God Is Changing You

God may be changing you instead of changing your situation.

[Watch the Video]

Outline:

• Introduction
• What Happens When God Is Silent

• Tests my priorities
• Tests my identity
• Tests my maturity
• Tests my faith
• We’re Praying to Remove the Symptoms
• You Won't Change Until You Hit Rock Bottom
• God is Disciplining You
• We’re Like a Seed

Scriptures:

• Philippians 2:12-13
• James 1:2-4
• Luke 14:26
• Hebrews 5:8
• Hebrews 12:7-11

Introduction

Hearing From God

“Don’t tell me God is silent when your bible is closed

I know that I’m far from perfect but I want to be close

Even on this broken road I know that God’s in control

I’m not where I wanna be I’m on the right road

  --Enough (Misfits Social Club)

...don’t tell me God is silent when your bible is closed

That’s a reminder that the bible is the primary way that God talks to us.

Review

God responds in 5 ways

1. Yes
2. No
3. Wait
4. Confirmation / Direction / Clarity
5. Silence

We’re continuing to examine the scenario when God is silent.

God is Changing You

You are in the wilderness 

Philippians 2:12-13

12 So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling;

13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure

• God took Israel out of Egypt instantly, but it took 40 years to get Egypt out of Israel.

Teaches me something about myself

What Happens When God is Silent

James 1:2-4

2  Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,

3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

4 And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

When God is silent it

• Tests my priorities
• Tests my identity
• Tests my maturity
• Tests my faith

Tests my priorities

What do I value?

Identifies My Idols?

Is this something you value more than God?

What do you value more than God?

• Happiness
• Other people’s opinion
• Sex
• Significance
• money
• Family
• Spouse
• Your children

Parent/Child

Many people lose faith when they have a death of a parent or a child

Luke 14:26

“If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.

Hate: μισέω miséō, mis-eh'-o; to detest (especially to persecute); by extension, to love less

Example: American Me

• Puppet choked his brother (Little Puppet)

Control

Is it that your mother died or is it that you couldn’t control God?

• You couldn’t manipulate Him to get your way
• You don’t want to be in a relationship where you’re not in control

The Prosperity Doctrine is popular among driven people because it proclaims to give you a method to control God

• Through faith

Test your identity

Do you see yourself as a Christian first?

• “Are you a rapper that’s a Christian or a Christian that’s a rapper?”
• “Are you a programmer that’s a Christian or a Christian that’s a programmer”
• Are you a Republican who is a Christian or Christian who is a Republican?

What do you want to be identified as?

What are you most proud of?

If you are in a social setting and you have to introduce yourself, what do you say?

Tests my maturity

Example: child throwing a tantrum because he wants his popsickle now

• Instead of waiting to get home

The inability to wait is a sign of immaturity

• Patience is a mark of maturity 

Are you going to throw a tantrum? Are you going to go and try to solve it by yourself?

Tests my faith

• Muscles are strengthened by being tested

Do I really believe God?

Do I trust God?

Many people lose their faith when God is silent 

We’re Praying to Remove the Symptoms

When we want God to remove the pain God is often more concerned with the root (the cause)

If God removed the symptom you would never address the real issue

Finances

Get Out Of Debt

Example: lottery

• Get me out of debt God
• Nearly ⅓ of US lottery winners go bankrupt in a few years
• Stop spending more money than you have
• Stop coveting… The new phone the new car

The love of money is shown by you spending more money than you have

• “The love of money” is really a love of the things that money buys
• It is not talking about loving to save money

The core problem is that you buy things to feel worthy or valued

God wants to cure the root issue

• What caused you to get into that problem
• We want God to deal with the symptoms
• God wants to deal with our character
• God wants you healed

Are you willing to have God change you instead of changing the circumstance?

Mate Selection

90% of relationships success is due to mate selection

Praying for a husband

You See A Pattern

You keep attracting the wrong type of people

• “All men are dogs”
• “All women are demanding, entitled and unappreciative”

• All my relationships have failed for the same reason.

You Are the Common Denominator

• You’re attracted to the wrong type of person
• You’re attracting the wrong type of person

Example:  Men Just Want Sex

• You meet them in nightclubs dressed like a slut
• You have sexy pictures on your dating profile
• Or you’re on IG showing your body
• What kind of bait are you fishing with

The core issue is where you are getting your validation from

• You fulfill your need for attention and validation in an unhealthy way
• Your self esteem and self worth are tied to men’s reaction to you

Example: Abusive Relationship

• Girl breaks up with her abusive ex
• Girl goes back to her abusive ex or another abuser
• Girl finds a nice guy who she can cry on his shoulder and complain to

The core issue is that your idea of love is tied to being abused

You think this is what love looks like

Example: Fixer and Taker

• The fixer blames himself for things that go wrong in a relationship. The taker is used to blaming others.  
• Fixers gives without taking. Takers takes without giving.  
• Fixers feel like they don’t have a right to say what they feel. Takers feel entitled to say whatever they feel like whenever they want.
• Fixers have too much of a conscious and are always thinking of other people in a relationship. Takers have no conscious and are always thinking of themselves.

You don’t like you. You like the opposite of you.  

The fixers view of love is tied to trying to please someone who is hard to please

Repetition

If you don’t get healed you will continually have the same problem.  

You anchor your feelings of love to an abuse that happened to you.  

Repetition compulsion: what you don’t complete you will repeat

• Core issues that you don’t resolve you will stay stuck in for the rest of your life

Until you fix your issue any relationship you get in will fail

You Won't Change Until You Hit Rock Bottom

We are often not open to the truth that the issue is within ourselves. We often have to go through a bad situation in order to start looking inward.

Sometimes you have to be in a low state in order to accept the truth

• You can’t tell an alcoholic he’s an alcoholic when he’s on a high

Not getting a solution can drive you to deal with the real problem

You don’t have enough discipline motivation and drive to change

• The pain of your current state does not outweigh the pleasure of your current state.  
• When people hit rock bottom they are open to trying new ideas for thinking outside of the box.

Turning to God

This is when people decide to turn to God.

• Therefore God needs to keep bringing you into this state.

Many people only seek God when they don’t have the answer 

Examples

• Church
• Bible study when laid off

Jesus Learned From Suffering

Hebrews 5:8

Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.

Some people have to suffer in order to grow

How to Avoid Hitting Rock Bottom

If you hear from God you can avoid the negative situation and start to turn your life because God told you to. 

You may not even know what God is working on until you notice the change.

God is Disciplining You

Hebrews 12:7-11

7It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? 10For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. 11All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

• Discipline isn’t just punishment
• Discipline is intended to modify your behavior
• Correction

Discipline is an act of love

Example: Good Times

• James whipped Michael’s friend

It is an act of love

The goal is that we turn to God completely

*That doesn’t mean that everything bad that happens is discipline from God

We’re Like a Seed

Sometimes we’re like a seed.  

• We got put down into the darkness into the dirt.
• We don’t know if the farmer forgot about us or not
• We haven’t seen sunlight in days
• Every now and then the dirt gets damp

Protected

• Every seed is wrapped in a hard protective coating
• Moses was in a basket when all the other Hebrew children were being killed
• Jesus went to Egypt when the babies were being killed

Provision

The seed doesn’t have the roots to get the nutrients from the soil

• The seed has its own food supply until the time that it is able to get nutrients from the soil
• The seed has provision
• The stuff that the seed needs is already in the seed

Potential

• It’s just a matter of time before the potential is released
• 
  

But one day we start to change start to feel different

• We begin to transform into something else

God is changing you for a greater purpose!



Instructor: Michael Leadon

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References

What to Do when is seems like God Doesn’t Respond - Stephen Furtick

https://youtu.be/4_0G1-hS1QY

God May be Changing You (Persistent Prayer)

Extra

Suffering

Hebrews 2:9-10

But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.

10 For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings.

We don’t deserve it more than Jesus and we don’t learn more quickly than Jesus.

2 Corinthians 1:3-5

 3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 5For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.

• God takes us through to help others