Spiritual Warfare - Know Your Destiny

Pastor Chae No's Humorous Welcome and Worship Praise You're listening to Regeneration Community Churches Midweek messages where you get to enjoy our Sunday service sermons on the go. Regen exists to welcome the broken, restore them back to Jesus, invite them into his family, and all together proclaim His good deeds. To get to know us better, visit us at regenchurchdallas.org. Speaker 2 Well, hello everyone. If you don't know who I am, I am Che. The last name is no. So just to give you a kind of a disclaimer before I I joke a lot. So if I make jokes, you can laugh. If it's like weird and kind of like borderline like offensive, you can still laugh. You can laugh at me, you can laugh like you can just laugh just so I'm just just want to throw that out in the beginning because I know sometimes church, at least at least this church, I can tell it's not. But you know, church can sometimes be a little stuffy, if that makes sense. You know, you got those like 3 piece suits and you got the cane and you know, you, you come to church and you give an offering and you leave. I don't think that's the way we do it here, right, Right. I think the way we want to have church is like family, right? Where you can just relax, don't walk around in your underwear, but you know, you can just like enjoy yourself and just be relaxed and just be a part of, you know, like a family, right? We want to be like a family. And so, man, I just wanted to say worship was off the hook, wasn't that? Yeah, man, I I was thinking like, after worship, we're done. We can just like, you know, eat and fly kites and have fun after that. But it was like, especially Pastor Aaron. Where's Pastor Aaron? I don't know where he is. He's running around all over the place. Oh, yes. Whenever you talk to Pastor Aaron, like outside the stage, he's like, he's like very introverted. He's like, hi. Hello. Right. And then when he's on stage, it's like a like a whole new person, right? He's like, he's like, yeah, this video song too. So like, and I was just like, where, where is this coming? It was it was awesome. I'm just trying to say, Pastor Aaron, that was awesome phrase, seriously awesome phrase. This like praise God, praise God, man, that was good. That was good. And then and then of course, I want to of course, thank Pastor Randall. He's he's the man in whites. You know, there's, there are stories, I'm sure, you know, like people in the Islam Muslim culture where they see a vision of a man in white. They might be seeing the vision of you, but you know, they know it's a vision of Jesus and they come to Christ, which is amazing, by the way. So with that being said, hey, I'm going to go right into the word. I know we have kids in here, so I'm going to make it like kid friendly, if that makes sense. At the same time, obviously I want to hit, hit up, you know, the, the meat of what we want to talk about, which is which is God's word. From South Korea to Texas: A Personal Journey of Identity So I want to introduce myself a little bit and hopefully that will help out with the message today. I was born in South Korea, not, not North Korea, and I immigrated to the United States at at two years old. All right, at two years old. You'd be surprised. Some people ask me that question in Texas, like, Hey, are you from the North or from the South? And I usually tell them it's the South, but two years old, born in, in, in South Korea, came here to the States and I lived in, in California, LA Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry. I know Texans don't like California, so I'm sorry. And then I, we moved out here about 14, now 14 years ago, went to the Dallas Seminary here and then my masters there. And it was great. But just to give you a background, at least of my family upbringing, we didn't grow up like rich. We as an immigrant family, maybe some of you may be able to relate to this. We grew up very poor, right? And so on the weekends, I didn't even go to church because on the weekends we actually had to go to a flea market or I think they call it swap meets. I'm not sure if that's what they call it here too. But where you would just basically sell like leftover things or whatever you had, you know. And so the things that we sold as a family were earrings, socks, because everyone needs socks and sunglasses. And so we would do that every Saturday and Sunday. We would wake up at like 4:00 in the morning on a Saturday morning, go to this place, open field. We will lay out all of our merchandise and then we would just stand there waiting for people and they'd be like earrings. We buy one, buy one, get one free. You know, like you'd be like, hey, buy 1 suck, get one free. Like, you know, we just, well, you know, like, you know, like try to make a deal and try to, you know, basically live, right. And so that's what we did. And because of that, we, I didn't grow up going to church. So going to church, like even for our kids right now, going to church, it's a blessing. I, I, I think raising our kids in the church is a blessing. But for me, I didn't start going to church until much later in my life because like I said, we were poor. Living Your God-Given Destiny, Not a Chicken's Life So with that being said, I wanted to start a story like for our kids, like I know, I know we had a bunch of kids in here. So we're going to start a story that will hopefully help us, like I said, into today's message, Once Upon a time, a farmer found an eagle egg, right? And you know, you guys know the eagle's egg egg is probably a little bit bigger than a regular chicken egg. But then the farmer didn't know how to raise an eagle. So what did the farmer do? The farmer grabbed the eagle egg and threw it into the chicken's house, the chicken coop, and said, hey, chickens raise this eagle. And as time went by, the the eagle's egg cracked open and the eagle came out. But the eagle hung out with a bunch of chickens and live with the chickens, ate with the chickens, talked with the chickens. And one day the eagle looked up into the sky and saw this big bird flying and soaring above. And the eagle looked at this chicken's friend and said, Hey, what bird is that up there? And the chicken said, oh, that's the, that's the majestic bird. That's a that's an eagle. You'll never be like them. You're just like a chicken like us. And then the eagle said, oh, you're right, You're right. And it started pecking on the ground looking for worms and continued on his life. All right, when I hear that story, and maybe you grew, you grew up hearing that story. I heard that story when I was a little kid. And the point of that story is telling us, or at least for us, making us understand that even though it's an eagle, because he grew the eagle, grew up with a bunch of other chickens and believed it was a chicken. It lived the life of a chicken. And I bring that because we're talking today about destiny. And I wonder if maybe for some of us in here, instead of looking at ourselves as an eagle like the way God wants you to be, we accept ourselves as being a chicken that isn't created in God's image. Rather, we are believing the lies of others, and we're believing in our current situation and living our lives like a chicken. That's a tragedy, right? The fact that that ego has the ability like the wings, the wingspan of an ego was just living on the ground, never to soar up in the skies. I wonder, and I say this to, to all of us right now, I wonder if that's the way we live our lives today. Do we live our lives today like a chicken where you're so afraid you're, you're believing the lies of maybe the enemy. You're believing the lies of the people that are around you that want to bring you down. You are looking at your current situation and circumstances, your finances are out of whack and you look at your life and you wonder, will I ever be able to live the life God wanted me to live? Moses's Struggle: Egyptian or Hebrew, Who Am I? There's a person in the Bible that actually lived that similar life that I want to talk about too. And that person's name is Moses. If you know, Moses is life, Moses actually breaks down. I would break his life down into three different parts. Part number one is that he was a stranger in the land. He was a shepherd and a savior. But in those forty years of breakdown of his life, 40 years he was in a palace, 40 years he was in a pasture, and in 40 years he was leading God's people. But let's take a step back. How did Moses become Moses, right? If you know the story and if you read it in Sunday school, right, you know that Moses was a baby. They put him into a little boat, you can call it, and just kind of push them down the, the river, right, the Nile, right. And if you understand Moses, he was kind of like similar to myself or maybe for some of us here that are feeling like immigrants in this world, in this land, I mean, where you look at your life and you wonder like, am I, am I really American or am I Korean? Like for me, if I can be kind of transparent and honest because I grew because I looked like this, but well, people, most people look at me, they look like, they say, oh, you look Mongolian usually, or like Vietnamese, which to most of you like, what's the difference? But anyway, but you know, like there's a difference. There's a difference, there's a difference. But you know, when you look at me, you're like, OK, you don't look, you know, you don't, you don't look like Pastor Randall. I'm like all, all, all like majestic and white, right? You don't look like Pastor George, you know, You know, right now with the, the, by the way, Pastor, Pastor George's voice. Hey, guys, his voice, man. He's got, he's got a voice, does he not? Man, Jesus, I I was like when I was up here, that's what I was talking to him about ever, ever doing communion. I was like, Pastor, how's it Your what? Your voice, It's like amazing. Your voice. He's all like, he's like, oh, thank you. Oh, thank you, Pastor Shay. Oh, very kind of you. And I was like, yeah, your voice is amazing, right? It's like, it's my mother's voice. Mother, it was great. I mean, OK, but if you look at if you look at our, if you look at us, we look very different. And living in America, you're like, are you American or are you Korean? Oh, no, you're Korean American. Because think about this, guys. I don't know if you understand this, but if I went to Korea right now, if I flew to Korea right now, they will look at me. And when they hear me talk, they'll be like, you know, you know Korean. You know, you, you, no, you American, right? And I'll be like, oh, I come here. What do they say? You know, you not know American, right? You, you are Korean, right? And I'll be like, oh, yes, yes, I am a Korean. Korean is who I am. But there's this confusion of who my, what my identity is. Do you, do you follow me where like you're not one or the other and you're kind of in this like middle place. It's like, I don't know, purgatory, but you're kind of in this like middle place where you don't know where you are. And that's how I felt growing up. And that's how even Moses, I believe, felt the same thing. Because if you look in most, if you look in the Bible, in Hebrews Chapter 11, it talks about Moses's upbringing and his way of of living and growing up. And he starts to realize there's a moment in Moses's life where he realizes he's not an Egyptian. Hebrews Chapter 11 verses 23 through 26 as this says this by faith Moses when he was born was hidden for three months by his parents because they saw he was a beautiful child and they were not afraid of the King's edict. Verse 24 By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to endure I'll treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the temporary pleasures of sin, considering the reproach of Christ's greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. Do you understand what Moses is doing? He's realizing that even though he lives in the land of Egypt, he is not an Egyptian. He's a Hebrew. If anything, he understands that he is a man of God. Like God has placed him, God has created him. God has chosen him to be Moses. But he has this moment of like, I'm confused. Like, wait a minute, My whole entire life I thought I was an Egyptian. I lived with the Egyptian people. I lived in Pharaoh's courts. I lived in his palace. I was educated by the people. But then now he's realizing, who am I? Who am I and when he realizes in his heart of hearts that you know what, I am not an Egyptian, rather I am a Hebrew. And he says I'm going to choose rather verse 2025, choosing rather to endure I'll treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the temporary pleasures of sin because my brothers and sisters, that's the same thing that we are going through, is it not? Living in the World, Not of It: Moses's Sin and Shame And a big picture. We live in this world, but we are not of this world, right? We don't, we don't live our lives according to what the world wants from us. We live our lives according to what God wants from us. And until you know who you are in Christ, right, until you know who you are in God, then you're going to be completely lost because you're going to be blown according to the winds. The winds are going to take you this way. You're going to believe in this one day. You're going to believe in that. There are there are things in this world, guys, that doesn't make sense to me, right? Where people are saying like, yeah, I can, I can be a cat. That was this great video, by the way. I think it was on like TikTok where this woman was acting like a dog. She's like she's dog and a real dog came up and started biting her. I was like, I was like, man, I wonder who's going to win? I think the real dog is going to win. But we live in a world where people are saying I can identify with whatever animal that I want to animal, but because, because what is that? That's the world's idea of their truth. But what is God's truth for you? God's truth for us is that we're made in God's image. And because we're made in God's image, we represent God in this world. And again, we live in this world. We but we are not of this world. We don't represent, we don't belong to this world. We belong to our God and Moses is realizing that. And the moment that Moses realizes that he starts to want to change his life, saying that, you know what, because I want to live according to what God created me. I'm going to even go through according to the Bible says I'm going to go through I'll treatments. Who wants to do that though, right? If you think about it, who wants to do that? Who wants to be? Who wants to suffer? Only reason why you would suffer is because there's a greater purpose. And for Moses, his purpose was that he's starting to realize that, hey, no longer is it that I'm just an Egyptian or I'm living in Pharaoh's courts, or I'm a Pharaoh's daughter. None of that matters. The only thing that mattered to me is that I am God's child. And but the thing that I want you to understand about Moses is that he has a moment, even though he knows who he is. And maybe for some of us, we can relate to this. He knows who he is, but he makes a mistake. He sins. And I don't know about you guys in here, but I've sinned, right? And the moment we sinned, what happens? That relationship with God breaks. We start to lose our identity. We might start to believe in the lie and we start to wonder like, hey, who am I now? I believe that I'm a child of God, but now that I made that sin in my life, now because of that sin, I'm being drifting away from maybe who I really am. Help me. Let me help you understand Moses. If you guys think of Moses, you're thinking like he's a great man of God. He's a leader, but he's also a murderer. He murdered, he'll kill. He killed somebody. Read with me, guys. Exodus chapter 2, verses 11 through 15. Exodus chapter 2, verse 11 through 15. That says this. And I promise it's going to be for the kids. It's going to be short. I'm almost there. Promise you I'm almost there. But then usually pastors say that and then it takes another 30 minutes. You never say that. Yeah, I shouldn't say that either. I don't know why. You know. All right, guys, All right. But yes, kids, I promise you, it's almost done. I know my some of my kids like they're looking at like phones already, probably tablets. OK, there we go. Exodus chapter 2, verses 11 through 15. It says this. Now it came about in those days when Moses had grown up, that he went out to his fellow Hebrews and looked at their hard laborers and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his fellow Hebrew. So we took this way, and I'm sorry, he looked this way, this way and that. And when he saw that there was no one around, he struck and killed the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand. Now he went out the next day and behold, 2 Hebrews were fighting with each other and he saw, and I'm sorry, he said to the offender, why are you striking your companion? But he said, Who made you a ruler and judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian? Dun Dun Dun right then Moses was afraid and said surely the matter has become known. Verse 14 or 15 Then Pharaoh heard about this matter. He tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from the presence of Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian and he sat down by well, man, when I read Moses story, I feel like that's the story for all, at least for me too. And for all of us, like you know who you are in Christ or you know you're, you're a child of God. But we do this thing called sin and we mess up. We all mess up every one of us. We mess. Even if you wanted to try at your hardest not to mess up, we still mess up. And that's what Moses did. And because of that sin that Moses did, he it took him so far. It took him so far away that he forgot who he was. Moses's Flight from Sin and God's Refining Process I don't know about you guys in here, but has that ever happened to you? Where you know who you are in God. And I mean you, you have a relationship with God and everything's great. You're born again, you're, you're baby dedicated when you're a child and you had the church helping you out growing up as a, as a, as a child of God and you're living your life great. And then somehow you got into, I don't know, like a, a bad group of friends and the friends made you do something that you didn't want to do. And then it LED you into a dark, dark, dark, dark area of your life. And then you looked around and you're like, what am I doing here? How did I get here? Why am I addicted now? And in that moment, what are you thinking? Are you thinking at that moment? Are you thinking like, I need to go back to God? No, at that moment, because of your shame and your guilt, you want to run away from God. Because of your shame and guilt, you feel like you're not even worthy to pray to God. Because of your shame and guilt, you just want to wallow in that shame and guilt and you want to stay there. And you're hoping, maybe hoping that somehow something miraculous will happen in your life. That's Moses. Moses murdered an Egyptian. He sees what happened, right? He did it purposely because he looked around. He looked to and fro. He looked around to see no one's watching him. He knew that he was about to do this sin, right? Maybe like most of us in here, right? Like when the moment, you know, you want to do sin, what do you do? You'd like look around like, OK, no one's seeing me. OK, let me do this, right? I mean, like, can I be a little more a little more personal? Like, isn't that how kids kids do things? Like little kids, like little kids, they know they want to punch their brother or sister. They're like, oh, where's Mom and Dad? They don't see me. Oh, yeah. All right. And then you start hearing crying. And then they should run away, right? That's Moses. That's exactly what Moses did. I'm obviously not doing this, but something more, more, you know, more, more heavier. Even though Moses knows who he is, even though he knows the way he was born and raised in this place that he doesn't even recognize, he realizes that now I'm completely lost. He's completely lost the point where he, he can't go back to God. I can't do anything. And so there's another again, 40 years of Moses life where he becomes a shepherd. He's taking care of sheep and he's thinking you're a sheep. I'm, I'm pretty sure God is putting him through this life where he's realizing, Oh man, I was great. I was doing great things here with Pharaoh. I was learning great things. I was, I was very educated. But now I'm just a, a shepherd. I'm going to just be taking care of a bunch of sheep that don't even listen to me, right? They're all like these like furry balls that are around me. And then he has a, he has a cane that like, like hooks them and the brings them back in and they're all running away in different, different, different, like directions and everything. And that's Moses's life. And for 40 years he does that. And at the end of his 40 years, God calls him. And the part that you have to understand is that when God calls and Moses is like God, like, do you even know who I am? Do you not know that I went through I, I, I did the worst thing I possibly can. I murder somebody. And as I murdered that, that Egyptian, you're going to allow me to like be used by you like I've got sin in my life that I haven't been confessed. I ran away from the sin that I had thinking that somehow God, you're going to be like, like forgetting some of my past and and you're going to allow me to do this thing that that I think, yeah, I just want to run away from God and just run away and do my own life and and God's like, no, no, no, you never want to run away from me. Beyond Earthly Nations: Embracing Our Identity as Citizens of Heaven And what God was doing. If you ever look at the new, the studies of Numbers, what God is doing with Moses at 40 represents if you look in Scripture of refine, refinement of testing, meaning that Moses, his whole life is a life of tests. He got tested in the very early stages. He got tested as a, as a, as a shepherd. And in the last 40 years, he's going to be tested as a man that's going to be leading the people of Israel out. And for all of us right now, my question to us is we think about like for me, especially as I was growing up in, in America, and even right now too, if I think about my, my identity of who I am, if I, if I rested upon a nation like Korea or a nation like America, I get lost. I get lost of who I am because I don't know who I am. Like I said, I'm kind of in the middle, right? And like in America, when you look at me, you don't think I'm American. You'll think I'm like, Chinese probably, right? They're all the same. Chinese, Asian, Korean, Vietnamese, we're all the same, right? But if I go to Korea, like I said, people look at me and be like, you look Korean, but you don't act like it, nor do you sound like it. And So what I'm trying to say is that I don't base who I am upon a nation, but I base my base who I am upon where I'm from. And when I say where I'm from, I don't mean from my mom, where I'm from is I'm from heaven. And all of us as citizens of heaven, we're all from heaven. But you have to operate your mind that way that you are not from America, you're not from Mexico, in here. Mexico. We're not from Spain, right? We're not from Plano, but we're from heaven because our citizenship is not an American citizenship that matters. It's our citizenship is from heaven. So if we operate our mind from a child of God, guys, what can we not do in this world? If our Heavenly Father has chosen us, picked us out from this world to live our lives apart from the way the world is, then what can we not do? And I wonder sometimes we, we, we go through this process, right? For some of us, we are limiting ourselves. We are limiting the way we are because we think of ourselves as Americans or we think of ourselves as Koreans or Spanish or, I don't know, whatever place you want to choose. And that's the mindset that the world wants to give to us. But what God wants us to understand is that we are from God. But that's the problem that we will never reach this destiny that God wants us to because we're stuck. And I don't know. I don't know the the best way I can one last, one last story for the kids and then we're going to wrap this up and we're going to go right. Breaking Free from Lies: Discovering Your Identity in Christ But the best way I can describe it is by this movie right here. Oh, there we go. There we go for a second there. I was like, OK, if you ever watch this movie, Tangled, I, I, I love this. I actually really love this movie. There's times where I just listen to the song in this movie. But if you don't know the story is, is Rapunzel like, it's like a children's like bedtime story, Like she has long hair. She's like stuck up in the castle, right? And then she can like lay down your hair. Rapunzel, Rapunzel lay down your hair. But if you watch the Disney version of this, you, you, you, you, you understand the backgrounds to the story is that she's inside this castle because she was kidnapped when she was a little baby by an evil mother, a woman, evil woman, right? And she kidnapped her from the king and queen, right, and locked her up in the castle. And what the the lady kept on saying to her is that you're too weak as a female to be out there in this world because the world is dangerous and you will always need me. And that's what the lady said to her. And so she grew up in this castle or in this tower by herself, stuck in there. But she keeps on looking out thinking like, Bam, one day, if I can be free, I can, I can live my life and, and do the things that I want to do and, and experience life. But but the mother keeps on saying like, no, no, no, no, no Rapunzel, no, no, you cannot because you're too weak. The world is dangerous and you will always need me. But the moment in this movie she realizes she's the lost Princess. What happens? Her identity is complete, completely changes. She knows who she is now. She knows that she's from royalty, she knows that she's from the king and queen, and she knows that she has authority to break free from this woman that was keeping her trapped. And for all of us today, I wonder if you're asking this question like, I am not good enough. I'm just an addict. I'm just a failure. My past is my trap and I cannot let go of my past. But I want you to understand that God is saying in first John, I'm sorry, John chapter one verse 12, you are a child of God. Second Corinthians 517 you are a new creation. Ephesians chapter 1 verses four and five, you're a you're chosen and loved and Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10 you are God's workmanship made in Christ Jesus. And if you understand that you no longer operate from fear, shame or failure. Rather, you're operating from the position of understanding of who you are in Christ because you shouldn't be operating your lives according to the opinions of others around you even, but you should be operating according to what God sees you. Amen, Amen. A Prayer for Living in God's Image and Freedom Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much. God, I thank you so much, God, for you who you are in our lives. And God, I pray that as we just soak in the God your word, soak in God, what Moses did. God, I pray for all of us to understand God that we are made in your image and God, you desire for us to live a life free from sin, free from the bondage God, free from the the words that that that that others may be trying to pull us down with. God, may we clearly hear from you. God, may we clearly hear from your voice in our life on a daily basis, every morning, every evening, God, every day, every moment that we have with you, God, that we can hear you on a regular basis so that God, we can live life that you have called us to live. And so God, we thank you so much. God, we love you. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.