Good morning, Champion Center. Happy Sunday, everybody.
We welcome you in Yakamo. We welcome you in Dupont.
We welcome you in Belleview. We welcome you online.
And we welcome you right here in Tacoma. Come on, let’s just clap real
loud for all of God’s church, God’s people.
Amen. Aren’t you glad that you’re not the only one in church today?
It’s so much better with other people around. Amen. Congratulations, by the way, to everybody who is baptized today at all of our locations.
Congratulations on the decision that you made to be baptized. And I also want to welcome any guests that might be with us
today. I know you’ve already been welcome, but I personally wanted to say we’re glad that you are here at Champion
Center. We would be honored if you like say this is my church. God brought me here. We would be honored to have you as
part of our church family. Okay, you ready for the word today?
Say this out loud with me. Say, “My heart’s open. My mind’s ready.
Make me better, God, by your word. I receive it.
I believe it.
And I won’t be the same again in Jesus name.”
Come on. Are you thankful today for God’s word? Amen.
Okay, you may be seated. We are in a series called Good Pharma.
Good farmer. The Bible talks a lot about being fruitful. And when it talks about
being fruitful, it’s talking about being productive. It’s talking about seowing
good seeds and bearing good fruit. The first commandment that God gave to man is in Genesis chapter 1.
And that first commandment is to be fruitful. Let me read it to you. It says, “And God blessed them. And God
said to them, say it with me, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and
subdue it and have dominion. This is what we also often call the u the dominion mandate. The dominion mandate.
He’s telling them, I want you to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion
on the earth. And then verse 29, and God said, behold, I have given you every
plant yielding seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with
seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.
I’m giving to you. God says, “I’m giving to you every plant yielding seed with
seed in its fruit.” Here’s an apple in
my hand right here today. And you you uh cut open an apple and you’re going to
find an average of about five seeds per apple.
So those five seeds in an apple
are all capable of producing a tree.
And then each of the about 300 apples average that are harvested on
an apple tree are all capable. Then you’ve got 1,500
seeds. Okay? And you can see where this is going. That God said, “I give you
every planty yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, every tree
with seed in its fruit.” So he’s saying to them, “It’s all up to
you. I’ve given you everything you need to be fruitful and to have your needs
met. I’ve given it to you so that you have resources and you have sufficiency
and you have food. Everybody say be fruitful. Say it again. Be fruitful.
Jesus taught his disciples the same principle. He said this, “By this my father is glorified
that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.
By this my father is glorified.” What?
That you bear much fruit. Another verse I want to show you real quick is the the
the 52nd Psalm where the psalmist says this. He says, “I am like an olive tree
flourishing in the house of God.” I love that verse.
He doesn’t say, “I’m like an olive tree wilting in the house of God.” He doesn’t say, “I’m like a olive tree that is
dying in the house of God.” He says, “I am like a an olive tree and I am what? I
am flourishing in the house of God. So the greatest
thing that we can do with our lives is to produce good fruit.
Think about that. The greatest thing that we can do in our lives is to
produce good fruit. on screen there’s a graphic that consists of five sections
in the field of your future and we’ve been talking about this in our series here and those five sections you have
the soul is a section relationships is a section finances your body your physical body and and the
fifth one is your work and what we’re what we’re encouraging everybody to do in this in this series is to practice
good pharma by sewing good seeds in the fields of your future.
Also in the graphic you can see next to the field there’s what there there there’s what we call the seed silos
and we started then teaching out of out of these silos. What what kind of seeds are in these silos? And we’ve got we’ve
got the the seed of habits. We’ve got the seed of attitudes. We got the seed of thoughts or beliefs. We’ve got the seed of choices. We’ve got the seed of
words. So today we’re going to talk about we’re going to talk about the the seed of thoughts and beliefs. Okay?
We’re going to talk about thinking that produces good fruit. thinking
that produces good fruit.
You see, your thoughts are seeding your future and how you think determines the kind of harvest that you’re going to have in
your life. Bible says this in Proverbs 23. It says, “For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”
So every part of your life is affected by how you think.
Here’s a progression that is is uh is an example of of how we all start with
thoughts. Our thoughts become our beliefs and then our beliefs become our behavior and our behavior becomes our
habits and our habits become our harvest. But where does it all start? It all starts with our what? Our thoughts.
And so it’s important to seed your future with good thoughts. If you want a good harvest in your life, it’s
important to seed your future with good thoughts. And let’s talk about what are good thoughts.
What are good thoughts? First of all, good thoughts are always God thoughts.
Isaiah 55, God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways.” So basically, the scriptur is telling us that your first natural human thought is
probably not God’s thought. The first thing that comes to mind, especially if you have not been serving the Lord or
you haven’t renewed your mind to God’s way of thinking, the the natural fleshly way of thinking is not God’s thoughts.
And you don’t have to go very far in your life to hear somebody express themselves with thoughts and opinions that are not God’s thoughts.
They’ll talk about life. They’ll talk about work. They’ll talk about marriage.
They’ll talk about relationship. And in fact, we’re watching a lot of bad thinking today in our world that is producing bad fruit in people’s lives.
We’re we’re we’re watching the the broken homes and the skyrocketing
divorces. And we’re watching how fatherless children growing up without a dad, growing up in that broken home.
We’re we’re watching what is called a a mental health epidemic happening right now in our society.
And all of those things that were watch that that were watching happening originated somewhere in some thinking
that created the behavior which created the habits. And then you’ve got this
culture of bad thinking and bad beliefs and bad behavior and bad habits. It all
is creating a harvest in our culture and in our society today.
Chances are that you are stuck right now in some negative thinking patterns
like don’t look around right now. Just you some of you want to look at your your your friend or your spouse or [laughter] your husband, your wife,
somebody. No, no. Let’s talk about you for a minute. Chances are that you are stuck in some negative thinking patterns that are holding you back and are
holding you down in areas of your life where you really want something better.
I remember years ago I was I was 50 or 60 pounds overweight and I went to a
weight loss center and they told me this. I’ll never forget this. They they told me, “Well, Kevin, you don’t really have an eating problem.
You have a thinking problem.” And I remember looking back at the at
the lady and I’m thinking, “No, I’m not here for mental counseling. I’m here to
lose weight.” But you know what? It turns out that I had picked up a mindset
and a way of thinking in regard to food that was creating an unhealthy harvest
in my life. And as I started changing my thoughts
having to do with exercise and food, my new thoughts changed my beliefs and
my new beliefs changed my behavior and my new behavior became new habits and my new habits changed my life.
But it all started with different seeds of thought getting planted into the soil
of my life. And I want to just say this to you today. The main cause of relationship
problems is thinking problems.
And a lot of people who struggle financially, they don’t really have a financial problem. They have a thinking problem.
There’s something worse than being poor and that is thinking poor.
Having what we would call a poverty mentality.
See, you can you can be in a difficult position financially but not have a poverty mentality.
Or you can have a whole lot of financial resources and still have a poverty way of thinking.
Whenever we travel to South Africa, we visit these small communities where I think they call them shanties or little
communities of people who live in mud houses and have dirt floors. And as you walk through those community, you walk past little school rooms and you walk
past little houses and and the people will sometimes come out and greet you and the children will sometimes be
walking down the little walkways around the community. And you can see in their houses, I’ve walked in the houses when
they’ve invited us in and and and these houses will have dirt floors and they are the cleanest dirt floors that you
have ever seen in your life. Like it’s amazing. They can actually keep them clean and they’re walking around with clean clothes on. And the children have
they have on school clothes and sometimes they’ll have on like a white shirt. You can tell it’s fresh and it’s cleaned and they have smiles on their
faces and they they sing and they dance like it’s one of the happiest places literally that I’ve ever been. They live
in poverty, but they’re not povertyminded.
And what I’m saying to you is that bad thinking produces a bad harvest and good thinking produces
a good harvest. And the more you elevate your thoughts, the more you elevate your life.
Good thoughts are always God thoughts. Say that with me again. Good thoughts
are always God thoughts. Okay. Another element of good thinking is that good thoughts come from wisdom.
And that may sound like for many of you like an ancient word that doesn’t really apply and out. You don’t hear it very much in the world right now because that
people talk about education, people talk about knowledge. One thing to understand is that wisdom is not the same as knowledge. There’s a lot of uneducated
people who are wise and there’s a lot of educated fools.
So wisdom is not education and wisdom is not knowledge. And yet the Bible talks a lot about having wisdom.
Nothing will reward you, the Bible says, like wisdom. Let me read to you a scripture in Proverbs. Proverbs chapter
3, it says, “Blessed are those who find what?” Say it out loud. Wisdom,
those who gain understanding, for she is more profitable. Yeah. It uses like a
female as being as being a female gender as being wisdom. I I’m not sure why, but I
know I know the gals love that. like that. That’s that’s wisdom is a she in
in the scripture, right? It says she is more profitable than silver and yields
better returns than gold. She’s more precious than rubies. Can you see the verbiage
there of the writer like trying to say, man, this is like this is way up there.
Nothing you desire can compare with her.
Long life is in her right hand and in her left hand are riches and honor.
Her ways are pleasant ways and all her paths
are peace. She is what? a tree of life
to those who take hold of her and those
who hold her fast will be blessed. We’re talking about wisdom. We’re talking
about how good thoughts always come from wisdom. that there’s a lot of there’s a lot of thinking that is foolish, but good thoughts are always wise thoughts.
And you know, sometimes you have to recycle foolish thoughts because we all have them and we we inherited them or we heard
other people talking and we just picked up on it. And and until you place it under scrutiny and until you really evaluate it, until you ask yourself, why
am I thinking that way? Why? Why is my mind saying this?
And is that really work? Is that really true? Like, and until you do that, you can live from that thought pattern of foolishness.
But thank God like we have the ability to recycle
our old foolish thoughts and replace them with wise thoughts and higher
thoughts. You know, every computer has something called a recycle bin. Everyone who wants a good harvest
in life, come on, needs a good needs a good recycle bin. Need to be equipped
with the ability to recycle the old stuff that has has been in your life and start putting in new seeds of thought
into your future. You get rid of the trash. You get rid of the junk. You get rid of what they say. and you start
thinking from a place of wisdom. Third thing about good thoughts, help you recognize good thoughts in your life, is that good thoughts are based on truth.
They’re based on truth, not on what we wish was true or have been told is true, but on what is actually true.
The facts matter.
Acknowledging a negative reality doesn’t make you a negative person.
I want you to grab that. I want you to just think about it for a minute. Like acknowledging a negative reality. Some people won’t acknowledge something that
is not altogether positive because they think, “Well, that that’s just being negative.” Well, think about this. If you have a green salad wedged in your in
your teeth, how many of you want somebody to tell you about it?
[laughter] Come on. How many of you How many of you want you want to know? You want a good friend will tell you there’s
something green in between your teeth, right? That’s not that’s not being negative.
That is speaking truth in love.
If your thoughts about yourself are based on ignorance and lies,
you’re going to either think too highly of yourself or you’re going to think too low of yourself. The Apostle Paul actually
talks about this in scripture and he encourages all believers, hey, let’s have an accurate assessment
of our self. Why? Because when we have an accurate assessment of oursel, that’s
when God can give us wisdom. God can give us instruction. We can learn. We
can grow. We can get our minds right if we know where we actually are. I like to
call it red dot yourself like a mall map. You are here and you want to be here. Like if you want if you’re here
right now and you have a poverty mentality or you have a victim mentality, go ahead and acknowledge it. You got you got green stuff in your teeth.
Acknowledge like this is not fun to say, but I grew up this way. I think this way. I have a lot of negativity going on
in my mind. I have a I have a I always look at the glass, you know, half empty
rather than half full. There’s a there’s always the the negative thing that’s popping. I just have a hard time, Pastor Kevin, seeing the good.
Acknowledge that is what I’m trying to tell you. Acknowledge that because when you red dot yourself, then you can begin
the journey into replacing the old thought with new and better
thoughts. And when you do, it’s like scattering good thoughts into the field of your future. And it literally changes what your future looks like.
Please hear me when I when I tell you this. Don’t underestimate the power of your thoughts today.
Some of you are young right now and you’re you’re battling things in your mind and the tendency would be to say, “Well, it doesn’t really affect anybody
but me.” That’s not true. It’s affecting not only your future, but anyone who marries you, if there’s any children
born in your home, it’s going to affect and influence your whole life. If you underestimate the power of your thoughts, negative thoughts will create
a negative harvest. It’ll create stuff in your life, in your relationships, and your finances. It’ll create all kinds of
negative. And it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to be that way. But you got to go back to the pattern of
thought, the habit of thought. You got to go back to the recycle bin. You got to hit trash more often. Put it in the
junk and replace the old bad thinking with a new and better thinking.
I I read an article recently by a CNN publicist titled people are inherently good.
And in the article it says this and I’m quoting it says remember
we start from a place of moral purity but under certain circumstances
we are all capable of doing things to others that are painful and vicious. I’m
just giving you an example right now of bad thinking and how it has filled the
earth because no, no, no, we do not
start from a place of moral purity. And the article had a little picture of a
sweet little baby with a smile on their face.
So deceptive. Because that same little baby given their way will become will
will have a selfish monster, will have a horrible attitude, will kick and scream and cry. And the only hope for that baby
is that that baby would be taught by caring parents who would guide that
baby into a place where their thinking is not just their first thought to stomp
around, scream, want their way, my toy, my throw food all over. That’s how we start.
But with learning and guidance and a parent saying no no no no we do not think that way. We do not say that we do
not behave that way. A good parent will the Bible says train up a child in the way that they should go.
So it’s just the opposite than this article and most of the world thinks today. We are not born with moral
purity. We are born in sin. We’re born with a sin nature. Our flesh is sinful.
Dating all the way back to the Garden of Eden. God is right about this. Whenever man believed the lie and fell from a
place of grace, our flesh, our our flesh now is is not good. We are not naturally
good. So, let me let me say it to you like this. And I’m going to meddle a little bit in the world that we’re living in right now. Have you wondered
why America has gone soft on crime, is against policing our cities,
is not protecting our own people, is opening up its border and letting millions of people come in illegally who
we don’t know their background. We don’t know who they are. Giving Have you wondered why? Like America’s writing out checks of $6 billion to a country known
for terrorism of innocent people. You know why? Wrong thinking. Wrong thinking.
Thinking that people are inherently good. No, they’re not. We are not inherently need good. We need God. We
are sinners in need of a savior.
Come on. And if we don’t learn good moral values, if we don’t learn from God’s word how how we’re to live and how
we’re to behave and how we’re to treat other people, then we’re going to produce ugly, painful harvest in our
culture, in our society, and in our future.
Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. I hope I’m helping somebody today. Good thoughts are based on truth. Good thoughts are based on truth.
And lastly, let’s talk about one more thing. Good thoughts are alive with faith. Good thoughts are alive with faith.
We are faith people.
We live by faith. We seed our lives with faith. We seed our future with faith.
if we look too much at situations around us and you know Ecclesiastes 11 that is kind of the the
foundation of this whole series that we’re in right now declares that whoever watches the wind whoever pays attention
to the clouds they will they will not sew they will withhold their hand and the Bible says don’t withhold your hand don’t hold back sew your seed in the
morning what’s it telling you it’s telling you keep sowing seed seeds.
Seeds of faith, seeds of confidence. We seed our future with faith.
We live by faith. We walk by faith. We give with faith. We fight with faith.
And this month, our children are in the series Mind Monsters. And if you don’t yet have it, we have a book for
parents to read to their children. It’s a book for kids on mind monsters.
And then this is the adult version of mind monsters. And it says it says conquering fear, worry, and guilt and
other negative thoughts that work against you.
And I want to encourage you today to understand that negative invaders of the mind are always coming in as a thought.
They start with a thought.
And the the idea is to be so entrenched with faith
and to have faith in your life at a level where you recognize what is not a faith. you recognize, no, that that’s going to take me away in worry.
It’s going to take me down the road of fear and doubt.
I can see what is real, but I don’t have to buy in to a fearful mindset
or a worrying way of thinking.
And we have in our we have in the book in our church really, this is part of just our history as a church.
And I think to most of you today, it’s not new, but what we call the faith acronym. Focus on the positive. Affirm yourself.
Imagine God doing something good. Trust God and everything and hope for the best.
And we have that acronym there in in mind monsters. And I’ve taught on it and preached on it as a tool that God gave
me years ago for my own life that I never really knew was going to be shared like it’s been shared and put in books like it is and repeated like it has
been. I didn’t really know that. But I needed faith. And I knew I needed faith in the scenarios that I was in in my
life because my my my mind was drifting into other places. And I knew Kevin that is not faith. You have to live by faith.
You have to think with faith. And so today, I want to encourage you.
Whatever level of faith you’re at right now, you’re not stuck with that level.
If you say, “Well, my faith is weak.” You’re not you’re not stuck where you are. Like, there’s some things maybe you struggle to have faith for.
That’s okay. We all do. But I want you to just know what the goal is here. And that is to put seeds of faith into the
soil of your life. Put seeds of faith into every day, into every week. Seeds of faith into your family conversation.
Seeds of faith having to do with your finances.
Seeds of faith having to do with your physical condition. Just whatever it is like that you need faith for, you
believe you’re going to need faith for in the future. Start right now. Start with scriptures that declare. You can
just start with something simple, a a a simple scripture like like we walk by faith and not by sight. That’s a
scripture. You can take that and you declare it and you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning and you declare your faith based on God’s word.
And as you se your future with faith, guess what? you shift and change the
harvest from a harvest of worry, a harvest of negativity, a a harvest of doubt, that’ll get you a whole different
future. If you if you h if you sew seeds of worry in your life and you you think with with doubt and you have all these
things that you’re all worried and concerned about, that’ll give you a different future. I’m telling you, it’ll give you a different home. It’ll give you different relationships. Are you
understanding what I’m saying today? And I want to encourage you right now. Go to the seed silo and grab you some faith
and get faith as an everyday practice in your life. Talk about it.
Speak with faith. Declare faith based on your confidence and your faith in God.
and watch what God will do in your life in the months and the years to
come when you seed your future with faith. Amen.
Amen.
Okay, with everybody everybody looking this way right now if you would.
Nobody leaving, everybody staying where you are. I want to talk to some people today and invite you to salvation.
I want to invite you to a new life of trusting God. Maybe faith feels foreign to you. Wisdom feels foreign to you.
God’s thoughts feel foreign to you. The whole thing I said about truth. And maybe you’re sitting there and you’re wondering how many how many things have
I bought into like the illustration I gave today that are literally creating a harvest in my life that I don’t want in my life. May maybe you’re that man.
You’re that woman. You’re that person today who God brought you here. And you’re not here by accident. You’re not here by coincidence. God brought you
here and is offering you a new beginning in your life and your relationship with him.
He’s offering you an a a a new beginning that will show up in the field of your
future where your marriage will be different, your relationships will be different, your thoughts are just going to seed the future in a whole different way.
Your approach to life is just going to be completely different.
And if you’re here today and you say, “Pastor Kevin, I I sense God drawing me.” I want to pray with you right now.
And we’re going to pray for a new beginning in your life, your relationship with God. I’m going to ask you if you would if that’s you. And I’m talking about you just raise your hand
just boldly, right? Don’t think too hard about it. Come on. If if you feel God tugging on your heart, just
think ju just raise your hand high in the air. Or you can raise both if you like because this is your day. This is your moment in time. And I’m going to
pray a prayer out loud and invite you to repeat after me. Are you ready? Are you ready? Let’s all just pray this prayer
together. Say it with me. Lord Jesus, welcome to my world. Forgive me of all my sin.
Come into my life.
I ask you today to be my leader and to be my Lord.
And I boldly declare that I receive you.
I receive your word. I want to walk in your will.
And with that in mind, I will never be the same again.
By faith, I receive my salvation in Jesus name.
and all God’s people. Come on, shout amen. And let’s give everybody today a great big welcome to the house of God.