What the Bible actually says about discipline

0:00 So, you've decided that this is a year that you're going to lock in with God. So, you set your 5 a.m. alarm, your habit tracker, and your Google calendar kind of looks like a game of Tetris. But what if I told you that trying to discipline yourself this way is actually the exact opposite of what the Bible teaches? Well, in just the last year, I've gotten rid of nearly all of my worst habits, my worst limiting beliefs, and a whole other bunch of nonsense that you see on the screen here. And I did it without really relying on discipline at all. I just did what the Bible teaches. So, in this video, I'm going to show you what the Bible actually says about locking in and how you can use what it says to completely change your life the same way that I have with just one hour a day. So, to show you how this concept really works, imagine you are talking to an AI chatbot, right? Something like

0:45 chatbt and you are trying to get it to reprogram itself or to change the underlying function of how it fundamentally works. Now, on the surface, if it agrees with you, it might start acting differently, right? It might start talking differently. might start saying different things. It might seem like it's actually changed the underlying function, but you'll know that once you start uh if you ever used any of these chat bots before, the moment that you close a conversation, it's going to go back to its default programming and function, and it'll be as if your previous conversation never existed. So, our brains actually kind of work the same way. So, science has found that our decisions and our behavior are roughly 95% influenced by our subconscious mind with only 5% being driven by our conscious mind. So this is why when we try to use our brain or our conscious mind, our flesh, our effort to

1:32 try and change our brain, our conscious mind and our effort doesn't really work, right? This is why your life always ends up in this kind of trajectory where you're always going up and down like a roller coaster and you never really seem to be able to break through that glass ceiling, which is really just your subconscious running your entire life behind the scenes. Now, the Bible actually teaches us the same concept when it comes to controlling our flesh and our behavior. So the first two verses I want to look at are 1 Corinthians 9:27 and Proverbs 25:28. It says,"I discipline my body and keep it under control so that after preaching to others, I myself will not be disqualified." Then Proverbs says, "A person without self-control is like a city with broken down walls." Now, most people look at these verses and they'll say, "Okay, time to lock in, right? Time to be disciplined because that's how I'm going to change my life. That's what God wants and he's going to be happy once I

2:18 start setting all my alarms and calendars." The thing that they don't understand is that these verses tell us to be disciplined. Yes, but they don't tell us how to do it. To get that, we're going to look at these four verses down here. So, 2 Timothy uh 1:7 says, "God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power, love, and self-discipline." Galatians 5:16 says, "I say then, walk by the spirit, and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh." Galatians 3:3, "Are you so foolish? Having begun by the spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" And then Philippians 2:13 says, "It is God who works in you both to will and to act according to his good pleasure." So this really tells us three things, right? The first one is that self-discipline comes from something called walking by the spirit and not relying on our own flesh.

3:04 Second is that trying to perfect ourselves through our flesh is just straight up foolishness. And finally, the desire and the power to do good both come from God. Meaning really God seems to be controlling the entire thing here, right? So based on what we've been covering, based on what we've covered so far, we really have two options if we want to change our behavior. First is we can rely on our own effort to reprogram our subconscious using modern psychology techniques, right? Aka modern self-help, therapy, and maybe even new age if that's what you're into. Or we can just walk by the spirit and let God do it all for us. Now, I don't know about you, but the reason I made this video is because I tried both and number two was a lot easier for me. So, we're going to talk about number two. So, that being said, what does it actually mean to walk by the spirit and how do we actually do it? So, if you watch my testimony video on

3:51 my channel, you're going to see that I had a bunch of I had a pretty crazy first year of walking with God, right? I had a bunch of encounters with him. I started to hear his voice a lot. And like I said at the beginning of this video, a lot of the things that I used to struggle with like every single day of my life for years, God just kind of started deleting them one by one. And so from this I kind of started to or I couldn't really answer the question like why was my walk with God filled with so many miracles, so many encounters, so many crazy experiences while other people who had been, you know, Christians for like years or decades had not really had anything remotely similar to my experience. And as I really started to boil it down, I realized that it really just came down to one thing that I did more than almost anybody that I knew. And that thing is rest. Now, when I say rest, I don't mean like, you

4:37 know, taking a break every 15 minutes to eat a donut or, you know, making sure that I get 24 hours of sleep on Sundays, right? This is a different kind of rest. And not only is it one of the most misunderstood concepts in the Bible, it is also one of the most important parts of living the way that God actually designed us to. But what does any of this have to do with walking in the spirit? So now we're going to look at two key sets of verses that are really going to help us paint the full picture of what walking by the spirit actually means and what that has to do with rest which is what I was talking about earlier. So we already looked at Galatians 5:16 which says I say then walk by the spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. Then it goes on to say now the works of the flesh are obvious sexual immorality moral impurity promiscuity and it goes on to list a

5:22 whole bunch of other sins in the next two verses. Then verse 22 says, "But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience kindness goodness faithfulness, and then goes on to list a whole bunch of other fruits and virtues." So this is walking by the spirit. We're going to get back to this in a second. Now then we have entering God's rest, which is Hebrews 4:9-11. So it says, "There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered his rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. So this actually tells us three things. One is that there is a rest available to God's people. Two is that when we enter this rest we cease from our works. And finally not resting is actually a sin. Now Hebrews was actually written after

6:09 the resurrection of Jesus. Meaning that even today if we do not enter God's rest as it is describing here we are actually sinning. So it's kind of important. Now, one thing I want to call our attention to is this word works here, right? So, you may have noticed I highlighted this in orange. And the reason for that is because these words in uh Galatians 5:19 and Hebrews 4:10 are actually the exact same word in Greek, which is, you know, the original language of the Bible. Now, the reason I focus on this word is because when you read these two verses here, right, you read uh verse 19 and verse 10, you would think that the idea of works is bad, right? Because God is saying, you know, works of the flesh, you know, are bad cuz they lead to sin. And then when you enter his rest, you will also cease from your works. So you might be thinking, oh, well, it sounds like works are not a good thing. But if

6:55 we actually look at where this word is used elsewhere in the Bible, specifically in the New Testament, which is, you know, the Greek one, we're going to see that the word works or urggon, which means a toil or an an act, right, is used in both positive and negative connotations. So Matthew 11:2, right, it describes the works of Christ, right? The works of Jesus. Um, it also says to it's also used to describe the good deeds that a woman did to Jesus. And then finally, James 2:20 says, "Faith without works is dead, right? Meaning you should have good works to accompany your real faith." But then we also see it being used, right, when Jesus talks about the evil works of the Pharisees and their ancestors. We see it up here in Hebrews 4:10, right? Telling us to cease from our works. And then also for Galatians 5:19, which telling which is telling us that the works of the flesh will lead to sin. So this is

7:40 interesting, right? because this is showing us that works can be both good and bad. So what this tells us is that God is not against work itself. What he's strict about is how we go about the work and where it comes from. And this leads us to the Galatians 5 contrast which we were looking at earlier. Right? So here we can see if we go down to verse 22, it's talking about fruit of the spirit. Not works of the spirit, not the effort of the spirit. It says the fruit of the spirit is all these really cool things down here. Now the writer Paul the apostle is contrasting that with verse 19 which is the works of the flesh. Right? The works of the flesh lead to sin. The fruit of the spirit produce all these good virtues. Now we actually see him contrast these two things again in verse 16. He says I say then walk by the spirit and you will

8:27 certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. So we actually see two pictures happening in parallel here. Right? When you give in to the desires of the flesh, you actually end up doing the works of the flesh, which is really us relying on our flesh and our own strength to do works, which actually leads to sin. Now, if we walk by the spirit and we if we walk by the spirit, we will produce fruit of the spirit, which is really us relying on the spirit to produce good works or good fruits like we've been trying to do over the past couple of verses. So our conclusion from this is essentially to stop relying on yourself or your flesh to do good works and instead enter God's rest so that he can produce good works or fruits through you by his spirit, which is essentially what walking by the spirit is.

9:13 So that being said, what is God's rest? Well, so there's a whole bunch of verses here. I'm just going to quickly read through them, but I will give you kind of my conclusion to kind of piece this all together. So going back to Hebrews chapter 4, it says in verse three, for we who have believed enter the rest in keeping with what he said. And so this is God talking. So I swore in my anger, they will not enter my rest. And this is going back to the writer. Even though his works, God's works have been finished since the foundation of the world. Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news did not enter because of disobedience, he again specifies a certain day, today. He specified this speaking through David after such a long time. today if you hear his voice do not harden your hearts. So I know this is a whole bunch of stuff but this really tells us three things right first of all God has been

10:00 resting since the seventh day of creation right his works have been finished since the foundation of the world which was you know sixth seventh day of creation now that same rest is actually available for us to enter today right he gave the Israelites a chance to enter it when they came out of Egypt but they disobeyed him they sinned and so they didn't get to enter his rest but in our case that very same rest that God has been chilling in since the seventh day of creation is still available for us today And finally, God's rest is a place that we can enter, right? It's not a verb. We don't do rest in this case. We enter God's place of rest. So with that said, where is this place of God's rest? And how do we, you know, practically enter it? Not just conceptually, not just theoretically, but how do we actually what do we actually do in our lives to enter this place of rest? Because otherwise we are sitting. So, that leads us into the

10:47 final and more practical component of how to actually let God change your life using what I call the threer framework. Now, quick word of warning. Uh, this section is going to contain a lot of different verses and we're going to jump between a lot of different scripture and it might get a little bit confusing. Now, if you recall at the beginning of this video, I did promise that I was going to show you how to basically implement everything that I teach you in this video with just one hour a day. And within that one hour is really just two simple steps that really anybody can go and do starting tomorrow. So with that said, if you are willing to stick this through with me and actually gain a full understanding of how all this fits together, then I will fulfill my promise to you and I will show you how you can literally change your life with 1 hour a day with God doing most of the work in under a year like I did. So with that said, let's jump into the first R, which

11:34 is rest. Specifically, where is God's rest and how do we enter it? And there are three steps that I'm going to go over. So the first step is what I call believing through hearing, right? Not really what I call it. It's what the Bible says, right? Believing through hearing. So Hebrews chapter 4, we're going to go back to that chapter which is talking about rest and how it works and why we have to do it. So Hebrews 4 says or 4:2 says, "For we have also received the good news just as they did. But the message they heard did not benefit them since they were not united with those who heard it in faith." Then verse three says, "For we who have believed enter the rest in keeping with what he has said." And then verse 7 says today if you hear his voice do not harden your hearts. So this is really telling us two things right first of all do not harden your hearts when you hear the word of God and when you hear the word or basically Jesus we must believe

12:19 in that word or believe in Jesus. And Romans 10:17 is really just an echo of that right it says so then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. So this is really step one right we want to make sure that when we hear the word that we don't just harden our hearts and we want to actually go and believe it and go follow what it says. And that leads us into step two, which is approaching God. So we're going to go back to again Hebrews chapter 4, but we're going to look at the later verses in this section starting from verse 11. So if you recall earlier, we looked at verse 9 to 11, which is really telling us the emphasis of, you know, making sure that we rest otherwise we are sinning. So we're going to start off from that section here. Let us then make every effort to enter that rest so that no one will fall into the same pattern of disobedience. Now this next piece is talking about the word of God. It says, "For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any

13:05 double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart, and no creature is hidden from him, but all things are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account." So before I proceed with the rest of this, right, what this is saying is that look, the Bible is saying you have to rest, right? Otherwise, you are sinning and you cannot avoid that reality, right? You must make every effort to enter that rest because at the end of the day, the word of God is going to judge you and you're the only one who's going to be lying to God, telling him that, hey, like, you know, I'm trying to rest, but you know, I also want to lock in and, you know, do all this stuff. The word of God is going to convict you at the end of the day. And that's why it's pretty important to pay attention to what this video is trying to show you. Now, let's move on to the next piece, which is the great high priest, right? It says, "Therefore, since we have a great high

13:51 priest who has passed through the heavens, right, Jesus the son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need." So, this is telling us a couple of things. First of all, when Jesus became our high priest eternally, he actually became the guy eternally who's advocating on our behalf, talking to God, saying like, "Hey, um, you know, these people, they kind of sinned. They did all this nonsense, but but I went through the same struggle that they did, and I was able to overcome it, and I sacrificed my life for them as God. So, you know, this thing they're, you know, kind of being accused for, this thing that they're feeling bad about, they're good, right? Cuz I pay the price." And

14:36 every single time, God the Father would be like, "Yep, sounds good. Yep, sounds good. Moving on." Right? And because of that, we are able to approach him without shame because Jesus is the actual is the person that is actually allowing us to approach God fearlessly. Now that being said, despite all that, God also knows that approaching him as mere mortals is not easy, right? So we go to God to receive mercy and grace to help us obey, which is, you know, to approach God and enter his rest. Because here's the thing, right? We all feel unworthy when we think about the approaching the creator of the universe. Think of him as our father is kind of a foreign concept that a lot of people can't really wrap their heads around when they're doing this for the first time. But God knows that. So he's like, "Hey, I'm going to help you with that. Just come to me and I will give you the

15:23 grace. I will give you the mercy you need to come into my presence and commune with me." So that's really what this is talking about here. And all of this is really summed up quite nicely in Matthew 11:28, right? which is Jesus saying, "Come to me all of you who are weary and burdened and what I will give you rest." Which is really just all this that we just looked at. Now, step three is what I call abiding. I keep saying what I call, but it's what the Bible calls abiding. Right? So, there are two kind of parallel concepts here that I want to uh talk about to show you how this fits into the concept of rest and walking by the spirit. So, earlier we saw in Galatians 5:22, our goal is to produce fruit of the spirit, right? love, joy, peace, patience, just to be godly people and that is represented through producing fruits of the spirit. Now, how do we actually do that? Well,

16:08 John 15:4 actually tells us exactly how to do that. So, it says, this is Jesus speaking. He says, "Abide in me and I in you." As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine. Neither can you unless you abide in me. So, he's literally saying, "If you want to produce the fruits of the spirit, you have to do something called abiding in me or abiding in Jesus." Now, Hebrews 4:2 says,"For we also have received the good news just as they did, but the message they heard did not benefit them since they were not united with those who heard it in faith." So, this goes back to the whole hearing and believing thing. Right? Now, 1 John 2:24 says, "Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father." So, this is a whole bunch of words, but really what this is saying is

16:53 that hearing, believing, and bearing spiritual fruit or producing spiritual fruit all involve something called abiding in Jesus, which is also how we produce good fruit and enter God's rest. I just repeated fruit twice. That's okay. Anyways, how do we actually abide? So, there are four parts to this, and one of them we already covered, which is belief. 1 John 4:15 says, "Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and he in God." Now that being said, that isn't the entire picture, right? For J because in James 21:17, it says, "Thus also by thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works is dead, right? This is whole that whole debate of if you have faith but not works, then you don't really have faith." Right? So, this is saying that if you truly have belief, like we see in step one here, then you need to have

17:39 works, which is the second part of abiding, obedience. So 1 John 2:6 says, "Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked." 1 John 21:17 says, "And the world is passing away along with his desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever." But there's a whole bunch of commands and things that we have to obey in the Bible. So how do we actually make sure we do all that? Well, Galatians 54 5:14 actually helps us um really summarize all of it and simplify the entire process which is for all the law is fulfilled in one word even in this. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. So there are hundreds of commands in the Bible, right? Telling us to do this, telling us to do that, don't do this, don't do that. But Galatians 5:14 is saying if all you do is love your neighbor as yourself, you will

18:25 fulfill the entire law. Every single thing that God calls us to, you will fulfill. And that brings us to the third part of abiding which is love. 1 John 4:16 says, "So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us." God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him. Now another interesting verse that comes after this is that it tells us that we actually can't do anything that the Bible tells us to which is love unless we understand first John 4:19 which is we love because he first loved us. So what this is saying is look there's a whole bunch of stuff we need you to I want you to do right go do this don't do this but if you just love other people then you're good but then he's also saying that you know I told you to

19:11 love other people I told you to love me but you actually can't do that unless you let me love you first so that being said right how do we actually go and receive God's love and this brings us to a concept which is called dwelling in the Bible now I really want to focus and pause on this for a second because not a lot People talk about this concept of dwelling, but honestly, I would say that this is the one thing that has changed my life more than anything over the last 12 months. So, where we see dwelling talked about is first of all in Psalm 91:1, right? It says, "He who dwells in the secret place of the most high, which is God, shall abide under the shadow of the almighty." Then we go on to see in Psalms 31:20, it says, "You hide them, you being God, right? You hide them in the secret place of your presence." So

19:57 we kind of see a train of logic here which is the secret place of God is his presence. Right? Psalm 31:20. That means that abiding in God is dwelling in his presence. Right? If the secret place is his presence, then we're supposed to dwell in the secret place, we are supposed to dwell in his presence. That also means that dwelling in his presence is where we will receive his love. Right? If our goal is to abide in God and that is where his love is, then we must dwell in his presence to actually get that love. And finally, that also means that where we receive his love is also God's place of rest because it is the place that we are abiding. Now, I know that's kind of confusing, but let me just summarize everything we talked about in this kind of simple little diagram here. So, entering God's rest in summary is first of all hearing and believing the word of God. Because of

20:43 our belief, we can boldly approach Jesus or God without fear. And finally, when we approach Jesus, we abide in him through obeying him, through loving others, and through receiving his love by dwelling in his presence. Now, you probably noticed that I've been really hammering on the importance of dwelling. So, why is it so important and what exactly does it mean to dwell in God's presence? So, when I first started walking with God, one of the first things that he told me to do was to abide in his love. And this wasn't a, you know, one-time instruction where he was just like, you know, go do this for an hour. He told me it was a season of abiding. So I literally just kind of sat there for three months doing nothing and just learning how to sit in his presence and receive his love. So this wasn't me trying to come up with the fanciest prayer. It wasn't me trying to memorize a whole bunch of scripture and trying to

21:29 list them all out and in worship and stuff. It was just me sitting there and doing like absolutely nothing sometimes for hours on end. And that would sometimes lead to encounters. Sometimes God would, you know, tell me a whole bunch of stuff. I now hear his voice which is pretty cool. And sometimes God's presence would just kind of crush me and I would just sit there and enjoy it because it felt amazing. And sometimes absolutely nothing happened. And that's okay because that's just kind of part of the process. But it was from this place of dwelling and receiving and hearing God's voice that I was able to move on to the second R which is receiving from God. So we're going to go over a handful of different um stories and individuals from the Bible who went through this process of receiving which led to transformation. So the first thing that God wants us to receive when it comes to, you know, walking with him and being transformed by him is identity and calling. And we're going to see this

22:14 across four different people in the Bible. Um first we have Jacob, right? Which is the guy who became Israel. Then we have Moses, Gideon, and Apostle Paul. So the first step to this process of being transformed by God is what I call encountering God's presence. So we see that through each of these four verses here, right? It says, "Then Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. So Jacob called the name of the place pineal for I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved. Now in Moses we have the burning bush incident right which most people have heard of. It says and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of the bush. So he looked and behold the bush was burning with fire but the bush was not consumed. Then we have Gideon who also had a encounter with um the angel of the Lord right it says and the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him the Lord is with you you mighty man

23:00 of valor. And finally we have Apostle Paul who on the road to Damascus encountered Jesus. It says and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven and he said who are you Lord? And the Lord said I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goats. So here in every single one of these cases the first um point of contact with God is these people all encountered God in his presence. Right? They encountered the angel of the Lord. They encountered a shining light or they ended up actually wrestling with God. In each of these um scenarios, they every single person had to first encounter God's presence before he could do anything with them. Now, the second step to transformation is when God gives them a new identity and calling. So, in Jacob's case, right, it says, "So God said to him, what is your name?" He said, "Jacob." And God said,

23:46 "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed." In Moses's case, right, Exodus 3:10 says, "Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh." So in Moses' case, it wasn't an identity change. It was actually a a assignment of a calling. Right? So it says, "Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt." In Gideon's case, he actually received both a new calling and a new identity. So if we go back to verse 12, it says, "And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, the Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor." Then the Lord turned to him and said, "Go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midionites. Have I not sent you?" And then finally in Paul's case um he was just this was actually an indirect commission. So

24:31 Jesus was sending someone to say these things to Paul. So it says but the Lord said to him go for he is a chosen vessel of mine to bear my name before the Gentiles kings and before Gentiles kings and the children of Israel for I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake. So this was a little indirect but kind of the same um process. Right now, even after God gives somebody a new identity and calling, he actually does one more thing which really ties everything we've been ties together everything we've been looking at. And the third step is what I call God's promise of presence. So instead of just telling you what that is, you can just read the verses here, right? Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go. Certainly, I will be with you. Surely I will be with you and you shall defeat the Midionites. And it says, "For I am with you and no one will attack you to hurt you, for I have many

25:18 people in this city." So really what this tells us is that not only does God give us a new calling and identity when we enter his presence and rest, he reaffirms us so that we never have or he reaffirms us that we never have to leave his presence or his rest even as we step out into the work that we are called to or that he calls us to. And this is really the fundamental difference between locking in and resting in God. When you lock in, you work because you want to change who you are. When you enter God's rest, you work because of who you already are. And you discover who you are and what you're called to do from being in God's presence. Now, that being said, there's a second big benefit that comes with entering God's rest or God's presence that we see happen more in the New Testament, which is when people encounter Jesus for miracles. So,

26:05 Jesus actually followed a pretty consistent pattern in most of his healing miracles, right? First the person would encounter Jesus. Then Jesus would heal or deliver them and then Jesus would then restore them to fullness or even into a new calling. So one example we're going to look at is the woman who was bringing out her son. So this woman was bringing out her son in a coffin. He was dead. He was kind of she was carrying him out of the city and she was weeping. Right? So it says here that so the first step we see that Jesus encounters her. Right? It says that when the Lord saw her he had compassion on her and said don't weep. Then the next then the next verse says then he came up and touched the open coffin and the palbearers stopped and he said young man I tell you get up. So this is Jesus literally reviving the guy right and then finally it says the dead man sat up and began to speak and Jesus gave him to his mother. So this man was not only

26:50 restored to his original function through speaking he was also restored to his original life which was being with his mother. Now we're going to see another example here with the demonpossessed man that a lot of people talk about. Right? So when Jesus, it says when he got on the land, a demon-possessed man from the town met him, him being Jesus. So Jesus encountered this demon-possessed man. Step two is Jesus then casted the demons out of the man and they went into the pigs. So it says the demons came out of the man and enter the pigs and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned. And finally it says Jesus is Jesus is now talking to the man and he says go back to your home and tell all that God has done for you. And off he went proclaiming throughout the town how much Jesus had done for him. So now, not only did Jesus deliver this guy from demons, he also sent him into a new calling, which is to preach the kingdom

27:36 of God to his town. So what we just talked about is essentially what I've been experiencing in my own life over the past year. Like in many of the encounters I've had with God, one of the things that God has given me a lot of is, you know, new identities, new callings, new promises, um, and plans that he just has for my life, which is, you know, really cool. But another one of the biggest changes for me was as I started to spend more time in his presence, God just started deleting like sins and traumas and you know self-sabotaging behavior from my life. Like I used to struggle a lot with lust, with bitterness, with self-rejection, fear of being judged by others and a whole bunch of other nonsense, right? But every few months, God would like just heal me or deliver me from another one of these things. And I would just kind of stop struggling with them afterwards. Like I have been struggling with lust for almost an entire year now. U my social anxiety has pretty much disappeared. And another thing that God

28:22 helped me with recently was, you know, I would usually anytime I got bored or distracted or stressed or um uncomfortable while I was working, I would just instantly turn to like scrolling or eating food or some other stupid distraction, right? But now I just kind of don't really struggle with that anymore. Like I still kind of reach my phone every now and then, but I don't have that same chronic like, oh, I'm kind of bored or I don't like how this is going. I'm going to go scroll for two hours. That doesn't really happen anymore, which is really awesome. And I didn't use any discipline. I didn't use any like habit trackers. I didn't use like 5:00 a.m. cold showers, I was just like, "Hey, let me go spend time spend time in God's presence." And he just started fixing my problems one by one. Now, that being said, there are still some cases where sometimes even after God delivers or heals somebody, the problem doesn't completely go away. And that brings us to our third R, which is renewing. So, the first verse we're

29:09 going to look at to see how this process works is John 5:14. It says, "Afterward Jesus," So, this is a guy that Jesus healed by the pool of Bethesda, I think it's called. He was lame for like 30 something plus years. And Jesus basically went up to him and told him to get up and walk. So here it says afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, see you have been made well. Sin no more lest a worse thing come upon you. So Jesus is actually showing us two things here. First is that we sometimes have to be reminded of our new reality even after we get healed or delivered because we simply haven't had the experiences that validate or give us proof that we actually have had our lives transformed. The second piece is that we have to make sure that we stay away from the things that once kept us stuck, right? Because it says that if you actually fall back into the sin that

29:54 you were freed from, you'll actually end up even worse than before because you were actually free from it and actually made a conscious decision to go back into it. Now these two steps really points to one overarching process that a lot of people talk about in the Bible right which is Romans 12:2 that says do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Now a lot of people talk about you know renewing your mind but not a lot of people talk about what that actually entails. Now, from my experience, having gone through this entire process several times, I can tell you that most of the time, it's going to look something like this. Right? After you've entered God's presence, you received a whole bunch of amazing things from God, he's healed you and delivered you, you then kind of have to go through this three-step process here or something to its effect, which

30:41 is you're going to have to break any remaining strongholds or lies or limiting beliefs. Cuz sometimes God may deliver you from a bondage to sin, but then your mind might still be thinking like, "Ah, but like, you know, I need to do this or I'm helpless here." So sometimes we have to rewire the lies in our minds. So once we identify what those lies are, you we replace them with truth which you know usually comes from scripture or straight from God himself. And finally once we have truth that can replace the lies, we have to reinforce those truths daily through things like scripture and just living out new experiences that prove that you have been set free and are walking in a new version of yourself. Now what you see here is really just a highle overview of the renewal process. now cuz I can really make like a 1-hour video on every single one of these three steps. But the reason I put this here is because I

31:27 wanted to show you that if you actually want God to change your life through his spirit, you can't skip the steps of learning how to enter his presence and receiving from him. Otherwise, these three steps become really, really difficult because you're not going to know how to hear God's voice. You're not going to trust God. You're not going to love God. You're not going to believe that he loves you. And that really just prevents any of this from happening. Like imagine Jesus, right? Imagine in his time on earth instead of doing all that he did, he just wrote a book that told people to stop sinning without forgiving their sins, without healing them, without delivering them. Or imagine he was preaching to a crowd of demonpossessed people and just told them to preach the gospel without, you know, meeting them individually or without delivering them from demons. Nobody would know who Jesus is today because he wouldn't have done anything that people actually cared about. And the sad thing is this is basically how many preachers and ministries operate, which is they tell people what to do without changing their lives first, which is what Jesus

32:14 did. So, I'm going to show you what this whole renewal process looks like step by step in my next video because that's a whole thing on its own. But first, I need to fulfill my promise to you, which is my 1h hour routine that let God change my life in less than a year. So, this is basically what I did every day for like 3 months straight. And I still do something similar today for like, you know, at least one or two hours a day um first thing in the morning because it is by far the most important part of my day now. I have added a couple of slight modifications to make it better than it used to be because I didn't really know what I was doing before. Right. So, step one is really quite simple. You just sit in God's presence. And I recommend that you do this for at least 20 to 30 minutes. If that's too much for you, you can do, you know, 10 to 15 or you can do more, right? I currently like to do at least 45 to an hour, right? 45 minutes

33:00 to an hour. um currently and then I go and read scripture afterwards. But you can do whatever you want. Um now, if you're just kind of getting into this or even if you're not and you just kind of want something to help you with this, one quick prayer you can pray is something like, "God, Holy Spirit, or Jesus, right? Whatever you want, I offer you my time, my attention, and my whole being as I enter your presence. Please help me hear or experience whatever you want me to during this time." Now, a quick tip that I recommend is to play instrumental worship music in the background. Right? This helped me a lot when I was just starting out and I still do it to this day. Uh, one guy I recommend to check out is William Austoto. He does a whole bunch of instrumental worship music. I have no affiliation to him. I don't know him personally. All I know is that in a lot of the encounters that I've had with God in my secret place, in my prayer time, this guy's music was playing in the background. Now, another recommendation

33:45 I have is that every time you do this, write down whatever you hear or experience um afterwards in a journal. even if you're not sure what really happened or what you experienced. Um because eventually once you have, you know, once you get a couple dozen of experiences with God, you kind of lose track of them and you kind of lo you don't remember all them, right? So, I really recommend you do this and this has honestly been super valuable to me. Now, step two, once you've done uh once you're finished sitting in God's presence, then you can ask him for scripture. So, the first part of this, you can just literally ask God to give you a Bible verse to either a help you with a problem or a question you already have or b tell you something that he wants you to know. Now, if you want to spice things up a little bit, right, you can also ask things like, "Who do you see me as? What season am I in? What's on your heart?" Right? The first question here, like, "Who do you see me as?" That has really, you know, that's something I've asked God a lot. And this

34:32 has unlocked multiple different um dimensions to my identity and to my calling, which have really helped me in my walk so far. On the second question, right, what season am I in? This is the same question that I asked God when he was, you know, when he told me, you know, that I'm in a season of abiding. And that is what led me to, you know, several months of a bunch of amazing experiences with God. And finally, you can just ask God like what's on your heart, right? Like instead of it being about me me all the time, you can just be like, "Hey God, like I want to know about you, right? Tell me what you're thinking about, what matters to you. I want to know what you know really what's on your heart and so that I can connect to that and so I can see things from your perspective." Now, once you've asked God a question, you just sit there until you feel like you've gotten an answer and then wait for a Bible verse to come to you. Right? when it's once it comes to you, then just go and read that verse. Now, if the answer that the verse

35:19 gives you is obvious, then fantastic, right? You've gotten an answer from God. Now, if the answer isn't obvious, one thing you could do is ask God how this verse is relevant to you. Or if it makes absolutely zero sense and you haven't really gotten anything, then just try again and go through this process again. Right? This is kind of, you know, learning how to hear from God and obey God is kind of a trial and error process, which I will talk a little bit more about later. Now, the reason I think it's better to start by asking for Bible verses instead of just, you know, asking God to tell you something directly, um, is because it's much harder to second guessess God's voice when you get a specific Bible verse versus trying to decode like, did he say this, did he say that? Was it these words or that words, right? These words, or that, those words, whatever. It's also a great way to study parts of the Bible that God wants you to study rather

36:05 than just blindly following a reading plan. Now, just like part one, I recommend you also write down whatever God gives you during this step because I think this is especially important when it comes to, you know, journaling about scripture and just studying scripture, right? You want to make sure it's written down and make sure you have a reference for later cuz you're probably going to forget. Now, the reason I use this process and the reason I think it works so well is because this trains you to do the two most important things that allow God to change your life. One is abiding in God's presence and rest. and two is learning how to hear God's voice and letting the Holy Spirit guide you, which is essentially walking by the spirit. Now, a quick disclaimer about this entire um routine or process, which is, as you can probably guess, when you start doing this, there's a chance that you're not going to notice a whole lot of stuff, right? You might not hear anything, might not feel anything, you might not really just you might just be

36:50 like, "What the heck am I doing?" Or you just might not be sure that what you're experiencing or hearing is actually from God. And that is super normal. I went through that for several months and you know I would honestly expect it to happen for several months before you really start getting into a rhythm. Now my advice on this is to just go with the first impression or feeling that you get and try to act on it if possible because in my experience and really just know logically speaking the fastest way to confirm God's voice is just try obeying it and see if it produces the fruit of the spirit or if it just leads to a positive outcome. Because one thing that people don't realize is that while obeying God requires faith, it starts by receiving from God in faith, right? If you don't believe that God spoke to you, how you're supposed to obey God. So that's just kind of my advice there. So that's essentially the entire routine, right? This is basically what I did and

37:36 have been doing every single day for really the entire last year. And it is by far the single thing that has changed my life the most, more than anything that I've done. Now, like I said earlier, there is a whole other process to actually walking out the new uh realities and promises and all the cool things that God gives us from this place of receiving. So, if you want to learn how I do all that, then you can go watch the video that pops up on