The Power to Change: Week 3

Good morning. I'm so glad you're here today. My name is James,

and I want everyone to grab out your phone. Let's grab out our phones

right now, Okay, And as we grab out our phone, I'm the

count of three. Everybody yell out their code. But grab out your phone

and jump onto your alarms. Okay, jump onto your alarms and do me

a big favor and put like a reoccurring alarm for two oh six in the

afternoons for as many days that you don't have important meetings during that time.

And two oh six represents John fourteen six where says jesuss I am the Way

of the Truth and the life and John fourteen six, So two o'clock is

the fourteenth hour of the day. And that was a request from Jose and

Patricia Gomez and for the church to pray for the launching of the Spanish ministry

every day at that point. So the last couple of weeks, that alarm

goes off, even like yeah day my wife and I were driving around Laren

went off in a vehicle and we just prayed while we were driving. Now,

let me tell you a little bit if you update on that that ministry

is moving a little quicker than we thought it would. We're looking at a

big launch day several months from now. But the last couple of weeks we've

had about two rows filled up, and you know, Andrew and I are

preaching and they just smile at us and say see and see see, and

they don't know a word that we're saying, but it's very encouraging smiles.

But since he's already picked up five or six families, which that was really

quick considering he's been in town for five or six weeks, they had to

actually start moving into the gathering place this morning to kind of have small group

a little bit of worship. So because we don't want those people to lose,

we want to move forward. And so I just even before service,

I picked my head in the air and there was twenty Spanish speaking people in

there this morning. That's like months ahead of time. Amen. So those

of get in the front couple of rows. If you guys could smile and

say see see, that's so encouraging. So that would be great if I

could have some of that during the sermon today. But we're seeing God at

work. And then also we've got to report about a week or two ago

and you know, in our goal here to become a better church, a

church that is the hands of feed of Christ. But as we become a

better church, there's fruit to that, and a lot of the fruit is

just what we're seeing with the neighborhood market, new families coming. But I

was surprised to see that for the same time period of late August July,

in first part of September, that those numbers of those who were on the

campus throughout the weekend from Thursday to Sunday was equal to our a little bit

more than where we were at pre pandemic. So there's a full recovery in

our church. And every week, I mean multiple families who were guessed,

and I'm just seeing God at work and it's just really cool. You know,

it's spread out all right now over five services, but we're seeing God

doing ay for So thank you for your faithfulness, but also thank you for

all the guests you've been inviting and it's just been an incredible, unique,

surprising experience. So hey, we're going to jump into a very convicting scripture

this morning, and so we will all be challenged today. We will all

have to make some decisions today in our life. So let's pray and ask

God to prepare our hearts. You're ready, Let's do it. God,

We call on you right now in the mighty name of Jesus. We thank

you for the work you've been doing. We thank you for the goodness of

your mercy and your grace in our life. And so today, right now,

we pray in the Mighty Name of Jesus, that you will speak to

us through this message today in Jesus name Amen. Growing up, whenever you

mentioned Papal Roberts, it was one of those things we weren't allowed to talk

to or about in our family, even though he lived in the same town.

Talking about and asking questions about Papal Robbers was taboo and our family.

But I was one of those annoying kids who whatever the question you're not supposed

to ask, was always a question I ask. And if you've been out

to lunch with me, you know I do the same thing today. And

so I would ask over the years questions about Papal Roberts about once a year,

and I would always get a one liner, one sentence, one phrase

that wrapped up his life. I would say, Hey, tell me a

little bit about Papa Robbers, and it would be like, well, you

know he was a drunk. The next year, tell me a little bit

about Papal Robberts. Well, you know he cheated on your grandma. Another

year later he coming a little bit about my Papal Robbers. Well, you

know he abandoned his family and cheated on your grandma, and he's a drunk

all right. Year later, you know, he went into ministry and embarrass

our family by having an affair and going back to the bottle. So here's

this guy who I would ask about, and it was always one liners,

one liners, one liners, one liners. And here's the thing. He

lived for seven decades, he worked and retired from AK still he had a

ton of friends, a lot of people who really really liked him. But

when whenever I asked about his life, it was always summary of one sentence,

one phrase. And let me tell you something. It seems as though,

if you've ever noticed it, that those who really really mess up their

lives, people will summarize their whole life with a one liner, a sentence.

And as I got older, you know I understood that. You know,

I got to know him right before he passed away, and so I

wanted to know more about him. But as I thought so much about him

the last couple of years, this thought keeps reoccurring in my mind. No

one wants to mess their life up. I don't know anyone who wants to

screw their life up. I've never went to someone and said, hey,

tell me your five year plan and they're like, oh, check this out.

You know how I have a beautiful life, a beautiful home, a

beautiful family. Here's my five year plan is to blow it all up.

Man, I am just gonna burn every bridge in my life. Awesome,

just watch it. It's gonna be spectacular. No one has ever came to

me and said, my five year plan is to blow my whole life up.

And here's the thing. But we still see people who do it.

They blow their whole lives if they messed their whole lives up. And here's

what we do as a society. We take the months, the years,

maybe the weeks, and we summarize their whole life of one liners. You

know, haven't heard about this guy for a while. Well, you know,

his sex addiction was out of control, so his life left him.

One sentence, What about her? I haven't seen her for a while,

if she went back on drugs and she lost her family. One sentence,

Hey, how such and such? Well, you know, he battled with

his way and he died at age fifty have a heart attack, one sentence,

And often what takes decades and a lot of seasons. We summarize people's

lives who've messed up their lives like it was just one bad day. But

when you think about it, I mean, I really don't know anybody who

mess up their whole life and one day that's extremely rare. Here's how people

mess their lives up. Check this out. People mess their lives up.

It's one bad decision, one wrong step, one harmful habit, one sin,

one unwind decision, and again another bad step at a time. And

I'm gonna show you an example today through scripture where we see this. Let

me give you some clothes. One he had beautiful hair, absolutely beautiful hair,

and then he didn't have any hair. And then he had a lot

of strength, and then he didn't have any strength. He also had eyeballs,

and then he didn't have any eyeballs. Anybody knew who I'm talking about

yet, Samson? Yeah, And he also had the anointing of the hand,

and the presence of God upon him, and God anointing his life,

and then one day the presence of God and the anointing of God left his

life. We're looking at a man who has so much potential, who had

it all, but messed up his life royally. And here's what I want

you to understand. He didn't do it all at once. He did it

one day. He did it with one step, one harmful habit, once

at a time. A matter of fact, I think if we look at

how Samson messed his life up, we can say that Samson messed his life

up in fifty six thousand small steps. Fifty six thousand small steps. Now

where do I get that from? All right? Check out the scripture.

It says one day Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute.

All right, let's look at this map here. Okay. First of all,

Samson was hanging out in Zora, Zora, Israelite country on account of

three let's all see Israelite country one two three, Israelite country. And then

he traveled all the way down to Gaza. On the three everybody say,

Philistine country, one two three, Philistine country. So one day he traveled

twenty five miles, fifty six thousand steps into the wrong character just to hook

up with the process. Here's he went back into his enemy character where he

happened to be public enemy number one. Okay, let me help you understand

something. For twenty years, Sampson has been living as a leader, as

a judge, a man who was anointed by God, leading Israel, and

then all of a sudden, after twenty years, this guy goes all the

way back to enemy territory, back to the scene of the crime. Now,

let me give you a little bit more backstory. So remember this is

all didn't happen in one day. Something happened during this twenty years of being

a leader. There's twenty years of being anointed by God. He start making

some wrong steps, He's started making some wrong decisions. Sin entered into his

life, and one day he said, you know what, I'm gonna go

all the way back to it the place that everyone wants to kill me,

and I think I'll go hang out for prostitute there. All right, So

that takes a little while, Right, that's not just one day, that's

many steps. That's fifty six thousand steps. Let's go back to tex again.

What was it say? One day Samson went to Goza where he saw

a prostitute. He went in to spend the night with her. The people

of Goza were told, hey, Samson's here, More like, can't you

believe this person? He's crazy. He's back. So they surrounded the place

and laying away for him all night at the city gate. And they made

no move during the night, saying, hey, you know what, in

the morning, we're gonna kill him. Okay, So not only did he

go here is solicited a prostitute, but he went back to a place where

everybody wanted to kill him. So let me give you a little background.

Why is everybody want to kill him? All right? So, twenty some

years ago Samson decided that he wanted a Philistine wife, even though he was

Israelite, and God during this time said no, I want all the Israelites

together. We're gonna be set apart. This wasn't a racist thing, This

was a theological thing. This was a religious thing. So people could prose

light in from any culture. But he wanted those of the Jewish faith to

marry those in the Jewish faith. But Sampson insisted in a lent to a

tragedy. So he goes all the way to this place. He falls in

love with this woman who's a philistine, and right before their big wedding,

Samson decides to tell the community a riddle and said, hey, if you

can't figure out my riddle, then I get like thirty garments of clothing,

which was like the most expensive thing you could own back then. Okay,

and so a lot of stuff went on. They got into a big fight

about it, and they got into a let's just say a scuffle was Sampson

and Sampson killed thirty men from this community. The people were not cool with

that. Samson went into hiding. After Samson feels like everything's cool down,

he goes all the way back to this community and he's thinking, I'm gonna

go get back and get my wife. But his father in law during his

time, thought surely Samson would not be crazy enough to come back to this

community, so he married off Sampson's wife. Samson comes back, He's like,

where's my wife. She's married to this dude. Sampson loses his mind.

He goes out into the crops burns all of their crops, which,

by the way, that's like the worst thing you could do to an agrarian

culture. You have destroyed their year. So he burns up all their crops,

which makes the city extremely angry. So then they go back said,

hell, you burn our crops, we'll kill your father in law and your

wife. So they killed his wife and his father in law. Samson again

was not very happy. So Samson goes back and he attacks the Philistines and

starts this war, and he uses as his weapon a jawbone of a donkey

as a choice weapon. And at the end of it, the day one

thousand Philistines are killed, one thousand Philistines are dead. Okay, so then

we go all the way back. Samson comes back to Israel. He's a

champion, he sought after, he's a judge, he's a man of respect.

But something happened in his heart over a certain period of time that made

him think it was okay to go all the way back to Gettemy territory and

sleep with a prostitute. Well, they run him away, but then he

comes back again. At this time he falls in love of a woman named

the Lilah, and the Lilah is being used by the Philistines and say,

hey, how can we destroy Sampson because he has a supernatural strength, and

so he keeps trickinger and tricker, and finally he gets annoyed by her.

The text actually says, from all the nagging, and finally he says to

her, hear's how all of my strengths will disappear. Let's look at this

scripture together. Here he goes. So he told her everything. He says.

No razor has ever been used on my head, he says, because

I've been a nazarideakid to God from my mother's womb. If my head were

shaved, my strength would leave me and I would become weak as any other

man. All right, let's stop here, because I'm gonna make sure we

got the theology correct. Here. The anointing, the strength, the power

of God was not in his hair. Does that make sense? His hair

doesn't matter. The anointing, that power and the strength of God came from

a vow that his family made with God when he was born to dedicate Sampson

to the Lord. And because his life was dedicated to the Lord, the

anointing of God, the hand of God, the power of God was upon

his life. And so he takes all this power, all this privilege from

God, and he throws it all away. And so let's continue in this

text. When Delilah saw that he had told her everything, she sent word

to the rulers of the Philistines. Come back once more. He has told

me everything. This she called Sampson. The Philistines are upon you. So

he awoke from his sleep and thought, you know, I'll go out before

like I have before, and I'll shake myself free, because he'd done this

many times. But he did not know that the Lord had left him.

What's that mean? He broke his vow. It wasn't about the hair,

it was about the vow. He broke the vow, so the Lord's presence,

the Lord's hand was off of him. And what happened to Philistines seized

him. They gouged out his eyes, They took him to Gaza, and

then binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to a grinding grain in

the prison. So you gotta ask the question, all right, how does

someone so talented, so bless, so anointed by God, someone whose life

has went off for decades, decades with the hand of God upon him,

How does someone who's been walking into Lord's presence for decades mess their life up,

y'all. As a pastor, I've asked this question plenty of times because

I've seen this happen plenty of times. And let me tell you something.

People don't mess their life up in one day. They mess their life up

one secret sin, one secret habit, one day, and one step at

a time. And it happens far too often, far too often, many

of us who are following Christ. I see us blow our life up.

But it's a bunch of little steps that no one sees for many years.

Now here's a good news today. The good news is it doesn't have to

be that way. We're in this series called a Power to Change. We're

want to know more about a great Cruschell wrote a book on it. And

here's what I want to do. I want to review the first couple of

weeks, and then today we're gonna add a principle. So let's hope about

the first couple of principles we learn, and today we're gonna add one principle.

So very first week we learned this real and lasting change isn't behavioral modification,

but it's spiritual transformation. In other words, this church is not a

club. We're not trying to get you to act and look like Christians.

We're not trying to get you just to clean your life up. No,

we want the Holy Spirit to lead you, the Holy Spirit to guide you,

the Holy Spirit to convict you. We want to see spiritual change.

Why because we learned this as well the first week. If we just change

our behavior without changing our heart, the behavior tends to come back. You're

just being good as long as everybody's looking and watching. We're talking about having

your heart changed to honor and bring God. So in order to have that

true change happen, you have to have your spiritual Why example, hey,

you want to get your finances in control. You don't want to get your

finances in control just so you could show off, you know. I.

You know those people who all of a sudden, they they build their finances

up and they set their life up really well. Then all of sudden they

they're just all over Facebook. They got their yacht and they're like a ha,

all of you who picked on me in school, all of you who

made fun of me, look at me. Now, that's not the point.

That's nothing. There's this guy that I went to school with and he

was a big time geek. I'm talking geek, geek, geek. And

by the way, to see you guys know, geeks end up being the

ones who are successful order of life. And he was a big time geek

and down almost every week on Facebook there's a picture of him on boasts that

costs more than my house. And and obviously there's a woman that he's married

that obviously did not know him in high school. And you know what I'm

talking about, And and I look at his life all the time, like

you go, boy, I didn't pick on him, so I'm happy for

him. I'm like, yeah, so he got picked on a lot,

and I'm like, yeah, baby, yeah, yeah, this is awesome.

But that's not the point of making money. The point of making money

is not the show all or the point of making money. It's not just

so you can do all kinds of fun things. The point of being good

with your money and so that you could bring glory and honor to God,

so that when the churches says, hey, we want to take a step

of faith and we want to redo the gathering place so that we could Sunday.

We're a Spanish ministry, and today we got twenty people in there.

It's because you were good and faithful with your money and when we ask you

to help, you gave some money. We're able to do that. Whenever

we decided that we wanted to start blessing those in our community by open up

a neighborhood market and we need to redo that places everything up. We didn't

have to go do a campaign. You know why because those of you who

have been faithful of your money and honor God for money gave to it and

we were able to do that. Ministry immediately, see, the reason we

want to do these things is to bring glory and honor to God, not

to bless ourselves. And so when we find our spiritual why, you have

your spiritual why also in God's hand is upon you and God blesses it.

And so we learned about that the first week. Last week, Andrew talked

about the spiritual what. So it was basically this, based on who you

want to become, what's one habit you want to start, What's one habit

you want to start? And so today I'm doing the opposite, based on

who you want to become, based on a better question, based on who

God wants you to become. What's one habit or sin you need to break

based on who God wants you to become. What's one habit one sin you

need a break up. So here's what we're gonna do. Those of you

up there and control the clock. Stop the clock. This is I'm taking

my response time and I'm gonna put it in the middle. So this is

not kind of getting sermon time. Okay, ready, this is response time.

Get out some paper, get out your phone. This is this isn't

everybody all person event. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna go into

a holy moment and God is going to speak to you here in the next

moment or two. And here's what I want you to do. I just

want you to simply go before God and say, God, according to who

you want me to become, what's one habit or one sin that I need

to break? So God will come to you right now. And we're trusting

that your Holy Spirit talking to your children, that you will speak to us

right now. So go ahead and ask God that question, God, what

do you want to get rid of in my life? And allow him to

speak to you. I believe God is generous. Fal Fring his answers to

his children when they asked, So, Holy Spirit, thank you for speaking

to us. Who are the one who spoke to us. So it's therefore,

God help us to honor you. All right. So now you got

it? Okay, So let's just go ahead and jump in. Let's talk

about how to make this happen. So let's look at James chapter one.

He says, so get rid of all that is wrong in your life,

both inside and outside. I love this and humbly be glad for the wonderful

message you've received, in other words, this message of grace, mercy,

love and hope in Jesus Christ. Because we've received all this which you can

save our souls at a response to receiving this powerful message of Jesus and grace,

we respond by getting rid of everything that is wrong in our life,

but inside and out. So based on who you want to become, what's

one habit or once then you need to break. And I want you to

be very very specific. Why check this out? Because you cannot defeat something

then you can't define. You cannot defeat something you cannot define. So a

lot of people that I interact with say stuff like this is like hey,

I want to change my diet. All right, that's not good enough.

Be more specific. I want to cut carbs. I want to cut out

sugar. No more fast food. That's specific. Some of you might say,

hey, I want to get rid of this digital stuff and said so,

be more specific. I'm going to cut down my time on social media.

Or you might have an addiction to porn. You need to cut it

out of your life because it's running you, poison you, running your relationships.

It could be a substance abuse problem. Maybe you've been abusing alcohol,

or maybe you've been abusing medications. And let me tell you something is your

pastor today. If one or two or more people who love you have set

something to you in concern about substances in the last year or two, pay

attention, Pay attention now. It might not just be those sins that are

are bad habits that are easily noticeable from the outside. What about those that

are not visible. Let's look at James again. What does he say,

get rid of all that is wrong in your life, both inside and outside.

So it could be an attitude problem. Maybe you have such a bad

attitude that it's robbing you from an experience of the joy God has for you.

Maybe you have a critical spirit. Maybe your spiritual gift is criticism.

Maybe already in a service, you got fifteen things you didn't like, twelve

of them having to be with my sermon. Maybe you've got a complaining heart.

You love to complain. Maybe you have a gossiping time. So based

on who you want to become, what's one having you need to break?

And let me tell you what I've been working on. I don't know if

you know this, but pastors have a sedentary life, and so I want

to break a set entary lifestyle. See, my job is basically I write,

I read, and I'm in meetings. So there's not much exercise going

on in my life unless I'm going to be really intentional. And most of

the time you're really exhausted from all these meetings, and the last thing you

want to do is to be physical. But I tried this before, but

lately I had to come up with my physical or my spiritual Why? What's

my spiritual why? Well, years ago I broke my back, and I've

noticed it as I'm getting older in my back isn't getting stronger. And recently

a pastor that I deeply admire how to resign early years before he was ready

to because of back pain. And so I want my ministry to last longer.

And it hit me recently that if I really don't strengthen my back and

build the muscles in my back, it could cut off years from ministry.

And so I decided, all right, here's my spiritual why, because I

want to honor God with strengthening my body. So I don't I'm not,

you know, I don't have these debilitations when I get older. Now what's

my how? Well, a couple of things. Whe I started cardio.

Okay, So for instance, last week I had a break in between meetings,

and so I went over to the mall and I'm mall walked, I

malwalked, and let me tell you some Yeah. I thought you guys would

laugh not give me an applause. And in order to get into club,

I'm in my forties. So they were like, okay, we'll let you

in the malwaluking club. But I had a fifty year old get me in.

You know, he's like he's with me, and so, you know,

we're walking around and I'm like, hey Walter, hey Annie, love

those belgro shoes. You know. So I'm walking around and I'm like,

man, I'm just doing what a text. I'm also doing a lot of

stuff physically with my back. One of my favorite things to do is chocolwood,

So I've been chocolate wood. I've been. I've been doing a lot

of reorganizing in I mcarages. It's China, like three or four times a

week. Be extremely physical. But here's something else. What's going on is

I've had three or four ninths that after I've done all this physical work,

I got to soak my foot because I'm a struggling with planter fasciitis, which

is basically almost healed now. But it hit me that, all right,

as I'm engaging in this, it's causing me a lot of pain, and

I gotta fight through this pain in order to see again. And that brings

us to a question, why is it? Why is it so hard to

start good habits? Why is it so hard to break bad habits? Well,

let's look at these answers. See, the good habits are so difficult

to start. The reason is because the pain is now and the payoffs later.

Pain now payoff later. Last week, when Andrew trying to get you

all to start good habits. All Andrew was prescribing was he wanted you to

experience pain. It's all. He would just give you pain, pain,

and you know, and we know what this he does. You wake up

one day and you're like, hey, you know what. That's it.

I'm gonna get a healthy lifestyle. I'm gonna become a jog or so what

do you do. You go to the mall, you go to Fab Athletics

and you get some stretchy pants and some cool shirts and you're stretching. You're

like, oh, this looks good. This looks good, this looks good.

You're getting stuff to match, and then you go home. You stretch

in front of the mirror and you're like, oh, the outfit's not complete.

I need a Apple Watch as some pods. So you can't work out

that day. You go to the next day and you go get your Apple

Watch and your pod. You come home you're like, oh my gosh,

I'm ready to a jog in my nice neighborhood and fishers. Then you get

up the next morning at six and it's cold and you're like, well,

I can't do it today, so I gotta go back to Fab Athletics.

And maybe Lugo gleimon and I gotta get thicker outfits. And now finally you

got all these outfits your pods and you're you're just looking great and you're like,

this is gonna be awesome. And you go jogging and you're jogging,

and all of a sudden, you're like, and my toe hurts, my

calf hurts, my hamstring hurts, my shin hurts, my quadriceps hurt,

my back hurts. And then like when you're really out of shape, we're

stuff like your body hurts. You're like, man, why's my ear hurting?

And you're like, man, that jog man, my ears do this

all week. And then you get on the scale and you've lost no weight

and you're like, ah, why because it takes a long time. Why

because you experienced the pay now, payoff later, pay now, play flayter.

But the bad habits no completely opposite. The payoff is now, pain

comes later. Have you ever notice that chocolate cake and ice cream tastes good

now and then the doctor visa comes later? Cake and ice cream now yummy,

doctor later, ouchie cake now, surgery later. Listen. And that's

the reason why bad habits are so hard to break off. Some people did

some research and they and they looked at all these people and they noticed that

the average person spends four hours some type of screen, some type of screener.

Now say you do that through the course of your life from age fifteen

to seventy five. You die, but you've either been on a television screen

or on a phone screen that a year by year you're talking as a you

know, fourteen hundred hours a year. You take that times at by three

hundred, or you know, each each day by four and three sixty five,

You take that by sixty years, and that ends up being like this

incredible amount of like eighteen thousand hours or excuse me, eighty seven thousand hours,

So eighty seven thousand hours of watching TV for four hours a day or

being on your telephone for four hours a day over sixty years. When you

divide that by a normal twenty four hour a day, that's three thousand and

six hundred and fifty days of your life. In other words, that's ten

four years of your life, ten four years of your life looking at a

screen. And see that, And I know it's a very silly, silly

example, but the point is this, our bad habits are are simple habits.

They don't just all happen at once. Into consequence, isn't all at

once? Is things that build up. And so if ten instead of ten

years to be able to give your life and glory to God, you got

ten years completely wasted. So here's a question, how do we break these

bad habits? How do we break these bad habits? So we're gonna close

now and talking about how to break our bad habits. Okay, actually I

got about ten more pages. I'm sorry, Sorry I jumped ahead. All

right. Number one, you gotta remove the trigger. You got to remove

the trigger. Now. What are triggers? Triggers are anything to tempt us

into a bad habit, our sin in our life. That's what a trigger

is, anything that tempts us to experience that bad habit or that sin in

our life. Recently, on my phone, I love to watch Facebook reels,

and I love to watch sports clips and hunting clips, and all of

a sudden, it's about like a month ago, and I hadn't seen these

forever. I know, I talked about this that twenty years ago. They

used to have pop up ass but about three or four weeks ago they start

having pop up three or four second pornography ads between my hunting ads, and

it was like ooom right there, and I'm like, no, not dealing

with this. I know not to bestus. I went and tried to reach

out to Facebook and went on all my settings try to change it. There

was nothing to filter that out. And so I remembered a sermon that I

did a couple of months ago, and I went back and actually pulled that

sermon up because I remember I during my research, I actually found an app

that would not allow social media to bring in these bad pictures. And so

it's called Canopy. I download a Canopy on my phone as seven dollars a

night, in night cents a month. I loaded it on my phone.

Two to three days later, I'm all back to sports and honey clips,

none of those things wrong. So I just couldn't mess with it. That's

a trigger. I got rid of it. Now. When I think about

triggers, I often think about, you know, our sinful nature, our

old nature, and so it's triggered by anything it makes us want to go

back to that center and back to that bad habit. And every time I

think about sinful nature or our old nature I always think about my dog Penelope.

And let me tell you something. We should have named Penelope sinful Nature.

All right, this is the picture of my dogs. I asked another

day if they would pose, and they're like, sure, Dad, how

is it right? From the fireplace? Said that's great. And so Penelope

is a small one that has Satanic eyes. So Penelope, okay, we

should have named her sinful Nature. She walks around to and fro our house

looking for things to destroy, just like Satan. And guess where her triggers

are. Her triggers are just anything she can reach. And so even this

morning, every time you leave the house, you had to put things up

high and everything towards the centrich was around all the tables, all the debt

everywhere, looking around for anything she could reach. And that's why she'll eat

by time you get home. And let me tell you something. This is

that she's been doing pretty consistently for the last few months. And so you

know sinful nature, I mean Penelope. She can't handle the triggers, and

she sees it, she goes after it. She has torn up multiple pairs

of expensive shoes. She has eight at least six of our remote controls matter

of fact, I ordered remote controls two at a time because every time she

choosed one, I'm on my hat. No. Last week I came home

to a couple of pieces of firewood in the middle of the living room that

she was eating. And she's even recently she chewed up the collar or excuse

me, she chewed up the remote control of her shock collar. As I

told you, her Satan worked together. So Sinton came to her like,

do you want to know where the shock collar control that is? Let me

show you. And he takes her over and like this is where they're hiding

in. And she ate it, and she ate it. And see,

that's what she does because if anything that triggers her, which is anything you

can see that her mouth can bipe, that's why she'll chew up because she

has this sinful nature and then triggers or anything you see. Now, last

week was a big Last week was a big I come home and my wife

is extremely upset. Why sinful nature ate all of my wife's makeup? Now

I learned a few things. One I did not know the makeup was that

expensive. I thought it was like a government program that you know, like

let's make America beautiful again, and they just send everybody out of makeup.

And and so when my wife taught me the hundreds of dollars that we needed

to spend, I'm like, honey, that's not in the budget. We

just can't go replace that. And then my wife asked me a question that

was almost impossible to answer. And she happened to be wearing no makeup,

and she points at her face and she says, do you think it's okay

for me to go around looking like this? It was an extremely compelling argument,

and so I knew that I had to answer this question wisdom, because

one answer would I would lose hundreds of dollars. Another answer, I would

lose a wife. And so I made a decision that I felt like it

was for everybody, and we'll let her replace the makeup. Now, husbands

don't try these jokes at home. Remember I'm a paid professional. I get

paid to do this. And I asked my wife, Okay, but here's

my point, my dog, it's nature is to it, just to go

after anything that triggers it. But see God in his love for his children,

know one what's good for his children, No one what's good for his

church? No one's good for his kingdom. God wants you to allow the

Holy Spirit to remove the triggers in your life so that you can overcome the

temptations that lead to destruction in your life. And so you've got to allow

the Holy Spirit to remove the triggers. Because today I can sit there and

say, what's one bad habit or one sin you want to give up,

and you'll write it down and you'll pray over. But if you don't go

home and remove the triggers, I promise you you will be committing those sins

again. So it's not just knowing what's sin you want to break, but

it's removing the triggers, because bad habits start with a trigger. And see

if you don't want to start down that wrong path. Proverb says this,

don't set foot on the path of the wicked or walking away of evildoers.

And now he's talking about triggers right here. Avoid it, don't travel on

it, turn from it, go on your own way. In other words,

don't mess with it anything it can lead you down the wrong road.

Get away, don't mess with it, no excuses, get it out of

your life. So as we close today, here's the most common triggers.

Number One, Places, Places are the most commentary. If you have a

problem over eating, don't go to Red Lobsters. All you can eat Shrimp

Fest is currently going on right now for nineteen ninety nine, where you could

get coconut shrimp and they have rago shrimp. They have this new hot pop

or like pool. It's amazing. Thrind let me tell he was there about

three weeks ago at that special and I was just disgusted with everybody in the

dining room. These waitresses, they're running, they're sweating, they're crying.

They have a support group in the back, and people are running in and

out of the kitchen and everybody jelling more coconut, more spicy, and listen,

like these waitres are running out there have already have nervous breakdowns. And

I'm just looking at this room and I'm like, first of all, I

need never to play a coconut. But then this is disgusting, this is

something wrong off this room, and we ate and eate, and they finally

had a shut down the restaurant because the ocean was empty and solem. But

but here's the thing, if you have that problem, don't go there.

If you have a problem with substance. If use don't go to the ron

ron party. If you have a problem of alcoholism, don't go to a

bar. Notice that Sampson didn't go to his hometown, took us to a

prostitute. He went somewhere that he knew, that he knew he can get

away with it all right. Number two times, gotta pay attention at times.

If you want to avoid pornography on the phone, you might want to

be a little extra intentional about late night surfing. I've heard that, hey,

nothing good happens after midnight, and I think that's true. So you

gotta pay attention to when you're tired, because your resistance is down, and

that leads us to another trigger, our moods. Our moods are big time

triggers. Many of you heard of the halt moods, which is when I'm

hungry, when I'm angry, when I'm lonely, when I'm tired, those

things, okay, And I experienced it all on Sunday morning. I started

preaching a little bit late in this service. I start getting hungry. People

look at me like, what the you're about done? First service, people's

tired, you know, so I've watched all the moves, man, but

we could go through all these moves throughout the day. But you're more vulnerable

when you're in one of those moves. Number four Big moments. You have

a bad day of work, you want to go have some venage jes or

you want to get drunk, or you're gonna yell at your kids or your

spouse. You're gonna find comfort in things in this world, or maybe you've

had a great day to celebrate but you go a little bit too far with

drinking, or after a big five years spouse, you really get into you

jump on the phone, you start gossiping. Watch for these big moments,

and lastly, people, some people lead us into sins. You know,

they were doing a study of twelve thousand people for twelve years and it's really

interesting. They found now that the group you hang out with, if some

of the people in the group are overweight, there's a fifty seven percent chance

that you're going to be more overweight. So, for instance, if you

want to be my friend, you need to call your tailor and say,

hey, I'll be gaining some weight because we're gonna go have some sushi and

we're gonna have some good time. But on the counter mix it says that

if you hang if one of those people in the group lose weight, the

rest of the group loses weight. It's really fascinating. Whoever we hang out

with, we're going to pick up their habits. We're going to become like

them. That's why we need to be in small groups. That's why we

need to be in relationship with other Christians. We're going to be like the

people around. A matter of fact, Proverbs says this walk with the wise

and become wise. For a companion of full suffers harms. But here's the

good news today. You can always change. And I know we've had a

lot of information today, but it begins by knowing and believe in this that

God wants to give you the power to change. Remember, Samson took fifty

thousand steps in a bad direction, but the good news is he had fifty

thousand opportunities to change. And so now let's talk today. Simply, if

you find yourself on the wrong path, what do you do? Number one,

you turn around. The biblical word for that is repent, repent of

your sin. Number two, you got to find help for some of you

who you're doing some stuff that's big. You know, I'm not afraid or

ashamed to say that I was really struggling for leaving the church during a pandemic.

Thank God I was in counseling already. I need an outside perspective.

I needed a Godly perspective. I needed someone to help me see through the

fall. See, asking for help is never a sign of weakness. It's

always a sign of wisdom. Number three, don't get isolated. Don't let

the enemy separate you. If you have no group that you're with in a

discipleship journey, you will get isolated and Satan can pick you off. Samson

isolated himself and went to Gaza and fell into sin. Lastly, today,

choose to embrace God's power to change. Allow the Holy Spirit to do a

deep work in your life. Allow the Holy Spirit to bring about this power

to change. All right, the band's gonna come out and we're going to

do the second part of response today. So can everyone please grab back out

your phone and your list of the one bad habit or one sin that you

want to break. So let's all grab that back out. It's all play.

So let's all grab that back out and we're just gonna take a moment

to go into the presence of the Holy Spirit today and we're gonna ask him.

And here's what I want you to do now. I want you to

write down the triggers that you're going to remove from your life. This is

where the work begins. What's the trigger you're going to remove, what's the

steps you're going to take. Let's take some time to pray. God will

be come to you right now, and we're asking you. We're asking you

to first of all, have mercy and have grace upon us. But we're

also want Christians that change. We want to change and bring you glory and

honor. And so right now, go ahead and respond where you're at right

down, what are the triggers that you need to get rid of in your

life. For those of you who who are struggling with a substance abuse problem,

get those out of your house. For those of you who are struggling

with gossip, you need an accountability partner, you know, just think about

these steps you need to take. So God speak to us right now.

So go ahead, Holy Spirit take over this moment and go ahead and write

down and respond