This sermon emphasizes the need for a new way of thinking and a deep relationship with God to break free from twisted patterns and invest in personal growth. It highlights the importance of surrendering to Christ, abandoning rebellion, and seeking unbroken fellowship with God to experience transformation and true fulfillment in life.

The old twisted way of thinking is going to produce the same twisted result. We have to have a new way of thinking. So becoming normal begins with the right relationship with God. You see, that's where it all begins. You will rise or fall according to the quality of your relationship. If you are shallow in Jesus, guess what? It's like you're putting Jesus a mile away from you and you're keeping him so far away so you don't have to have him too close to improve your life. And so you're living in prayer. You pray when it's just convenient. Or you say, well, I pray on the way to work. You know, you're just perpetuating the same old joke. You're not wanting to invest. You're having a welfare mentality. That's it. Just repeating the same old thing. You don't want to invest in this life, so guess what? Because you're not investing in your relationship with Christ. You are not investing in your marriage. So you are being the same man or the same woman. You've been this all the years. You're not going to change. He goes in. My marriage is a nightmare. And you go and you run the test. They ask, will you fix my nightmare? But he can't fix it. Because you're the creator of the nightmare. And the only way it's going to change is you've got to come and have a radical change in life and way of thinking by submitting to Christ. We'll look at that in just a moment. But it begins by your relationship. If you don't have a deep relationship with Jesus, you will never conquer the twisted self. You will never conquer it. You'll be the same man, the same woman, 5, 10, 20, 30 years from now. Because you never, ever dealt with it. Because you never wanted to get near Jesus. And so you have to build the right relationship with Jesus. You know what this means? I've put myself in a place where like Hebrews tells me to set my eyes on Jesus. And to look at him. And gaze at him. You know when I begin to look at him and I see perfection? I can begin to look at people and see Christ's mark upon them. Okay? I can see some really good things and I can say, that I can see Jesus able to help me to live it. Look at this brother, look at this pastor. I can see the things. His mark is on these people. They're not Jesus anywhere close. But yet we can begin to see what it's truly Christ-like. And how God begins to grace life. Amen. Amen. You know you were not created for sin. You weren't created for drugs. You weren't created for sexual pleasure. You weren't created for any of that. You were created to love your God. Amen. That's why you were created. You were created to love him, to serve him, to worship him. And only when you do that will you become an individual returning back to what you were originally created to be. And so what should our goal be then as Christians? Our goal must become unbroken fellowship with God, which is the highest honor and reward given to man. That must be the goal. Not to know all the sports stats you can know. Not to know all the stuff this world has to give. But to come to the place that you are longing to know your God more and more. And enter into that place of unbroken fellowship where you gaze upon him. You see him. You draw near to him. You become more like him. And guess what? If you're a husband, it revolutionizes you as a man that you might see your marriage change. Amen. If you're a wife, it changes you so rapidly it starts affecting your husband. But if you wait for each other to change, you'll never change. You'll just point the finger and do the old victim mentality. It's his fault. It's her fault. And never find change. It is so sad how many marriages in the church are just a challenge. Are just nothing but misery. And Jesus designed it to be so. Second part of becoming normal. The first is having a look at Jesus and it's our relationship. But out of that relationship comes a thing. I know I've used this phrase many times when I preach to you. It's the idea of reckless abandon. You can only become normal through reckless abandon. Which is suing. Go ahead. Reckless abandon. I like that idea. It comes from Oswald Chambers. And it is devotional of my utmost first highest. Read it 30 some odd years ago. And the idea is that when Jesus commands and he says, Child, do this. Or child, stop that. You don't sit there and wrestle. You don't debate it. You immediately respond. And you say yes. You recklessly abandon yourself to this God. Recklessly abandon yourself against the man. To obey him. And do you know what that is? It is the untwisting of our rebellion that is so deep-rooted in us. We are rebels. Right, guys? We got that rebellious right, ladies? That rebellion. That deep-rooted rebellion. The only remedy to it is intimacy with Christ and surrendering to Jesus. Because if you're not surrendering, you'll never know true fellowship with God. And so, this does come out in Romans 12, 1 and 2. That we give our bodies as a living sacrifice and so on. But it also touches the idea of ignorance. Here it goes back to the extreme individualism. Guess what? I want to be king. I want to be king of my life, my objectives, my purposes, my future. I want to define my destiny. All about me. But that's not Christianity. Christianity is me giving up my lordship and bowing to the true Lord. Because I am just a usurper. Do you understand? In essence, I have had a coup d'etat against the Holy God to rule myself. And that coup d'etat, that rebellion, will be my ruin unless I surrender to Him. Do you understand how I put that? What's a coup d'etat? It's when you have this military force that rises up and tries to overthrow a government. You see, a coup d'etat is an overthrow. And that's what we try to do here. It's a coup d'etat of our own rebellious nature. I'm going to rule myself. I'm going to rule my life. How many Christians have ruined themselves? Because one way or the other, they come to think, I'm going to rule my life. I want that man. I want that woman. I want this. And they go after their own thing. Because they overthrow God in their heart and kick Him out to do their own thing. And what's happened? Think of it like this. Imagine that before they were Christians, they had this big, huge hunchback. And they were all twisted. And they come to Jesus. And after a few years, He's untwisted. And they now start to stand up a little straighter. Not quite as twisted. But then, Jesus has done all this work. And they have a coup d'etat. They go and they overthrow the Lord. So they're Christ-like. They drove off His reins. And all of a sudden, they become more twisted than they were before. Do you understand? It just takes you back, but further, into the twisting. Because now, you have tasted of God. You have tasted a little bit more of what it means to be normal. But now, you've thrown off His Lordship. And you now are a greater slave than you ever were before. Because that's what happened. You are no longer guilty. Because of it. General William Booth. You know the early days of Salvation Army? They were absolute radicals. If you've never read on the early days of Salvation Army, you need to read it. And it's some radical stories of their abandonment to God. Laying down their lives for Christ and so on. General William Booth made a statement. He said, the greatness of a man's power is the measure of his surrender. Not the measure of his ability to preach. Because you can have men preach that look like the devil. Do you understand? You can have a man preach.