that sin follows a progression: tolerated, then accepted, then celebrated. James 1 maps the early stages of that progression from the inside. James says each person is tempted when they are drawn away by their own desire and enticed — and that desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is full-grown brings forth death. The language is almost biological. Desire is not itself a sin; desire is the starting material. What matters is what we do with it. The word "enticed" suggests something that looks attractive, something that promises more than it delivers. And the tragedy James describes is that the promise is never fulfilled — desire leads to sin, sin leads to death. Nothing in that chain produces the life that was hoped for. This is why Pastor Bill's application landed where it did: the answer is not gritting your teeth against the desire. The answer is finding something — Someone — so genuinely compelling that the enticing thing loses its pull in comparison. That is not willpower. That is transformation. And transformation, as both James and Pastor Bill made clear, begins not with behavior modification but with the love of a Jesus who met us in the middle of our entanglements and did not leave us there.

For reflection

Where in your life do you notice the early stages of this progression — something being tolerated, perhaps slowly accepted — and what would it look like to address it at the root rather than the symptom?

Pray

Pray for honest self-awareness about where desire is pulling you, and ask God for the kind of deep satisfaction in Him that makes lesser things less compelling.

Day 5

When Jesus says "I am the way, the truth, and the life," He is not offering a philosophy or a technique. He is making an identity claim — and Pastor Bill drew a sharp and important line around it. Jesus does not say He knows the way or that He can show you the path. He says He is the Way. That means the destination and the journey are the same Person. Truth is not a doctrine to master — it is a Person to know. Life is not a result to achieve — it is a relationship to enter. This matters enormously for how we approach the questions of identity that this sermon addressed. If identity is something we discover by looking inward — by following our strongest desires to their source — then Jesus is just another voice among many. But if identity is something recovered by turning toward the One who created us and redeemed us, then Jesus is not optional to the project. He is the whole project. Pastor Bill said encountering the love of Jesus is where change actually begins. Not a set of rules. Not a ten-step plan. An encounter with a Person who is Himself the truth we have been avoiding and the life we have been looking for in all the wrong places.

For reflection

In practical terms, what does it look like for you to seek Jesus Himself — not just answers from Scripture, but a real relationship with the Person — this week?

Pray

Pray for a genuine, personal encounter with Jesus today — not just information about Him, but the experience of His presence and love that Pastor Bill described as the starting point for real change.

Day 6

"Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." This verse is sometimes read as a transaction: do your spiritual duty and God will hand over what you already want. But in the context of everything this week has covered, the verse is saying something far more transformative. When you genuinely delight in God — not as a strategy but as a real orientation of your heart toward Him — your desires begin to change. What you want starts to align with what He wants. That is the from-the-inside-out transformation Pastor Bill described. The pull of the wrong thing does not vanish overnight. But it grows smaller as the life you are gaining in Christ grows larger. This is also why Pastor Bill pressed so hard on community and accountability — because delight is not a solo project. We are shaped by what we spend time with and who we spend it with. Getting into a real circle of people, not just sitting in rows, creates the conditions where delight in God can grow. Your treasure, your time, your attention, your relationships — where those go, your heart tends to follow. And as your heart follows Christ, even your desires begin to tell you a truer story about who you were made to be.

For reflection

What would it concretely look like for you to "delight in the Lord" this week — not as a discipline to perform, but as a real turning of your attention and affection toward Him?

Pray

Pray that God would cultivate in you a genuine delight in Him — not as an obligation, but as the natural overflow of knowing how deeply you are loved — and ask Him to show you one practical step toward that this week.

Day 7

As you close this week, it is worth stepping back and holding the whole arc together. The sermon began with an honest look at how broken the human heart is, and it ended with a genuinely hopeful picture of what happens when that heart turns toward Jesus. Not perfection. Not the immediate disappearance of every wrong desire. But a life that is being rebuilt from the foundation up, on something that will actually hold. Pastor Bill left everyone — regardless of what specific longing they are carrying — with four honest questions to keep returning to: Am I compromising biblical truth for what I want? Do I get angry when I cannot have it or when God's Word challenges it? Am I valuing this thing over people? And is it drawing me closer to God or further away? Those questions are not a checklist for spiritual performance. They are a compass. They help you notice where you are and point you back toward the Person who is Himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life. If anything this week stirred something you are still sitting with, consider bringing it to someone you trust at Rock Point — a pastor, a circle leader, a friend in community. You were not meant to carry it alone, and you do not have to.

For reflection

Looking back over this week, which of Pastor Bill's four questions felt most personal to you — and what is one honest step you are willing to take in response?

Pray

Pray through each of Pastor Bill's four questions slowly and honestly, and ask God to make your heart more responsive to His truth and more rooted in His love as the week ahead begins.

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

This message asks a question we don't often slow down to examine: where do we go to find out who we really are? Let's dig into what Pastor Bill opened up for us.

Discussion questions

1
Jeremiah 17:9 says the heart is deceitful above all things. What does it mean practically that the heart can deceive the very person it belongs to — and why does that make it an unstable foundation for identity?
2
Proverbs 14:12 says there is a path that seems right to a person, but its end is death. What is it about a path that 'seems right' that makes it so hard to question — and what might it take for someone to stop and reconsider the direction they are heading?
3
Pastor Bill walked through Romans 1:18–32 and described how suppressing the truth about God and finding identity in created things — including sexuality — functions as idolatry. What does it look like, according to that passage, when a person or a culture begins to substitute created things for the Creator?
4
In John 14:6 Jesus says, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life.' Pastor Bill made the point that Jesus is not a path to be found but a Person to be known. How does framing identity as a relationship with Jesus rather than a personal discovery change the way we think about the search for who we are?
5
Pastor Bill offered four diagnostic questions: Am I compromising biblical truth for what I want? Do I get angry when I can't have it or when God's Word challenges it? Am I valuing this thing over people? And is it drawing me closer to God or pulling me further away? Looking at those four together, what do they reveal about what has actually taken first place in a person's life?
6
Psalm 37:4 connects delighting in the Lord with the transformation of our desires. Pastor Bill described this as a change that happens from the inside out over time. What might it look like, in everyday life, for a community of people to cultivate that kind of delight together — in the Word, in honest relationships, and in real accountability?

Pray together

Ask God to make Jesus Himself — His love, His truth, His life — more compelling than anything we might be tempted to build our identity on instead

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Identity Crisis

Week 4 · 5 messages

Where these passages are preached

Jeremiah 17 Proverbs 14 James 1 Romans 1

Explore related topics

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