 When you become a Christian, it's a miraculous experience. Literally, you go from spiritual death into spiritual life. You were made into a new creation and now empowered by God's power in His presence in your life to follow Him daily. However, after the dust settles and it does settle, you realize that you still carry some baggage from your previous life. Ideas, beliefs, presuppositions, understandings, things that are not built on biblical truth, but rather lies that you've carried for so long. Now, I experienced the exact same thing. In today's video, I'm going to share with you eight lies that I believed when I first became a Christian. And I'll share with you the scriptural truth that set me free. I don't know about you guys, but as a young Christian, I struggled with my sense of assurance. I put my faith in Jesus, but I was still finding myself struggle with old sins. One of the things I really struggled with was lust. I felt like some days I was taking one step forward, then two steps back. Sometimes it felt like I was making no progress. Other times it would feel like I'm getting totally free from it, actually finding victory. And all of a sudden I fall back into the same old sin. I felt isolated. I felt alone when I looked at my other Christian friends. It didn't seem like they're really struggling, so it caused me to question whether I was really a Christian. But it took me a while to realize that this isn't unique for Christians at all. Even the Apostle Paul explains this same tension in his life. Oh man, where'd my Bible go? Okay, okay. I got it here. I got it here. Okay, so Romans 7.15, it says, I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. As I read Paul's words, the distinction here is that Paul hated his sin. An untransformed heart stews in sin. It justifies it. It doesn't apologize for it. But a heart transformed by God hates sin and delights in God. There's definitely a place to examine yourself to see if you're in the faith. But don't for a second believe that it's by your good works that you're kept saved, basically, right? You don't maintain your salvation by doing good stuff or trying to earn God's favor. Ask people in your life, do you see the fruit of the Spirit in me? Do you see me growing in maturity? Do you see God's work in my life? The old saying, I'm not sure who originated it, but it goes like this. It's not about perfection. It's about direction. Now if you search your heart and you find out, look, I don't really hate sin. Look, my life is actually going against God and it's not going towards him. Then maybe you find out, hey, I'm actually not in the faith. It is not too late for you. You know, the Bible says that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness. Ask him to transform your heart and he will. Now, this is a transactional understanding of a relationship with God. If I do good things, if I'm nice and walk old ladies across the street, then God will bless me and he'll also show his favor and his love for me and his approval of me. Now, the scripture is clear about God being pleased when we obey him and honor him, but we need to understand that God's love is always a gift. It is not merited. We did not earn his love or his approval of us. So when we operate on this understanding of, well, if I do these nice things even as a Christian, then that means God loves me more on that particular day. We're taking out the reality that every ounce of God's love shown towards us is a gift. And it took me so long to realize this and even still today, I'm trying to internalize this truth that even when I sin, God's love is still there for me because it's a gift and it still covers me by his grace. The Lord is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love. He will exalt over you with loud singing. I love this so much. God takes delight in us. So if God's love is a gift, where do our good works come from? Well, they should be an outflowing of our love towards God because he loved us first. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us for this is the love of God that we should keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome. Okay, so stay with me. So our obedience is both an outflowing of our love for God and a sign that we love God, but it's not the means of obtaining God's love because that's a gift. I can't tell you guys how much I struggle with this, especially as a new believer. I had thought that every time I kind of sinned that God was out to get me, that he was trying to punish me or mess up my life somehow. Now, obviously there are natural consequences to sin. Oftentimes, you know, you cheat on something that gets found out. You have to suffer the consequences or you sin against someone. You say hateful words to them. You still suffer the consequences of that broken relationship with all that being said. It's important to recognize that God's not just out here trying to get Christians. He may discipline you as a good father disciplines his child when he strays off the right path, but that's motivated out of his love and for your good ultimately. But he's not just out to get you. Okay, in Romans 8, there's one of my favorite verses. Of course, it's Romans 8. Guys, Romans 8 is so good, so thick. For I'm sure neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor heights nor depths nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Now, although these are conflicting ideas, they're both lies. It brings me back to my first days on YouTube, actually. Somebody had commented underneath one of my videos and said, You are too sad, Isaac. You need to be happier and display the joy of the Lord. Conversely, there was also sentiment from other influences that the Christian life was full of hardships and trials. It was just a treading through the muck in the mire of our world till we met our maker. Both of these understandings are distorted. It's no surprise the scripture points out that the Christian life isn't just ponies and rainbows. Like just look at the early church, the martyrs of the faith. It was not just easy like jog to follow Jesus. It was challenging. There were real challenges, real consequences, real pain, real sorrow. But this is one of the interesting things of scripture, though, because although it talks about these challenges and these trials, it also talks about peace that passes all understanding and that our joy is to be made complete in Christ. This joy and peace interact simultaneously in the midst of our daily lives as we're experiencing those trials and those tribulations. Even though we're experiencing the circumstantial hardships of our daily lives, we have this internal, eternal reality of joy and peace in Christ. In John 16, Jesus says this, I have said these things to you that in me, you may have peace. In this world, you all have tribulation, but take heart. I have overcome the world. We have the outer reality of trials, hardships in our lives. And yet we have this inner reality of peace that passes all understanding because Christ has overcome the world. And actually that plays into our real everyday lives because even when things are tough, man, we got this hope, this hope, this lasting, living hope. God didn't make us into robots when we became a Christian. He was not just like, you need to be happy all the time or you need to be sad and just kind of sad because the world's a bad place. It's like, okay, yeah, there's a time for weeping. There's a time for mourning, but there's also a time for rejoicing. As a kid, worship was the two or three songs that you sang right before the pastor came up to preach. Or at Bible camp, it was a thing that happened just before the altar call. But worship is so much more than singing. It's not less than singing though. That's definitely a part of it and raising your voice to the Lord. The scripture is clear about that, but there's something else too. Romans 12 says this, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Okay, this term living sacrifices, what does that even mean? We're called to lay our lives down in submission to God to submit our will to him, to pursue him in obedience. Any assumed autonomy on our part needs to be laid down at the foot of the cross. This is worship. So when you're singing, don't just think about the words that you're saying, but also think about the humbling and submitting of your own heart to God. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm not going to play a song for you. I'm not that good. One of the most famous verses in scripture. I got to go to it. You knew I had to. I got to do it. Come on. Why is it taking me so long? I've been out of Oana for too many years. And he said to them go into the world and proclaim the gospel to all creation. Now, if I read that right, there was no exemption there. He wasn't like, go all you extroverted people into the world and make disciples sharing the gospel. But for all you introverted folks, just keep chilling, doing what you're doing. Enjoy the scrabble and the book readings. Like, no, no, that's not what Jesus said. But I feel for you because I'm an introvert. So as an introvert, think hearing about this idea of sharing the gospel. It felt very unnatural and foreign to me because you're like, okay, I'm going to talk to somebody and like initiate this. What might be felt as a confrontational conversation, even though ideally it's not. But some people, you know, oh, wow, you're telling me about Jesus. Like, this is uncomfy. I don't like this. And so as an introvert, I'm like, I don't know if this is like right for me. So I'm trying to figure out, okay, God, you want me to do this, but yet I don't feel equipped. And I think this goes back to our understanding of what it looks like to share the gospel. We often see, you know, big and bold and boisterous people go out onto the streets or, you know, share the gospel or preach open air or even their own social media. They're going ham and they're just like preaching up a storm and that that's great. I love that. But for a lot of folks, it's like, hey, I don't relate with that. That doesn't seem like it could be me or my gifting. Okay, how can I share it in my daily life in the conversations that I'm having? God puts us in each each in different places and it's about recognizing. Okay, what avenues do I have here to share the gospel? What are the types of people that he's put in my life and how can I make an impact on them and be a light to them? Now, it took me a while to realize that sharing the gospel can look very different for a lot of people. There's different styles or different ways and that's okay. And it's not just necessarily one conversation, but it's multiple conversations over, you know, years and that's all right. But my encouragement is become very familiar with the gospel. Who are we? Who is God? What has he done? What are we called to do? Because even if you're not able to get everything out in one conversation, it's important to know. Okay, what am I trying to lead them to here? It's not just getting the loss of the weeds of arguments and debates and apologetics. Even though this can definitely be helpful and necessary at times, I want to lead them to Christ ultimately. So keeping that in the back of your mind, it's going to be helpful regardless of what context you're sharing the gospel with somebody at. If you'd like further help on what this looks like, comment down below and I'll do a future video on it. As a teenager, I loved theology. I listened to theology podcasts. I watched theology YouTube videos. I listened to pastors and preachers. That was my obsession, I guess you could say. And I was really excited about learning more, learning new terms and that was my jam. But it was inevitable that I'd be having a conversation with someone and maybe it was revolving around a theological topic. I'd throw out a term or maybe something I was learning and they'd come back to me saying, Oh, have you ever thought about becoming a pastor? Now, I definitely didn't take offense at their questions. It's a reasonable one. But ultimately, there's an underlying belief that just because you're interested in theology or the things of God or studying the Bible a little bit more thoroughly, going a little bit deeper, that means that you should become a pastor. But here's how scripture describes your everyday disciple. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law, he meditates day and night. As Christians were called to meditate on God's law and his word day and night. Does that sound like the average everyday modern Christian? Not really. We've devalued this understanding of what it means to be a Christian. What it means to be a Jesus follower so much that when somebody really actually decides to dig into the scriptures a little bit more, everyone's caught off guard and they're like, Oh, wow, we got to hoist this guy up. He should be a pastor. He should be a preacher. Maybe he should be or maybe not. Paul highlights this challenge in 1 Corinthians 3. He says, I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now, you are not yet able. When you first become a Christian, Paul talks about this idea of taking in the milk of the word, these fundamentals, these cores of the faith, the cores of the gospel, the essential aspects of things that we need to know as Christians. That is great. That's wonderful. It strengthens your spiritual bones. But then as you grow and you mature, hopefully you move from the milk of the word to the meat of the word. The real substantial, hearty things that take you a while to chew on. Some people never actually move towards the meat. They just stay in the milk territory for so long because they've never dug any deeper. Maybe you like me have heard people say, you know, I'm not really interested in theology. And I just leave that to the preachers and teachers in my life. And I, you know, I'm not really interested in that kind of bores me to be honest. It makes me think that they don't understand what actual theology is. It's just understanding who God is and spiritual things. And as Christians were all called to explore the things of God and meditate on his word. So everybody should be into theology to a certain extent. Obviously, there are people that are going to dedicate their lives to learning Greek and Hebrew and teaching. And that's not everybody's gifting. But as just the average to everyday Christian, we should be committed to meditating on God's word and who he is. People will ask me even now, oh, Isaac, are you going to become a pastor? And I don't know, you know, what God has for me. He could call me in the future, but pastor is a specific office. It's not just you're interested in theology and sharing the gospel or learning more about him. It's like, no, this is a specific, you know, criteria around this position that God has ordained. And there's a specific calling here. God bless the men that are called to that. But honestly, we need a lot more laypeople that are concerned with learning God's word and being equipped for sharing his word with other people, making disciples, raising Godly families, making an impact in their own workplace. Now, let's look to the scripture on what it says about finding direction, making decisions and finding guidance. Make me to know your ways, oh Lord, teach me your paths. The way of the fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice. Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors, there is safety. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Okay, keep that in your memory. Now, I do 100% believe that the spirit of God is active within us and this can manifest in a prompting or leading, I guess you could call it. But I would categorize this distinctly different than just a feeling, you know, but it's hard to explain. Now, I don't want to downplay those promptings or leadings, but if your decision-making is fully based on your feeling, you're missing out on key elements of how the Bible calls us to find guidance and wisdom. Getting wise counsel from those around us. Searching the scriptures, meditating on it, asking God for wisdom. Let's not rely on gut emotions or momentary feelings, but rather look to God for wisdom. It takes discernment. Yes, it absolutely does, but that's why we have counselors around us and people that are ready to give us guidance. We have the word of God and yes, we do have the prompting of the spirit. Thanks so much for watching this video guys. If you enjoyed it, give it a like down below and subscribe because I'm putting out new videos all the time. If you want to support my mission of equipping people to follow Jesus daily, join the Daily Disciple Club in my description. Thanks guys. I'll see you next time.