Pastors
Sermon Ideas:
We offer this ministry and the fruits of our labor as a gift to you. The following sermon ideas are based on our clinically proven and Faith-based program. This is just the beginning. This section of our ministry will be expanding greatly over time. Keep checking back for new ideas for our sermons. We present here some outlines for sermons using our Dominos metaphor, so we first need to explain how this model works. Senior Pastor Ken Burkey has tested these ideas in our congregation at Green Valley Community Church with great success. The “Dominos” help give greater depth and insight into the character of Biblical heros.
Jesus teaches us that, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.”1 The Enemy (i.e., “the thief”) wants us to stay focused on pursuing the little temporary forms of happiness that merely mask pain and keep us from experiencing the fullness of life God wants for us. He knows by keeping us focused on what we cannot control in the world around us he can keep us from growing, keep us from becoming mature believers, and keep us from attaining the abundant life God wants for us. That abundant life is attainable by learning to master the B-E-S-T life. The Bible tells us: “A river flowed from the land of Eden, watering the garden and then dividing into four branches.”2 We are going to look at these four areas (B-E-S-T) of our lives as the most important and only things we can really control in life. The sin life, the life that is devoted to making the outside world conform to our wants, distorts the B-E-S-T life. The B-E-S-T life is the “abundant life”—the life filled with purpose.
So how do you get the B-E-S-T, abundant life? You get it by managing the four parts we just mentioned: our behavior, our emotions, our sensations and our thoughts. Why these four? Because, these four parts are the four pieces that make up all God-created human beings. There are not three parts or more than four parts. All other aspects of human nature are related to one or more of these four parts. For example, spirituality is certainly an innate aspect of human nature. It is the combination of our thoughts and behavior.
The Domino Effect
It is often easier to understand how the dominoes work by looking at the last domino and working toward the front. The last domino represents how the world reacts to our behavior—it is not about how we feel about our behavior. If you throw a chair through a window, the consequence is a broken window and maybe a broken chair. If you consistently treat your friend badly, the consequence is a broken friendship. Some of the consequences we are now living with have been the result of our behavior. If people are angry or disappointed with us, it is likely we have done something to make that happen. There are many life consequences that can be the result of our behavior, things you either did or failed to do. This relationship between behavior and consequences is easy to understand. It is important because it is the foundation for personal responsibility. We want our children to learn this at an early age so they can grow up to be good citizens.
The next connection—between behavior and emotions—is also easy to understand. Most of us are aware of how our emotions drive our behavior. We may mope when we are sad or discouraged; we may be noisy and boisterous because of our excitement when our team wins; we may act thoughtfully when we feel a sense of importance as we are engaged in a meaningful discussion. It is fairly well accepted that emotions can be powerful drivers of behavior. When people are asked “why” they did something, a common response is: “Because I felt like it.”
Unfortunately, the next link is the difficult one to grasp. When asked why we feel a certain way, our response is likely to point to something or someone in our outside world. One powerful example is the feeling of falling in love; another common source of overpowering feelings occurs when we lose a loved one. Most people point to the outside world out of habit. “If that hadn’t happened, then I would not feel this way.”
We want to show you that the truth is deeper than this. With one specific exception, what you think, not what happens to you, is always the source of our emotions. Our emotional responses are because of the way you interpret outside events. If you are late for an appointment with your boss and miss it because of car trouble, your feelings about the missed appointment will depend on how you interpret the missed appointment. If your boss wanted to demote you or fire you, missing the appointment would trigger relief because you would be telling yourself how lucky you were to have had the car trouble. On the other hand, if your boss was going to make you the new vice president but chose someone else because you did not show up, we doubt you would be feeling elated. So, for the theme of this book, we want you to get used to accepting the fact that all your emotions (both painful and non-painful) are caused by your thoughts, whether you are aware of them or not.
This idea is important for learning how to live the abundant life with the Big “H.” When all our dominoes are standing, you will be experiencing the Big “H.” The problem is that when you look closely at the Dominoes Chart, you will see that the first domino—life, the outside world—has a round bottom. It does not stand up easily and when it does, it is not for long. This is indicative of life itself. The outside world is constantly crashing into our personal space. Sometimes it does so in an annoying way that we might be able to shrug off; other times, life hits us so hard we wonder if we will ever recover. Almost reflexively, we reach down and try to put the first domino upright. Even when we succeed, it will eventually fall again, knocking all the other dominoes down. When they stand because we have kept the Life domino up for a while, we get to experience the little “h.” But then it falls and the chain reaction starts all over.
We are going to teach you how to begin using a different strategy. Instead of trying to keep thev first domino from knocking over the other dominoes, you will learn to change how you use the second domino. You will learn how to lift the “thought” domino off the table, slather the bottom of it with super glue and firmly place it back on the table. When the glue dries, the second domino will be immovable, no matter how hard it is hit by the first one. The writer of proverbs reminds us, “be careful how you think, your life is shaped by your thoughts.”
Our personal experiences in life are often the effect of an unseen chain reaction. This chain reaction can lead us to believe that our lives are not our own, that we are victims of a cruel and unfeeling world, and the universe is ruled by a God that is uncaring and even vindictive. We are calling this chain reaction the Domino Effect.
The first lesson you need to learn is that God wants us to acquire the skills to control this chain reaction by taking control of the second domino. The human has been designed to react to an unpleasant (or maybe even a pleasant) life event with an automatic thought response. Our brain wants to understand what is happening. It becomes a cluster of perceptions, interpretations, judgments and other mental activity. But now you are going to learn that the most powerful thing you can do to transform your life and live more in accordance with God’s will is to change the way you think about certain life events or triggers. We will use the words life, trigger, and activator interchangeably to describe the first domino. The Bible tells us throughout that controlling the second domino, our thoughts, is an imperative step in obtaining the abundance of blessings God wants to bestow upon us when we conform to His will.
There must be a spiritual renewal of your thoughts and attitudes.
Ephesians 4:23(NLT)
We capture every thought and make it give up and obey Christ.
2 Corinthians 10:5 (NCV)
The discovery by modern psychology, that thinking produces emotions, only reinforces what the saints and prophets have been telling us for ages. But, until recently, what was not clear was how unnoticeable some of that thinking really is. The scientists call it “automatic thinking” or “silent assumptions.” Some of our thoughts occur so rapidly that we cannot even perceive we had any thought at all. They seem hidden. Normally we only perceive the audible thoughts in our daily lives, but destructive, paralyzing emotions such as guilt, anxiety and depression signal us that more devious thoughts are occurring quietly and rapidly enough to be just beyond our ability to perceive them.
To give you an idea of how powerful this connection between thinking and emotions is, research has shown that the emotional effects of uncovering and replacing negative thinking can produce the same good and pleasant brain chemistry as anti-depressants. As a testimony to this, I (Pat) was able to quit taking the prescribed anti-depressant Serazone after mastering the materials we are presenting here.
This graphic helps explain Eve’s fall using the Domino Model:
