Gregory Dickow - Shift Your Thinking, Lift Your Life
Well, as promised, today is your day, today is the day I told you about last week, your inside out revolution begins right here. Right now, I'm about to take you into our auditorium for what could very well be the most significant and life changing message you've ever heard. It's our two thousand and nineteen Fast from thinking launched today. It's not a fast from food. So be encouraged. You can eat whatever you want. I believe, though, this farce was given to me by God. Listen to what one of our viewers wrote me in our previous fashion.
Wrong thinking, he said. I began to receive the forty day fast and wrong thinking in a very bad time of my marriage. My wife moved out and I realized she wasn't coming back, she said. He said after 20 days into the fast wrong thinking, I angrily told her to get out of the house. Four days went by and I realized she wasn't coming back. She said the pain was too great. On day thirty eight of the fast wrong thing, it still looked hopeless. But on day thirty nine he said everything changed. I read your message and began to expect the tables to turn, just like the Bible says. And at noon my wife came home. Something had happened in her heart and she felt like she give me one last chance for our family. The Lord restored my family back and I'm a different man.
Wow. That's one of the thousands of testimonies we receive when people fast from wrong thinking it changes your life forever. And listen, here's how it started a number of years ago. I was frustrated when I saw so many people desiring change in their lives, but failing to see results out of this frustration. God spoke to me and said, call my people to a fast. I was a little resistant, but he said not a fast from food, a fast from wrong thinking. In that moment, a movement was born which is powerfully impacted hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people around the world. Again, it's not a fast from food, but it's literally abstaining or fasting or eliminating wrong mindsets and wrong thoughts that keep us limited and keep us defeated. One thought at a time. So let's go into the teaching and I'll be back in a few more moments to tell you more. Check this out.
When Adam and Eve sinned, they're separated from God now, this will explain the condition that everybody, everybody experiences and the world is experiencing today. And he said, you're your sorrow and your conception. You will have you will have sorrow in your life and in your conception and in pain. You're going to bring forth children and and your desire will be to rule over your husband, but he will rule over you. And you've got you've got to go to the Hebrew language to see when he says your desire will be to your husband. It doesn't mean she will desire her husband. It means she will desire to usurp her husband, but he shall rule over her. Both of those things are a curse. Both of those things are wrong. God didn't create the man to rule over his wife and God didn't create the woman to rule over her husband. Both of those things are the byproduct of the curse.
And what I'm trying to say is there's three things that set in to mankind's soul and psyche. The moment that Adam and Eve sinned, three things set in. Well, there's really for fear was the first one. But the three that are in this passage of scripture that I want to focus on is sorrow. That's depression. Sadness, loneliness, emptiness, that sorrow, number two, is pain, so he says you'll have pain in as you bring forth children. How many have children? You have pain, all right? Oh, God help us. So and I'm kind of joking, but I'm not, you know what I mean? So three things. What do you have? What what is the result of being separated from God? What is the result of sin?
And I'm going to tell you what sin is, and you're going to have to look it up and study it if you don't believe me. But I'm going to tell you what it is in a few moments. But here, listen, he's number one, sorrow is going to multiply. Number two, pain. Now you're going to have sorrow, which wasn't in the Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve sinned. And now you're going to have pain, which was not in the Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve sinned. And now you're going to feel inferior and a need to dominate. So now you're going to feel inferior because now you're going to have this need to because you're going to you're going to be you're going to live now with this sense of inferiority, because sin makes cowards of men and all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Romans three twenty three says when he says fall short of the glory of God, that word short there is the word inferior, inferior.
So he said, because of sin, you become inferior to the glory of God. When when God created Adam and Eve, he gave them his glory. He made them in his image. They were glorious. They were in his image. And now they have and they were they were made in this image to rule and reign over life, to rule and reign over the over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over everything, the creeps and over all the earth. And so they had rulership over Satan. They had dominion over the serpent. They had dominion over the earth. They had dominion in life. And now that they have sinned, they have fallen short. They have become inferior to the person that God created them to be. And this is what happens before we get born again. We are living in sorrow. We are living in pain and we are living in inferiority.
And the cross of Jesus Christ deals a death blow like an arrow into the heart of the heart of your very flesh, the the cross of Jesus Christ. It stricken the heart with with joy and peace and happiness, and delivers a man or woman from depression and sorrow, the cross of Jesus Christ, the love of Jesus Christ, what God did for you. It strikes through the very heart of pain so that by his stripes you are healed and the cross strikes right through the heart of inferiority. Because he was nailed to the cross, he was buried and he rose from the dead and he didn't rise alone. He said, you are risen with him and seated with him in heavenly places. And now you and I are kings and priests. The very cross of Jesus plunges through the heart of what sin did to mankind in giving them sorrow, pain and inferiority.
Let me tell you something. It is our it is our absolute ignorance and lack of knowledge that is keeping us in sorrow, keeping us in pain and keeping us in inferiority. It's our ignorance. It's not God's plan. It's not God's will to keep you in pain. It's not God's will that keep you depressed. It's not God's will to keep you in sorrows, not God's will to keep you feeling inferior and beneath yourself and beneath your destiny and beneath your value or lower down to a less valuable person than who God created you to be. Your value is immense. Your your destiny is greater than you could imagine. Your worth is precious. It's so precious that Jesus paid for you with his own blood. That's how valuable you are. That's how worthy you are. He raised you up and gave you the million and said, through the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness, we reign. We reign in life.
Life doesn't reign over us unless we're ignorant, unless we remain ignorance, unless we remain ignorant of who we are, of who we are. What I want you to see is what Adam and Eve brought into the world Jesus took from the world, Adam and Eve brought sorrow, Adam and Eve brought pain, and Adam and Eve brought inferiority. Jesus brought joy. Jesus brought healing. And Jesus brought righteousness and elevation. He elevated women. He elevated children. Let the children come to me. Women come to him at the well. Women come to him and who have been prostitutes. Women come to him and and pour oil on his feet and wipe their feet with wipe his feet with her tears.
You know, Jesus elevated women. He had women following him. He had men following him, obviously. But he, he treated women equal. He he loved men and women and children. Jesus loved everybody. Didn't matter where they came from. The woman, the the Syra Phoenician woman, Jesus healed her daughter and and the woman with the issue of blood. Jesus healed her. And I mean, he did not hold he did not withhold his healing from anybody because of their sex, because of their age or because of their race or because of their color, because of any sin that they had committed. He was he freely gave people. He insists he's the best. He's the he's the greatest. He is he is our savior and our friend. And he's the lover of our soul. And he's he's the best thing that ever happened to me and he's the best thing that ever happened to you.
And if he's not the best thing that ever happened to you, then let me introduce to you the real Jesus, the real Jesus who came to bring good news. He said, the good news is you don't have to work anymore to be saved. You have to earn it, can't earn it, can't deserve it. I'm saving you, by my grace. The real Jesus says, let me heal you. No matter what you've been going through, no matter what you've done to make yourself sick, I am going to make you well. I am here to heal you. It's a gift. The real Jesus says. Let me renew your mind. Let me restore your soul. Let me deliver you from addiction. Let me deliver you from fear. Let me deliver you from selfishness. Let me deliver you from loneliness. Let me deliver you from whatever I mean deliver you from the sickness. Let me deliver you from your pain. Let me deliver you from your sorrow. Let me deliver you from what you're going through.
That's the real Jesus. The real Jesus. Let me tell you about him. The real Jesus wants to sit down with you and study the Bible with you. As you sit down and read your Bible, he'll speak to you. He'll say, oh, check that verse out. Who I wrote that one. Who I said that one. That was my quote. That was me. I want you to watch it. Jesus wants to have fun with you. He wants to rejoice with you. He wants to laugh with you. He wants to cry with you. He wants to say, give me your heart. OK, I see some broken areas in there. Here, let me here let me remolded in the Bible says and he remade he reshaped the clay while it was on the Potters. He saw that he saw that it was marred in Jeremiah eighteen. And what did he do. He he he took it and he reshaped it again. And he yielded.
This world is hurting folks. This world is suffering, we need to wake up, we have the answer. You only wake up like we need to wake up and be better people. Holier people. We need to be kinder people. We need to be more merciful people, you want to know what holiness His Holiness is? Mercy. You want to know real holiness, His Holiness, real holiness is is agreeing with God, that's real holiness. You know, you want to know when your own holy, when God says when God shares his opinion, but you want to argue with him about your opinion, your opinion is unholy unless it agrees with God. That's what holiness, His Holiness, is to agree with God because God's right and God's smart and God is the truth. And so when I'm agreeing with him, I'm I'm holy. I'm I'm set apart for four good things now because I agree with God. When I disagree with God, I'm in sin. This is what sin is. This is what I wanted to get to that sin.
In John, Chapter six or seven, Jesus said the Holy Spirit will come to the world. He will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness and judgment. And then he defines in verse eight, I believe in verse nine what sin is. He says the Holy Spirit will convict the world concerning sin. He said he'll come and convict the world in verse eight of sin, righteousness and judgment. Verse nine says of sin because they do not believe in me. So now the sin that the Holy Spirit is trying to convict us of is not our smoking in the boys room. I'm not saying to smoke. I'm not encouraging you to do unhealthy things. But that's not that's not the sin that the Holy Spirit is going after. Convicting us of the sin is not the drinking. The sin is not the cussing. The sin is not the sin that he came to convict us of is not our behavior. The sin that he came to convict us of is our belief.
He said the Holy Spirit will convict the world of now don't take this the wrong way, ways all the pastors preaching, that's OK. Listen, I didn't say first of all, I'm saying it's not OK to sin, but I'm defining what sin is. Sin is to not believe in Jesus. That's what sin is. The most holy, righteous thing you can do is to accept Jesus as savior and Lord. And the moment you accept him as savior and Lord, you're no longer in sin. You're in him. You can't be in post, you're in now. Your behavior might be still screwed up. Like I got saved and I went out and partied. And something like. Oh, maybe maybe you're not really safe yet. I got saved and went out and got St... But not because I wasn't saved, it was because my mind wasn't renewed yet, it was because I didn't know how to break free of my actions and behaviors.
If I have to change all those things in order to get saved, I would be doomed for the rest of my life, not because I keep doing those things, but because that is a lie and a false gospel that you have to stop doing all of your sins so that Jesus can forgive you. That is pathetic. It is ridiculous. It is religious. It is the Pharisees preaching. It is self-righteous. I don't care who told you that. I don't care how you grew up. I don't care what religion or what church or what famous pastor told you that it is wrong. It is unbiblical because we are not saved by our good works. We are not saved by changing. We are changed by his salvation. The salvation is a gift. And then it leads us to repentance. God gives us the gift of salvation and it leads me to change.
I don't change and then get salvation. That's that that's that's man made religion, folks, if we can change, to beat, to be saved. And then why did Jesus even have to come? My behaviors have changed through my belief, my beliefs don't change through my behaviors, my behavior changes through my beliefs, as I believe, right. I end up living right. And if I'm not in this area of my life, I'm not living right. It's because I need to adjust whatever I'm believing that is causing that behavior. I'm not going to focus on the behavior. I'm going to focus on the believing in the believing is the root to the behavior. And this is Adam and Eve, this is when Adam and Eve truly sinned, it's not when they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They they truly sinned when they when they doubted who they were.
So God said he made them in his image in Genesis Chapter one. But in Genesis Chapter three, the devil says if you eat from this tree, you'll be like God. And and they believe that, oh, OK. So let's eat from this tree so we can be like, God, it sounds real good. We want to be like God knowing good and evil. But they forgot who they were. They forgot they already were made in God's image. They didn't need to eat from that tree to be to be made in God's image. We do need to eat from a tree to be in God's image. But it's not the tree of knowledge of good and evil that we need from we from the Tree of Calvary. We eat from the tree that Jesus died, died on. When we assess the moment you eat from that tree, you are now made in God's image. You are now a son or daughter of God. You are now more than a conqueror. You are now the head and not the tail above. Only a knot beneath.
That's who you are now. And listen, you think this isn't a problem in the world, do you think this isn't a problem in the body of Christ today? Depression is now the leading cause of disability worldwide. It is the leading cause of disability worldwide, according to the National Alliance of Mental Illness. If you if you feel dark right now, if you feel unhappy right now, you can do something about it. You can change what you believe. You can medicate it for a season. But medication wears off, meditation never wears off. Meditating on God's word day and night to bring eternal joy and happiness. Into your life?
What caused unhappiness in the Garden of Eden is the same thing that causes unhappiness today, they stop believing what God said about them. They started blaming each other. They started condemning themselves. And all the unhappiness that came out of the Garden of Eden distorted the mental and emotional well-being of all of mankind from that moment forward. And that's why Jesus comes first to save us, to make us born again. And then the second thing he does after he preaches the gospel to us in Luke Chapter four, she said he preaches, said the spirit of the Lord is inviting me to preach the gospel to the poor, which was all of us were poor in our sin. He said the first thing he comes this is preach the gospel to the poor, and the second thing he comes is to heal the broken hearted.
All of the pain in this world is a result of beliefs and damage that is done to the brain through through trauma, scar tissue, emotional scar tissue, trauma, abuse, whatever we've done to to create pathways to our pleasure, the pleasure center of our brain. Don't. Don't. Don't tune out here, but the things we put into ourselves to make us happy. Artificial pathways to the pleasure center of our brain, where the where the endorphins are and the serotonin and the dopamine and the stuff that you've been getting tired of me talking about for the last several months. But it's so important that we understand that the chemicals made by plants made by drug creators, they are they are they carry the same opioids and chemicals that. Ride on the pathway to the pleasure centers of our brain.
There, neurotransmitters that ride to the pleasure center of our brain, I don't mean to sound like I'm that smart, but I've studied this at least enough to know now. Several other things that God gave us are the original pathways to the pleasure centers of our brain. Salvation is a pathway to the pleasure center of our brain. God's promises create a pathway to the pleasure center of our brain. Thankfulness and gratitude. Science scientists have proven that gratitude is the is a pathway or it rides on the pathway is with you. Was the original pathway to the to the to create the serotonin. Which is what, which is what opioids do.
They manufacture temporary opioid to get to the pleasure center to tap in and ride on that pathway, to get to the pleasure center of your brain so you feel pleasure and no pain. Those those pathways have to be retrained. We have to we have to re redirect. We have to we have to stop using artificial substitutes to to create those pathways and start using the promises of God, the table of communion, the speaking God's word, thankfulness and gratitude, which which puts which literally changes the dynamic, the chemical, the chemistry of our brain, and brings us back to the condition that God created Adam and Eve in when he first created them. And and that's why he says you are transformed.
Romans Chapter 12 verse to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. It's the rewiring of your brain, is what he's literally saying. The renewing of your mind is the rewiring of your brain so that the neurotransmitters that go to the pleasure center of your brain are created by the word of God, the promises of God, gratefulness and thankfulness and worship and praise. These are the then generosity. These create the the these create the accurate and correct pathways to the pleasure center of your brain. And in his presence, his fullness of joy and in his right hand are pleasures for evermore. And when you know who you are, you're seated at the right hand of God with Jesus who will create pleasure. You take pleasure. Pleasure. Is God right here?