Christian Imposter Syndrome | Kingdom

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Welcome to the Kingdom Podcast. I'm your host John Moffitt. I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and also the host of Theocast.

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It's a podcast about the Christian life from a Reformed perspective. This particular podcast answers this question, how do you seek first the

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Kingdom of God? Why does it matter? And technically, how does it change your life? That's what this podcast is.

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Well, I want to pick up where I left last week, and we were talking about why the Bible feels like a fairy tale.

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And I just have some additional thoughts I want to give you. How many of you feel like there's something missing?

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You love Jesus. You love the church. You know that falling in love with the world, like when it says, do not lay up treasures here on earth, but in heaven, you know that part's right.

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But life just seems more complicated than it should be. Life feels, at times, empty and void, like you rest in Christ, but you're restless.

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You enjoy the gospel, but you're anxious. You love worshiping on Sundays with your brothers and sisters, but your life literally feels like a fake, like my life has zero meaning.

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Like if I died, I don't think anybody would care. That's how you feel. Your significance is found in how many

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Instagram followers you have, or whatever social media, right? Your identity is wrapped up in your career.

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You know, I have three children right now that are all going to be entering into the workforce, and have already entered into the workforce, and it's been a battle to help them understand they are not what they do.

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They are not the sum of their actions, but man, that's what we're told. So when we believe we're the sum of our actions, then that's the data we pursue, right?

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We go after self -help. We go after recognition. We go after name brands.

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We go after money, right? That's where the acceptance is, because we are told we are the sum of our actions.

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What did we do on the episode I did a couple weeks ago called Born Identity? We're not the sum of our actions. We are the sum of Christ and his actions, right?

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So this is the part of the Bible that has been lost to us because, frankly, we only take portions of it.

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We've been trained to take portions of it. At times, my wife and I laugh at how much we can turn food into religion.

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I'll come home, and I'm like, babe, you'd be so proud of me. I was good today. And then I describe all of the healthy things that I ate, right?

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As if food has a moral value to it, right? Food doesn't have a moral value. Or I'll justify, like,

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I've been good all week long, so I'm going to have this cookie. We create these justifications based upon performance.

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And in the end, it leaves us feeling still empty, because we want there to be the acceptance of our actions, but they really aren't.

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There is no acceptance that's there. One of the realities that I have been loving about confessional theology and Reformed theology is that it forces you to deal with all aspects of the human life.

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You are forced to face the physical and the spiritual realm.

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You can't live life without both of them. This is why Calvinism has become so powerful for me in my own life, is that I understand that it's not human will against God's offer.

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That can't make any sense, because there's so many passages that speak against that. But there's this supernatural nature to it.

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I mean, I love when Nicodemus comes to Jesus and he says, you are talking in such a way that I have not heard before.

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And so he uses, Jesus uses spiritual language. He says, you have to be born again.

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Nicodemus is like, well, what do you mean I have to be born again? And then he says it this way.

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It's like, well, the spirit is like the wind. It blows wherever it wishes. No one knows where it goes or where it's coming from, but you can see the evidence of it.

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Do you understand the whole Bible is designed this way? Jesus often talks in these miraculous spiritual language.

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And we always try to make that physical in nature. I'll give you another one. The rich young ruler walks up to Jesus and says, what must

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I do to be saved? The man is asking for physical examples that he can point to.

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And Jesus says, oh, salvation is not of this realm. Salvation cannot be conquered through flesh, right?

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Salvation has to be conquered on another realm, on a spiritual level, on a soul level.

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And Jesus says that the only way that it can happen is through me. And I have to do all of the work.

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So the whole book has been wrapped up in physical people learning to look at the world through spiritual eyes.

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That's how the whole book is set up. So if you're feeling like the Christian life is kind of half cocked, you know, you've only seen half the book.

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You ever walk into a room and everyone in the room is laughing and having a good time, but you can't pick up why that is?

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You're not on the joke. You're not in on it. And you just, after a while, you want to leave the room.

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Because if no one leans over and says, this is what we're talking about, that's exactly how Sunday mornings feel for many of you.

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You walk into church and you're like, I'm not in on the joke. I don't get why everyone's happy. I don't get why everybody's excited about this.

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I don't feel it at all. I know I should. I know I should love Jesus. I know I should be excited about the

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Bible and about church and about the kingdom and all that stuff you say, John, but I am, I just don't feel it.

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Well, believe it or not, I think it's because you only have half the story.

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That's why. And I think Satan's done a brilliant job of blocking people from God's word.

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Just go back to last week's episode. The moment you shut down the supernatural side of the

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Bible, you're shutting down all the hope that you have from God. Do you know why? I'll just start with prayer.

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Do you know why prayer is so hard and complicated? Because you're talking to somebody you can't see. That's just, that's just weird.

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I mean, do you understand that people go to a graveyard and they sit in front of a tombstone and talk to it because at least there's something physical in front of them that it feels like the person could hear them.

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Like we just want to be able to feel like someone can hear us. And the

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Bible is designed to give us enough confidence that when we stop and we commune with our God who lives inside of us, we commune with him and he hears us, that we should believe in that conversation.

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But because the supernatural side of us is disconnected from the Bible, it's hard for us to believe that there's a

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God who truly is communing and interacting with us. And we've turned him into a genie, really. We're used to the genie side of God where, and we're all drawn to this.

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I was recently watching a show where this man was trying to heal this guy in crutches.

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You know, the whole thing was like energetic and passionate and prayer. Every time the guy wasn't healed, he'd just go back to praying, which was funny to me.

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Because you don't really see that in the New Testament when someone prays or has the gift of healing.

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It kind of instantaneously just happens. There wasn't like, let me try that again. Let me try that again. Let me try that again.

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It didn't work that way. But we're drawn to the miraculous in the physical realm. Like we want to see people's cancers healed and we want to see, you know, their eyesight come back.

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Like we want to see that. But on an eternal level, it doesn't really matter because if your cancer is healed, you're going to die of something.

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Car accident, old age, everyone's dying. But what you can't replace is the joy and the hope and the capacity to actually change someone's life from death to life, from hopelessness to hope, right?

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From anxiety and fear to strength and power. You can do that with the

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Bible. To me, when Paul, this one phrase has so like altered my thinking for so long.

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Paul's like, the weapons of our warfare are not things that you can touch. Which is hard for us going to gun toting

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Americans, right? Like I will protect my, I will protect my money with my guns. It's like, no, you can't. And then

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Paul's like, yeah, but you have a weapon that can actually destroy the thing that holds people in prison.

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He says the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but of divine power that tear down strongholds.

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And I don't mean the kind of strongholds the charismatic talks about. I mean, the kind that where Satan has come in has completely destroyed people's minds.

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And has them enslaved into sin. And no matter of how powerful you are physically, you'll never be able to help that person.

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No matter how much money you have, nothing. The only thing that will change them is the truth.

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And if you don't know the truth, the truth can't set you free. Therefore you're imprisoned and they're imprisoned because we don't have the truth.

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And we're more concerned about physical healings and miraculous gifts that even the demons can by the way, then we are about the truth that destroys

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Satan and all that he can do. What does Jesus say? I am the truth. I am the way.

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I am the life. But we would rather go after, well, tell me how to do more.

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And therefore the whole Bible becomes an instruction manual about how to self -improve.

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We don't need a self -improvement instruction manual. If you read the parts of the Bible, it's very hopeless when it comes concerning to you.

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I mean, the strongest people in the Bible, like Paul, he's like, yeah, I'm pretty weak.

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And if he's weak, then imagine what we are, right? So just kind of adding onto my thoughts from last week, the cold and distant, the disconnected, what is the purpose of my life?

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If you're willing, if you're willing to just walk down this journey with me, it doesn't matter who you are, if you've been married, if you're single or you're divorced, doesn't matter what your job is, doesn't matter what your gender is, it doesn't matter what your age is.

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I don't care if you're nine or 90. God's word is powerful.

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And the moment we believe it, there's nothing God can't do through us. That's a scary thought to think about.

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But the world will never know what he's doing, because that's not how it works. The world may never see the joy that you have or understand it.

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Now, it tells us to be ready to give an answer to the hope that lies within us. So there's definitely going to be opportunities. But this is where it starts.

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Your Bible, if you're willing to open it up and look at every single word and say, I'm going to believe everything that's in there, use a confession to guide and direct you.

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But if you're willing to do that, things will start to change. So I'll just leave you with this.

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The world you live in that you see is only half the world. And the moment you can embrace that, you'll want the

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Bible as much as you possibly can. Because how do you learn about something you can't see?

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Somebody's got to tell you about it. If you can't see it, you can't observe it. You can't figure it out on your own. You cannot figure out the spiritual realm on your own.

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This is what Paul is talking about. We're not wrestling against things that you can see. You're wrestling against what you can't see.

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And it's often what causes our depression, our discouragement, it defeats us, it entangles us. This is why he's saying, if you don't put on the armor of God, then

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Satan's darts will hit you, but you can't see them. That's the problem. Not with physical eyes.

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You have to see them with spiritual eyes. So every week we're going to start unpacking, what does this look like?

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How do we take the Bible and make it real? And I'll just go ahead and say this and sound crazy, but Narnia and Lord of the

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Rings is a little bit closer to the Bible than you think. That wrestling between realms that happens there,

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I think that's what Paul's talking about. And it's at the end of the book, which means if you want to understand what

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Paul is saying and what Jesus is saying and what Peter is saying, we're going to start in Genesis and start working our way through there.

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So how do you seek first the kingdom of God? You need to understand the differences between the kingdom of light, the kingdom of dark, the physical realm and the spiritual realm.

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And if I'm sounding crazy, but it makes sense, then you're on the right track. If I'm sounding crazy and you're not coming back,