thing that I realized is I've gotten so used to thinking in terms of choice, that sometimes I
forget about the fact that, that as of maybe a few years ago, like say maybe like three,
four years ago, when I started on this journey, I didn't know how to make a choice.
Because, and here's why I had lost ownership of myself. I did not own myself to myself.
I was at the mercy of everybody else around me, what it is that they thought about me,
what it is that they thought I should do the standards, everybody, my parents were holding
in their minds about me, or that I thought that God was holding in his mind about him,
or that the, I mean, about, about me related to him, or maybe a pastor or a mentor or a,
I don't know, whatever, some other teacher that I would be listening to.
I did not own myself. I always doubted myself. I always thought that I was less than, I always
thought there was something that I didn't know. And everybody else did, or all these other people
that I was listening to, because they knew certain things or had certain revelations,
or were an operating in certain power in the spirit that I couldn't, that I didn't have a
right to make my own decisions. I didn't have a right to feel something. I didn't have a right
to act on it. I didn't have a right to make any choice because my choices weren't being made for,
for literally decades. My choices were not being made because I made a decision
from deep within myself of out of basically out of my own free will. Instead, I had given up my
will to be determined by the sway and the flexibility and the constant, the constant,
how would you say that? Just unexpectedness of what could be presented to me that someone wanted
wanted of me, some standard that they were holding to me, holding me to that. I had to
quickly be able to adjust. I didn't. So in short, I did not own myself,
including, I couldn't even own myself in my relationship with the Lord, Lord, whatever you
want, whatever you say, I'm waiting for you, Lord, whatever, you know, if you say to do it,
Lord, you know, you know, I'll do it. There's nothing wrong with obeying God because we need
to obey God, but God doesn't want us to do it from a place of, I mean, nothing because then
we're actually not a son and we're not, and we're not actually interacting with him as he desires,
because we're not giving him our free will. We're not obeying him out of our free will,
because we're not engaging our free will. We're shutting it off. And then, and then just doing
whatever it is he says to do, he wants us to engage our free will and for him to be what we
choose. And that was something that I have that sometimes I forget when telling people, oh, by
the way, you need to choose the Lord, you need whatever that I see that I sometimes forget.
Sometimes, especially the people that end up going through the rest intensive are here and in such a
desperate place because they, they have long time ago given up their own right to make a decision,
their own right to want something, to choose, to listen to their intuition or whatever.
So that's something that I would recommend that all of you could explore with the Lord.
And that you remember that, that when you interact with the Lord, so say for instance,
you know, you're interacting with the Lord, whether it be on, whether, you know, your
devotionals or, or whatever, or in a time where you're sitting with him and you're, you're being
loved by him or whatever, that remember when you engage with him, bring you, bring yourself
to the table. That because he wants to engage with who you are, not with a limp dish rag,
not with something that doesn't know what it wants or who it is, or just doesn't think anything
of itself. He wants to engage with someone who was actually offering themselves to him. You can't
offer yourself to him. If you haven't, if you haven't chosen yourself, if you don't own yourself,
you can't give yourself, you have to own your free will in order to submit it. So it's very
important to actually, to mature our will to ensure a, to mature our sense of self and of
ownership, you know, meaning like ownership of ourself, et cetera, in order to be able to have.
that to give to God. And so that's where, that's kind of a basis that I can provide
of maybe where some of you can start of kind of being aware of the fact that maybe your
free will is not being engaged. Maybe you, and the way that sometimes I see it is,
is I have, is when I'm not owning myself and give. And so therefore I don't have myself
to give to the Lord. I don't have anything that I can want and give to him because I don't let
myself want. It got to that point. It got to the point I had, I didn't know my own dreams
and meaning my own desires. And therefore I couldn't ask God for them because I just didn't
think I had a right to want. I was too afraid of being disappointed. And I've been disappointed so
much. I stopped dreaming. I stopped wanting, and I thought I must be intrinsically bad.
So I spent all my time, effort, and energy all day long, avoiding myself, avoiding what I thought
avoiding what I felt, you know what? So therefore I had, I didn't have anything to give anyone else
other than mirroring them. Like, what is it that they want out of life? And how can I help them get
that? Or how can I be a support? How can I be loving? Because everybody else is more important
to me because that's what God says, et cetera. But you can't choose someone else over yourself.
If you haven't chosen yourself first and to not choose yourself is to not be in agreement with God.
So it's very important that before you give yourself to others, before you try to obey God
or anything else, understand you can't do that. You can't be successful until you've chosen yourself
first, because that's coming into faith and into agreement with God that he is who he says that he
is to the degree says he is that, and that you are who he says that you are. You are what he gave to
the world. You are what he gave to your spouse. You are what he gave to, to your family, your
parents, your friends, your church, your ministry, your business, whatever. And you don't have it to
give if you don't own it, if you don't own who it is that you are and come into agreement with that.
So there's a way in which we're actually in, there's not in a way it is unbelief against God
by not choosing ourselves first before everyone else. And I know that that's going to sound
selfish. It's not because you don't have you to give. You don't have you to die on behalf of
someone else if you don't own you. That's the only way that Jesus was died. Jesus gave himself up. God
didn't take him and no one else killed him outside of his will. It says in the Bible that God, that
Jesus willingly, he has God, but Jesus willingly gave himself up. He volunteered himself. You can
only do that if you own yourself. So the only reason why it's, so the reason why it's important
to choose yourself is because that, that solidifies and, and the kind of like the way in which God can
offer you and me as spirit together to the rest of the world. He can't do that. If you're absent,
you can't do that. If you're not engaged. And yes, part of that is a risk of being disappointed
and, and are, are in facing and risking the fact that we could be rejected. We could be rejected
by God because maybe she says that, no, I understand that that's your idea. I understand
that that's what you want, but that's not what we're going to do. You know, we're risking a lot
in doing that, but by not doing it, we're not having faith in God at the, at one of the,
at the most basic level outside of choosing him. After we choose him, the second thing that he
requires that we choose is ourselves. Who do I say that you are? And you have to choose that.
It's not selfish is coming to in, is coming into agreement and in faith with God at one,
at the most basic level. So anyway, hopefully that makes sense. And I'm missing, I'm missing
stuff in the chat. So mature will never thought it like that. You can choose someone else to be
yourself if you haven't chosen yourself first. Correct. Yes. And yeah, so someone told me that
I don't know a while back and it, at the time I was so new in it that, and it was after I had chosen
the Lord, et cetera. But it was so new that I didn't.
I really, really struggled with it.
I stumbled over that.
I was like, I don't think that that's right.
I don't think that that's Godly to mature your will, you know, because aren't we,
isn't that contradictory to submitting it, but you can't submit something you don't own.
You can't submit something that you haven't fully claimed as being given to you by God.
So God says, I've given you something.
I will not take it.
You have to be like Abraham and submitted on the altar.
Um, anyway, as over time, I came to realize that it wasn't contradictory.
It actually was required in order for me to be able to obey God,
because I have to, I have to have something in order to submit.
Um, but, uh, but anyway, and then also remember just like Jesus and just like Abraham presented,
presented Isaac on the altar.
When you submit your will to the Lord, then he will actually, and you, you know,
submit it completely to him where you let it go completely.
Then after that, you know, just like what he did with Jesus, where Jesus, you know,
said I, he did not consider, um, his divinity.
Um, oh, I'm having a really difficult time remembering that verse recently.
And that to be like, uh, claimed or laid hold of says that he released it when he came on,
when he came to the earth.
And then because he said, because he learned, he learned obedience by the things that he
suffered and he submitted himself completely to the father.
And because he did so after that, it says that God then gave him all power and authority.
But the only way that he could do that, that God did that because Jesus let it go first,
let go of any right to it, let go of holding onto it at all.
And completely submitted to it, completely submitted it and completely gave it up.
Not God.
I, I will be willing to give it up.
If you ask it of me, no, let it go.
Walk away.
It dies.
You're separated from it.
Only then can God trust us to give it back to us.
So when we're submitting our will, we won't be robots and not want anything anymore.
We're not like developing.
So we're not talking about like, oh, I'm developing my will and I'm maturing it.
And then there's me and God and we're separating.
And I've got my own thing I want to do.
But eventually I'll get to the point where I submit it.
And then after, and then after I submit it, I'm just, you know, I've got nothing to offer.
And then I'm just a peon of a slave to, uh, uh, to whatever it is that God comes along
with that he wants me to do.
That's not true.
That's not what happens.
Remember that in Christ, whatever dies always resurrects always without exception, anything
that dies in Christ, that is offered to Christ always, always, always, always, always, always,
always, always without exception, because it's the power of the gospel of Jesus to having
died and resurrected.
Anything that we offer to Christ in our flesh that dies is resurrected.
So your will is then given back to you in a manner of speaking, the fact that you're
one with Christ.
And now you and Christ operate together in your combined wills where you were, but, and
then you, you interact with the, with the earth, but your will by then is so submitted
to Christ that you don't go off and you do your own thing.
You and the Lord collaborate.
Okay.
The Lord, I think this is the good idea.
Well, I actually, I think this is a good idea.
And then you talk about it and do that.
And finally, the Lord might say, you know what, let's go with your idea because I'm
maturing you to the point where your idea actually reflects my character.
So that's what we're going with.
So he's gonna, he's teaching you as a good father, how to express your will to, to look,
to express his character and to look like what he looks like to make the decisions that
he would make out of that place.
Once your will is fully submitted to the Lord, the things that you desire are good.
The ideas that you come up with are reflective of his character, in which point you'll find
yourself in a situation like Moses did where Moses, you know, where God says, I'm going
to kill the Israelites.
Moses says, no Lord, please don't.
And it says that, that the Lord repented.
In other words, the Lord changed his mind and said, Hey, we're going to go with your
idea.
Why?
Because Moses was reflecting Moses's idea, even though it was the opposite of the one
that the Lord said that he was going to do.
The, the idea that Moses came up with was reflective of God's character.
So I was like, Hey, let's do what you came up with.
They counseled together and Moses had submitted himself so much to the Lord that he
And he had been matured by the Lord to the point where when they counseled, his will was reflecting the character of God, and it was just another way in which to approach the situation.
Both of them, though, were reflective of God's character, both God's idea and Moses', and God decided to do this one.
So anyway, our will is very important. We have to own ourselves in order to submit it, and then it will be resurrected, and then you'll be operating in your will with the Lord for the rest of your life in relationship to business and finances and relationships.
So the reason that that is important is that is you owning yourself is what's going to enable you to choose to choose yourself over, say, your anxiety.
So that's one of the, that's why actually I was thinking about this is, I know we're going just a little bit over time, but I wanted to come drive this point home because I hoped that it would be helpful.
Is, say for instance, there's something that you're struggling with, and you're wondering, how do I, especially some of the stuff that's come up this week, is what do I do when I don't know what I, what I am believing, or what I'm not believing?
You know, what, what do I do? You don't have to know. Sure, some of that is helpful, but sometimes it's not because there's a reason why we're believing it.
We're not simply identifying our unbelief. We're not going to convince ourselves to not believe that. We know not to believe it. We're believing it anyway.
You know, we're all very mature believers who can all teach Sunday school. We know what the truth is. Convincing ourselves by talking to ourselves, by having known the truth, by realizing what it is that we're not believing and trying to talk ourselves out of it, isn't going to work.
So we can, we can know it and, and sometimes it's helpful, but we don't have to. We're not limited by our knowledge of whether or not we know what it is that we're believing or not believing.
The important thing is that if you're dealing with some issues, say for instance, it's stress or it's anxiety or it's some other negative emotion, that's another thing we've been talking a lot about. There's something coming up and you're going, I do not know what the root is.
I do not know why I'm feeling like this. And if you're not careful, you're going to start feeling condemned and shamed. I shouldn't be feeling like this. Let that thing go.
If you let that go, you'll be able to release the other easier as well. So don't get onto yourself for feeling that way. That will, that's creating resistance to being able to let it go. So let that thing go first.
No shame, no condemnation. And then now, okay, I'm stressed, I'm anxious, I'm fearful, I'm whatever.
Choose that you are more important than your anxiety. Choose you over your anxiety. Choose you over your stress. And so that's why everything it is that I was talking about the power of choice is so important.
You have to own you in order to rise above this thing that we've been subject to. I feel this way. I don't want to feel this way. Why do I have to? You don't have to. You choose you.
And the way that you can know that you have the right to is God has said that you are that important. You're that important to him, so you have a right to be able to choose that as well.
The fact that you were so important to the Lord that he chooses you even over whether or not you believe him. He chooses you over your beliefs. He chooses you over your feelings and your experiences, and he chooses you over whether or not you choose him.
He chooses you over your faith. He chooses you over your beliefs, period. You are more important to him than even you believing him. And how do we know that? That's biblical. How do we know that? Because Christ died when not only were you not believing him, your unbelief was rejecting him to the point that your rejection was what killed him.
And he chose you anyway. He chose you when you literally gave him nothing. He always chooses you as more important than your faith, more important than whether or not you're believing him.
So we have to realize and decide to choose for ourselves that that is going to be the reality in which we're going to live. So when I say you choose yourself, choose yourself to the extent that God did. Choose that you are more important than whether or not you're believing God right now.
Choose that you are more important than you believing God right now.
Your value, the value that God has placed on you
was worth his death and his resurrection
was worth him coming and submitting himself
to the experience of a human being, which was his creature.
You were worth that.
So you can choose yourself as more important
and of more value than to feel any kind of weight
or condemnation or shame or anxiety or stress
because you've done something
or because something's happened to you.
You are more important than anything that happens to you
or anything that you do, whether or not you believe God,
whether or not you're trusting,
whether or not you're doing it right,
whether or not you've shifted into rest, period.
If you choose that, everything else will fix itself.
Really, it sounds contradictory.
Initially, it sounds like we're trying to elevate ourselves
to the point of being God or something like that,
and it's not.
It's the fact that God chose us
when it was actually our unbelief itself
that was rejection, and it was our rejection that killed him.
So, I mean, there's no place,
I don't wanna say lower that we can go than that.
There's no place of lack that we can be in
in relationship to God than that, and that didn't deter him.
In fact, it was in that place that he made covenant.
So anyway, so I just kind of, like I said,
the majority of people are here, if not all of them here,
because by the fact that we haven't been allowed
in our own minds to own ourselves,
that's why we struggle with knowing how it is we feel
or what it is that we want,
or sometimes what it is that we believe,
or we're stressed and anxious and we don't know why
and we can't get out of it
and we just feel things are unfair.
You have a right to own yourself.
You have a right to choose that it's God
that's most important and then you.
We're not talking about you at the expense of other people.
That's not what we're talking about,
but also you can't have yourself to give to someone else
until you choose the value of you first.
Then you have something to give.
Then that thing has a value when it dies for this,
and I don't mean physically,
because very few, any of us will ever have to die physically
for somebody else,
but you will emotionally have to die for your spouse,
for your parents, for anybody that you're leading ministry,
et cetera, you're pouring out also,
you're a living sacrifice for God as well.
So, yeah.