Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, guys, this is Naeeb and you've reached the Mosaic church podcast. So excited that you're part of our listening community and I'd love for you to be even more connected. So check out our website. There's more content there and there's more opportunities for you to get connected in our ministries and events as well. Also, love for you to share this content if this is blessed to you. I know that God wants to use you to bless other people with it, so share this podcast if you will. Lastly, would you consider supporting this ministry? This is made possible by other people's generosity and I'd love for you to pay it forward. Join us to reclaim the message and the movement of Jesus together. So would you consider giving to this ministry? I know that God is able to do immeasurably more through us when we come together. Thank you so much. God bless you and enjoy.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Good morning. Good morning. I don't think there has ever been a more perfect roll in for me. I'm so excited about this new series. I'm gonna bring some razzle dazzle. I need to get, like, confetti cannons, sparklers. I don't know what exactly missed opportunity this morning, but we are talking about a new series called almost true. Almost true. Because you guys know how it is. There is no hiding it. There's like not even a. Oh, do you know this? This is the whole world right now. We are living in a world where we have no idea sometimes what's true, what's a flat out lie, and what. Which is the most scary, what is only almost true, right? Politically, we're just going to talk about the elephant in the room politically. Right now, both sides are making claims of, like, misinformation, disinformation. No, no. We are the side that has the truth. No, no. We are the side that has the right information. And it's making some people very confused socially, even. Ashley just talked to you about all of the people that are in disaster right now from Hurricane Helene. It's only been a week. And our feeds, depending on what news source you go to or who maybe you follow on social media, you're not even seeing the good that is actually happening. We're sending so many supplies as a staff. We're going up there on Tuesday. We've got more trips that are planned. But it's hard to see the good of what's happening to help these people that are in need because there are also conspiracy theories. There are also people saying that nothing is really happening and no one's actually getting help. And it is hard to know who we're supposed to believe, even spiritually. I think there are some of us who are believing things that are only almost true because it's a belief that we were given first. It was the thing that we were taught first. And so since that's what we learned initially, we were like, well, then that must be it.
Never stopping to wonder if it was only almost true. And listen, I am in this with you. There is all the grace for being confused, for not knowing who to listen to, or for maybe even sometimes believing something before you go back and fact check it or figure out, oh, shoot, I was actually wrong about that.
Here's one I'll tell on myself first. Here's one of the things that I want to believe to be true, and it is the idea that you can be anything. You can be anything. You've heard this phrase, right? Does this sound so good? So in 2015, Mattel, one of the largest toy companies in the world, actually decided that they were going to reimagine Barbie and make this her slogan. Yes. As if I didn't love Barbie enough already.
So we, they said, mattel told people, hey, little girls, little boys, little kids, because Barbie can be anything. You can be anything. And people ate it up. I am. People loved it to the .9 years later, only just last weekend, I threw a birthday party for my daughters with a you can be anything theme. That is literally what I texted their parents. So and so is invited to come over and play. And because Barbie can be anything, your child can be anything. And they did. They showed up as chemists and eighties fitness instructors, and we had chefs and makeup artists and all of these different things. And we spent the afternoon pretending that they could be anything they wanted to be and showing the kids that were in my house that they could be anything that they wanted to be. And I was so excited because I had just empowered all of these kids. So that night, we're putting our kids to bed and talking about the party and the day, and my youngest daughter, Margo, is about to be nine, and she starts praying. And I was like, good job, mama. She's going to thank God for creating her, that she can be anything that she wants to be. And instead, my child leaned all the way in and she asked for God to give her superpowers.
Because she wants to be an animal, is what she wants to be. Not forever. She just wants to communicate with them, you know, be able to like, like Maui and Moana. She wants, like, pop. Now I'm an animal. I just want to check in on the vibes, see what it's like. What's life like for you guys? Then she'll come back to us. And she is a little frustrated, I think, with God that she keeps having. My husband's laughing. It's every night that she keeps having to pray this prayer. And that's when I went, oh, shoot.
It's only almost true that she can be anything.
See, we want to believe these things. They sound inspiring, and they sound empowering, and they sound so good. But there is danger if we live our lives by things that are only almost true. See, there is an enemy of your soul that wants to come in to steal and kill and destroy the life that God has in front of you. And the enemy is smart. He is smart. He's not gonna come in with a razzle dazzle, something super blatantly obvious. He's going to come in so aligned to the truth to try to trick you that it's actually God. He knows what your misconceptions already are. He knows your fears. He knows the things that you just need someone to assure you it's going to be good. It's going to be this way. Here is an answer.
So he will come in with empty promises, and he will come in sounding as close to God as he possibly can so that he can get you to believe something that is almost true, but not true enough, that will rob you of living the life and becoming the person that God created you to be.
Even if something is almost true, it still isn't. So for the next few weeks, we're going to look at some of these ideas, and the one that we have for today is that you are perfect just the way you are.
My singing voice is not perfect, but I'm fighting my fears here. You're perfect just the way you are. We want to believe this, right? Okay. Turn to your neighbor and tell them you're almost perfect just the way you are.
Now, listen, some of you, that was easy. You're like, I know that person, and I know they're not perfect, so it's good. Listen. Same. I know I'm not perfect just the way I am, or I wouldn't have to wake up at 05:00 a.m. to look like this. Okay, so I got it. I got you. Same page. Where does this idea come from? Right? Where does this idea of perfection come from? Maybe actually from the Bible. So we're gonna look at a verse in Matthew five in just a second. In Matthew five. Jesus is giving his famous sermon on the mount, and this sermon is packed with information. There are so many things that he is telling both his disciples and the people that are now gathering to start to follow him, and they're paying attention to his teachings, and he's teaching them a new version of God, a new way to see God, and then what to do in response and how they are to live because of who God is. And so the last thing he says, after listing out all of these new ways to live, is in verse 48. He says, therefore, you are to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.
I mean, that sure sounds like Jesus is setting a high bar for perfection, doesn't it?
So, we've talked about this before, but Jesus didn't actually speak English. And when your Bible was written, when those scriptures were written, actually, those scriptures were not written in English. So there has been a lot of translation that has happened from the time Jesus said this until these words got put in our bibles, and I will not ever attempt to do that. I don't even know how linguistically it works, especially because it doesn't always work. There's not always a one for one perfect word. And that's what I think we see happening here, that even when it's not technically the wrong translation, it can still lead to the wrong interpretation. It can still lead us to the wrong definition. So I want you to think about the word perfect. The definition of the word perfect. What comes to mind when you think of perfect? Who or what?
Barbies? Okay.
Yes. Social media influencers. That's for me, like the celebrities that having to look a perfect way.
Jesus. Don't Jesus juke me up here. You are right. You are right. You are right. Also not attainable. Right?
So we have these definitions. I think of words like shiny, clean, pure, happy. Like there's no flaw in something that's perfect. But Jesus definition of perfect is actually not that he was trying to tell them something different. So I'm gonna teach you a couple of greek words today. And the first one is the greek word for the word perfect, which is teleos. Say teleos.
Teleos actually means to complete or make whole. So when Jesus is saying, hey, you are to be perfect, he's saying, you are to be complete. As my father is perfect in him, you are to be made whole in him. And it is only through that connection that we can become perfect. Jesus was not saying that this is about achieving or attaining perfection or a certain level. He's saying, I actually want you to stay in process of fulfilling the purpose that you were created for, which is to receive the love of God. Let it change you from the inside out and then take it out into the world to other people who need it. The big takeaway for you today, if you only remember one thing, I want it to be this. God doesn't want us to perform for perfection. He wants our participation in transformation.
God does not want us to perform for perfection. He wants our participation in transformation. You are not perfect just the way you are, but you can become perfect by your connection in him. So what does that even look like, right? What does it even mean to be whole? In Mark twelve, Jesus paints actually a pretty good picture of this. And he tells us, you guys are going to help me. You might know this one, that we are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your, and with all your heart, your soul, your mind and your strength. It takes all of these parts to be a whole person. And we have to use all of these things to both love God completely and exist as a person in this world where there are other humans who also need that same kind of love, and they're all connected. So we're going to see today what it looks like to move away from perfection toward transformation in each of these things.
Paul was the apostle who wrote most of the New Testament, and he had a pretty well known transformation. He writes about it a little bit in Romans twelve. It says, do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind.
Then you will be able to know the will of God, what is good and is pleasing to him and is perfect. That is that same word, Teleos. Paul knew that the first step to life transformation was in changing our mind. Now, Paul was writing from his own experience. He went from persecuting christians to being a pretty high leader in Christianity.
But I think even the way that we often talk about Paul is also only almost true. Nt Wright is a scholar and a theologian, and he's a bit of what I like to think of him as like a Paul truther, like he's given a lot of his time and research to studying Paul's life and his writings and to help us better understand what Paul was doing in the early church after Jesus ascended back to heaven. And nt Wright reminds us that Paul did not really have a conversion because that implies that he went from no religion to all of a sudden following Jesus, that he went from no religion and no belief in anything to then choosing one day to have a faith. But what is actually the case with Paul is that he was a very strong believer. He was a very strong believer in the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the old Testament. In fact, he was what people considered a zealous jew. He was extremely passionate. He was convinced of what he knew and what he believed in. He knew, he thought he knew what God wanted. Today we would probably call him a radical or even an extremist because he was so certain in what he believed that he was willing to take people's lives in the name of God.
Until then, one day Paul had a supernatural experience with the resurrected Jesus, who both literally and figuratively opened his eyes. After that happened, after Paul encountered Jesus, it both destroyed everything that he thought he believed about goddess, while at the same time fulfilling everything about this faith that he had always believed in so strongly. See, the world will tell you that your mind is perfect just the way it is if you clearly know what's right from what's wrong, and you know every dividing line between black and white.
If you have full mastery of scripture, you've memorized all of the verses that you need to memorize, then you take all of that knowledge, and then you use it to make God happy. You use it to make sure that you are perfect in your behavior and you are good for God.
But a transformation of our mind means that when we read scriptures, we actually do go back and reread them, even though we've read them once. This is great. Learning from other teachers is great. Reading books about scripture is great. But we have to actually get ourselves back in the actual word ourselves so that Holy Spirit can reveal things to us. And a transformation of our mind means when we're in there, we're unlearning and we're relearning, and we're learning about things in context. We're looking at greek words and nerding out about facts and history and things to help us better understand what the original message was. It means we ask questions of what we believe and why we believe what we believe, not to discredit it, but to better understand this faith that we profess.
It also might mean changing your mind on some things.
I think the reason that a lot of people have disconnected from faith or have disconnected from God is because they have this thing that they were taught about who God is, or they have this picture of Jesus that they were taught, and then they're seeing christians live out in the world and it doesn't line up, or they have this thing that they believed about God or about their faith. But then other people are like. They're like, it doesn't reconcile. And so they're sitting in this cognitive dissonance of, how can both of these things be true at the same time?
I don't know what the specifics are for you, and I can't prescriptively tell you, hey, believe this, this, this and this.
I could. It would make me know better than other people that I would say, don't listen to them. Don't do that. Right. It's good to learn from people, but you have to take this yourself back to God and ask questions and wrestle through and ask him to show things to you. But what I do know is that it's okay to change your mind. It's not a sin to change your mind.
And some of you were taught that. It was. Some of you were taught that because you learned this one thing first, it is now a sin to change your mind.
And it could be that very thought that is actually keeping you from becoming whole.
After we have our thoughts in our minds, then we move into something that's connected to our thoughts, but, like, our inner part, which is our soul. Your soul is that thing, like, the essence of who you are, right? Way deep down in there. It's your personality, it's your ego, it's your desires. And I think a lot of times we take the word desire and we're like, whoop, I'm gonna put this over here with, like, sexual attraction and other, you know, relationship stuff. Desires over here. I don't have desires. Desires are over here for this thing. But we all have desires. A desire is just a deep down want for something or for something to happen. And so the world will tell you you're perfect just the way you are. As long as your soul doesn't have these certain desires, as long as you don't have a desire for somebody that you should not be in relationship with, as long as you don't have a desire for jealousy, that then turns into greed, so that you then have to become obsessed with needing to be the biggest or the best. A desire that maybe is for revenge, even in the name of justice, because someone hurts you and changed your life in a way that has never been the same since.
But the deep down desire is that you want something bad to happen to them because that's what they deserve.
You might find the desire that you want someone else to fail, that you want them to have to experience the shame of being caught out because, you know, they cheated or they manipulated people to get where they are today.
List. I am not removed from this. Listen, all of us have these desires within us, but what we have to do in order to transform our souls is to get honest with them. We have to be honest with them. I think our souls are the easiest thing to kind of look away from or push away because we are afraid of what we will find.
It is fear that keeps us from going. If I take this thing to God, if I tell God what it is that I think I want, then I'm going to have to figure out where that started, because the seed of that desire started somewhere with some almost truth.
There's an often misquoted scripture about desire in psalm 37. And I apologize to those of you if this is your life verse, because I'm about to give you a little bit of different meaning on it. Here it says, take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires, your heart. Now, I say this is often misquoted because I think people tend to forget the first half and just think about the second half, that God's just going to grant all of our wishes, right? And be like, boop, you got what you want. Boop, you got what you want. Boop, you got what you want. Forgetting that there's just, like, a comma, like, it's a two part thought here. So another greek word I want to teach you is actually the greek word for delight, which is onag. Say onag.
Onag. That is the greek word for delight. This was the most fun surprise for me this week when I was researching this word, because I was like, oh, delight. It's going to be, like, happy. It's going to be great. Or even maybe like, I'm rooted in God. No. You want to know what anag means?
Soft or pliable.
You know, like, moldable.
Ready to be shaped or changed or transformed. What this verse is actually saying is that if we submit our desires to God, he will mold them into something better.
Have you ever had the thought, hallelujah for that unanswered prayer?
Thank God that that thing that I prayed so hard for, I did not actually get.
Could it be that you changed your mind because God helped change that desire?
Could it be that your soul at that time was pliable and willing to be transformed so God was able to change what it was you thought that you wanted to give you what you need to give you something better.
Transformation of our souls means that we take those desires that don't look like God or sound like God and admit that it's probably not his best thing for our lives. It means we take an honest look at our gluttony, our greed, our envy, our deceit, our anger, our pride, our sloth, our fear, and we get super honest about them and ask God to show us what the real reason is underneath those desires.
The good news is we can also ask God to help us change them, even if we're afraid of what it's going to mean. We can ask him to help us to give up control and to trust that his way is better. Because if we don't see it in the life of Jesus, we probably shouldn't see it in ours.
Have you ever met a perfectionist?
I can see you from here when you're like, have you ever met a perfectionist? I maybe am a recovering perfectionist. I think for people that are a perfectionist, it's very important to them that everything is exactly as it is supposed to be, right? Comes across maybe as control, like they're trying to control themselves or other people or the situations around them or their environment.
But I don't think that perfectionism is actually about attaining perfection. I actually think it's a strategy that people have learned for self protection when they're afraid that they're going to be disappointed.
Perfectionists are super focused on having everything as is and on being right, because they think that that is what is going to keep them from experiencing bad things. If everything is as it should be, these bad things won't happen. Or if everything is as it should be, I'm going to get the thing that I actually want.
And this is learned for a lot of people from childhood. Perfectionists are taught you are perfect just the way you are. If you not only get good grades, but get good enough grades to get on the honor roll and get a scholarship.
Kids grow into perfectionists when they are taught you are perfect just the way you are, as long as you follow all the rules, definitely in public, but also at home. And if you ever dare to make a mistake, not only will there be consequences, you're going to apologize, ask God to forgive you right that second. But then don't ever tell anyone that you made a mistake, because we want to make sure everybody knows that we have perfect kids.
Perfectionists are grown when they are taught that they need to be an expert in whatever the skill or the craft or the sport or the activity is. And so they sacrifice relationship with friends and family and being fun and having a kid. Because what's most important is that they are the best at whatever their thing is, and that requires all the time and all the practice.
Perfectionists also become people pleasers quite often because they're also told that they need to put their needs and their emotions aside for the needs of other people so that they do not become selfish.
Perfectionists hyper fixate on these things because that was the only time that they ever heard their dad say, hey, I'm proud of you.
It was the only time that they ever felt genuine love from their mom when they could perform perfectly.
Just as God doesn't want us to perform for his perfection, we also don't need to perform for his affection.
We do not have to perform for God's affection because God does not love us the way people love.
One of the things that Jesus said on the sermon on the mount that I referenced earlier was in verse eight. He said, blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God pure. Not happy in heart, not shiny in heart, not perfect in heartland. Pure purity, innocence. What's true, what's real.
When you take your heart to God, he doesn't say, no, no, no, no. Shove that part down. He doesn't say, only bring your happy, shiny feelings out here, please, like the world does. God says, you bring all of that to me. You bring all of who you are. You don't have to change your emotions. You don't have to change the way you feel, because not only can you still be in my presence with all of that, but I still also love you. And you don't have to change or prove anything to me in order for my affection to be yours.
See, but our heart is not just about our emotions. It's also about what we do with them. And right after Jesus says that we are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. He also says this. He says, love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.
When we submit our hearts to God, it should change the way we love. It should change the way we love God. It should change the way we love ourselves, and it should change the way we love other people.
Pastor Naim recently did a fantastic message on being a neighbor, and he asked the question, who is my neighbor? And if you missed it, you can catch it on YouTube this week. But I'll give you a spoiler alert to the answer of who is my neighbor? It's everyone.
It is everyone. We are called to love everyone. And so a transformation of our heart means that we see people the way God sees people, and then we love people the way God loves people. And this doesn't only go for the people in our actual local vicinity. This is even, maybe even especially more for the people that we will never interact with, the people that we will never have that chance to, like, gather our own first impression of. Because what it means is we then have to rely on what God says about these people, which is that they also are his and that he loves them.
When we have a transformation of heart, we treat people differently with no hierarchy, with no labels, with no name calling, and with no hate.
Your heart cannot be filled with the love of Jesus if it is being led by hate toward any group of people.
Not only is it anti gospel, hate is 100% anti gospel, but also for those of us who consider ourselves to be christians. It's also dangerous.
It's very dangerous and confusing for the world that's watching on to hear us say, God loves everybody, and I love everybody, except for these people that I don't even just like, not have feelings about, but I actually hate.
This is not the message that should be coming from the church. Nothing is more anti gospel than hating people that God created. It was actually love that compelled Jesus to the cross for all people to be reconciled back to God. And it has to be love that compels us to change in our own lives as well.
You might have to change your mind and keep changing your mind about how you see people until you are able, because it's not always easy, until you are able to love people the way God does. And I know this is all easier said than done, right? You're like, great. I can change my thoughts and I can have different desires, and I can try to love people better, but this really still sounds like only a perfect person could do this, and I would say that is accurate. It is Jesus, he's the only one that could do this on his own.
But also, we were never meant to. We also get to have a transformation of our own strength because this is not going to be super comfortable work.
It's not going to be super comfortable. You're going to have to wrestle with some questions, win some things. You might even face conflicts, because when you change your mind or you start accepting or loving a new group of people, there might be people in your life that don't really like that.
People like to know what to expect from you. And so when you change that, it like somehow rocks their boat.
That's a them problem is what I like to say. But it's still worth us knowing that this is part of the process of transformation. Right? Because none of us live on islands in isolation in this life.
But we have to learn to accept the discomfort that comes with becoming the people that we were meant to be. And we get to do it relying on God's strength. Another person that went through a pretty well known transformation in the Bible was King David. David was actually called the man after God's own heart. And then after he got that label, he committed adultery and murder and abuse. And so we look at. And it's easy to be like, what? Like what? What happened here, right? And so David also writes about his own experience in psalm 73. This is one of the, I think, most honest things in the entire scripture. My flesh and heart failed.
They failed. I tried and I failed. I failed. What do the next two words say?
But God is the strength of my heart and my reward forever.
You are going to fail. And it is going to be hard because it is supposed to be. We were never meant to do this on our own.
The difficulty is what reminds us to turn and to rely back on God and remember that it is his power at work within us. For all of these things, I want to caution you of something also. We need the self awareness, right? We need to spend time with God and ask holy spirit, like, hey, show me the things. Show me the areas so that we can transform our heart and soul and mind and strength. But we also have to be really careful that then we don't take that list of things and turn it into a to do list of holiness.
When. When the idea is you are perfect just the way you are, as long as your transformation to holiness is perfect. That's religion. That's just religion. There's no relationship, there's no grace there. That's just religion. So what we need to do is make sure that when we have a transformation of strength, we don't make the holy to do list become now the thing. We have to let the transformation remain the thing. Instead of falling back into the trap of, like, I just have to go and check off all of these things on the to do list.
A transformation of strength means some of us have to just learn to stop and be still and be present and listen. We have to take our high capacity for doing things and not let it distract us from inviting God into this process with us. We have to be okay to fail and to ask for help and to rely on other people. And we have to give up the idea that we have to do it first. Like that. We have to reach the timeline first because there is no timeline in transformation.
And I would actually argue. Like, if you think you reached it, you probably gotta go back and start over.
I think that's a pretty good sign that you haven't.
So you are not perfect just the way you are. But if you are a Christian, you have chosen this teleos connection with God. Through a relationship with Jesus. You can show up perfectly in process, authentically imperfect, to display all of the things that God wants to do within you.
I guess it's not technically homework per se, but I encourage you to read Matthew five this week, to go through and just read the sermon on the mount. Maybe read it slowly, take all week to read it and just see what jumps off the page at you.
Not because God is telling you that you are not good enough in this area, not because God is shaming you into like, well, why are there things here that you still have to work on? No, because these are the areas that we get to then submit to God and join in and participate in our own transition, transformation, to do the best that we can, to become more and more like Jesus, to become more and more whole as we are connected to God and submit all of these things to him.
God doesn't want you to perform for perfection. He wants your participation in, I would say, an ongoing and forever transformation in your heart, in your soul, in your mind, in your strengthen. You can be confident that God is working within you and that you are in process of becoming whole in him.
And we are going to do this not only for ourselves, which is not selfish, by the way, to want to take time for yourself, but also the people around you need to see this. The world out there needs to see this kind of church. The people in your life need a different version of God. They need someone to show them, no, a different version of Christianity. And so by showing up flaws and all, that's when we get to show them that they have the permission and freedom to also show up imperfectly and still be loved by God and still be in process, and still be loved by people and still be almost perfect just the way they are.
We get to bring his perfect love into the broken places of the world and help make it whole.
Amen.
Amen. All right, if you guys want to stand up, I would love to pray over us this morning.
God, I thank you for just this time. God, I thank you for your word and for your truth. God, that never changes. God, that your word is always true and your heart and your character are always true. God, thank you that we get to participate in that with you, that we get to be vessels of your truth and your love and your spirit, just walking around in the world out here doing the best we can.
God, I pray that we would give ourselves grace when we're able to have that honest look at ourselves in the mirror and say, God, my flesh failed, but you are the strengthen of my life. God, I pray that we would learn to rely on you this week in conversations, in our thoughts, God, and what we believe.
And Lord, I pray that everyone that is here today, God, or watching or listening online, Lord, that you would reveal that thing that you want to transform into mold, into what's better. God, for their lives, to make them the people that they wanna be. And God, I pray against any voice of the enemy that wants to come in with shame. Tell them that they're not good enough, that they can't show up at church, that they are crazy for thinking the things that they're thinking, for doubting themselves. God, I pray against the lies of the enemy in Jesus name. God, would your voice be the loudest thing that they can hear this week and then also project out into the world around them?
Amen.
Thanks for listening to this message from Mosaic Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. For more audio and video content, visit us at Mosaicchurch TV.
