Leon Fontaine - The Missing Peace
Hey, everybody. I'm so glad you're joining me today. We are starting a series. I'm not even sure how long I'm gonna go on this but it's gonna touch every person watching today. We're gonna talk about a Biblical response to depression, mood disorders, things that are going on out there and I pray that you'll just hang in there, stay with us because everybody's family is touched by this. The stats and there's all kinds of stats that are out there is that in everyone's lifetime, pretty much over 80 percent of the population will struggle at some point with depression, a mood disorder, and struggle to get free for a period of time. Others are locked in to this thing and it's just horrible. Some take their own lives. Christians are struggling with it at a huge number.
I was interviewing a guest on a talk show. A Christian doctor who was just a regular general practitioner, wonderful man, and his practice got overtaken because so many Christians would come to him and confide in him that they were struggling with depression and dark thoughts and they couldn't break it free. It was affecting their marriages, their health, their home, and they didn't want to tell anybody at the church because people would look at depression or any kind of mood disorder as a real big problem. They were embarrassed to have it. And we had a great talk on there as he said, "Man, we gotta wake up as a church and recognize just like the kidney can break down, the brain can break down".
I'm gonna show you one incredible piece of this puzzle that so few seem to be talking about. We've got medical doctors who feel that because they can give a name to disease that they understand it and that's not true. You know, the medical world can give a really complicated name to a certain disease and still have no ability to cure it. You can study the signs and symptoms of recognizing a malady, a sickness, a disease, a condition. And still have no ability to bring about change. In our world today, in my friendship circle, I've got a friend who is on meds and that's the only way they're handling things and when they are on their meds, wow, their life just changes. I've got another friend that meds almost destroyed their life and they had to get help to get off the medications and they literally went on to a restricted diet and what they're eating and certain things that they were taking. Amino acids that can completely turn their life remarkably around.
There are others who literally dealt with, and so, there's a lot of experts out there. We've got the medical world. We've got the natural-pathic world. We've got people even when it comes like chiropractors and others who feel that, you know, that the spine and they'll show you proof about affecting your head, your thinking processes, being bluesy, gloomy. Just living a life in depression. How much it's connected to the spine and I have literally, and every one of these conditions are these situations I've met people who've been really helped by all of these areas. So today, I'm not here to knock any of them. But I am here to tell you, I want to give you a Biblical response that needs to be added. You are gonna have to figure this journey out. I'm gonna challenge you to not just look at one person as the expert.
There's so many things out there that can help you that you know, Google it and begin to read great books on the things that are going on. But I believe that the Bible is the most powerful book on the planet. That when God made people, He knows how to make your life begin to bubble and perk. He knows how to guide you into the right things. I believe that your faith should be in Jesus Christ and in his Word alone but that wisdom says you should also know all the other areas and disciplines that have been developed to help us live health, strong lives. Christianity, if it goes legalistic, can be one of the number one reasons why people are so unhappy, so depressed, and they gotta have an answer. Now, religion has been probably one of the worst causes the depression, mood disorders, because when you begin to believe wrong things about God, those beliefs are driven so deep that it will destroy you emotionally.
I was chatting with a doctor here in Canada over a federal mental institution where they put the criminally insane and they have different floors. When I was a paramedic for seven years, I would often go there to pick up patients and transfer patients and doctors and nurses would come along as we were in the back and we would just talk about different things and one time, I talked to one of the top doctors and he was an atheist and he'd just hated Christianity. He said, "Religion is one of the number one reasons why people are in mental institutions". And I said, "What do you mean"? He said, "The guild," he said, "The discouragement, the condemnation, the inability to ever measure up," he says, "is so brutal". That he says his words, 75 percent of the people I work on this mental institution that I'm over, he said, are there because of religions delusions, because of religious fears and you know, torment, because Christianity has brought it to them.
Now that shocked me when I saw that as a young pastor back then. But as I've grown over the years and looked at the Bible, I've recognized that it's actually true. Now I'm gonna take my time and talk through and I pray that if you know anyone that is struggling in this area, you get a hold of these teachings for them and let's just slow down. I always wanna rush and just get the information out there. But let's slow down and let's make this a line upon line, you know, just cross the Ts and dot the Is in some of these areas and I believe it's gonna help you immensely. I believe some of the things I'm gonna share are gonna just set you free to pursue health. The Bible says in John 10:10, Jesus can that you may have life and more abundantly. That means Jesus has answers and his will is not that you live with depression, mood disorders. His will is that you now the joy and the peace that comes from him and his Word.
Now, let's talk about mixing the Old Covenant and the New Covenant which I believe has caused horrendous problems for the body of Christ today if you are a follower of Christ. In the Old Testament, we had the law and the law is how you had to learn to deal with your life. If you were, if you did bad, you got bad. If you did good, you got good. And everybody understood it. That all through the Old Testament, every promise says, if my people will obey me, follow my commandments, do good, etcetera, etcetera, their life will be blessed and happy and whole. And so, the law simply was very clear. Do good, get good. Do bad, get bad. And because they all understood it, it was very clear. Very clear. And nobody could measure up all the time but the law was what they were dealing with in the Old Testament.
Now in the New Testament, which is the new agreement, the Bile says in the book of Hebrews that we have a new covenant. Now covenant is different than just legal agreement because the word covenant means that this agreement was made with the spilling of blood. It was a blood covenant. When Jesus died on the cross and shed his blood, a new covenant, a new agreement between God and mankind came into being and we call it grace. That Jesus qualifies you through his behavior for God's blessing. Jesus qualifies you through him dying on the cross and taking your sin and taking God's wrath and the curse of the law. That now you are blessed, okay, and that the blessing is on you. So people though they try to mix the Old Testament of if I do bad, I'm gonna get bad. But yet the Bible says even when you do bad, God's gonna be there for you and love you and help you, that He's not gonna curse you. And so, when you try to mix these two, you get real problems.
The Bible says in Romans 8:1, "Now there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus". You know, the enemy of our souls, the Bible says the devil, harasses the mind. And he continues to speak thoughts into the mind, questions and so that people will always look at themselves. And when you look at yourself to be righteous, to be pleasing to God, you'll always fail. When you look at our behavior, be pleasing to God, you'll always fail. And so, when you understand and that you look at yourself and these deep feelings of I'm not good enough, God's not happy with me, God's blessing is not on my life, the curse is on my life, that this is my lot, God's will is that I go through this, He's trying to teach me something, I could list on and on the reasons that people seem stuck when it comes to depression, mood disorders, all these areas. I'm not gonna worry about using the proper terms. Maybe the doctors and nurses who work in this area, if you're a psychologist, psychiatrist, in our church, we have scientists and doctors and psychiatrists and psychologists and we've got people who are naturapath areas and Chinese doctors. I've got friends and people in all those areas.
So I'm not trying to get all my verbiage correct. So just this area that I'm talking about and I wanna help you in a bit. Christianity, if it goes legalistic, can be one of the number one reasons why people are so unhappy, so depressed, and they gotta have an answer. They've gotta recognize that there's a way to change. Now here is the thing that to me is one of the most exciting things in the last number of years and that is we've understood how powerful the heart is and what it believes. You know, the Bible says renew your mind with the Word of God. That's crucial. But as you renew your mind, the Word of God comes into your mind and then it drops into your heart which is a deeper level of thinking. It isn't but you can kind of compare it to the subconscious.
There are thoughts and beliefs that you have below your conscious level of thinking that were placed there by your upbringing, by religious thinking, by the teaching of parents, grandparents, the culture that you were in, that country that you were raised in, etcetera, have all put beliefs in what the Bible calls your heart. And the Bible says as a man thinks in his heart, Proverbs, so he lives. The way you live will be determined by the beliefs and the daily thinking of your heart. The Bible teaches us that when you look at the heart, that no man can change his heart. It's just wicked, it's evil. And so, we need to know that only God's Word, only a relationship with Jesus Christ can begin to change these deepest levels of beliefs. So as I talk about this, I wanna continue to show you in the Word of God how to change these haunting, horrible, feelings that rise up that you can't seem to get rid of.
Now, for the sake of you understanding the things we're gonna deal with, I want to differentiate between emotions and feelings. Okay. Emotions, they just come from focus. You know, if I'm in front of a crowd right now and I'm speaking. I'm public speaking and one guy shaking his head and frowning at me and going, if I focus on him, I begin to have emotions that are just like, "Oh, no. I'm not doing very good". And if I'll focus on somebody else's smile, then I'm going, "Yeah, so good". You know, my emotions are up. I'm doing great. So emotions seem to come and go fairly quickly through what you're looking at, listening to, focused on. But feelings, they tend to come from deep within you and this feeling rises up and many people don't know why they feel like they do. They can't explain it. They can't even put their finger on what they believe about that. And so, they struggle.
Well, the word subconscious is like a subfloor. It's a floor that's below. So this is below your conscious level of thinking. There are beliefs inside of every one of us that we didn't put there. Life, traumas, repetition of teaching, what people think about us. What we've gone through. What our parents taught us, grandparents taught us. What our brothers and sisters. You know, who knows where we get these deep, deep beliefs. But they cause feelings to rise up almost to radiate into our lives. And so, as a pastor, I would often meet people who had deep feelings that they were stupid. And everybody was smarter than them. No. It wasn't true at all. They were brilliant people. But this feeling governed, who they married, who they were friends with, who they hung out with, everywhere they go, they had this horrible deep feeling that everybody's better than them. Everybody's smarter than them. There were others that had this deep seated feeling of God's gonna get them.
You know, something bad is gonna happen to me and I haven't pleased God like I should be pleasing God. And they had done things in the past that just haunted them. One woman I had talked to had had an abortion years ago and just knew that because she had done that there her chickens would be coming to roost. She used, even used the word karma. She used the word, she had all these different things and she had all of her beliefs messed up. But what she really believed was that her life couldn't be good because she had to pay for what she had done. These teachings, I'm sorry, beliefs are so deep seeded that I would meet person after person, I would try in the counselling office to kind of get them to think different and found that I can get them to think differently for a little while and have a little, you know, ray of light but then, they would just go right back into the way they felt into this deeper depression. You know, these problems that they were struggling with and it affected all their relationships, their careers, their personal life, etcetera.
And so, I want you to understand that according to the Word of God, there an area of deeper thinking in the believer and of every person called the heart. There's been much teaching on the heart. Some believe that it's just really another word for your spirit. Others believe it's another word for your soul. And I'm not gonna right now get into that. I might get in later. But you need to understand it is literally a deeper level of thinking because as a man thinks in his heart, not as a man thinks in his head. As a man thinks in his heart so he is, Proverbs says. So he lives. And so, I want you to have the best live you could have and at the core of what you're dealing with and whether or not wisdom says that you need to get on meds, if you do, get on them. Whether wisdom says you gotta change the way you eat and get all sorts of amino acids and nutrients into your body, good. But at the core of all this, first, I wanna change the deepest beliefs of your heart and I wanna show you how.
Okay. And as we change, and as I go through verses and just as I talk about certain things, you all of a sudden know truth and the truth will just set you free. That belief will just be released as the presence of God and the Word of God brings truth. The Bible say in John 8:32, "And you will know the truth and the truth will make you free". As you go through these messages over and over and I want you to get a hold of them, just listening to them, renewing your mind with them, it's like you'll just get a shower and a bath and these words will begin to penetrate deep into your heart and push out all of the wrong thinking and these deep feelings, they'll begin to go away as they're replaced with the joy of the Lord which is your strength and the peace of God that passes your understanding. It will begin to come as you continue to hear to Word and hear these truths.
I want you to know Romans 8 where it says, "Now, there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus". The first thought I wanna give you is if you've given your life to Jesus Christ, you are born again and God will never use condemnation. He doesn't want you to live under this and the word condemnation means to feel damned. To feel so responsible to feel that you are not good enough to have God's blessing, His joy, His peace, and so many people who have been raised in Christianity where they didn't understand when they taught them that you can't mix the law of the Old Testament with the grace of the New Covenant. When you mix these together, it causes confusion but the thing I want you to understand today is that when Jesus died on the cross and we're gonna show you even further this, in sessions ahead, he died on the cross, he took all of your sin in your past, all of your sin in your future, and he took them away as far as the east is from the west.
You say, "Well, Leon, I know that Jesus forgave me for things that I've done, but what about the things in my future"? When Jesus died for you 2.000 years ago, all of your sins were in the future. And he died for them all. The ones you haven't even committed yet. And so, we'll talk about that and we'll bring real clarity to you so you need to understand that this condemnation, this sense of, it's not just guilt. It's just this deep feeling damned, feeling cursed, this knowing God's gonna get you. That things are gonna go bad. They can't ever go good. Only the Word of God can change that. Hebrews 4:12 teaches that the Word of God is alive and powerful and it affects the body, the soul, and the spirit and the last line in that verse says it's a discerner of the thoughts and the intentions of your heart.
One of the things that is keeping so many people locked in deep depression, unhappiness, mood disorders, whatever you wanna call it, is that it's rising up out of their own heart. It's not even so much the devil has that kind of power. It's not God doing this to you but there's a deep seeded belief in there that you can't even seem to get to because it's subconscious. It's under your conscious level of thinking. It's been implanted there and just repetition or strong emotion or trauma and it's put in there and the Word of God is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. It's says the Word of God is like a scalpel, like a knife and as you listen to these sessions, I believe the Word of God will come in and cut out those wrong beliefs and they'll begin to drift just slide out and then rising up from within. Peace will begin to rise up rather than fear and anxiety. You find joy will rise up from your heart rather than this deep depression and darkness where you just know you believe things are gonna go bad. It's not just the mind. It comes from deep within you. As a man thinketh in his heart, so he lives.
***Part 2***
Hey, everybody. It is so good to have you with me today. We're on an incredibly important series. It's a biblical response to dealing with depression, mood disorders. And it doesn't matter if I have all the correct titles for all of these things, but we are talking about a biblical response. Depression and mood disorders, it touches so many family. I think almost every family is touched by a loved one who is struggling with it and it destroys homes, marriages, productivity, health. I mean, it's brutal. And in the first session I talked about how that one of the worst culprit that causes this deep depression is the beliefs that stem from religion. Okay, and Christianity can be a religion if it's not a life-giving relationship with Jesus Christ.
And so we talk about the fact that when you mix Old Testament Law with New Testament grace, you create just this confusion and people struggle with condemnation. They struggle with this deep sense of impending doom and judgment and the curse. And God's unhappy with them and God's not pleased with them. And it can just destroy people's lives. And so, I talked a lot about that last time. Now, let's start and let's begin to move today as we talk about an area that so crucial to your health and your thinking. Did you know? That while you are thinking with your mind and your emotions, you know, they come from what you're thinking about. There is a deeper level of thinking and that is you actually think with your heart as well. The Bible says as a man thinketh in his heart, not with his head. It says, so he will live, so he is.
Another word your identity doesn't come from your head. It comes from the deepest thinking of your heart. And this is not an accurate description but it helps. If you understand the subconscious. That there are things that going on, on a subconscious level that affect you greatly. There are beliefs that you have growing up as a child, traumatic situations that have happened to you, religious thinking that was taught to you Sunday after Sunday, that's incorrect. Yet, totally, deeply put into there your deepest feelings that rise up. It should be feelings of joy, feelings of peace that rise up from you, a feeling of hope, an excitement about the future. But if the feelings of your heart or the doctrines, the beliefs of your heart, it's more powerful than even your subconscious. But way down in there when you don't even know what you actually believed. But it's been your parents, your culture, your schooling, your traumas, the repetitious teachings.
All of these things have formed these deepest beliefs of your heart. And so these feelings will rise up and they'll radiate into your life every day. You can change everything on the outside. Even change your thinking for a while and you get a little spike of happiness or hope or change something and start doing some activities. It will help. You might even have tried meds. You might have tried, you know, naturopathic responses and all the things that are out there and got a little bit of relief. And I think they're all answers to a certain degree. I'm not knocking any of them but the deepest most important area is what are the deep-seated beliefs in your heart that caused feelings. I'm gonna differentiate between emotions which come from what you're thinking about and what you're focused on and feelings.
Feelings seemed to warp up in your life and just control every day, every moment of your life. The way to change the deep, deep heart beliefs is to speak the truth of God's Word. Okay, with passion because it must be fervent and then with repetition. Passion and repetition have an impact on the heart. When we listen to who we think is our religious leader in our lives, who speaks for God. They often have the most powerful access to our heart. Which is why you gotta be careful. The Bible even teaches us that I believe James 3:1 that it says be careful you teachers, you gotta be held to a greater judgment because when someone listens to you as a pastor, an apostle, a leader, a prophet, an evangelist, a teacher. Whatever you wanna call yourself.
That when you teach people the Word of God and you don't teach them correctly but you bring them into bondage where the Law of the Old Testament and you don't understand it and you begin to make them feel condemned. They begin to feel this horrible sense of doom and they're not pleasing God, and God is unhappy with them. When you bring teaching like this to bear, it doesn't set people free from the power of sin. It actually entrenches them deeper and deeper and it causes disorders. I'm gonna go on record in saying that when you teach the Word of God wrong and you bring in the Law and you mixed it with the grace of the new covenant. That you literally destroy people's ability to have freedom, laughter, peace, joy. You destroy it, because you're incorrectly teaching the Word of God and it brings bondage. The Bible always teaches from Jesus and on about freedom and being set free.
So, let's talk right now about this area of Law and grace because you have to have a look at this from the Word of God. You know, in Romans 5:17, it says that God' s favor is on your life and that it is unearned, unmerited favor. That's the definition of grace. It is unearned favor. If I say to you, I'm gonna do you a favor. You don't have to earn it or pay for it. You put your wallet away. You don't have to trade me for anything. You don't have to do anything for me. An unearned favor is just beautiful. This is a gift. Did you know? That God's blessing in your life is an unearned favor. And that you must stop thinking that you have to achieve a certain level of performance before God will bless you.
That's the Law from the Old Testament and it never worked real great for them. But today, it's God's grace is unearned and now when we give our lives to Christ Jesus, He represented the human race when He became a human, died on the cross, took all of our sin. He took our punishment. He took the curse that goes with doing anything wrong. Anything you've done wrong, Jesus took the curse that goes with it and it's gone. And so people might hold you to what you do wrong. In fact, they often will, but God has forgiven you. The curse went on Jesus. God's wrath was pour out on Jesus. And between you and God, you're free. Now, if you stole something from the store, you and the store better work that out. If you've hurt an individual, you and the individual would have to work that out. But between you and God, there is peace. Between you and God, God forgave you 2.000 years ago when Jesus died on the cross for you. And so, to recognize this is powerful.
In Romans chapter 5, the whole chapter is amazing. It says there that you've been given a gift of righteousness. Now, righteousness means you are in right standing God. You see, so many the people I've worked with as pastor and in counseling and in friendships that I've seen rise up in our churches. You know, they'd have so many negative thoughts and it was always about themselves so often. Things aren't gonna go well. God's mad at me. I'm stupid. I'm dumb. I'm under a dark cloud. I can't please God. I've done so many bad things with my life and I get locked into this deep, deep, depression. And it seems like these beliefs come from their heart. And if they've been taught that way in legalistic teachings, they can't seem to get free. And when I would show them in the Word that every sin that they committed, Jesus took. That on the cross there is no longer, I mean, it says literally every Law was written nailed to the cross. Whatever Law tries to rise up and compromise you from being blessed by God. Jesus took it.
Now, righteousness is a gift from Him. Whenever you want answers to your prayer. Whenever you find a promise in the Old Testament that says if you'll obey my commandments, I'll blessed you. When you go to that promise and you pray that promise, you have to take it through the cross. So now that promise says you have to obey all that I've commanded you to stay, to walk in this blessing. Now, you would go and you would say, "Jesus, I'm a believer and because You obeyed every commandment and I died with You. I rose again with You. You're seated at the righthand of God and I'm seated with You, because of Your performance, I get this promise". When you realize what that means to take God's Word from the Old Testament through the cross, simply means Jesus is the one that qualifies you. You are qualified for all of His promises because Jesus qualifies you.
Often people think, "Well, I make a mistake. My qualifications are gone". No, because you didn't qualify yourself. Okay? Jesus qualified you and He's never gonna make a mistake. He's never gonna slip and fall. And so anytime the devil tries to remind you of your past, remind you of your sin, remind you how short you are, how short you come from pleasing Him the way you think you should. Jesus pleased God, says that. Jesus took your sin. And as you begin to focus on the new covenant, that the cross is so beautiful because all your sins were forgiven. All the curse that goes with you making a mistake even as a Christian. The sins you've committed as a Christian. Jesus died for those sins and that the curse of the Law that should go on those sins, He took. There's no wrath for God to pour upon you because Jesus took it.
And now, that's why the gospel is such good news that we believed on Jesus and because of that Jesus has set us free. And when you begin to know this truth, this truth sets you free. In the book of Hebrews, it says there, labor to enter the rest. Now, we'll put that verse up on the screen there. Labor to enter the rest. I wanna pull that little line out. Because it looks like there's wow it doesn't make sense. You have to labor to rest. What we must do to labor to enter the rest? Is we must labor to get God's Word, and we must renew our mind with God's Word, and we must speak God's Word with our mouth, until God's Word begins to drop into our heart. Mark 4 is all about God's Word getting into your heart and then it begins to grow. If you keep the soil of your heart rich and you keep planting the Word in your heart that truth begins to grow. So we labor to enter the rest.
Now, the rest is that Jesus has done it for you. He's qualified you. That righteous now is a gift. You can't earn being right with God. It's a gift because of Jesus. You can't earn God's unearned favor, His unmerited favor. It's a gift to you. And as you begin to see these things, you're gonna find that your beliefs deep in your heart are gonna begin to support healthy living, healthy thinking, joyful thoughts, peaceful thoughts. Now, we know that your body has other reasons for getting depressed. I mean, there's post-partum depression, and there's tumors and diseases and sicknesses and diet. There's so many things and so I'm not looking at them and saying, "This is the answer to everything". I'm saying, it is, I believed the first step that you must deal with as you go on and deal with all the other areas and then your specific situation. But labor to enter the rest. Labor to get the right beliefs in your heart.
And as you do, those beliefs begin to get planted in your heart which is called soil and it begins to grow. All of a sudden, out of the inside of you these feelings of joy that you never used to have before or you lost. These feelings of peace. This hope that my future is gonna be good. God's favor is on my life begins to rise up because you begin to change heart beliefs. I wanna go into God's Word now and go through promises, and as you listen to this over and over, get a hold of this series and listen to it over and over. And I believe it will literally renew your mind and it will begin to help you labor to get into your heart the grace teaching of Jesus Christ so you can be at rest. You can be at peace. In Psalm 112:7-8 in the Amplified, it says, "He shall not be afraid of evil tidings, his heart is firmly fixed, trusting leaning on and being confident in the Lord. His heart is established and steady, he will not be afraid while he waits to see his desire established upon his adversaries".
Whatever that enemy is. Is it sickness? Is it depression? Is it fear of money, finances, relationships, divorce? Whatever your fears are, that adversarial fear. That giant that keep speaking at you. It says that your heart can get established and steady in God's Word. And so, God's Word must begin to be taught and it must be confessed. As I go through God's Word, you're gonna find out that speaking it is the most powerful way to change your heart, when you speak the Word of God. The Bible says in James chapter 3, there it says that just like a bit in a horses' mouth can turn his whole body. The Bible says life and death are in the power of the tongue. In James 5:16, the second part of that verse. It says that the fervent prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available, dynamic in its working. The way to change the deep, deep heart beliefs is to speak the truth of God's Word.
Okay, with passion, begin to be must be fervent and then with repetition. Passion and repetition have an impact on the heart. People go, "Why do I have to pray fervently? Because God's not listening unless I'm fervent"? No. You know, we know in your mind is the wall but guard your heart, out of it flows the forces of life, a negative force of depression, a positive force of joy both can come. They come from the heart. We must guard this heart. We must feed the heart the Word of God. Verse 19 in Proverbs chapter 4 says keep the Word of God in your eyes. Keep it coming in your ears. Keep it at the center of your heart. Then it talks about its life and healing. Life and healing isn't just your physical body and it's also, and it isn't just your brain as an organ. It can heal that organ. But it's also to the thinking of the mind. The believing, the thinking. The beliefs of the mind and the heart, all can be changed by the powerful Word of God.
And the greatest way is to speak with passion and to speak God's Word repetitiously, not as vain repetition. Every day in your prayer time when you're alone in the car, when thoughts begin to rise up. You need to confess the Word of God. Our time is running out soon. But this next session we're gonna talk about the speaking of God's Word and how it begins to dominate every belief and everything that governs your life. Because the spoken word is powerful. Life and death are in the power of the tongue, Proverbs says. James 3 says like turning a horses' whole body when you can control his mouth, his tongue with a bit. He says the whole ship can be controlled and turned around. I want you to turn your life. You know, when you turn a ship, it slowly starts, not like turning a canoe when you turn a great ship that begins to turn. I'm gonna help you turn your life by changing the deepest beliefs of your heart. Your heart must be established in some things, if you want it to just effortlessly.
You see, the Bible said, Jesus said my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Effortlessly. You're gonna begin to sense and know the joy effortlessly. You gonna know His peace when you get it from here to here. When you understand the principles of changing the heart. When you understand the principles of getting rid of old beliefs of the heart. We're gonna talk some things tomorrow that are gonna rock your world as I show you why prayer doesn't work for so many people and why. Because they're praying wrong. They're incorrect. We're gonna deal with some of these things. I'm gonna help you get your heart establish in grace. And get your heart which has been established in Law and curses needs to be moved out and your heart needs to be established in grace. And then you're gonna labor to enter that rest and then effortlessly peace, joy, blessing, prosperity. All the things about the blessed life will begin to rise up in your heart.
Let me give you this in closing and we'll talk some more about next time. Hebrews 13:5-6, it says this, "Let your conversation be without covetousness, be content with such things as you have". And He's not saying that you just be content with depression. He's saying, He's talking about just physical things. He says, "For He hath said, I will never leave you or forsake you. So that we may boldly say, 'The Lord is my helper. I will not fear what man shall do unto me.'" You must, I'm giving you an assignment. Tonight, when you done this. Find a quiet time by yourself and the Bible says so that we may boldly say out loud. The Lord is my helper. I'm not afraid of what man can do to me. I'm not afraid of what cancer can do to me. I'm not afraid of what depression is trying to do to me. I'm not afraid of what the bank, the bankers. The Lord is my helper. And it's not enough to just read it with your mouth close. You must speak it out. The Bible says fervent prayer.
All right, stop right there. When you confess God's Word, that is praying. That is prophesying to your future. That is declaring what your future is gonna be like. Don't just go do it, don't go like this, "I will boldly say the Lord is my helper. I will not fear what man will do unto me". And then repeat, that's just vain repetition. If you want to influence your heart, which is what you're trying to do. We're not trying to influence God. He's already given you all things that pertain to your life and godliness, Peter says. You're trying, you are laboring to enter the rest on this heart. So that we may boldly say, "The Lord is my helper. I'm not gonna be afraid of anything on this planet. Greater is He who is in me, than he who is in the world. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me".
As you fervently say that and repetitiously. Every time fear rises up. Every time a thought rises up that you are not worthy. God's not happy with you. That, you know, that you are gonna literally have sowing and reaping. And there's a teaching to that but this is not where it goes. That I'm gonna reap everything I've sowed. God's gonna make sure. No, it's wrong. You get up and say, "No, I am blessed and the favor of God is on my life. And the Bible says, I am righteous". When you're righteous, all the favor of God explodes in your life. So begin to say boldly, "The Lord is my helper. I'm not afraid of what could happen to me on this planet. God's gonna see me through. God's gonna be my helper". Start saying that out loud.
***Part 3***
Hey, everybody. It is so good to have you with me today. We're on this incredibly important series and that is a Christian response. What does the Word say about dealing with mood disorders like depression, etcetera. And we were teaching how that, you know, the Bible says labor to enter the rest. There is a laboring of getting the truth of God's Word, not just in your head but down into your heart and then the truth will set you free and so, just a two-second recap. We're dealing with this issue that probably one of the greatest discovery for Christians who are studying the Word is the understanding of the heart. That deep powerful center of their being that is determining their entire future.
Proverbs 4 says, "Guard your heart because out of it flows the forces of your life. Forces of depression or forces of joy or forces of poverty or forces of prosperity. It just says all the forces in general. And so, we're in this series to help people who are struggling because we must seek first the kingdom of God and His way of being righteous, in right standing with God, thinking clear, etcetera. And then all of the others that you're dealing with, I think, well, you'll know how to walk them out properly. So this is not saying, this is the only answer. This is just saying I think it was a missing piece to this whole puzzle and we've been talking about it.
Now, I wanna dive straight in because I keep wanting to go back and review everything I've done but I'm just gonna trust that you go back because I'm just gonna be giving you a piece of this teaching. In this session, you need the other ones and the future ones. Prayer doesn't work for a lot of Christians because they're not praying. Prayer is two things. It's communication with God and then it is causing things in this physical world to be changed, to be impacted by the presence of God. So prayer is communication with God, that will be in the spirit, in the soulish realm where we're communicating. Don't even have to open our mouths. We can be communicating, praying, believing, talking to God. But then, the Bible says, prayer is also, has an impact on the things that are going around us.
When we know what God's will is, it says speak to the mountain. It says prophesy the future. It literally teaches us to use our mouth to turn our lives in the direction that we want, that life and death are in the power of the tongue, that what we are declaring will happen so you better control your tongue. Don't let it be saying things that you don't want. And people get mixed up with the word truth. They think because, for example, I am unhappy. I am depressed. That's the truth. Well the word truth in the Bible doesn't mean what do you feel like right now. It means are you speaking truth which means depression has no right to be upon you which means feelings that are not filled with joy and peace have no right to be there.
So that's the truth that governs this. Yes, we know you have feelings like that. But the truth is that Jesus died for me. He paid the price for all my sins. That he has given his righteousness. He's given me his grace. Therefore, I am forgiven. I am filled with his joy. I am filled with his peace and that's truth. Read the Word. And so, I choose to walk. And so, confession is really important. My heart's beliefs are creating the boundaries of my life. Matthew 12:35-37 has a unique look at the Christian life because many of us just think that prayer is asking God and we've got certain verses that talk about ask and ye shall receive. And the Word ask there could just be as easily interpreted declare. But it says here in Matthew 12 that a good man out of the good treasure of the heart. Not of the head. Of the heart brings forth good things. Woah. And an evil man, out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.
Okay, let's just stop right there. See, this is not what most Christians believe. Most Christians believe that God is in control of every area of their life. The Bible does not say that. The Bible teaches us that God ultimately in control of this planet, how long the devil has before he's thrown into the lake of fire, you know, when his time is gonna be up. But it does not say that God's got the whole world in His hands and He's in control. That's a song. That song doesn't come from the Bible. But so many people believe he's in control. So something is happening to you, it must be God's will. That's ridiculous. The Bible says that God is not willing that any should perish. But that all should come to a knowledge of Jesus and give their lives to him. That's not happening but it's his will. So just because it's God's will doesn't mean it's happening. Our will has something to do with that.
And so, there's a part that we play. There's a part that God plays. What changed my world for me was understanding that my heart's beliefs are creating the boundaries of my life. If you look at the boundary of a river, that's two shorelines. Where you've got two shorelines, two boundaries, the river stays within those boundaries. Now, the Bible says it's the heart that determines those boundaries. In Proverbs 4:19-24, it says, it talks there about guard your heart with all diligence because out of it flow the issues of life. Another translations shows that word. It literally also includes the boundaries because there's a boundary on how happy you can be. Are you setting boundaries on how prosperous you can be? But even where your heart is going, it literally is saying now in Matthew 12 that a good man from the good treasure.
Now we don't use the word treasure in our world today. Let's use the word deposits. A good man out of the good deposits of the heart. He brings forth good things in his life and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. It is literally saying here, now, the word evil by the way, the Bible often calls what is not of faith evil. It talks in one place about an evil heart of unbelief. When people don't believe God's Word, okay, then their beliefs begins to go towards the dark side. You can be the most beautiful, incredible person. I mean loving God, loving Jesus, loving His Word. But if you have not learned to control your heart beliefs, heart beliefs can rise up and literally stop the blessing of God and allow in the unhappiness and the heartache and the hurt because the heart believes things that are wrong.
So, here it says a good man out of the good deposits in his heart brings forth good things. We've gotta change what's been deposited in your heart. Maybe by your upbringing. Maybe traumas caused you to form beliefs that are wrong and they're hurting you. Maybe it comes from parents, your culture, your religious background. But these heart beliefs are absolutely, it says here, it doesn't say that a good man out of the good treasure of his heart asks God and God brings forth good things. No. It says your heart is bringing it forth. An evil man out of the evil deposits brings forth evil things. But I say onto you, listen to this now, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof on the day of judgement. For by the words, you will be justified. And by your words, you will be condemned. Everyone thinks that at the end of the age, God's gonna sit us down and keep track of every word you've ever spoke and He's gonna judge you for it.
Now, because Jesus has set us free from that judgment. What it's saying is the words that you speak now justtify you or condemn you. So you've got a choice. The words that you speak can be, "Well, bad things always happen to me. I'm not perfect and I've messed up my life and I guess I deserve this," and these words can literally bring in horrible things. Job says in Job 3, "What I fear befalls me and what I dread comes upon me". Showing us that our heart is what is determining the boundaries of what we let in and what we stop. Your heart can literally stop letting in happiness, joy, peace, prosperity. Your heart can stop letting poverty and fear and anger and depression, etcetera. Your heart is determining what is being released and not released into your life.
Therefore, we must understand that the changing of your heart is the most powerful change in your life because if you've accepted Jesus Christ as your savior, he's already in your spirit man and you are forgiven. You are a brand new creation in your spirit. No, you don't have a brand new body. You don't even have a brand new mind. Those two, it shows us how to deal with them. But the heart is this center area that's kind of connected to your spirit and to your mind and it determines. It's like a one-way valve allowing, you know, what comes out of your spirit or it's siding with your mind, etcetera. And so, by our words we are justified and by our words we are condemned. We must really understand the warfare that is going on for the hearts of Christians.
Now as we talk about mood disorders, depression, and again, for those who are watching who this is your field of expertise and you have all these terms figured out and they tend to change every few years as to how we talk about them. I'm not worried about bring accurate medically, being accurate when it comes to the herbs and things. I'm talking Biblically. So, we can just call it depression, fear, whatever it is, it's not been designed to be in your life. The new creation has been designed to push that out and to bring in the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus said very clearly that I've come that you might have life and more abundantly which means superior in quality, innumerable in quantity. So a good man brings forth good things. It says an evil man from the evil deposits of his heart brings forth evil things.
There's an interesting verse in 2 Corinthians 10. It says, "For thought we walk and live in this flesh, we are not carrying on our warfare according to the flesh. The outside world and using mere human weapons. For the weapons of our warfare are not physical weapons of flesh and blood but they are mighty before God for they overthrow the destruction of strongholds in as much as we refute arguments, theories, and reasonings in every proud, lofty thing that sets itself up against the true knowledge of God and we lead every thought and the purpose away captive into the obedience of Christ, the anointed one".
A lot of times with, you know, over the years as a pastor when I've tried, prayed and worked with people who are struggling brutally with depression or mood disorders, they'll often, when they talk with me. "Tried that, been that, doesn't work. Doesn't work. Doesn't work. That's what I hear from them all. That doesn't work. That doesn't work. Tried it. Tried it. Tried it". And what they don't understand is you can't just try the Word of God just in your mind a little bit but the key is getting the powerful Word of God and its revelation deep down into the heart. That's where the boundaries change. That's is when everything changes. That's when you can begin to release the power of joy and the power of peace. You know when we talk about, some of the other things that are out there, I was saying in the very first session that I've got friends who, they, you know, as a born-again, spirit-filled, love God.
Went through a phase and they got some medicine and some help and it really helped them through that phase. Others that it messed them up worse than before. Their words to me. "I should have never have done that". And they found going over to the natural path and they began to work with missing things in their diet and amino acids and things that helped to balance them and they just found incredible victory with that. Others, health issues. Went to see the doctor and yes, they found a brain tumor. Others dealing with post-partum issues and you know, as the hormones are fluctuating. And so, I'm not an expert in these areas other than the people in my world. I've seen a multiplicity of different reasons and different things that they did. But in every case, they found that when it came to finding truth in God's Word, it set them from this black cloud, from this dark monster.
And our faith must not be in human things. Doctors, natural paths, herbalist, chiropractors. Our faith must be in Jesus and his Word. But now wisdom we get to use and he'll guide us on what wisdom to use to help us out. Some Christians think you should never get on meds. You should never, oh, really? Then why are you wearing false teeth? Why are you wearing a wig? Why are you wearing glasses if we should just be natural and not get any kind of help. No. Of course we can get help. Of course we can do things to help us through certain seasons of life or things that are gonna help us. And so, the Christian response has been kinda crazy depression.
Many people are embarrassed even to talk about it yet I remember a wonderful pastor in my life had an impact on my life. Lived his life for God doing incredible things and in the latter years of his life, went into a deep depression. He believed that he just hasn't done enough for God. And it just broke my heart watching him deal with this. When you allow certain thoughts to come in and that thought is not taken captive, the Bible teaches us here in 2 Corinthians 10, there's a process that talks about in 2 Corinthians 10:3-6 that a thought must be dealt with. If you don't deal with the thought, it becomes an argument. It beings to argue against you in your own head. It begins to have its own theories. Its own reasonings. And then your very imaginations begin to be filled with a concept, a wrong thought. A wrong argument, a wrong theory. And it says it exalts itself against the knowledge God. We need to make sure that the Word of God comes in, that we renew our minds with it, and that we spend time speaking God's Word.
Okay, we talked about that last time and getting it into our heart. Now these new heart beliefs will begin to push out these deep-seeded wrong beliefs. And you might not even know what they are. You don't have to know what they are. Sometimes we have all these deep inner healing teaching that I think in some cases really mess people up. I've found that as I begin to take God's Word every day, feed on it, speak it out with my mouth, find out the truth about me and my limitations, that Jesus took my sin, took the curse that he literally won me. Righteousness is now a gift that his grace is unmerited and I just believe that I am blessed and favored because of Jesus' behavior. Because of his lifestyle. Because of what he did at the cross for us. Wow.
Then it'd take me to a whole new level of joy and peace. Here it says at the very end, the last verse in, I'm sorry, that I gave you 2 Corinthians 10:6. It says, "Be ready to punish your disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled". Now here's an interesting thing. When you obey God's Word and establish your heart in grace, okay, then as disobedient thoughts rise up, you jump on them right away. When you've established your heart in grace and a thought rises up, "Well, God's not gonna look after you because you didn't do this good enough. You didn't do that good enough. You fell into sin over there. You did that wrong". Those thoughts are wrong. Those are disobedient thoughts that are not accurate according to the New Covenant that Jesus won for us in his blood, his death, his burial, his resurrection. He's seated at the right hand of the Father. He won all these things for us.
And so, we can't. We must immediately take that disobedient thought captive. The power of focus is interesting. Whatever you focus on in life get bigger. If you focus on pain. Let's say that you put your shoes on and there's a tack in your shoe. Well that pain's brutal. If you focus on that tack more and more and more, the pain gets bigger and bigger. Let's say that you're outside. You live on a farm. You grab your boots. You throw them on. You step on a tack and as you walk out, you go, "Oh, I was stepping on a tack". But right away you see a bear in your yard and he's changing you. Your focus on the tack is gone. The tack stop hurting. The pain goes away because you are now focused on a bigger problem and that a bear running at you.
So whatever you focus on, literally gets bigger. That tack and its pain disappears. When you focus on the Word of God and you begin to get God's Word on the inside of you, all the focus on you're not good enough. You've made major mistakes. God's not happy with you. God is displeased with you. The future is not bright. The future, it's gonna be dim. You know, I'm gonna say something else that might help somebody watching.
One of the things that has hurt the body of Christ the most is end times teaching that makes it look as if a great big powerful antichrist is gonna rise up and behead people and kill church people. If we don't get the mark, we're gonna do this. And they've got this well-developed end times theology which in many cases, I don't agree with. I know Jesus is coming back. Praise the Lord. But he's not coming back for a whipped, beaten church that's pushed around by the devil and some false prophet and the antichrist. Whatever your theories are. If the end times teaching makes you unhappy and depressed and down and the world's going to hell in a handbasket and only a few people are gonna be left a remnant and all these crazy teachings are wrong.
The Bible gives us the mandate to take this Gospel to the world and to disciple nations and we're gonna do that. If you wanna ask me, "Well, Leon, I'm ready today to go be with Jesus. If he comes back, I'm ready to go today". When do I think he's coming? I don't think he's coming for hundreds of years. We've got nations to disciple. We've got people to reach. The church of Jesus Christ needs to get out of its funk and out of it little, you know, get up and rise up and be the answer to this world. Maybe a lot of the things you're dealing with have to do with your entire world view of the church as a whipped, beaten little nothing, you know, and the whole world's rising up against us and everything that's out there is strong.
Oh, it's all about the change as truth comes to the body of Christ. That Jesus has paid the price and we're to rise up as the leaders of this world. The head and not the tail. Above and not beneath. That greater is he who is, and I said, he was in the world. All of these teachings from the Word of God change the heart and they begin to cause you to rise up and live a completely different life. We have an incredible life ahead of us. This teaching on the heart is, I believe, for many of you, an aha moment. Oh, that's so true. None of us are responsible for the beliefs of our heart. The beliefs that are in our heart are there because of our upbringing, religious upbringing. Teachers, parents, grandparents, traumas, repetitious things that have been taught to us, and they were there long before we even consciously could begin to deal with the deepest heart beliefs within us.
Take these messages and go get more and let's begin to change. Let's begin to labor to enter the rest. Labor to get the truth of God's Word deep into your heart and there will be a rest that rises up within you of joy and peace that's easy and beautiful and exciting. Mood disorders are real. As real as any other sickness. A broken leg or cancer. If you're facing mental illness, there is no reason to be ashamed. You need healing just like the rest of us. I want to encourage you. You can make it through this. In John 10:10 it says that Jesus came so we could have life and have it to the full. If you've accepted Christ, then that applies to your life as well. Make sure that you're taking the time each day to read your Bible. Getting God's Word, that eight inches from your head to your heart is what it will take to start changing the bad belief systems that you've been living from. If you've found today's message encouraging then I'd like to encourage you to keep tuning in to this program.
***Part 4***
Hey, everybody. It's great to have you with me again today. We're on this incredible series that is so crucial and important about mood disorders like depression, etcetera. And we're not trying to figure out all the proper lingo and it changes every couple of years. But I wanna bring you a biblical perspective. So far we've talked about a lot of area, but the one thing that is so crucial as I go into today's teaching, is that you understand one of the greatest things that has ever hit the Christian world in the last number of years or decade or so is the understanding of the heart. That it's not the devil destroying your life. It's not God withholding it back. But all through the new covenant we see and see it all through the old that the heart of a person is determining their future or the deepest beliefs your heart, as a man thinks in his heart so he lives.
People who struggle with depression, mood disorders, they literally have no hope after a while. They're cynical to even thinking there's a Christian response because it's just been like, just use your faith and get rid of it. And it's been so bad that people have backed away from church and gone into so many other areas. And so we know that there's, I've got lots of Christian friends and I shared this before. I know one or two actually that are on meds and it really helps, some of them stays on because of what they're dealing with. And I believe they're believing God for a miracle and moving in that direction and when they received it, they'll probably go off at that point with the doctor's help. Others had went off all of their meds with doctor's help and it took them a year or so of just getting into teaching like this until they're just totally free. Others, you really use diet and amino acid and herbs. And others might joke around about because they've tried, but I've seen it helped them.
So there's a lot of areas, counseling has really helped people. But a lot of the professionals that are in my world because I pastor thousands of people from doctors to herbalist to naturopath to literally brain scientist. That when I've talked with them, they had unbelievably told me that one of the teachings that we do in our church, in our ministries is the area of the heart is absolutely crucial and all of them agree. This is a missing ingredient for Christians. And so, the heart is the deepest level. In fact, it is where you get your identity, your belief identity. There's an identity about you that God has, which is the true identity of you. But your belief identity, who are you deep inside in the heart. That is where it is controlling your life.
Feelings are continually rising up that are controlling. It brings darkness. It brings hopeless. It brings dark clouds on everything. It's a battle. It's a fight. It's a, literally it is a terror that is just barely being controlled in many cases or just this monotonous not looking forward. We can describe it in a lot of ways. But I want to tell you something. There is hope. Don't ever allow the enemy. Maybe Christians have taken you through something in the world that didn't help at all, and it just kind of turns you off to the way Christians deal with it. Sometimes Christians, you know, churches, a lot of people they don't wanna share that they're struggling with something in the area of mental health because it literally looked down upon.
And I think every family, I find every family I talk to in our church would tell me if someone they love in the family that is touched by this and their concern is great. They wanna know how to help them. And so, for those who are watching who are touched by this. Don't allow the enemy to bring thoughts to you. That people will think less of you, etcetera, etcetera. Some of the most incredibly high producing heroes of generations have struggled with this and been phenomenal amazing people. So today, I wanna just talk for a little bit about the six deadly fears. The six deadly fears that I see the most that people struggle with, because the kingdom of darkness is dominated by fear. The kingdom of light dominated by love. All of the negative tributaries on the river of fear come off of fear as the base emotion. And that is whether it's embarrassment, condemnation, etcetera. All come off that one. Love is where you've got joy and peace and patience and long-suffering and goodness and all these beautiful things.
And so, at the root of all this is fear. This fear is a snare. It will stop you from using your gifts, being creative, from trying, from rising up. There are misbeliefs deep in your heart that you probably need to put there, not even aware of them that they radiate the deepest feelings that you feel day after day. So the Bible teaches us that we're gonna be attacked by fear our whole life. As children, fear is not a good thing to use to train children. It has no good application. Job 3:25, Job teaches us the principle, what I fear actually comes into my life. What I dread befalls me, he says. And Jesus says and teaches us through His spirit, in 2 Timothy 1:7, that we don't the spirit of fear but a power and of love and of a sound mind.
Some people have told me, "I don't have any fears. I'm just totally depressed". And I said, "No. You're wrong. You're not aware of it". Like, if fear controls us, then there are a number of symptoms emotionally. If you're grumpy, it's fear based. If you're unhappy, it's fear based. If you're angry, it's fear based. All these things, they are fear based, because with Christ there is a sense of joy, a sense of peace, a sense of excitement, and a hope for the future. And the enemy of our souls doesn't want that. So we know that fears always gonna push at us. Every time Jesus went to do a miracle. He would say fear not. Don't fear. And then He would teach, minister to them. He would often teach the Word to the crowds first. And then He would minister to them.
So we need to understand that fear doesn't have to be terror. It doesn't have to be, you know, something that we can really recognize. It can be this low-grade hum, just, whatever it is. There's a belief deep in this heart that is shutting you down. Now, let's deal some of the fears. The very first fear of the six that I see a lot of, is the fear of death. And the Bible teaches us, you know, in Hebrews 2:14, talks about we're subject to the, so many of you are subject to the fear of death. Psalm 23:4, talks about walking through the valley of the shadow of death. And you know, when you see the shadow. You know, there's something is doing that shadow. So if I see someone's shadow enter the room, I'll look around. There's gonna be a person standing there. I see their shadow.
And so, in life a shadowing of death is always there. We're reminded by funerals, reminded by grandpa's dying, friends dying. Things that are going on. You watched the news and you see people being shot in terrorism. And we're very aware of the shadow of death that we see everywhere and then it gives us a fear. If we're not careful it gives us a fear of death. But 1 Corinthians 15:55, says, "Death, where is your sting? Jesus took the sting out of death and it does not have the right anymore to bring such horrible fear into our lives. Do not allow the fear of death. Begin to focus on heaven and understanding some of these things. But be aware, it's a fear of death. The Bible says this number two fear, is the fear of man. We begin to worry about what people are thinking. How people look at you. What are they saying about me? What are they thinking about me?
And Proverbs 29:25, says that this fear is a snare. It will stop you from using your gift, being creative, from trying, from rising up, from building great friendships. This fear of what people think about you, what they're saying about you, will stop you from even building friendships. Because everybody's a jerk and I've never found anyone that loves me or cares about me. And the Bible teaches us in Luke 12:4-5, not to fear man but to fear God. Have this awe of what does God think about you and that's the way to transition and recognize, I wanna please God. I'm not gonna worry anymore about pleasing people. But the second fear, is the fear of man. A third fear of these six fears that often people is that the root of what's going on is the fear of failure. We don't attempt anything and then we have enough worry about failing at it.
You know, the Bible says in Romans 8:37 and on, that we are more than conquerors because He loves us. What does that mean? Well, when you attempt something and you fail, nothing changes with God. He still loves you, believes in you, and He's with you to help you in the second attempt, the third attempt. We are more than conquerors. We can stop being fearful about the people that are around us. The enemy will tempt us to hook into fear. A fear of death, a fear of man, a fear of failure. And the thing about fear is that what you focus on gets larger in your life. As you go to the teaching we've done in the series about the heart, it will give you an ability. Holy Spirit is gonna work with you and give you an ability to focus on the Word and then you magnify God. You magnify faith. You magnify all these beautiful biblical attributes. What you stay focus on, you magnify. You make larger in your life. And Holy Spirit's been given to you to lead you into all truth. The fear of failure is huge.
You know, 1 John 4:15 and on says that love is what cast out fear. I never could figure that out and one day I was just meditating on this and this picture came to me, of a mom with a phobia of snakes, terrified of snakes. She'd see one and she just like literally go into heart palpitation and almost passed out sweat. But one day, she sees a poisonous snake slithering across the floor of the nursery of her baby. And that little three-month old precious baby is in the crib and she sees it going up that crib. What she gonna do? The love for the baby overrides the fear of that snake. And I've got news for you, that is one dead snake. If she's gotta chew his head off with her teeth because the love for that baby will override. It doesn't matter what this world is bringing in. It doesn't matter what's going on in your life. There's a powerful love that makes you love God, love life, love your relationships, love your purpose that will make you get up and stop giving in to the enemy's fear. The next one is the fear of rejection.
Now, some of these fears are close but I'm just showing, and the fear of rejection is that God's rejected me. People reject me. I can't please God. You know, much of Christian teaching which is just such hogwash has developed this fear in people. That God loves you but He doesn't like you. God loves you but He's not pleased with you. Oh, God's forgiven you but He's not gonna bless you. God's forgiven you but He's not gonna promote you. We mixed all this Old Testament Law with the New Testament of the cross. What Jesus is on the cross with His death, His burial, His resurrection, seated at the righthand of the Father. He qualifies you for the gift of righteousness. You are righteous because of Jesus. You qualify for every promise and for an amazing life. But if you've been rejected as a child, if you've been taught rejection from God because you're not, you've sin, you've done something wrong. God's gonna get you. That's wrong teaching.
And when you hear the truth in this series and listen to it over and over. That truth is gonna settle down deep in your heart and it's gonna destroy the horrible harvest of fear and depression. And it's gonna bring a crop of joy and peace. Another fear is the fear of sickness. I don't know how many people who've lost loved ones to heart attack, cancer. And so because their dad and their dad's dad or dad's dad's dad or their mom and breast cancer all through their family. And they'll even test you for a certain kinds of breast cancer for example and say, "This runs in the family". I know one family every woman in downlines have been told, "You got a 50% chance". And so, and this fear that just grips people and we've gotta understand that fear has torment. Depression is one of those torments, that they can just torments you. But when you deal with deepest level of fear, the fear at the heart level.
And so many Christians have never known about this and how to deal with the heart. That we can deal with it and we can rise up in faith and in victory. 3 John 2 says, I wish above all things that you be in health and you prosper. But then it says as your soul prospers. We wanna renew our minds with the Word of God, Romans 12:2 says. Because as you begin to get it into your mind regularly every day. It begins to drop deep into your heart and it begins to plant new seeds. Mark 4, the whole chapter is about your heart is the soil, the seed is the Word of God. And as you keep planting God's Word repetitiously, fervently, getting it in there, knowing the truth. You begin to choke out the crop of weeds and it begins to rise up the beautiful fruit of the Spirit of God, joy, peace, righteousness. Don't be afraid of sickness. And the last one is the fear of lack.
I know people who've taken their own lives when they went bankrupt. Taken their own lives as they've lost everything they've worked their whole lives for. Which shows you an inordinate focus on their career and their money. It's not things that are important in life. I don't care if I had to lost something, I'd rather lost my house, my car, and all my money than my relationships for example. But when you begin to be afraid of lack, you begin to literally allow this world's economy, finances, your boss, the CEO, where things are going? It just governs your life too much. In fact, the Bible says you are actually following mammon, which is the evil entity that governs money. Or you can prosper as you get into God's grace, His blessing, and His favor. But if you go the other way and you allow the mammon, this evil entity. That word is actually in five or six different languages, old languages showing you that the enemy wants us to work, to make our decisions with money, to be drawn by money, career. And that could also mean things, trips, shopping. Anything that begins to dominate your world and he'll try to lead you off.
The Bible says in Matthew 6:28-29, the birds, the flowers, they don't work or toil and God dresses them more beautifully than you and I. Birds they don't work at all for what they eat and God provides for them. Isn't just, aren't they look after you as well? These six fears I find somewhere, now, out of that. You might aren't be thinking about there's a fear in our lives. But when you begin to recognize that God wants to heal us. He also wants to heal our physical body. He wants to heal our physical brain. He wants to heal our mind and our thinking and restore it. There's a number of areas the Word of God very clearly teaches on. And what's beautiful is, its Holy Spirit's job to lead us into all truth.
And today, as I close out this last session. I want you to be aware that according to John chapter 14, 15, and chapter 16, Holy Spirit is here. If you've given your life to Him, He's within you. And you need to fellowship with Him every day. And you need to ask Him, when you read the Bible, Holy Spirit teach me. And you'll find that Ephesians 1:16 and on, says that He, the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him, will open your eyes. That's those aha! And all of a sudden something deep within you stirs. Holy Spirit's job is to reveal to you truth that will destroy what the enemy is doing. Holy Spirit will lead you even into wise things to do. If you need to get on to some meds, He'll lead you to the right doctor. He'll lead you to the truth. He'll lead you into things.
As people began to attend our church, many of them struggling with different areas of hurt in their life, different areas of, like depression and mood disorders. I'm amazed how, it wasn't just the kind of, okay flippantly, heal me God. I'm done. But God would lead them. And one gentleman told me how that his diet completely set him free from struggling from with schizophrenia and all the things that were going in his life. And I've watched him now for years with smiles on his face, living an incredibly productive life, loving his relationships. Someone else told us that, you know, God just guide me to this herbalist and to this naturopath. As I began to talk with them, I found out my body was horribly lacking in some of these things. And they put me on a program, begin to work with me.
I can tell you different routes that the Holy Spirit would lead them to what their body was lacking, what their minds. Some of them are into counseling. But all of them, every one of them as they came to our church, learned what God's will was for them, learned the new covenant of grace that Jesus won on the cross. And as the positive Word of God begin to come into their mind, Sunday after Sunday. And then every day that they get a hold of the teaching. That they go through them, their mind began to be clothe with the renewing of God's Word. You see, some of you watching right now. You say, "I know all the Scriptures, Leon. It hasn't helped me". No, you can know what turkey taste like. But it doesn't mean you've eaten it, digested it, and all the protein and the nutrients are in your life. No, the Bible talks about faith and then mental assent. As you continue to labor in God's Word, to grow in God's Word, confess God's Word.
All the things we've taught you on this series. You are laboring to replant into your heart the seed of God's truth. He's Word it pushes out all the things of the past, the lies. It heals you. It heals your brain, heals the enzymes, heals your hormones, heals brain chemicals. God's Word brings healing. It brings health. This beautiful Scriptures like laughter do it good like a medicine. Scriptures that show us that God understand. God's not shock by this rampant attack of depression and mood disorder. That it's just growing and rising everywhere and some say, "Well, it's chemicals". And I agree with all, I think there's a ton of stuff that they will get lay at the ground of that. Some say its vaccination, some say its certain drugs, some say it's the thousands of chemicals being invented every year.
Pray that beautiful prayer in Mark 16. That if I eat any deadly thing, it will not hurt me. Pray that any deadly thing in my, that I'm breathing, eating, or absorbing through my skin, it will not hurt me in the name of Jesus. God has got so many beautiful answers and Holy Spirit will guide you into the truth. You need to pursue into the health that you can find. I believe He's guided you to this series. I believe that He's giving you new hope. And that as you begin to listen to this over and over, one of the keys, one of the huge keys is the dealing of heart beliefs. How you look at God, the devil, yourself, this new covenant. And as you change this, you're gonna find amazing changes in the other things that God is guiding you in with wisdom to get yourself healthy and whole and to find what's going on in your life. I believe Holy Spirit is so close to you. And I'm gonna pray right now Holy Spirit.
Father, Your Word says that He's here to magnify Jesus. Holy Spirit is here to fellowship with us. Holy Spirit is here to lead us into all truth, to show us things to come with joy and peace to give us a vision for our lives. And Father, let this series be the start of an entire new journey into health, healing, wholeness, and victory. In Jesus name. Amen.