EPISODE 28 / STOP THE BLEEDING!!

Dr. Tony Evans tells a story about a sanitarium that tested mental patients by seeing if they could clean up a mess without stopping the source of the problem. He relates this to how many of us live our lives, constantly trying to clean up our messes without addressing the root cause. Using the example of King Josiah, he emphasizes the importance of stopping the bleeding, identifying mistakes, breaking free from negative influences, taking ownership of our actions, and replacing old behaviors with new ones. He encourages setting biblical standards and renewing our minds. He concludes by urging listeners to stop the bleeding before trying to clean up the mess, and to share this message with others. Dr. Tony Evans tells a story about a sanitarium in Europe that had kind of a crude and even a cruel way of checking the mental patients to see about their decision making, seeing if they could move forward and maybe even learn to live on their own. What they would do is they would go into a janitor's closet and they would turn the water on and stop up the sink. And after a while, of course, the sink was going to begin to overflow. And they would send the patient in with a mop and say, hey, we've got a mess in this room. Would you help us out by cleaning this up? And they would put them in the room. And then five, ten minutes later, the doctors would go in. And if the patient was mopping up the floor without stopping the sink from running, without turning the water off, they knew that they weren't quite ready to live on their own, to make decisions because they were trying to clean up the mess without stopping the source of the mess. And Dr. Evans goes on to say that that's how many of us live our lives. We go through the same trials over and over again. We have the same problems, the same messes, but we never go back and address the source of the problem. We're constantly trying to clean up our mess, but not turning the water off, not stopping the bleeding, as it were. I preached a message yesterday about Josiah from 2 Chronicles chapter 34, preparing for revival. We talked about how Josiah, when he came to reign, the northern kingdom of Israel was already gone. They had been sacked by the Assyrians and many of them killed. You would think that when God's judgment fell on the northern kingdom, that the southern kingdom of Judah would say, whoa, we need to straighten up, and maybe revival would break out. But it did not. And Josiah came to reign, and God's Word says that he did right in the sight of the Lord. He sought to do God's will, but he didn't go out and write any edicts or laws or tell the people stop doing this or stop doing that. No, here's what he did first. He got rid of the source of their problems. He had all of the groves, he had all of the altars to Baal torn down, burned, golden images ground into powder. He took the prophets of Baal, and he burnt them on their own altars. Man, he took care of business. So before anything could be fixed and made right, he had to stop the bleeding. If we're injured, if we've got a cut or a laceration, you're never going to heal until you address the situation. You kind of have to see, hey, how bad is this? Is this something I can handle at home? Is this something I need to go to the emergency room about? And we have to clean it up and get the blood away, let's see the damage. And then you've got to address it, and eventually you can heal. So before anything, you've got to get that bleeding stopped. You may need stitches, but you have to get the bleeding stopped. Many of us in our lives, we're kind of like those patients, those mental patients. We're trying to clean up the mess in our life, but the water's still running. We've still got the same habits, attitudes, and behaviors that got us into this situation in the first place. We get in a rut. We see people many times, it takes marriage after marriage after marriage to figure out, where am I going wrong before we ever attempt to turn the water off? And man, there's so many lives damaged and hearts broken and mistakes made that people suffer from for a lifetime because we keep making the same mistakes over and over again. We don't stop the bleeding. We do it in our jobs. Some people just job after job after job, and they want to blame it on the boss. But no, we have to step back and look at the decisions we've made, the mistakes we've made, maybe the sins that we're committing over and over and over again that are breaking hearts and just destroying lives. Friendships, we see many friendships that go south, and then more friendships, and you build new relationships, and it seems like, again, the same story. We're just making the same mistakes over and over again. Let me give you five things this morning that I believe will help us not to make the same mistakes. Now, we're going to make mistakes. I can't help you with that because we're all flawed. We're all sinners and come short of the glory of God, but we can help making the same mistakes over and over again by stopping the bleeding. So number one that we should do, this is overall overreaching umbrella, is we need to live by a set of standards, to set biblical standards of who we are, the things we do, the things we do not do according to God's Word. I want to tell you, that'll go a long way to stopping the bleeding and cleaning up the mess is live by standard, not a floating scale of what we think is right or wrong, what our friends tell us is right or wrong, what our culture tells us. Set biblical standards. The second thing is, is you've got to identify the mistake. What is it? What is it I've done in my relationship? What mistake am I making? What sin has trapped me and is making me go down these same roads, having these same heartaches over and over again? So set a biblical standard, this is who I am, this is what I am, no matter what. I'm not going to bend. And then you've got to identify the problem. The water's running, it's overflowing, I've got to cut the water off. Number three, here's a good one. Who or what has influenced us in this behavior? Who or what? What is influencing us? Is it our childhood, is it our past, is it an addiction? Who or what is influencing us to make the same decisions over and over and over again that cause us so much frustration and so much pain? So set standards, identify the mistake, the sin, figure out who or what is influencing us and get yourself out from under that influence. Here's the fourth thing, this is a good one. Whatever what it was, own it, own it, learn from it. We live in a culture that is, I mean, we want to blame somebody and something for everything. We want to blame it on our childhood, blame it on our parents, blame it on our boss. And if you can believe it, blame it on the preacher. So we need to set standards, identify the mistake, the sin, figure out who or what is influencing us to make the same mistakes over and over again and get ourselves out from under that influence. Own it, learn from it. My mistake, my problem, I did it, mea culpa, just take responsibility. Nobody in America wants to take responsibility for their very own actions. And lastly, here's what you got to do. You got to replace that old way of thinking and that old behavior with new thinking and new behavior. Some people haven't changed their thinking since they were a little child. They still think like a little boy. They still think like a little girl. God wants us to mature. God wants us to proceed. He doesn't want us to regress. We should be growing in the image of Christ. We should be moving forward. God's always moving forward and He's always calling us to move forward. So just to recap, some good things for today, for this week is set standards according to God's word. Identify the mistakes or the sins that we keep walking through over and over again. A good one, identify who or what is influencing us in that. And listen, number four, own it. Don't try to blame your husband, your wife for behavior that you commit. You do what you want to do. Nobody's making you do it. You choose that. Who's influencing you? And listen, the last thing, you got to change your way of thinking. Scripture says, Paul says, we should renew our mind. We should change. We should grow. We come to Christ. We're new creatures. Um, if you're not growing, if you're not learning, I hate to be the bear of bad news this morning, but you're dead. If you're not growing, if you're not learning, you've already died. So my friends, uh, stop the bleeding, uh, turn the sink off a way before you ever start trying to mop up the mess. And I promise you, you're going to see a change in your life. Thank you for coming and visiting with me today. Hey, listen, if you enjoyed this, you know, somebody that could use this message, uh, copy paste, do whatever you do out there in electronic world and send it to them. We want to try to reach more and more people, uh, with God's word. Uh, listen, hope you have a great week and, uh, I'll meet you back here next Monday. Father God, we thank you Lord for this day. I thank you for my friends. God, help us to make good decisions in all area of our life. Help us to live our life, not according to our own wits, but Lord, according to your word and, uh, God, we love you. We thank you that when we make mistakes that you forgive us and you, you don't give up on us. God, I pray you'll keep my friends safe this week. I pray you'll prosper them and bless them. Give them divine appointments, Lord. Maybe even somebody that needs to hear this message, uh, today, uh, Lord, we love you and we thank you for this in Jesus name. Amen.