Hold The Line | Week 2 | Daniel Goulding | Echoes Church

that God has you here for a reason. And so we are we are in week two of a series we started last week. It's called hold the line. We're talking about this idea that the Bible talks a lot about, that we are in a spiritual battle whether you realize it or not. My message last week was that you gotta get ready for war. You gotta get ready for battle because if you're not you're not prepared for it, you're already fighting from a position of defeat. And today, we're gonna start to look at what Paul tells us is the armor of God that we have to learn to put on. So if you got a Bible,

join me in Ephesians chapter six. I wanna read two verses to us and then we will pray and we will jump in. Ephesians chapter six verse 13 is gonna show us today the first piece of armor we need to learn to put on. Paul says, therefore, put on every piece of God's armor. Now again, we're gonna talk about one piece today,

but it starts with a direction that you have to put on all of God's armor because if you leave part of it off, you are leaving yourself exposed

and vulnerable. Now if you ever had one of those dreams where you show up to school and you realize you left your pants at home? You're like, uh-oh. This is gonna be a rough day. Right? Those dreams you can wake up from. But Paul says in the spiritual battle that we're in, do not leave yourself exposed to the enemy's tactics. You gotta put on all of the armor so that

you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle, you will still be standing firm. Stand your ground putting on, here's what we're gonna look at today, the belt of truth and what we'll look at next week, the body armor of God's righteousness.

Would you pray with me, father? We thank you, God, so much for the opportunity to gather under the banner of heaven. Father, we are asking right now that you would take the word of God, you would infuse it with the spirit of God to transform the people of God. It is in Jesus name all God's people said,

amen and amen. It's amazing. I've not thought about belts as much as I have in the last couple weeks, man. I've been thinking a lot about belts. And ironically enough, a couple weeks ago, we were out in Colorado

visiting my wife's grandparents and lo and behold, I forgot my belt and the funny part is is we're in this like weird stage of life where we have two teenagers, okay, I got a 16 year old and a 13 year old and they're awesome, they they kind of do their own thing. Right? Well, we now have a little 10 old baby and we're back in that stage of having to remember just how much stuff it takes to get out of the house when you have a baby. Like, you show up to the airport and you're like, this thing is this big, yet we have 7,000

suitcases to get to the airport again and somehow in the middle of the chaos of packing to get ready for Colorado, my belt gets lost. Right? And I don't wanna point fingers at whose fault that it was but it was definitely my wife's, you know. So

somehow we get ready and I'm like, I'm in this weird stage where I've lost a little bit of weight, but I'm I'm not so convinced that I'm gonna keep the weight off that I've actually committed and bought new pants, so like I'm really reliant on a belt in this season and we go to get ready Sunday to leave, we're gonna be gone for the whole day and I realized my belt's nowhere to be found and instead of blaming my wife for her for getting my belt at home, I just was like, okay, I'll I'll figure it out. She's like, you're an adult bro, pack your own belt and I'm like, I'm trying, I'm working on it, okay? I'm trying to become an adult but I have to go without a belt and I've I have not been without a belt in years and all of a sudden you realize how inconvenient it is when you're trying to like push a stroller, carry a baby, do the things while your pants are falling down, you're like, this is this is frustrating, right? I don't know if you remember the Mitch Hedberg, the comedian had a joke about, I don't really know who the hero is down there, like my my belt is holding up my pants but my belt loops are holding up my belt, so like who's the real hero in the equation? And we're we're not sure but here's what we do know, that the belt the belt is a big deal and if you don't believe me, just try to go a couple days without without wearing one but here's what's interesting to me, that Paul

will talk about the spiritual battle that we're in and says the first piece of the armor you got to put on is something that you and I would potentially even overlook, right? We're like, that's not that really that big of a deal but I'm telling you the more that I've thought about belts these last couple weeks, a belt does tell you a lot about somebody. Okay? I wanna show you a couple of belts to prove my point. If somebody shows up and they've got a belt on that looks like this,

you know you're judging that person. Okay? Don't act like you don't. You're like, bro, you bought a $900 belt, like, come on, what are we talking about? Like, wanna get a Louis Vuitton belt, I'm cool with that, but a real Louis Vuitton belt is a little bit extra. Right? But sometimes maybe it's not that belt, but it's this belt. And everybody knows a person that wears a belt that looks like this.

This is the kind of guy you ask them like, hey, what country are you from? And they say Texas

and then you're too scared to tell them that Texas is a state, not a country because they'll shoot you, you're like, awesome, bro. I love that for you. Maybe maybe at some point I'll get a cool belt like this but for others, man, the belt we think of is the title belt. Come on somebody. A championship belt in the WWE, like that's a that's a big deal. Right? For others of us, the the belts that we think about, it reminds me a lot of my father-in-law,

he was an electrician.

This is kind of a feminine looking one but he had like a real man's tool belt and and you would almost think that what Paul is talking about, this belt of truth we need to put on in the spiritual battle, maybe it would be like this kind of belt that it's a it's a utilitarian belt but I but I don't think that that's actually the belt that Paul is talking about. Remember again this morning

that Paul is not using a random illustration

in this idea of the armor of God. He's literally writing this letter while imprisoned and chained to a Roman centurion guard. The Roman centurion guard looked just like this, okay? This is again an AI picture but it'll show you what Paul was probably looking at. This is one that's on steroids but you know, you get the point.

This is what a Roman centurion guard would have worn. The armor that they would put on every single day weighed somewhere between eighty and ninety pounds, okay? They would wear it for twelve to fifteen hours a day and again, if you were tasked with, hey, what do you feel like are the most significant pieces of the armor that they're wearing? You might like me,

overlook the belt yet Paul

Paul tells us potentially the most important crucial first piece of all of it, it is the belt that the Roman soldier is wearing. Again, I made our team show us where the belt is so you can see it. That's the belt that we learn is holding up the rest of the armor that this soldier is wearing and then it begins the dots begin to connect to me. What what Paul is reminding us of is that friends,

in in this spiritual world that we are in, remember that we are we are not just physical beings, we are also spiritual beings that you and I have been giving a been given a calling

in an assignment from God. There's something significant that you are supposed to do with your life while you're here on this earth and I'm here this morning to remind you that the weight of what God has given you to carry is supposed to be something that is too much for you to carry on your own and if you don't have some type of support belt, I'm telling you the weight of what God has asked you to carry will overwhelm you. But here's a beautiful invitation of what Paul is showing us is available to us through the power of the Holy Spirit in us if you learn how to put on the armor of God. I think what Paul is talking about, the belt of truth that we need to learn to put on this morning, it's not a Louis Vuitton belt, it's not it's not a cowboy belt, it's not a championship belt. I really do think the best modern day equivalent of what what is Paul talking about is kind of like a weight lifting belt. Okay? If you've been in the gym, you've seen these things right here. This is again where I I begrudgingly go to the gym and I'll do the squats because I'm mandated to do it and I don't necessarily like to do it, but what happens every time when you start to warm up is the weight initially, it's okay, like it's manageable, but then usually what happens is you put more weight on, all of a sudden it's not it's not my legs that start to give out, it's my core and my back. So what do you do? You put a support belt on that stabilizes

your core so that you can carry the weight that you you have been asked to carry. Friends, I'm telling you this is the picture if you can see it of what the invitation of faith is is that what we've been asked to carry as followers of Jesus is is too much to carry on our own.

But here's the good news, that there is there's a spiritual toolkit available to you. You can learn to put on this belt. This belt, it can stabilize you in the spiritual battle that you are in and again, it is not lost on me that Paul says, here's what the belt that you and I need to learn to support our core with is called.

He doesn't call it something random, he calls it the belt of truth. The thing that will anchor you in the spiritual battle that you are in whether you realize it or not is truth and then I go, wait, we are in 2026

and we are living in what I would say is a war against truth. We are living in a moment where none of us trust anything. I don't trust politicians. I don't trust media. I definitely don't trust big pharma. I don't trust anything I see online because it's probably all AI and we're in this moment now where it's like, wait, I don't know who to trust. I don't know who to believe. I don't know where to look for a source of reality in the midst of this crazy world. And then I go, wait, Paul wrote this letter two thousand years ago? He said, here's the first thing the enemy is gonna come after, he's gonna come after truth and if he can disorient you when it comes to truth, I'm telling you he will destabilize

you in the spiritual battle that you are in. Friends, here's the definition of truth that we've gotta use this morning to talk about well, how do we how do we put on the spiritual armor that Paul is encouraging us to do? You gotta realize that there is a definition of truth. The definition of truth is an objective standard

by which reality is measured. You and I this morning have to realize that there is there are things in this life that are true regardless of how it makes you feel. There are things that are true regardless of whether you believe something to be different.

There's something that is objective that is outside of us that is true regardless of how it sits with us. This idea that there's things that can be your truth and my truth and those things be diametrically opposed,

I'm telling you it is a lie from the pit of hell and you have to realize the reason that I think we are in an all out assault against truth is because the enemy knows that if he can destabilize

you with truth, what's coming is the next pieces of the armor of God that we're gonna look at in the coming weeks. I've never seen the order that Paul puts them in together but just stay with me for a second. Paul starts with the belt of truth. What happens when we lose truth?

The next piece of the armor of God is the breastplate of righteousness.

Righteousness is just making a decision to live not according to what I think but according to what God thinks, living to his standards not mine. And Paul says if you take off the belt of truth, the next thing that's coming off is the breastplate of righteousness

and then the next piece of the armor is the it is the shoes of peace and I was like, hold on, there's the connection that Paul's trying to get us to see. Here's what I need you to follow me with this morning, when truth becomes relative, becomes subjective,

morality becomes optional. When righteousness is taken off, morality becomes, well you live however you want, you do whatever you want. When truth is relative, morality becomes optional and that in and of itself might not be dangerous until you realize what happens when morality

becomes optional because when morality becomes optional, peace becomes impossible and I'm telling you this morning, the reason there's an all out assault against truth in 2026

because what the enemy really wants, what he's really coming after, he's coming after your peace and there is a reason that you and I are the most anxious generation in history of the world. I'm telling you it is not disconnected from the truth that we have lost in the course of discourse over these last couple decades.

All of that to say, friends, we've got to go back to what what is truth?

How do we know it? How do we put it on so that we can begin to engage in the spiritual battle that we are in? What Paul is saying is that truth is the thing that stabilizes the believer

in the battle and the enemy wants to knock you off your course. He wants to disorient you so that he can come after every single everything else in your life. You gotta remember who we're fighting. We talked a lot about him last week but Jesus reminds us in John chapter eight verse 44

talking about the spiritual enemy that we have, it says that he was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated, here it is, the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he's consistent with his character for he's a liar and the father of lies.

Friends, you gotta realize that the the spiritual battle that we are in, if the battle really is not with flesh and bones but it's with spirits and principalities

that the actual enemy is not my it's not my boss, it's not my mother-in-law, it's not my spouse, that the real enemy is the devil himself that he's waging a warfare of deception, then we all have to realize that maybe

maybe it's possible that sitting here this morning, there are some areas in our lives that we've been deceived in but this is the problem with deception. The problem with deception is you don't know you're being deceived and you can really convincingly convince yourself that things are true that are patently false

and I'm here again this morning just to gently nudge you to go maybe

maybe there's some places in your life that you've been deceived, that I've been deceived, that I don't even really know it. I I heard this years ago but it's the truest thing in the world. The most dangerous lie is the one that you don't even know you believe.

And I'm telling you right now, there are so many people in our world and in our culture that are believing things to be true that are leading them down a path that I believe is leading them towards death. You gotta realize the bible says that there's a way that makes sense to a man. It makes sense to us. It's logical.

I understand it but the Bible says that that is what eventually leads to death but there's a God in heaven who knows you, who made you, who has a path and a plan for your life that is better and bigger than anything you could possibly understand but it forces us to reconcile with

that not just somebody out there but maybe, maybe me, maybe you has been deceived in some areas of our life and deception

is really hard to see. How do we get out of it? How do we realize that we've been deceived? I don't know why I think often in pictures, my my mind goes immediately to a show that I grew up watching with my mom on TLC. Come on, you can admit you watch some shows with your mom on TLC too, don't judge me, alright? We're in church, alright? There was a show that I used to watch with my mom all the time called What Not To Wear. Anybody remember the show? You're gonna age yourself if you say yes. It was a banger back in the day, right? But the premise of the show was simple. People would nominate a friend of theirs that was like, man, they're awesome in every areas of their life except they don't know how to pick out outfits. They dress like they're homeless, right? And so they would show all the b roll footage of them walking around just wearing the craziest outfits but that person was convinced like, it's not that bad. And if you remember the show, what they would always do is they would take that person that was gonna be the contestant for that episode and they would put them in front of this, we actually got a picture of it, they would put them in front of this massive mirror and what were they doing? They were trying to get them to see the thing that they were unwilling to see,

to take something that was outside of them, to show them something that was within them that was a lie so that they could wake up to the reality to go, man, maybe

maybe I've been convinced that a lie is truth and then and only then they would be willing to accept the help of the experts and they would bring in the fashion experts. If you remember them, these were the fashion experts that would come in and help them get a whole new wardrobe. Now again, I'm not here this morning to fix what you wear but I am potentially trying to challenge how you think and the way that you've arrived at understanding who God is because I believe that there's a God in heaven that loves you, that wants you to know what truth is and truth is not subjective but there is a truth that you can know that I'm telling you that can change everything about you if you'll see it. Three things I wanna show you this morning as we go on this quest to finding truth together that the bible talks about. The first thing you gotta realize is that truth truth is absolute.

What I mean by that is that this idea that is that is that is being fostered in the generation that's coming up behind me that the truth is relative is a lie. Barna just did a massive study and the results of the study should be alarming to all of us. He said that one in three generation z adults believes that something can be true for you without being true for me. They said that truth has actually become increasingly personal

rather than universal And I'm here this morning to tell you, do you wanna you want me to prove to you that that's not true? I I don't care what you think or feel or believe about gravity.

If we go to the top of this building right now and you believe that you can fly and that that truth is true for you but the laws of gravity don't apply to me, I'm telling you, you jump off the building, you will find out very quickly that there are some universal things that are true whether you believe them or not and this is the danger of belief is you can believe something wholeheartedly

and you can be wholeheartedly wrong. I'm here this morning to tell you the scriptures are clear. The truth is truth is absolute. It's not subjective. The next thing you gotta realize if that's true, this is gonna be even more offensive. For something to be true, it means that something else has to be false.

Alright, it's the very basic premise of logic. You take a philosophy class in college, that the very basic premise of logic is that a cannot be both a and b.

It's either a or b sometimes we have to realize the conversations that we're in. Again, I I love my Mormon friends that are trying to figure out their faith and my my pushback to them often is look what we're talking about,

I believe that Jesus is the creator of all things. He's outside of time. He's not a created being. He's a creator God. You believe that he was created by heavenly father. My only premise

is they both can't be true at the same time, so the question is is which one? Which one is true? Friends, truth matters. It's not subjective. The the stats, the data, they matter, they're all leading us somewhere. The question this morning is where are they leading us? Charles Spurgeon, a famous pastor said this,

he said the discernment is not simply a matter of telling the difference between right and wrong, rather it's telling the difference between here it is, right and almost right. I think my fears, the greatest lies we've believed aren't the difference between right and wrong but it's the difference between right and

man, that's really close but it's still it's still wrong. I'm here this morning to remind you that truth is absolute. Secondly,

my encouragement to us is also to remember that truth can be known.

In the middle of the sea of confusion against a war coming against truth, I'm here this morning with a bold claim that I think truth still can be known. I have to remind my mom of this often, she sends me probably five videos a week about like why the world is ending today and I'm like, mom, the video is AI, it's not real, okay? Like you need an AI filter, you just don't believe it, get off the internet lady, like it's it's deceiving you, you know?

But I look at it go, man, we have a generation coming up believing that truth is relative. At the same time, you have this this this explosion of artificial intelligence and these two worlds are about to collide and yet God says that if you if you lose truth, you will lose everything else.

I would say the only benefit that AI has produced A couple years ago, videos from my past were produced and showed up. I was gonna have to have some awkward conversations. Today, I'm like, wasn't me, It's AI. I've never seen that before in my life. I don't what you're talking about. Right? Now you just deny it. There's some benefits but I'm telling you that the downsides are are monumental yet in the middle of it, the bible makes a bold claim that truth can be known. How do we get to truth?

If truth matters, how do we get to it? Well, you've gotta you gotta get to the origin.

The closer you get to the origin, the closer you will get to truth. You don't believe me, go play the game telephone. Okay? Telephone with your friends is a simple premise. One person starts and tells a story to the person to their left. That person has one chance to repeat it to the person to their left and eventually will make its way around the room and it's a funny game because the person at the very end of line will say what they've heard and it's nowhere near where the story started.

But how do we get back to the source of truth? You ask the person that started the whole thing to say, hey, what did you say in the beginning? I'm telling you to find truth, you go back to the origin, you will find truth. The bible tells us that the origin of everything, the author of everything both seen and unseen

is God himself. If we are gonna go on a quest this morning for truth, you've gotta begin to search who God is. Again, I put it in notes this way, the only way to really know truth is you have to know God. If we're going to wrap our lives in the belt of truth, we have to wrap our lives in the person

of God. Who is God? You asked good questions at the 10:40 service this morning. Hebrews chapter one tells us this, as long ago long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through

the prophets. The author of Hebrew reminds us that the primary way that God used to speak was through the prophets. There was an age of prophecy where the primary way that God communicated his heart, his character and his nature to humanity was through people who are representations

of him on the earth today. You have Isaiah and Jeremiah and all the prophets of the old, that's how God used to speak but verse two says, but now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his son. God promised everything to the son as an inheritance

and through the son, he created the universe. The son radiates God's own glory and here it is, expresses

the very character of God and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven. If you've ever wondered why we don't need prophets today like we did in the old testament, it's because we have the person of Jesus.

We know who God is. We have the exact replica of his character in the person of Jesus. Paul will go on to the church in Colossae. In the book of Colossians, he will say that the God who is who is invisible became visible through Jesus. The God who is unknowable became knowable. The God who is untouchable and unseeable

through the person of Jesus became touchable and seeable. Friends, this morning I'm here to remind us that if we're going to figure out truth, we've gotta go back to the origin story himself. We've got to figure out who God is and God,

God is known through the person of Jesus. Jesus just flat out said it John chapter 14 verse six, he says, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the father except through me. I go, well that sounds really hateful, know, like that's pretty exclusive of you Jesus, like you're the only way

and this is the part that's hard when I have conversations with like my my well intended, you know, atheist friends or very spiritually enlightened friends like, man, I love Jesus, I think he's a great teacher. I'm like, have you read what Jesus said?

He said things like, if you don't hate your own mother and father, you're not worthy to be a disciple of mine. He said, you should eat my flesh and drink my blood.

You can't get to the father in heaven unless you go through me. Jesus' message was not, there's multiple paths, they're all leading to the same way, just follow your truth and they all get to the same place eventually. No. He said, there's one way to get to heaven, it's through me.

I am the only way this life will ever make sense and he makes one of the most exclusive but I would argue inclusive statements in the world because what's the alternative? The alternative is Jesus is like, hey guys, I'm about to be back in heaven with my father, it's gonna be awesome.

Good luck figuring it out from here. Like I I hope you get there, maybe you'll get there. No. No. No. He didn't do that. Why? Because he loves us, so he gave us the path. Here's the path.

You gotta know me. You gotta submit your life to me. You gotta surrender to me. If you want to find your life in this side of eternity, he said, you've got to you've gotta lose your life.

You gotta be willing to die to who you used to be so that you can be raised to life with me. What are we celebrating with baptism? We are celebrating people physically going through the process of what is happening inside of their hearts. The old person that they were is dying so that the new person can be raised to life. It's a public declaration to the world both physical and spiritual.

That old person that you used to know is dead. God did not make them a slightly better version of them. No. No. He made them a brand new version of who they are. They are now raised, the bible says, to new life in Christ. But friends, you gotta realize there's not multiple

paths to get to God, there is one. This tells me that in our quest for truth, you gotta realize truth is not an ideology, truth is not a thought pattern, truth is a person and his name is Jesus

and that is something that the church celebrates. Come on somebody. So truth, I believe truth is absolute but truth can be known but here's the third thing we've gotta reconcile with this morning is that also, it hurts. It's not always fun. I don't know if you've ever been like like really wrong.

Like, man, it's it's really hard when you realize you're wrong especially if it's in a family group chat. You're like, I'm not admitting I was wrong in the group chat. I'll I'll acknowledge it individually but not in the group chat. I gotta hold on to some level of pride.

But man, if you're wired the way that I am, like, you find yourself in a lot of situations where you've gotta, like, backtrack a little bit. Like, alright. I was pretty passionate about me being right and you're right, I'm wrong, but there's something about our the pride in us that man, we just have zero ability

to just raise our hands what should be something that's simple to do to just go, you know what? That was wrong. I don't know if was the way that I was raised, the home that I came from, the cultural experiences that I've had, the things that have happened to me, the way that I saw the world, but the truth is is that I was I was wrong. I'm telling you, the older I get, the more things I realize I don't really actually know all that much about. There's only a few things that I hold onto close handed like these things I know to be true.

The rest of this stuff, man, I don't know, we'll figure it out together and I think that's my hope in my heart as a church is that we would be a church, that Echoes would be a church to go look, our goal on a Sunday mornings when we gather,

our goal is not to just make each other comfortable and we're not coming here because we just wanna be patted on the back and celebrated for the life that we've already chosen to live. No, no, we're here to go look, we we want to be challenged. We we want to be pushed because I'm telling you, if you wanna know what happens to churches,

denominations, and movements of the people of God that make their highest ethic comfort, Look at it. It's playing out across the country right now. We have denominations all over the country that are shutting their doors. Why? Because the lie that comfort will lead you lead you to thriving,

it is a lie from the pit of hell. This is the tension that we have to wrestle with is that truth can be hard but what's the alternative?

That we all collectively just settle to a bunch of lies and we pat ourselves on the back that we're we're just going through the motions and we're we're checking the box and we're playing church. I'm just not gonna be that guy, that's not the church that I I want to lead because I think the stakes matter.

It is too big of a deal and my my fear as a pastor in America in 2026 is that we have way too many Christians, people who would identify as a follower of Jesus that are comfortably living a life that I believe is gonna lead them straight past heaven and straight to hell.

And I know that's not like, oh, that's warm and fuzzy and makes us excited before we go to brunch, but it's true and it's not just my opinion. I want to remind us of Jesus' words this morning in Matthew chapter seven. Jesus himself before he left this earth said, beware of false prophets.

Friends, I'm telling you, there are so many false prophets in this world selling us lies that are not true. Here's how to distinguish them, says you will distinguish them as harmless sheep who they're disguised as harmless sheep but they're really vicious wolves. You can identify them by their fruit, that is by the way that they act. Can you pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? He said a good tree produces good fruit, a bad tree produces

bad fruit. A good tree can't produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can't produce good fruit. Here's what he's gonna turn the corner. He's not talking about agronomy. This is not a lesson lesson about growing the right trees. Verse 19, so every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire.

Jesus himself is saying, it's not enough to claim to be a follower of Jesus. Just like an apple tree, know that it's an apple tree based on the fruit that it produces. At some point, you and I have to have a sobering look in front of a mirror to go, what is your life producing?

Because the bible says that the fruit of your life produces who you are. And Jesus warns us there's a day that's coming where the trees that are not producing good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. Friends, he's talking about hell. And as long as heaven and hell are a reality which they are,

we have to be on a pursuit for truth because it matters. Verse 20 says, yes. Just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions, not everyone who calls out to me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Only those who actually do the will of my father in heaven will enter it. On judgment day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, we prophesied in your name. We cast out demons in your name. We perform many miracles in your name, but I will reply, I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God's law. Jesus,

straight to the throat, just goes, man, there's a lot of you who know the Christian language. You know the Christian things. You go through the motions, yet at the end of your life, what you are gonna hear is get away from me for I never knew you. It's why truth matters.

And I'm telling you, if you've been around the the bible long enough, there's going to be things that you will read to go, oh, man. I don't that really challenges me. I don't know what to do with that.

I don't know how to reconcile that because if I was in charge, I don't know if I would make the rules that way. I would possibly change things, but then you gotta remember, I'm not God. When you get to a point when you read your bible and you realize that there's something that the scripture says that challenges your natural

wiring,

you have one of two options. You can do what a lot of people are doing today. You can water down the bible to get it to say what you want it to say. I'm telling you, if you wanna find a Bible verse to support anything that's out there, you can find a Bible verse, take it out of context, warp it, twist it, and make it to say what you want it to say.

But what you can't do is take the entire narrative of the scripture and change the core doctrines of the church that we know to be true. Here's my encouragement to you is don't change God's word to fit your life, but change your life to fit God to fit God's word. That if the belt of truth really matters

when we find ourselves in a place where the truth comes against perceptually, potentially a place that we've been deceived, you've got a choice to make at that point. Why? Why does it matter? Why does any of this matter to us? Because the truth hurts but it always helps.

This is the promise of heaven this morning. Here's why the stakes matter is yes, the truth is painful but it also helps. Jesus says, you will know the truth and the truth

will set you free. Friends, it's not comfort that will set you free. It's not me telling you that how you think, how you already feel, how you already believe. Yeah. Sure. The bible and god supports that. That is not the path towards liberation.

The freedom that you want, the peace that you are in search of, it is on the other side of knowing truth. And, again, I'm just here this morning to remind us all, it is God's truth, not man's idea that sets people free.

And so we have to if we are going to engage in the spiritual fight that we're in, we have to start by putting on what Paul says is the belt of truth that is it's not subjective. It is objective.

It can be known, and it is found in the person of Jesus. So here's my here's my gentle challenge. Here's my correction and question I leave you with this morning. Where in your life, where in your faith journey have you believed a lie to be true?

Where have you settled in to doing things that you've convinced yourself, man? These things are acceptable to God, and I'm telling you they're they're not. If I could push just a little bit. There's a lot of things I could pick on, but there's probably one that I see time and time again given where we live in the cultural moment that we are in. I would say probably the number one area that people live in disobedience to God, but they're totally okay with it is when it comes to the realm of our finances.

You realize the Bible? Jesus, when he was on this earth, he talked more about resources than he did about heaven and hell combined. And we would all agree heaven and hell are kind of a big deal. But Jesus knew on this side of eternity, the fastest way to get to our hearts is to go after our resources.

And I can't tell you how many conversations I have with people to do all these crazy mental gymnastics to get around the idea

that you and I as followers of Jesus are not supposed to trust God with our money. And I'm just going like, if you just read the scriptures plainly, you could argue with what a tithe is, New Testament, Old Testament, but what what is abundantly clear to me is that you and I as the followers of Jesus are supposed to be marked

by supernatural sacrificial generosity. And I'm just here this morning to go where in your life, maybe it's finances, maybe it's sexuality,

maybe it's some other theological belief, where have you settled into believing a lie to be truth? And if you wanna be set free, we've gotta allow the truth of God again to penetrate our hearts, to correct us, to challenge us, and to push us to live differently. Amen? Let me pray for you. Father, God, I thank you

for every single person that's here today. And God, though I could never know all the things that are going on in the hearts of every person here this morning, what is so amazing to me is that you are a god in heaven that loves every single person so much that you know the ins and outs. You know the nuances.

You know the wrestling, the tension that is happening in their soul right now, and I trust, holy spirit, that you would do what you do, that your kindness would lead us to repentance. I love the fact that it's not your judgment that leads us to change, but it's your kindness. It's your gentleness.

It's your long suffering. But father, I do. I pray today that you would give us that you would give us clarity on where it is we've been deceived,

and then you would give us the boldness to be willing to just say, hey. I've gotten this thing wrong, and that we would be willing to do something that can be really difficult, which is to admit that we are wrong, repent, and turn around and go a different direction.

Jesus, we love you. We need you. It is in your name all God's people said. Amen and amen.