Discovering Identity and Purpose Through Scripture

"Yes. 100%, man. And speaking of book, the only way that I believe that you can truly come to a place where you start to discover your identity for yourself apart from somebody who might be teaching you or instructing you is you got to go back to the book. You've got to get back to the Bible. The fundamentals. The fundamentals. But you talked about this in the first part of the series where you said that a lot of this generation is biblically illiterate." [00:02:38]

"You know, why would you listen to a bunch of mythical stories? I'm sure you've heard that a lot, too. And, you know, I think that in itself, in of itself, is kind of interesting because I think that's the root problem with why so many of us are struggling to find our purpose and identity because we won't even take, we won't even humble ourselves. And I use that gracefully. We won't even humble ourselves enough to accept the identity of who God says he is about himself." [00:03:33]

"But if you truly want to start to know truth. Yeah. If you truly want to establish a baseline. Yeah. You have to get beyond your own skepticism. You have to get beyond your own pride. Yes. And you have to get beyond. Yes. You have to get beyond what you think is socially acceptable and just accept the fact that if I want to know about my purpose, I first have to discover God. And the only way I can discover God is by reading about who he says he is." [00:04:46]

"If this were brainwashing, why do they work so hard to take it away? Why do they work so hard to try and discount the Bible? Why do they work so hard at keeping it out of society? If it truly were brainwashing you because I'm evil, could it be that the people that are the same people that are pushing God out and are trying to push the Bible away are the ones that are actually brainwashing you and keeping you from the actual truth of who you are and who you're supposed to be?" [00:07:16]

"So check this out. This is Jeremiah. He was a famous prophet in the Old Testament times. What you need to know though, is that God spoke directly to him and he was young. He was very, very young when God told him this message. So it says, the Lord gave me this message. I knew you before I formed you in your mother's womb. Before you were born, I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations." [00:08:29]

"How does this apply to you? This means that before you were conceived in your mother's womb, God had already created a plan. He had already given you a purpose. He had already given you assignment. He had already designated you to be alive right here, right now, right now in the existence of this timeline of eternity to actually fulfill a purpose and an assignment to make this world a better place for his kingdom." [00:10:09]

"there's a practicality of blocking out the noise, blocking out and getting rid of the worldly influences. For example, music. So I'm going to go back to just my high school years. I was a big fan of secular hip hop, man. I'm not going to name artists because I don't want people going out here and listening to these artists, but let's just say, you know, the nineties, two thousands, uh, rap artists, dude." [00:13:43]

"We got to talk about words. We got so many ideas for podcast episodes, but words, man, words just don't go away. So when you are hearing these explicit lyrics, when you're hearing these things about what people are doing, how they're treating other women or whatever in these songs, did you know that when you listen to this stuff and you don't actually counter it, you're coming into agreement? And what that does is anything that is contrary to what God says is considered a curse." [00:14:41]

"And so what happens then is it's not God bringing this evil on you. It's your actions coming into agreement with what is evil that allows these things to breed confusion, depression, suicidal thoughts, habitual sin, addictive behaviors that now starts to pop up in your life. And you start to wonder, why do I keep having these sick images rolling in my head? Why do I keep having these weird thoughts? Why am I so angry? Well, like Pastor Matt said, what are you listening to? What are you looking at? And also, who are you surrounding yourself with?" [00:16:18]

"Most of us, we look at our phone, we scroll social media, we check our email. What if, what if we challenged ourselves that rather than using our phone as an alarm, we actually got an alarm clock. Yep. I'm talking about that thing from the early 2000s. Plug that thing in. Once you hit the alarm clock, rather than the, rather than your phone be the first thing you grab, your Bible is the first thing you grab and then you get on your knees." [00:23:31]

"And Lord, I want this day to be a day full of, uh, of joy. I want this day to be a day full of accomplishment. But most importantly, I want this day to be a day that I dedicate to you. And I'm asking you to lead me, order my steps so that I can accomplish things for your kingdom. Super simple, super simple prayer. And then you can be on your way. But what you're doing is you're establishing God as a priority in your life to where then if you do this consistently each and every day, then you will begin to walk in a greater understanding of your purpose and your call." [00:24:46]

"Are you willing to submit? And are you willing to be obedient to what you already know deep down inside you? Because let's be real. After you get done partying or wherever you've been, you get home at night by yourself, and you're up alone. That's the real you. Those thoughts that are pouring through, why am I doing this? I wish I was more of this. I should be doing this more. Right. That's just the starting point. It's not to condemn you. It's the Holy Spirit trying to get ahold of you saying, hey, I created you for something amazing." [00:26:57]