Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
0.09UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.08UNLIKELY
Fear
0.12UNLIKELY
Joy
0.59LIKELY
Sadness
0.5UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.55LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.59LIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.59LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.95LIKELY
Extraversion
0.36UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.81LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.66LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
God loves you the way you are, but He loves you way too much to let you stay that way, and so His goal is to make you like Christ.
How does He do that?
Does he just zap you and all of a sudden you think, feel and act like Jesus?
No… unfortunately.
That would be too easy.
Notice that it’s a process.
It doesn’t happen all at once.
Our growth to become more like Jesus is a slow process.
The message says it like this…
A classic chapter in the bible on growth is Ephesians 4 and it gives us 6 elements that the Holy Spirit uses to help us to grow.
These are 6 characteristics of change.
Before we look at these elements of change, let me ask
Why is it so difficult to change?
1.
Because I’ve had them for a while
You didn’t become as messed up as you are over night… it took a while to collect all the bad habits and hangups that you are struggling with today.
Many of the patterns of behavior we have as adults began in childhood.
Those patterns may have helped you cope with things emotionally for a while… sometimes they are actually survival tactics.
But as an adult, they become self defeating.
As damaging as they are, you have become used to them and they actually feel like they are part of who you are.
2. Because I identify with them
We often confuse our identity with our weaknesses.
We will say stuff like… I am a workaholic… I’m passive aggressive… I get nervous when I get on a plane… I’m an over eater… I’m shy… when you say things like that, guess what happens?
Those things do…
Then in the back of your mind, you wonder if you change, will you still be you?
3.
Because every defect has a payoff
You may not realize it, but every defect or every bad habit has some type of payoff.
Every behavior has some type of payoff… if it didn’t, you wouldn’t do it.
If sin were not fun, no one would sin.
Write this down...
Whatever is being repeated is being rewarded
Whatever behavior whether it’s self defeating or not has a reward to you from it… somewhere.
If there is no reward, you would not keep doing what you are doing, so there is a pay off… even through it’s temporary and causes more long term pain.
Say it’s time for your children to come eat.
They don’t come, so you yell at them to get them to the table.
What happens.
The kids come to the table.
So you as a parent learn that yelling works and the kids learn that yelling works.
so guess what… the family yells all the time.
Sometimes it’s the negative self defeating behavior that’s masking the pain.
We hold on to it because it gives us an excuse to fail.
We actually set ourself up for failure because it compensates for our shame.
You actually feel better because you think you deserve to fail.
Sometimes we use our defective traits to manipulate people.
Sometimes it helps us get more attention.
There are lots of different motivations for negative and self-defeating behavior in our lives that cause us to keep doing it even though we know it's self-defeating.
It could be our identity.
It can be something that we think that I can't do without.
4. Because Satan doesn’t want me to change
Satan doesn’t want you to follow the Lord.
He doesn’t want you to improve your character and become more and more like Jesus.
He wants you to fail.... to just float along.
Satan is constantly fighting you as you try to grow.
He will tell you things like… You will never change… You might as well not even try… you have been this way all your life and you can’t change… No matter what you try, you will not change… it wont’ work.
Those statements are coming from the one who hates you and wants to destroy your life.
Satan will also use fear. he will get you to believe that you are best to stay in the rut you are in because it’s secure… comfortable and safe.
He will make you believe that if you rock the boat, people will leave your life.
These are some of the reasons that we don’t change.
I just touched on them because I want to get into how we can make the changes God wants us to make.
What does it take for real change to happen?
6 Characteristics of Change
1. Real change begins with new thinking
If you want to change your behavior, you don’t focus on your actions, you focus on your thoughts.
You focus on your thinking ebcause you have to change your thinking.
When you change your thinking, it will change your feelings and that will change your actions.
The battle is won or lost in your mind.
The Holy Spirit will do a spiritual renewing of your mind… of your thoughts and actions.
This is why it’s vital to spend daily time with the Lord in worship, prayer, Bible reading and study.
Look at the CEV
This is not something that God is asking you to do on your own.
You need the Holy Spirit in your life to make these changes for you.
What we call the fruit of the spirit comes from the Holy Spirit working in your life.
These are the fruit of the spirit, but it’s not something we can do on our own.
You cannot transform yourself to be like Jesus in your own power.
To really change you have to stop thinking like the rest of the world.
That’s the way the world wants you and I to think and act and it’s opposite of who the world wants you to think and act.
God wants us to be different in the way we treat each other, handle money, work, morality…
Another verse that talks about this…
If you want to be transformed, you cannot be conformed.
If you want to be transformed by God into a new person, then you cannot be conformed to the way our culture wants you to be.
And we cannot do this on our own.
Paul said,
Do you get the point?
we have to allow God to change us… to change the way we think.
How, that’s the next point.
2. Real change requires learning the truth
Jesus asked his father to teach us the truth which is His word… the bible.
The secret to personal change is not will power, it’s not pill power, it’s not resolutions.
The secret to personal change in the difficult areas of my life is knowing and applying the truth which is the Word of God.
The Bible is the Word of God.
Here is the goal… if we spend time with the Lord in his word… in prayer and in worship...
Why is it so necessary to know the truth.
We just said that every behavior is rewarded in some way.
Those behaviors are based on a lie.
Behind every self defeating behavior I fight in my life, there is a lie that I am believing.
I am basing my actions on something that’s just not true.
Paul said,
The more we get to know Jesus, the more truth we will have in our life.
The fact that Jesus was murdered and then rose from the dead proves beyond any doubt that he can be trusted.
If you trust in God’s word it will help you in at least 4 ways.
The Bible shows us the path to take
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9