Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Hi, everybody. Good morning. My name is Evan. I'm one of the senior pastors here. If you're visiting, I hope you're having a good experience here at Westside on this beautiful, perfect weather kind of day. My weekend looked like on Friday. I was working to repair something with some superglue, and I got it on my fingers, and I didn't realize how long it stayed not dry. And I touched my eye and I glued my eye shut.
[00:00:31] And, you know, you get into your 40s and you think, I'm finally to the place where basic life skills I've got mastered, I've got this handled.
[00:00:41] I can exist as an adult in life. And then you're looking with your one good eye into the mirror at how you've glued your eyelids together. And that's me. And I hope for you.
[00:00:54] I mean, it really is for your sake. I'm just. I speak to myself every day. I say, evan, pull it together, man. There's a lot of people counting on you. And then things like this happen to reveal that we still got a long way to go. Anybody with me? We got a long way to go. I bring that up because it just happened, and I'm not exaggerating. And also, what we're talking about today is can we change our mind?
[00:01:16] Can we say yes to being open to what we don't know? Even as we get older in life and it becomes really tempting and constant to get in that place where we have enough certainty around what we've decided to be and who we are and how we view ourselves and how we view God, that we don't have to change anymore?
[00:01:33] In those moments, can we realize that there is more to know that we don't know that there's more of God to experience than we've experienced? There's more to understand about our friends and our enemies in this life than maybe we want to believe.
[00:01:51] Today the question is, what if I change my mind?
[00:01:54] And that question can be a little scary because we build up, I believe, defenses around our opinions.
[00:02:02] And these days, I think it's in vogue. It's popular to have this strongly held belief that to never budge is the best way that to never change your mind, never admit you're wrong, is the way you're gonna succeed in life and what Christianity does. And it's fascinating. It's this faith tradition that says the way that you know that you are on the right track as you follow Jesus is because you acknowledge that you are on the wrong track.
[00:02:35] That's Christianity.
[00:02:37] It's to say, as the famous hymn writes, I was blind, but now I see.
[00:02:44] And then we wake up the next day and we say, I was blind, but now I see. Lord, open my eyes.
[00:02:51] And there's this old saying, famous, that says, conversion happens in a moment, but salvation is for a lifetime.
[00:02:58] That actually every day, as the Apostle Paul would say, that we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. What he's talking about is how we receive forgiveness of our sins through Christ. And in a moment, we become adopted into the family of God. But that isn't the end of that journey.
[00:03:14] Instead, and we say this every time we take a group that's about to walk through the waters of baptism. Listen, this is not the finish line of faith. When you come up out of the water. It is the beginning of a long, lifelong journey where we follow Jesus. And every day we wake up to the realization that we have some things wrong that we need to be made right through Christ.
[00:03:37] And even one of the earliest theologians that we still read today, after the apostles had died, St. Augustine of Hippo in about 300 A.D. don't check my dates on that. But he wrote all these books, Confessions, and these famous theological works that we read even today. And at the end of his life, he wrote his final work, and it was called Retractions.
[00:04:06] And he goes back and admits all the things that he probably got wrong.
[00:04:10] And this was from the very beginning in the early church, something that was humbly walked in of this, admitting that we don't always get it right. And Augustine is kind of beautiful because in Retractions he says all the things that he probably got wrong. And he maybe was so passionate about when he wrote Confessions, but now he disagrees with. But he says, you know what I didn't get wrong? I didn't get wrong the writings I wrote about the Holy Spirit. He's alive and he's at work. And I didn't get it wrong about miracles. Miracles are real and they're for today, and they're active in our world.
[00:04:43] And I love this picture of us getting to the end of our lives, not so calcified and defended of all of our opinions that anybody that knows us knows we've got some of it wrong. But we say, no, I'm just gonna put my blinders on and close my eyes, and I'm right. I'm never wrong. Instead, we get to the end of our lives and we say, yeah, I got a lot wrong. But I know what I know.
[00:05:06] And what I want our church to be is a place where we come around those things that we know and we hold fast to.
[00:05:13] And we admit that maybe some of our opinions that we've held for so long need to be surrendered to Jesus.
[00:05:20] And this is at the heart of what I talk about when I say we change our mind. And I want to read Romans chapter 12 as a picture of this.
[00:05:29] Today the Apostle Paul writes, and so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all that he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind he will find acceptable.
[00:05:42] This is truly the way to worship him. And don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.
[00:05:53] And then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
[00:06:00] So Paul is saying that on the other side of changing your mind is where you find what God's will is for your life. That actually a refusal to change our mind, to change how we think and what we think oftentimes is the obstacle that stands in between us and God's will for our lives.
[00:06:21] And so it's an invitation into the changing of our minds. Or as the Apple campaign in the 90s famously said it, think different. Right? Do we have this picture of the Apple Think Different 1997, a marketing campaign came out with this famous for what Steve Jobs did there, of course.
[00:06:45] And think different is the literal interpretation or translation of the word that Jesus actually uses in the Gospel of Matthew when he says, repent for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand. And so if.
[00:07:01] If this is maybe the better, more accurate way to sell the new iPhone duo, I think they should use it.
[00:07:09] And they can. If any Apple marketing folks are watching. Well, I hope not, because we don't like lawsuits around here. But think different literally is what Jesus is saying when he shows up on the scene and his central sermon, his main point, that he says over and over again in the Gospels as he goes around Galilee and the surrounding area, as he says, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And oftentimes we interpret that as feel bad for what you've done wrong.
[00:07:40] And while repentance can lead to that, the actual act of repentance is not so much a response of guilt or shame, it is a decision to think different. That is repentance.
[00:07:54] And so if that is the central message that Jesus preaches is to think differently.
[00:08:02] And then we come and we get into a point in our faith and our lives and our relationships where we say, you know what? When I was young, I was learning a lot and I was changing, but I've come to a pretty good spot and I don't need to know anymore.
[00:08:17] I'm done asking questions, and I'm done being curious, and I'm done learning. And to this, I just feel so strongly that the message of Jesus should ring in our ears today. Repent, for God is close at hand.
[00:08:31] Think differently, because when God comes here, the old ways of thinking and the old ways and the methods that you are so convinced of and your old opinions, they're not gonna hold up. They're not gonna allow you to receive what God is bringing to you. When God comes close, this can be frightening because you could interpret what I'm saying today as changing our minds, as though we have no opinions, we have no truth. We have nothing that tethers us to. We just have an open mind when we float through this life.
[00:09:05] And yet what we have in Jesus is not an invitation to have no opinions. It's to lay down those that we've held onto so long, to reach out and hold on to the truth that is found in Christ.
[00:09:17] And it's this truth that is outside us that marks us as belonging to Jesus. And how sad it is. And I've seen this in my own relationships, folks that are never, ever wrong.
[00:09:29] And you will never convince them that they're wrong. How many know people that are never wrong? If you're sitting next to them, raise their hand for me, okay?
[00:09:40] I mean, how sad to never be the person that's never wrong. Because that tells me that if I am never wrong, the truth is something that I have decided for myself, and I am the metric by which I'm living in truth or not to be belonging to Christ is to establish that the truth is not inside me. It is something that is external. It is found in a person.
[00:10:06] My friend AJ Swoboda says that if you were to ask Mary, the mother of Jesus, and James, the brother of Jesus, you know, is truth relative? They would say, truth is not relative. Truth is a relative. And he's right there, you know?
[00:10:21] I know. I won't say it ever again.
[00:10:24] Truth is found in a person.
[00:10:26] And how sad if we walk around and we baptize this opinion in, like, Christian language and religious language. But oftentimes it is a very deeply secular thought that instead of the truth being found in Jesus, that the truth is Something that I decide on, on what feels right.
[00:10:47] And so we are invited when that becomes. When we become the arbiter of our own truth, to actually change our mind and realize that the one that we follow Jesus is the embodiment and the fullness of truth and grace. As it says in John chapter one, that Jesus is our truth and he oftentimes asks us to change our mind. A good example of this, Luke chapter five.
[00:11:14] So this is early on in the ministry of Jesus, he's just called his disciples to follow him.
[00:11:19] And then in Luke 5, he's teaching the multitudes around the Sea of Galilee. And it says, when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, now go out where it is deeper and let down your nets to catch some fish. Master Simon replied, this is Simon, who would later become Peter.
[00:11:36] We worked hard all last night and didn't catch a thing.
[00:11:40] But if you say so, I'll let the nets down again.
[00:11:44] And this time their nets were so full of fish that they began to tear. And a shout for help brought their partners in the other boat.
[00:11:50] And soon both boats were filled with fish and on the verge of sinking. And when Simon Peter realized what had happened, he fell to his knees before Jesus and said, oh, Lord, please forgive me. I'm such a sinful man.
[00:12:01] And Jesus replied to Simon, don't be afraid. From now on, you'll be fishing for people.
[00:12:06] And as soon as they landed, they left everything and they followed Jesus.
[00:12:13] Jesus comes as a rabbi, and all of a sudden he starts messing with these fishermen, telling them he has the nerve to tell them how to fish.
[00:12:25] And I love this story because the miracle is impressive and memorable.
[00:12:30] But I love it because Jesus is not content to stay in his religious teacher lane.
[00:12:38] Instead, he comes to these guys who are, you know, probably 10th generation fishermen, and he has the nerve to tell Peter what Peter should do to catch some fish.
[00:12:51] And for Peter, he's been fishing all night, as they would have every night. That's when the fish are most active. The water is cool, the sun is gone.
[00:13:01] That's when they catch fish. So they spend all night and there's no fish to be caught. And then Jesus, in the heat of the day, says, let's try again. Let's go back out to deep water and let the net down again.
[00:13:13] And it's Peter's willingness to lay down his expertise of his own situation to say yes to Jesus that results in a miracle. And how oftentimes in my life and in your life are we the experts of our own situation?
[00:13:28] And when we hear the voice of God asking us to obey the. Sometimes in mundane ways, but ways we know won't work, our response is one of cynicism, because we know our own situation better, we think, than Jesus.
[00:13:43] And oftentimes it's the obedience in the simple ways that are not extraordinary measures. But they'll make us look stupid. Maybe just as Peter fishing in the heat of the day in front of all his friends. You know, I imagine Peter's like, jesus, don't embarrass me in front of my friends.
[00:14:01] It's in his obedience where he says that phrase, we haven't caught any fish. But if you say so, it's that kind of obedience, that changing of our minds, that invites the miracle.
[00:14:13] And this is not the only time that this happens. Because in John, chapter 21, after the crucifixion of Jesus, after Jesus has appeared to the women at the tomb and then to Peter himself after the resurrection, the disciples have been through so much. They've watched their friend die.
[00:14:34] They're wrestling with grief and hope because they've seen Jesus, but they don't know what's going on. And so Peter and his friends, they go back to doing what they did in the first place. They go back to fishing. And there they are, probably on the same boat, on that same lake. And once again, Peter doesn't catch any fish all night. Which begs the question, is Peter actually just a terrible fisherman?
[00:14:58] I mean, we don't talk about this, but is it possible that he said yes to the original invitation to follow Jesus because he knew secretly he was a real bad fisherman? So he's like, I gotta do something else. I'm just wondering about it. But we get to John, chapter 21. Same thing happens. They haven't caught fish all night.
[00:15:16] And there's this hope that maybe Jesus didn't stay dead. But that's a really tough thing to believe. And so in their grief, they're out fishing all night. And then someone calls from the shore and says, friends, have you caught anything? And they say, we haven't caught anything all night. And then from the shore, Peter hears the voice of Jesus, says, throw your nets down on the other side and see what you get. And it's that command of Jesus that something clicks in Peter. And he says, it's the Lord.
[00:15:49] Cause nobody else, nobody else asks us to do those ridiculous things. Nobody else pretends that they're an expert in fishing and tells us to do things that won't work.
[00:15:59] I know who that is. That's the voice of Jesus.
[00:16:02] And this is, I think, points to how it works in our lives, that maybe early on in our faith we are open and we are saying yes to following Jesus.
[00:16:15] And we think that once we say yes early on and then we follow Jesus. And Peter had followed Jesus. He had been with Jesus for three years. He had seen so much, he had heard so much of Jesus teaching. It was Peter who stood with the other disciples. And Jesus asked him, who do you say I am, Peter? And Peter said, you are the Messiah, the Christ, the son of the living God.
[00:16:36] I mean, Peter had seen some stuff, Peter knew some stuff. And here they are at the end of this journey with Jesus after Jesus has been murdered, and the rumors are that he's come back to life at the end of all this, Jesus comes back to ask the same thing again. Peter, are you still willing to change your mind?
[00:16:58] Are you still willing to say yes to my voice, even when you know it's probably not going to work?
[00:17:05] And for all of us who have gotten to the point in our faith or our opinions or our views where we have closed the door on learning, we've closed the door on opening our hearts and our minds to what God might have for us. Jesus calls us again.
[00:17:24] Same boat, same lake. Will you change your mind?
[00:17:28] I think following Jesus could be summed up in this one idea. I know what I think, I know what I want, I know what I believe. But if you say so, Lord, I'll change.
[00:17:38] I know what I think, I know what I want, I know what I believe. But if you say so, Lord, I'll change.
[00:17:47] And I love my opinions.
[00:17:49] I'm so impressed by my opinions.
[00:17:52] Two or three of you every Sunday tell me that you like my opinions.
[00:17:57] Two or three.
[00:18:02] And we get really attached the ways we think, don't we?
[00:18:05] Don't we love all the arguments that we've accumulated that get us to a point in our lives where we say, I've got this all figured out, and that extends to how we view God. Maybe you've been sitting in seats in churches the majority of your Life. Maybe you're 30, 40 years, 50 years into rooms like this where you probably know where I'm going with this sermon before I get there.
[00:18:32] And the temptation is to say, I think I've got enough. I think I've got it all figured out. And to all of us who feel that way, myself included, I would say, how small a God do we have that in our 20, 30, 40, 60 years? Somehow all of God's character and his nature and his glory has been distilled in a way that we have wrapped our hearts and our minds completely around how small a God. If that is true.
[00:18:58] And I think about the oldest written book in the Bible, the book of Job, where Job is one of those guys like me who thinks he's got it all figured out when it comes to God. And he goes on this long monologue about all the. About how God acts and how he thinks and who he is.
[00:19:17] And it's a good sermon. And then it says, the voice of God responds to Job and says, how dare you?
[00:19:24] Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Have you been to the places where the storehouses of snow in the mountains? Have you been there when I created the world?
[00:19:35] And it's this rebuke from God, I don't think, because he's, you know, frustrated at Job. I think he wants to make the point that no matter how much we think we've got our minds wrapped around everything that God is, we've only had a taste and a drop in the ocean of the character of an infinite God.
[00:19:55] And there's a scripture, and I love it in the book of Job where it says, these are the mere edges of his ways.
[00:20:03] And we come into places like this in year or decade three, decade four, decade five, and we think, you're not gonna tell me anything new. I'm not gonna learn any.
[00:20:14] Got this figured out. And we hear the voice of God that rang out to Job, these are the mere edges of my ways. Are we open to understanding more of God in 2026 and 2027 than we ever have? Are we open to changing our mind about our long held opinions that have kept us stuck and in small thinking?
[00:20:37] This is what Paul is talking about when he speaks to the Corinthians. He writes to the Corinthians in the Corinthian church. He says in 2 Corinthians 6, I can't.
[00:20:47] How much I long for you to enter this wide open, spacious life.
[00:20:52] We didn't put you in the smallness you feel.
[00:20:55] It comes from within you. Your lives aren't small, but you're living them in a small way. So open up your lives.
[00:21:03] Oh, come on, preach, Paul. That'll preach. Let's go.
[00:21:08] It's not our circumstances, it's not our busy schedule. It's not our kids, sports.
[00:21:13] Come on. That's not making our lives small. What makes our lives small is the way that we've approached our faith and our relationships and our world. It comes from the inside Paul says, and he's inviting us to throw off the smallness and enter into the open space of knowing and loving Jesus with a heart that says, I don't know everything and Lord, today if you say so, I will change my mind and follow you.
[00:21:36] What are the things that we hold up as barriers and obstacles to the wide open life that Christ offers? Those are things that today he would ask us, would you change your mind?
[00:21:48] Would you lay down those things? Would you surrender those opinions so that you can understand me maybe in a new way today?
[00:21:57] So here's the question underneath the question.
[00:22:00] Pastor Ben said this in so many words last week. What does it look like to give our whole selves to Jesus?
[00:22:07] What does it look like to give our opinions, our assumptions, our methods to Jesus? What does it look like to give our viewpoints and our worldviews and our politics to Jesus? What does it look like to give our theology and our understanding of scripture to Jesus? What does it look like to surrender it all to Jesus when He says, cast your nets on the other side?
[00:22:30] I think three things happen like they did for Simon Peter and they do for us today.
[00:22:36] One, we have to rethink what's possible because Jesus is close, because the kingdom of heaven is near and at hand.
[00:22:46] What seems impossible is possible.
[00:22:49] What seems like a dead end and a closed door because Jesus is close might change.
[00:22:57] Number two, what is required? What does the yes look like for you today?
[00:23:01] What is the yes to changing your mind, to changing your opinion, to laying down your assumptions look like and then finally rethink what's next.
[00:23:11] The hope of the Christian life is not just that we end up at the end of our lives confident we got it all right, so we end up at the end of our lives so close to Jesus, looking back, realizing we got a lot of stuff wrong, but we were close with Jesus and what a beautiful community that God would build here.
[00:23:39] That we all come here not so belligerent and convinced of our own rightness, but we come here so convinced of Christ's goodness that everything else is held loosely and lightly.
[00:23:55] And we hold on to good theology and we hold on to Scripture and we hold on to who Jesus is. And nothing about today is about living a wishy washy, nothing matters kind of life. But it's saying, lord, I acknowledge humbly that my opinions are not my ultimate truth.
[00:24:13] My truth is a person. And I find that in Jesus.
[00:24:17] I want to close this time before we go into communion with a quote from one of my pastors, Pastor Ken Johnson, who Pastored this church for many, many years.
[00:24:30] In one of his books, he writes, some people live in a state of perpetual misery simply because they aren't willing to pay the price of uncertainty and leave their familiar confines.
[00:24:39] All that was once dynamic becomes static. We're fettered to the familiar, wedded to our comfortable rut. The fact is, you'll never get into the miracle zone until you leave your comfort zone.
[00:24:52] So my invitation is really simple today.
[00:24:54] Change your mind. Don't be scared to change your mind.
[00:24:59] Don't be afraid. When Jesus says to put the nets down again and you say, I know that won't work. When Jesus says, love your neighbor and you say, I know I don't want to do that.
[00:25:12] When Jesus says, open your heart to learning more about me than you've ever known, then we say, yes, Jesus, I know what I think, I know what I believe, I know what I want. But if you say so, I'll change. Amen.
[00:25:27] Amen.
[00:25:29] Would you close your eyes? In just a moment, I want to lead us in a response of surrender to Jesus.
[00:25:41] It feels like the longer time goes on in my life, the less confident I am in my own certainty and opinions, but the more confident I am in Jesus closeness and kindness.
[00:25:59] And if today that. That feels like a contradiction, I just want to say, yeah, I think it is. And this is the gospel of Jesus, that he takes away our control, he takes away our certainty, and he invites us into the life of faith that is wide open and spacious if we say yes to his invitation. And so today in this room with your eyes closed, if you're watching online, maybe just bow your heads wherever you're at.
[00:26:27] And we just want to hear the invitation of Jesus to change our hearts and change our minds.
[00:26:35] And for each of us, that might be a different thing that we've been holding onto or hiding behind a different opinion, a different strongly held belief that today Jesus would say, would you lay that down to follow me? Would you lay down that cynicism? Would you lay down that piece of frustration that has burdened you for so long? Would you lay that down? Would you change your mind and follow me into the wide open spaces of what's next? And so, Lord Jesus, I pray. Would we say yes today? I pray that that would be the response of our hearts, is yes, we'll change our mind. Lead us and guide us, Lord, as we do this, that we would never love our opinions more than we love you.
[00:27:19] And following after you. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
