Live Free with Josh Howerton - God Transforms When We Surrender | Ep. 110 | Friday July 7, 2023

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

God transforms us as we allow Him to work. When we surrender and focus on what is true, our behavior transforms. Not because we try harder but because He makes us new when we allow Him in. All we need to do is believe. God will do the rest. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, thanks for hanging with us today. Hope your day is going well. My name is Mike. And on this podcast, we just spend a few minutes trying to get the know God better. And for the past few weeks, we've been trying to learn more about who he says that we are. Even though identity theft is on the rise in our world has actually been going on a long, long time. Because the enemy of our soul wants to hack into our soul and he uses lies to do so. Lies that you and I can internalize. And they begin to shape and define us. Lies such as I am what I feel. Or I am what people. say about me. I am what the mirror reflects about me. I am what I do and how

well I do it. And this week we've been focused on the lie that says I am what I have done. We talked in our last episode about how we have to establish new patterns of thinking so that the past doesn't keep us stuck. Anybody enjoy

doing like remodeling, renovation stuff? I love doing that stuff. But the worst part about it is stripping wallpaper. Anybody with me? Oh, it's awful. We talked about this a few months ago how you and I have to re-wallpaper our mind. You have to intentionally develop new patterns of thinking. Those old whispers, those old lies, they need to be stripped off and replaced by new truth. As we read yesterday from Romans 12, God will transform us. Only he can pull that off.

Only he has the power to do that. But we have to take responsibility for re-wallapering our mind. For instance, a good friend of mine was really deep into the pornography industry for years, and God pursued him and loved him, rescued him, redeemed him, and is changing him in some really cool, profound ways. It has been one of the thrills of my life to have a front row seat to that transformation. At one point, he had thousands, literally thousands of images of porn on his phone. And when he surrendered his life to Jesus, not only did he delete them, all. He replaced them with thousands of scriptures so that his mind could be re-wallpapered

with truth instead of lies, and he could be set free to see other people and himself the way God sees. And as you and I re-wallpaper our mind of these truths that we've been learning together, as we start grasping how deep and high and long and why the love of God is for us, guess what starts to happen? Our behavior starts to match up with our new identity, and we begin to leave live the kind of life that God has always dreamed for you and me to live. Instead of being locked up in the prison of our past, instead of being controlled by the old habits, the old grudges, the old bitterness, the old victim mentality, the old us,

instead of being defined by what was done to you or what you did in the past, you allow the truth of God's unfailing love to set you free. And, gang, he doesn't make you just a little better. He makes you new. When you walk humbly step by step with him every day, one day at a time, When you surrender to his power and his grace and his leadership, amazing transformation starts to take place, and you become a new person with a new identity.

Anybody else love those old Bourne movies, you know, Jason Bourne, the Bourne Ultimatum, the Bourne Supremacy, Born Story 4, I don't know, there's a bunch of them. But you remember how the original movie opens with Matt Damon playing Jason Bourne, floating face down in the sea? some fishermen pull him up out of the water they bring him under the boat and they treat his gunshot wound

they kind of revive him and take care of him and later they drop him off at a dock in a city that he's never seen he doesn't remember it anyway he doesn't know who he is he doesn't know who anybody else is he just tries to put a few clues together and these clues kind of lead him to this bank

and somehow it gets into the safety deposit box I can't remember how but they kind of remember him at the bank but he doesn't remember anything else and he opens his safety deposit box. Inside the box is a stack of money and a gun and about a dozen passports, all with different names on them,

but with his picture on each passport. Remember the name of the first movie? Yeah, that's right. The born identity. It's all about a guy who's trying to figure out just who he is. And maybe, just maybe you've been there like me. When I was faced down

him floating, trying to figure out who I was. I started reading through the New Testament of the Bible, learning about Jesus who he was and what he said and what he did and who he loved. And I found out that I too have a born, make that born again identity. I learned that through Jesus Christ we can all rediscover who we really are. Talking about Jesus, one of his best friends, John wrote this, but to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave them the right to become the children of God.

You see a little mathematical equation there. It's really pretty simple. It says believe plus accept equals become. God says that all you need to do to reclaim your identity is to believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. To believe that he is the way, the truth, and the life as he said he was. To believe that he was born and lived and died, that he rose from the grave, he's coming back again, believe that Jesus Christ is.

a substitution for your sin, that he took the rap, he took your punishment for anything you've ever done in your past. Believe and accept that free gift of grace into your life. You say, Jesus Christ, I accept your grace, I accept your unfailing love, I accept the fact that you want to wash away my sin and forgive me for all my sin, all my screw-ups, all my moral failures. I want that grace applied to my life because, God, I've tried to cram a lot of square pegs into the round hole of my life, and now I come to you and ask you to complete me. Come into my life and work on me from the inside out. I surrender to your leadership.

I will follow you. I want to find my identity as a treasured child of the most high God, and I give you permission to lead my life. Believe plus accept equals become. And I want to give you a chance to do that right now. Wherever you're at, unless you're driving, just bow your head with me for a second. You know, this whole last few weeks on our true identity has made me think a lot about

how God has rescued me and so grateful for his grace. I'm so grateful that I now know who I am, that I'm a much-love child of his, that I'm a guy that Jesus loves. I'm just a treasure child. And, man, that's replaced a whole lot of things. of insecurity of my life through the years, and I'm so grateful. And I'm praying that maybe right now you could just say, God, I want my new identity. I believe and I accept, and I want to become your child. Father, I want to thank you for everyone that may be listening to the day. I thank you that

reality could be true for everyone. Because of your love, all about what you have done, we can find her identity in you. And I thank you for the security. of that. I thank you for the eternal nature of that. I thank you for the way that gives us acceptance and security and significance in ways that nothing else can. Thank you, God, for creating us to be empty unless we're filled up with you. I'm so grateful that you longed to do life with us. And I pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen. And I hope you guys have a great day, and I'll see you back next time. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship, join us for our Church Online Live Weekend Services on Saturdays at 6 p.m.

and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. Also, if this podcast was helpful to you, would you be sure to rate, review, and share this podcast to help get the word out? For more information about all digital ministries of Lake Point, visit lakepoint. compt.com.com.com. Church slash Daily Drive.