Kerry Shook - Time Has Come
Kerry Shook: I heard about a burglar who had been casing out a neighborhood in the summer, and he noticed a house where a family had left for vacation. So, late at night he broke into the front door, he walked into a completely dark entryway, and when he stepped in, he was immediately startled by a voice in the dark that said, "I see you, and Jesus does too". He about came out of his skin, and then he pointed his flashlight where the voice had come from, and he saw it was a parrot in a cage. And the burglar just laughed in relief as the parrot again said, "I see you, and Jesus does too".
But then he heard a deep growl, and he shined his flashlight right in front of him, and there stood the biggest Doberman you've ever seen, just snarling, showing his razor sharp teeth, and the burglar just stood there shocked as the parrot said, "Attack, Jesus, attack"! Well, fortunately, Jesus doesn't attack us, but he does attack our comfort zone. He takes away our comfort zone and pushes us into our calling. He loves us just the way we are, but he loves us too much to let us stay that way. That's why Chris and I are starting this new series, "Now or Never". It's all about experiencing the positive changes that you've wanted to make in your life, that you have good intentions of making, but you haven't been able to make them.
Chris Shook: Have you ever felt like, "I know the kind of person I want to be. I want to be patient with my kids, I want to be loving to my spouse, I want to be disciplined, to exercise and eat right, I want to be joyful and kind," but every day things seem to fall apart by noon? Well, that's because our habits form deep ruts in our brains, and it's really hard to change a habit, change the way we are. We are pre-programmed to keep reverting back to our same old ways. It reminds me of a situation that Kerry and I encountered just a while back when we were staying in Airbnb for a quick getaway. And right before we went to bed, I turned the thermostat down, because we like it to be a little colder at night when we sleep. And after a couple hours, we woke up sweating, and I went back to the thermostat and saw the temperature was back at what it had been before I ever turned it down.
And so, I lowered it again, went back to bed. A couple hours later the same thing happened. And that's when I realized that the owner of the Airbnb had programmed the thermostat to stay at a higher temperature during the night, probably to save money. And I could try all night if I wanted to, but it didn't matter because unless the thermostat was reprogrammed, it would just keep reverting back to the original setting. And that's the way it is with our brains with making powerful, positive changes in our lives. If you want to make changes that last more than half a day, then you have to change the setting in our brains. We have to reset our mindset, and the Bible is really clear about how to do this. The Bible tells us that to change the way we act, we have to first change the way we think.
Kerry Shook: And I want us to look at a great example in the Bible that shows you that you have to change your mindset before you can change your actions. It's in Joshua chapter 1. Let me give you a little background on this passage. The people of Israel had been slaves in Egypt for over 400 years. Then God uses Moses to lead them out of slavery and into the Promised Land, and they send in 12 of their leaders to go into the land and bring back a report. And they come back and they say, "It's an amazing place, it's the most wonderful place we've ever been, but there are giant warriors in the land. We can't go in there. There are these giant warriors in the land, and we're not strong enough to conquer them".
And after hearing this report, the whole Israelite camp is overcome with fear, and they agree with the ten. Only two of the leaders who spied out the Promised Land, Joshua and Caleb, said, "Sure, there are warriors in the land, but with God's power, we can easily conquer them". But the rest of the Israelites were already stuck in the mindset that there was no way that they could enter the Promised Land. They were no longer slaves in Egypt. They were now free. They were in a new location. They were in a whole new place. But they still had the same old mindset. The place had changed, but their programming hadn't. It was still set to a slavery mindset back in Egypt. They were still programmed to the painful past.
They had a mentality that said, "We're just little pawns in the great game of life. You can't expect us to do anything great. We'll just fail". But they weren't slaves anymore. They were free. God had freed them and led them through the Red Sea into the doorstep of the Promised Land. Everything in their circumstances had changed, but their mindset was still the same, and you can't change the way you act until you change the way you think. You have to change your programming so you can enter your Promised Land. Well, God sent them back into the desert to wander around for 40 years to reset their mindset. But they were so stuck in a slavery mindset that the whole generation had to die out in the desert so a new generation would come up that had a different mindset that was more focused on God and his power than their problems.
And that's where we pick up the story. Joshua, who 40 years before had a God mindset, is now the leader of Israel, and they're back at the Promised Land, and this time everything is different, because their mindset is different. They're ready for real change. And so, would you stand in honor of God's Word?
And let's look at Joshua chapter 1, verse 1. "After the death of the LORD's servant, Moses, the LORD spoke to Joshua son of Nun, Moses' assistant. He said, 'Moses My servant is dead. Therefore, the time has come for you to lead these people, the Israelites, across the Jordan River into the land I'm giving them, I promise you what I promised Moses: Wherever you set foot, you will be on land I have given you, from the Negev wilderness in the south to the Lebanon mountains in the north, from the Euphrates river in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, including all the land of the Hittites. No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live. For I will be with you as I was with Moses. I will not fail you or abandon you.'"
You can be seated. Focus on that phrase where God says to Joshua the time has come for you. God was saying, "Joshua, this is your time. This is your defining moment. The time has come for you to walk out of the desert into your destiny. The time has come for you to step up and lead the people to step in to the Promised Land. Joshua, this is your time". And I believe God is saying to you today, "This is your time". This is your moment. The time has come for you to walk out of the desert into your destiny. The time has come for you to stop wasting your one and only life and start becoming who God made you to be. The time has come for you to stop living a life filled with activity and busyness and step into a life filled with purpose.
The time has come for you to stop focusing on your failures and start building a life of faith. The time has come for you to let go of the hurts you've been holding on to and let God heal you. The time has come for you to stop playing God and finally surrender to God's power. Your time has come. It's time to change. This is your time. This is your day. This is your moment. If not now, then when? It's now or never. And maybe you feel like you've been wandering in the wilderness for the last year, or for the last several months, or for the last 40 years. I want you to know the time has come for you to step into your Promised Land and experience real and lasting change. But there are three things that you need to do that the Israelites did that make the real change happen.
Chris Shook: On the Greek Island of Santorini at the very tip of it, there lies the excavated ruins of a once thriving city called Akrotiri. And that city was abandoned 3,500 years ago due to an earthquake and a volcanic eruption. The Minoans had inhabited that area beginning 6,500 years ago and built this thriving society that was there for 3,000 years until it was destroyed in the 16th century before Christ. Now, it's only over the past 50 years that the city buried in volcanic ash there has been revealed, and it is incredible. Even after all this time, the beautiful buildings and detailed wall frescoes and ornate pottery speak to the high level of organization of ancient Akrotiri. Their plumbing system even had third and second story toilets.
That's pretty advanced for the time. But archaeologists were not most surprised by that. They were most surprised by what they didn't find at Akrotiri, because unlike Pompeii, there were no human remains, no precious metal, no coins, no weapons. All of that was gone. And why? Well, the people of Akrotiri evacuated before the volcano erupted. Despite all that they had in their very comfortable city, despite thousands of years of evidence to the contrary, I mean, they've been there for 3,000 years, 3,000 year history, and even though they lived in the shadow of a volcano, nothing had ever gone wrong. But they believed that the nearby volcano's eruption was imminent, and they moved on. They accepted the fact that the season of Akrotiri had ended, and they moved on for good. No one ever returned to try to rebuild anything on top of this city.
The people who left it moved on and settled in a new place, their new lives were built elsewhere. Well, doing something new always takes more effort than staying in the same old place and doing the same old things, right? You may think, well, sure, I have some issues, I have some bad habits, but at least they're familiar, and it's awfully tempting to just keep trying to patch up our old broken ways and hope that one day the changes will stick. And it's time to see the thing that we have been pretending not to see and to call it out. And that is, we can't fix ourselves. If we could, we would have all done it already, right? We would have already fixed all of our issues and bad habits, but the good news is that the entire Bible speaks to how to do this.
First thing we need to do is to change our mindset with God's promises. Now, here's the simple but really profound way to change your mindset, your autopilot. Instead of focusing on yourself and focusing on your own shortcomings, make the choice to focus on God and his ability. So, instead of focusing on I'm not good at this, I'm bad, I can never do this, we focus on what God can do. We see the principle in action with the Israelites when they're back knocking on destiny's door, they're right there at the threshold of the Promised Land, they're the same place they were 40 years before, and the same giant warriors still live in the land, but yet everything's different this time.
This time, they're focused on God's promises. God had promised them the land. He said, "I have given you this land. It is yours. This is your destiny". And this time, instead of focusing on the great giants in the land, they focused on their great God, and that changed everything. They changed their autopilot. They actually changed the way they thought about the situation, and it made all the difference. It all comes down to what you focus on. You'll either focus on God's promises or dwell on your own past. And think about those Israelites in the desert. They'd wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Can you imagine the regrets that they had? They were out in the desert with 40 years to think about that.
Think about all the wasted time, all the wasted opportunities. But they decided they were going to stop focusing on these regrets, and they were ready to step into a better future. A lot of times we get stuck in the past, we focus on our past, we keep reminiscing over, oh, if only I wouldn't have made this mistake, if only this would have gone differently. We think about our regrets and our failures and our shame. And if that's you, hey, you're not the only one. Just know that everyone around you, myself included, even though oh, okay, everybody can look pretty good on the outside, hey, we all have a past, right? We all have a past. The amazing thing, though, is that when we start dwelling on God's promises, and there are over 7,000 promises in the Bible, it will actually change our brains.
All the new brain science shows that you can actually reprogram your brain by changing what you think about. Science is finally catching up to what the Bible has said all along, and scientists have proven that there are chemical changes that take place in our brains when we change what we think about, physiological changes, synapses change, they reconnect in different ways depending on what we're focused on. We can actually change the physiology of our brains, change, make a rut in a new place, a rut that's aligned with God and his promises. That's our default, our new default position. And so, when we focus on God's promises rather than our problems or our past, it changes us. It changes the way we think. And when we change the way we think, that's when we can change the way we act.
Now, look at this passage where God spoke to Joshua. In chapter 1 it says, "Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful". So, God told Joshua, "I want you, Joshua, to be strong and courageous". And now God said that because he knew that Joshua felt very weak and fearful. And so, God told him, "I want you to be strong and courageous". In fact, he said it three times. "Be strong and courageous, be strong and courageous, be strong and courageous".
Joshua was filled with strength and courage to lead the people into their destiny because he chose. He made a choice to focus on God's ability and what God said rather than his own feelings or his own inability. Now, there's a huge sign that lets us know if our autopilot has been changed or not. It was the sin the children of Israel reverted back to over and over again. God calls it the sin of unbelief. We call it complaining. That's what they were doing. He's referring to the sin of unbelief as complaining, because when we complain, we're saying, "I don't believe you, God. The things you're telling me, these promises you're telling me, I simply don't believe you can do it through me".
The people of Israel, once they were set free and they were in the wilderness of the Promised Land, they start complaining. And god provides for them. He provides food and guidance and protection. But every time God answered their cries, the Israelites found something new to complain about. That reminds me of myself, because God will answer my prayers, and as soon as he does, I think, "Wait, something else I need you to work on now". I seem to always have something that I can complain to God about or complain to anybody else who will listen to me. God called this the sin of unbelief. That's what it is. It just means that our autopilot hasn't changed.
Whenever I'm complaining about my circumstances or blaming someone else, I'm really blaming God, because he's the one who's ultimately in control. "God, you're not doing your job here, and let me tell you how to do it," is what I'm really saying when I complain. Now, it's okay to go to God and say, "God, I don't like this. I don't understand it. I need your help". It's okay, encouraged to pour our hearts out to God. In fact, that's what a lot of the Psalms are is David pouring his heart out to God and being honest with him and saying, "God, this is hard, I don't like it, I don't know what to do, but yet," and there's always that turn, "but yet I trust you, God".
You see, we can tell God exactly how we feel. God gave us feelings. They're not wrong, but we're to bring them to him and let him change our hearts. And even when our feelings don't come along and I'm still feeling scared or sad or confused, I can still say, but, you know, in spite of that, I choose to trust you. I'm just gonna take you at your word, God. I'm going to follow you. Our brains will be re-formed as we focus on God's promises and put them into practice in our lives.
Kerry Shook: So, we reprogram our brains by focusing on God's promise. But then secondly, change your direction and claim what God has given you. You change your mindset, but then you have to take a step of faith, you have to take a step in a new direction. Look at what God said to Joshua in Joshua chapter 1, verse 3. "I promise you what I promised Moses: 'Wherever you set foot, you will be on land I have given you.'" God says to the Israelites, "I've already given you the Promised Land. It's yours". And the Israelites are probably thinking, "God, that's great that you've given us the land, but did you tell the giant warriors that? Did they know that"?
And God says, "They're no big deal. If you'll just take a step of faith into the Promised Land, then I will conquer them for you. You stake your claim to what I've given you, and I'll win the victory for you. Wherever you set your foot, it's yours, but you have to step out of the desert into a new land. You have to take steps in a new direction". And for you, see, God has already given you his peace. God has already given you his purpose. God has already given you freedom from that sinful addiction, that destructive habit. And you say, "Well, Kerry, why am I not experiencing that? If God's given me the victory, why do I not experience it"? Because you haven't taken the step of faith to stake your claim. You haven't moved out of willpower into God's power.
And God says, "I've given you everything that you need, but you have to take it now". It's yours, but you don't take it by willpower. You take it by a step of faith. And when you take a step of faith, God opens a door. And then you take another step of faith, and God gives you his strength. You take another little step of faith, and God gives you his big power. Every step continues to change your programming and reset your mindset. You focus on God's promises, you start changing your brain. But then you've got to take steps of faith in that new direction, whether you feel like it or not, whether you have fears or not, and every step you take in that new direction, it really emphasizes and re-emphasizes the new programming.
But if you stop taking steps of faith, you will revert back to your old programming. The Israelites step into the Promised Land and they come to the great city of Jericho with its great wall, and they were filled with fear. And they knew they desperately needed God, because there was no way they were gonna conquer Jericho without God, so they trust God, and God gave them this great victory. Then the next place they come to was this little town called Ai, A-I. There were no walls. It was just a small village, and the Israelites had no fears. They had no worries, because they thought we don't even need God on this one, and they reverted back to their old programming without God, and they lost the battle.
God allowed them to fail miserably, and that failure reminded them how much they needed God. And one of the greatest gifts God will ever give you is the gift of failure. You say, "A gift"? Yeah, it's one of the greatest gifts God will ever give you, the gift of failure, because it's only when I fail that I turn to the God who never fails. Look what God said to Joshua in Joshua chapter 1, verse 5. "No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live. For I will be with you as I was with Moses. I will not fail you or abandon you". God says, "Joshua, I'm never gonna fail you, even when you fail". And God will never fail you. He loves you. And when you fail, he'll lift you back up if you let him.
But then there's a third thing. You have to go through the river of surrender. You never get to the Promised Land without going through the river of surrender. You'll never change without taking a step into the river of surrender. You see, the only thing separating the Israelites from the wilderness and the Promised Land was the Jordan River. The problem was the Jordan River was at flood stage that time of the year, and if they tried to get hundreds of thousands of people across the Jordan River at flood stage to get to the Promised Land, most of them were going to drown. But God said, "Joshua, I want you to cross over. The time has come. The time is now. It may not look like the right time, it may not look like a good time, but I'm telling you, it's now or never. This is your moment that everything changes".
Now, Joshua 3, verse 15, I love this, because this is what happens. "So when the people broke camp to cross the Jordan, the priests carrying the ark of the covenant went ahead of them. Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet as soon as the priest who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water's edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam in the vicinity of Zarethan, while the water flowing down to the sea of Arabah, (that is, the Dead Sea) was completely cut off. So the people crossed over opposite Jericho".
Did you get that? They had to step into the water and get their feet wet before the river parted, and that's the way God works. We have to step into the river and get our feet wet, and then God works the miracle. We want God to split the water, part the sea, part that river, and then we go, "Wow God, you worked a miracle. That's great. I'll just experience it and walk through". But God says: You take a step of faith first, because without faith, it's impossible to please me. And if you just wait for me to work the miracle, then you step into it, it's not faith. You've got to give first, and then you'll get back.