Christ's Kingdom Within: Dismantling Our Inner Strongholds

So when Paul says we have to bring every thought captive to Christ or his disobedience, he's making a breathtaking claim. He's saying not just that Jesus is a consultant or Jesus is a a role model or Jesus is an adviser. He's saying that Jesus is king. He's saying that Jesus has precisely the kind of claim to authority over us that would make a category of disobedience make sense. [00:37:53] (27 seconds)  #JesusAsKing

And he says Jesus isn't just king over my behavior, although that can be challenging enough. He says it's also Jesus also came over my interior world. He's he's king over my motives and over my assumptions, over my private narratives, the stories that I tell myself, over my emotional reflexes es and responses, over my secret ambitions, over every thought that I have. Jesus is king. [00:38:20] (24 seconds)  #KingOfTheHeart

Now, why would the Bible claim that kind of authority? In in Paul's mind, there are only really two options. Right? One option is that you are here by pure accident. The cosmic forces of evolution have conspired together to produce you Now and if you are the product of blind forces, then you don't owe your allegiance to anything. Nothing. No one has the right to claim anything at all over you. Paul says the other option is that you're created, [00:38:44] (37 seconds)  #CreatedNotAccident

that you've been made, that you've been fashioned with intelligence, with intention, with design. And if you were created, then you belong. If you were created, then you belong. And we intuitively understand this. If if if I created a piece of music, someone steals that piece of music. I could say, you can't steal that music. It's I made it. If I build a house and somebody else moves into the house, I might say to them, you can't move into that house. [00:39:21] (42 seconds)  #MadeByDesign

It's mine. I've made it. If you design something, if you create something, that creation is yours. This is the logic of the scriptures. You have been designed and created and fashioned by a god who claims authority over you. And the logic of the gospel is even deeper still. If you exist because of Christ, if your breath and if your your mind and your talents and your bodies, all that you have and all that you are belong to Christ, then your life is not self governed. [00:40:03] (42 seconds)  #LifeBelongsToChrist

It is under the rulership of a king. And now this is where those of us who have sort of western sort of a western flavor of of of independence, sort of chafe at the message of the gospel. Because we're we're designed in our western upbringing to say, we don't serve anybody. We pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We bow to no king. We answer to our individual conscience alone. [00:40:45] (35 seconds)  #IndependenceChallenge

But the gospel presses us and says, oh, no. No. No. No. You do have this offering. You do have the king. Somebody is ruling your life. Something is in charge of your life. There's some authority that you bow to. Maybe you bow to the authority to the rule of approval, and you'll do anything for the approval of others. [00:41:20] (23 seconds)  #WhoRulesYou

Maybe you bow to the authority of your career, and you'll sacrifice anything for it. Maybe you value and bow to the rule of independence or image or whatever it is, but there's some entity that rules you, says the scriptures. We are never masterless. We were never created to be independent. The question is not, will I serve? The question is, who will I serve? [00:41:43] (32 seconds)  #HeartTyrants