HS 4 - Changing Your Worldview

“Changing Your Worldview”

Acts 14:8-20

Review

1. They want to Stone me…
• Is the HS our senior partner?
2. Who is the HS
• HS is a person
• Personhood helps us stay away from just wanting power; but rather this person using us
3. Trinity – mystery of this Father Son & Holy Spirit
• Personhood – trinity in relationship
• HS is the sanctifier (God/creator; Jesus/Redeemer)
• Trinity is key to our doctrine
• Apostles Creed – triad form
4. Changing Your Worldview
• Why change?  

Introduction

• Worldview – what is it

“A way of interpreting human experience in this world”

• Worldview is buried in the subconscious mind.  It is pervasive like the water a fish swims in, and thus does not often intrude on our awareness.  Our worldview has developed by osmosis through our family, language, and social environment.  Rarely is it consciously or intentionally developed.  This unconscious element makes it a very difficult element to change.  Thus it causes great distress when it is challenged. 

• Icebergs aren’t just for sinking ships
• Form – what we can see (visible)
• Meaning – just below the surface (not visible) hurting but don’t know it
• Worldview – deep below (very hard to change or get at) decisions we make without thinking. 

Basic ideas of the way Worldview helps us see and experience reality

1. By being trained in our culture, we see as others in our culture see
2. Indoctrinated long before we seek to make any of our own choices in perceiving what is real
3. Seeing is interpreting and not simply observing.
• We never just see what is there; rather we shape our perceptions of reality by our ideas about reality.
4. Seeing is selective
• We almost always accept what confirms what we have been taught
• We usually reject what doesn’t fit what we have been taught
5. What our culture teaches us becomes a set of filters or lenses through which we see and experience reality

Lenses of our Worldview

• All that happens

Worldview helps us to see clearly: but is also blinding

• We see more through the eyes of many
• Our culture
• Blinded by our culture
• We only know what our culture knows

Illustration of “holding hands”

Passage

Vs 8 - In Lystra there sat a man crippled in his feet, who was lame from birth and had never walked

Some important facts to ponder

• Where is this – Way North, Gentile territory
• Man crippled from birth – never walked

Vs 9 - He listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him; saw that he had faith to be healed

Another key Holy Spirit verse

• What do you see…
• He was listening to Paul… speaking
• Paul wasn’t talking about the weather
• Paul looked – eyes met
• Paul saw or heard – Gr (perceiving by sight/prophesying)

Vs 10 - and called out, “Stand up on your feet!” At that, the man jumped up and began to walk.

When Paul hears the Spirit he responds now

• No gathering for prayer etc.
• Boom… Healed
• How’s your Worldview doing – look at Lystra’s…

Vs 11-13 - When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, “The gods have come down to us in human form!” 12 Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker. 13 The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought bulls and wreaths to the city gates because he and the crowd wanted to offer sacrifices to them.

Probably not the reaction Paul & Barnabas were expecting.

• What is the temptation here… soak this up
• Look how Paul & Barnabas respond

Vs 14-15 - But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting: 15 “Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them.

It leaves no doubt where the power was at

• Human like you
• Bringing you… Gr – euaggelízō

So what can happen when our worldview is challenged?

• What did we say - Thus it causes great distress when it is challenged. 

Vs 19 - Then some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowd over. They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead.

I’d call this distress…

• What did we say the first week? – Stone me…

But people with the same worldview continue on

Vs 20 - But after the disciples had gathered around him, he got up and went back into the city

There is a profound correlation between what we believe to be real and what we experience.

At the same time our experience limits our worldview and what we understand.

Many have trouble accepting as real what is past the reach of their experience.