The Beatitudes | Blessed Are the Pure in Heart

Well friends I want to Dive Right into our text.

This morning is Rashad said we're in Matthew 5 in verse 8

and I want to get us started this morning with a question.

Question is this have you ever hidden something about yourself

or played a part in order to be accepted?

We have her hidden something by yourself or played a part in

order to be accepted a while back.

I was at a social event with some neighborhood dad's that I

was just getting to know. And I was really excited to

connect, we were huddled around a fire pit in a buddies,

backyard. And I was just like, I'm glad I

got invited to this thing. I've been wanting to get to know

some of the guys who are stage of life and live close to me,

and we were having a great time, the drinks and the jokes were

traveling around pretty freely. Most of the evening was really

just beautiful and connecting but there was a specific point

in the evening. When I got caught up, when I got

caught playing a part, an individual came up in the

Conversation, who candidly a bunch of the people in the group

did not like very much. Someone made a joke at his

expense and then another person followed on with a pretty

ungenerous judgment about this individual.

And before you knew it, it felt like everybody was kind of

piling on and part of me felt uncomfortable.

I was like, oh, this feels off, you know, granted, I know this

individual. I've been also put off by some

things that had recently happened, but the way that he

was being mocked kind of bothered me.

And at the same time, there was a bigger part of me that I'm

embarrassed to say just like wanted to fit in.

I was more worried about kind of being part of the crew that I

was about how I showed up as relates to this other guy.

And so before I knew it in an attempt to connect with these

other guys to build some Rapport, I found myself.

Not only awkwardly laughing along but chipping in with with

a snide comment my own the very next day and my spiritual

practice is the holy spirit brought Me back to that moment

with a highlighter underlining it and instantly I had one of

those moments you know, when you're when you're communing

with Jesus and it's like, I missed it there.

I'm disappointed in how I showed up.

I hadn't done anything, particularly flagrant, but as I

looked back on the events of the previous evening, I just, I

immediately knew I had gotten, pulled out of my values, out of

my integrity and begun to play a part in order to fit in.

Maybe you can relate is there been a moment where you've

you've hidden something about yourself, you've played a part

in order to be accepted or to get something that you want.

Pastor and author, Mark scanned Rhett in his book on the

Beatitudes suggest that not only do each of these sayings of

Jesus invite us into a new posture, but they also invite us

out of a default or a first instinct way of relating with

one another. And this morning we come to the

Words of Jesus that Rashad's already read for us.

In Matthew 5:8, where Jesus says, blessed are the pure in

Matthew 5:8

heart for they will see God. So what's the opposite of that?

If we were to pick an opposite of pure in heart, Pastor scanned

Rhett suggests that, it might be this instinct to hide and

pretend the instinct to hide and pretend and this Instinct has

been with us for a while, has it not right.

This goes all the way back to the Garden at the very beginning

of scripture. Story in Genesis 3, we find our

first parents disobey God and then immediately, how do they

respond? Right?

They begin to cover up and hide. They, they want to Shield

themselves from being seen, no sooner than had Adam and Eve

disobeyed. God, then there was something

inside of them that for the very first time broke where there had

been wholeness, there was now Division and they knew it, they

sense something was off internally and so their

instincts to hide to avoid being seen to avoid being seen.

Posed in their Brokenness, there was something that told Adam and

Eve, even in that first moment of Shifting out of Innocence

that if I show up if I allow God to see me if I'm seen by God,

then this thing that is off inside, my soul will be exposed.

And so they responded by hiding and this is an instinct friends

that continues on for each one of us, right up until today,

right, everyone of us is a paradox, if you will where a

mixed bag, Back because on the one hand and this is this is

true, I can't overstate this enough.

Every single one of us is beautiful Created in God's Own

image designed for good. We're beautiful.

And also paradoxically were broken, right?

Something inside. Our soul has been Shattered by

sin and there's their pieces of us that are off, right?

That have been warped and twisted from their original

intent. And deep down everyone of us,

know this, we sense that there are certain parts of us that are

more loveable than others. This is The Human Condition,

Paradox, beautiful, and broken. And our first instinct if skin

red is, right? Is that if we're going to feel

okay and our desire to be accepted to, in our desire to

find belonging that we default to hiding and pretending.

Brene Brown. The noted.

Shame researcher talks about fitting in and says fitting.

In is about assessing a situation and becoming who you

need to be in order to be accepted when we distance

ourselves from the parts of our lives that don't fit in with who

we think we're supposed to be, we stand outside our story and

hustle for our worthiness. And this kind of hustling for

our worthiness is at the very core of this instinct to hide

and pretend and man it starts off, not only early back in

history but it It's early for us, doesn't it?

Like from from childhood from childhood.

It starts out when I was little my parents love.

The fact that I was precocious, they were both teachers and in

our home you know they didn't this wasn't like explicit but

they valued intelligence, they valued academic success.

And so anytime I be carrying around a clipboard anytime I'm

like learning the ABCs all of a sudden my parents like they just

got so excited guys. They were like oh yeah, we are

Really smart. This is wonderful, right?

I don't know. Probably wasn't even that smart,

but my parents were, like, really hype about this and, you

know, it's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing to

celebrate things. In your kids.

I have an almost two year old daughter now and I find myself

all the time. Oh my gosh.

Ava. You're so beautiful Ava.

You're so smart, right? But but implicitly at a subtle

level. What happens, right?

We began to foreground certain parts of ourselves.

And hide others, right? We begin to show off the parts

of ourselves that we think others want to see and hide and

pretend when it comes to these parts that are not ashamed of

and and friends, if there is ever been a time when this is

problem in the world, it's got to be now, right?

It's got to be now when our whole world pulls out us and

invites us into a posture of hiding and pretending, I've

recently been interacting with the work of Sherry turkle the

sociologists and psychologists at MIT and she names this

reality. Saying texting email, posting

all of these things. Let us present the self as we

want to be. We get to edit and that means we

get to delete, it means we get to retouch the face, The Voice,

the flesh, the body instead of being in the world and with

others as we really are we find ourselves wearing masks

cultivating. Personas in order to win favor

and the acceptance of others. And look at some level.

I get it right? This makes sense at some level.

So, like, all of us, all of us want our parents to like us, all

of us, right? One other, one of the accepted

you look nice. Today, I make up the most of you

took showers before coming here. I'm not complaining about that.

Okay, right. There is, there is a level at

which it makes sense for us to foreground parts that are

beautiful. I'm not suggesting that any of

you walk out of here today. And, you know, Yourself.

Hello, my name is Josh. Please allow me to introduce you

to all the most dysfunctional and terrible parts of me, right.

That'd be a weird way to introduce yourself.

Not everyone is worthy to hold your wounds and your tender

parts, right? Not everybody's worthy to hold

your wounds and tender parts. But here's the problem while

this instinct to hide and pretend works at a level to keep

us safe, right? It's a great survival strategy.

This very same strategy Keeps Us divided and keeps us stuck.

Even if we are successful. Using the strategy even if we're

effective at masking the broken parts of our souls even if we

can cultivate and curate a compelling image in score,

thousands of likes and follows and become an influencer or a

YouTube celebrity out there with a divided life.

They'll be something in our soul that says, it's not.

Okay, it's not real. Parker Palmer so beautifully.

Describes, this burden saying the divided life is a wounded

life and the Soul keeps calling us to heal the rude.

See when we operate in this posture in this first instinct,

default of hiding and pretending, we begin to lose

touch with the core of our being.

We begin to lose touch with our souls.

We start to disappear into personas and projections And

very often, we sense that there's something off, there's

something missing, something's not right?

But instead of going inward, we go outward.

We began to see if we can create that thing.

Which will reflect back to us the worthiness that we long for.

You know, if I can just get in this relationship over here and

this girl, or this guy, right then, I'll feel like complete,

right? If I could just man, if I could

just get this job and this salary, right?

Then on, I know that I've made it.

I'm Legit. I'm I'm if I could just get into

that school, right? Then.

I would know if I can buy this house in this neighborhood,

right? If we could have a kid and on

and on and on, we go with these attempts to somehow create

externally. These mirrors, that would would

show back to us that we're okay that we're worthy were accepted

in all the time, we fail to realize in our search for the

missing piece that that which is missing is us As long as we

attempt to manage our image and traffic in projections real

relationship remains Out Of Reach, you may have 1,000

connections but you're still going to wind up with deep

loneliness. Palmer suggest that there can be

no greater suffering than living a lifelong lie and friends.

I don't think it is accidental that we are now in a space in

our society and culture where we are more connected than we have

ever been. And also more moment.

So many of us are caught in this default of hiding and pretending

me too, instead of showing up as we really are, So what's Jesus

got to say about all this, back to our text Matthew 5:8, Jesus

Matthew 5:8

proclaims a blessing, over those who are pure in heart, blessed

are the pure in heart. He says, for they will see God.

Now let me be real with y'all for a second.

When I first read this verse, I thought Jesus was talking about

sex. Okay, maybe you did too.

I don't know. I grew up in Conservative

Christian culture. Somebody else out here did to I

know And, you know, there's a strong Association if that's you

between Purity and sex, right? So if you are reading this and

thinking as kind of I did initially, that Jesus is

warning, that if you really want to connect with God, don't look

at explicit content or sleep with you partner outside of

marriage, right? That is not.

I would suggest to you, what is actually going on in this text

now, there may be other good reasons for that, right?

But tonight, despite my initial assumptions, I don't think

that's what this passage is all about.

See in scripture Purity, generally has A much deeper and

richer meeting than it's kind of given in Purity culture.

When a material is free is pure in the world rather it has the

characteristic of being free from division, right?

It's not contaminated by other sources, its whole later in the

same sermon Jesus again brings this same concept back in in

chapter 6, verses 22 through 24 and there he's warning again

about the same danger of a divided heart, but his caution

isn't about sex. It's actually about the love of

money and the danger or of walking in a Vision where we try

and pursue both Jesus and wealth.

The same time in another context, James is talking about

the same thing. When he says a double minded,

man is unstable. The kind of Purity Jesus is

describing here has to do not primarily with sexual

abstinence, but it has to do with interior, alignment and

undivided Soul. So Jesus says, blessed are the

pure of heart and heart here, too, can be a word that can get

us off track based. Our cultural assumptions about

what the heart is, right? Because in our, in our language,

and in our thinking, very often the heart has to do with the

emotions, it has to do with our feelings, right?

But this word in the Greek actually has to do with the

interior, the deepest part of one's Soul, right?

So what Jesus is saying in otherwise is this, he's saying,

blessed is the one whose values beliefs and actions are aligned

right down to the core of their being.

I think the message translation actually gets at this pretty

effectively when it says blessed are you when you get your inside

World your mind and heart put right?

The best way of describing this kind of purity of heart.

Jesus has in mind here, might actually be Integrity integrity.

In other words, Jesus is inviting us from a posture of

hiding and pretending into a posture of wholehearted.

Integrity, and integrity is a powerful word, isn't it?

As it has some weight to it, right?

You know, instinctively kind of what this quality of Integrity

is, right? If your chair has some Integrity

to it, you're good, right? If it loses his Negra T, what

happens? What happened?

So you've all right, somebody's gonna end up on the ground,

right? You want you chair to have some

Integrity to it? Integrity is this characteristic

of alignment that says that when things are in Integrity,

everything fits together, everything aligns, everything is

where it's supposed to be. And this quality of Integrity,

when its present, it allows for things to function, effectively

and powerfully. Potently for several years

growing up, I study martial arts.

I'm not cool. I was not very good at it.

I Remember very much of it and please, I do not want to spar

you after this Gathering, okay? But one thing I do remember is

how important alignment was right?

This is something that our instructors like drilled a sin.

If you're going to throw a punch the punch doesn't come from your

elbow, right? The punch comes from your lower

body. All the way from from your hips,

right? When you throw a punch

correctly, the energy is being transferred, from your hips,

through your shoulders, down your arm, and into your

opponent, right? And when you throw it, when you

throw a punch with alignment with integrity, something on the

other end is going to move. There's some power there, right?

What happens when you throw a punch out of alignment?

Well, a couple of things can happen, right?

One thing that can happen, is that your punched just kind of

crappy, right? There's not a lot of power

there, right? You just you throwing This

Little Light punch that's coming from, from your elbow or from

your shoulder. Another thing that can happen is

you can actually get injured. Very often.

This is exactly what happens. People actually get injured.

In fact, the injury is so common, it's called boxer's

fracture and boxer's fracture is the injury that occurs when you

throw a punch and, and things are not aligned.

And instead of that, that power are flowing through you into

your opponent. What actually happens is your

hand gets snapped in the process.

Right. Integrity and Alignment are

important and they're not just important in boxing.

You know this right? When we lose Integrity in our

lives, when we lose a purity of heart, it frustrates our ability

to show up in the world with power and our ability to connect

with other people a few minutes ago.

I described the situation in which I began to slide out of

alignment in response to some perceived social pressure.

I was more concerned with fitting in even if it meant

putting forward, a projection of myself, then I was about being

true to my values and maintaining my own Tegrity.

I was hiding and pretending in order to fit, in, in this moment

and friends. This is the absolute opposite of

what we see in Jesus. It's the absolute opposite of

what we see in Jesus, and Jesus is fascinating to me, because

Jesus, honestly, is kind of weird.

I don't know if you thought about this before, like Jesus is

a super weird, dude, right? Don't get me wrong.

Jesus is enormously impressive. There's huge Authority and power

that comes out all over the place, but there were any number

of parts of Jesus that you would think that he'd be a little bit

awkward by, right that he try and hide that he try and kind of

move into the background. I mean, this is a dude, there

was rumors that Joseph wasn't his real dad.

He was from a Podunk Village out in the middle of nowhere, right?

Vocationally, he did not have a quality education.

This man was working as a lowly Tradesmen.

And yet Jesus did not hide. He didn't try to impress people

or cater to them. In fact he constantly invited

people into the reality of his life and he went he will like

far with this friends like Jesus straight up said, hey follow me,

come with me even when he did not have a place to live.

We thought about this like the tank says he did not have a

place to lay his head. Can you think about the audacity

of that with me for like one second?

All right, you are homeless, you literally do not have a place to

stay and you're like, yo, why don't you come to my place

afterwards? Like this is gonna be great,

right? I mean that's some that's some

audacity right there. It wasn't just that how many of

you have ever been in a situation where you had to ask

somebody for help, right, maybe for it, maybe was a cow.

Ouch, you need to crash on for a couple nights either just

because you're out and bad luck or we're traveling.

Maybe you need to borrow somebody's car.

Maybe you go on a service trip and you need to raise a couple

bucks, right? And you had to go around and ask

some family and some friends. If they chip in, I don't know

about you. I've been in that position a few

times in my life and let me tell you, it feels it feels

vulnerable. Doesn't it right?

You know, if you've been in that spot it's like who this feels

vulnerable. I don't like not being

self-sufficient. I don't like needing to depend

on other people. Get my needs met and yet.

Jesus whole Ministry. This dude who is literally the

creator of the universe? The possessor of all things puts

himself in a position where he has to vocationally depend on

other people's generosity to do his work.

Like scripture tells us that there was a group of women that

had the bag, like they were, they were helping this man get

paid so he could continue doing this thing.

And what's crazy is that Jesus didn't debit any of this out of

his profile. All right, like we got the text.

Jesus, loved it all in there. Like, how easy would it be for

Jesus? Or for his followers to say is

kind of what's our guy in a bad light?

Lets, you know, we're just going to shake this up a little bit

over here, put a little filter, on it, over here, we can, you

know, make that a little thinner, you know, it's going to

be good. Jesus leaves it all in.

And that's Integrity, Jesus knew who he was.

He operated in a wholehearted Integrity for Jesus.

The deepest parts of his nature and character flowed through his

values into his actions into his behavior into the way he showed

up with people. And there was an authority, it

was present because of that. It was nothing tisza T, that's

present because of that. Now friends, I am embarrassed to

admit this, but I'm a millennial.

How many Millennials we got out here?

If you're a millennial in the crowd.

Okay, Millennials everywhere. All right, shout out to all the

Millennials out there. So if if there's one thing that

we value as Millennials it is, Authenticity, cool.

I thought someone was gonna say iPhones, but yeah, authenticity

is actually the answer that I was looking for authenticity.

Unlike most Millennials, I have a high value for authenticity,

but I think sometimes in our culture Authenticity is put

forward not as the real version of authenticity, but is a

counterfeit. Does anybody know what I mean?

By this? Write as a times we use the word

authenticity which again I think is a good thing is a value.

But sometimes we use this kind of counterfeit version of

authenticity. That means something along the

lines of just, I'm going to express whatever feels true to

me, right? I'm going to say, whatever.

I think with no filter, right? My dad used to say.

Yeah. You're like somebody who just

like open their mouth and their brains fell out, right?

It's like Sometimes we think that that's what authenticity

looks like. And I would suggest that these

versions of authenticity are actually counterfeit.

To according to scripture, there's not one you inside you.

Right. We're actually in this innermost

being we're divided. There's there's a lot of stuff

going on Paul talks about this in Romans 7 when he describes

the wrestling that he experiences between conflicting

desires. He says, I don't understand what

I do. Like I want to do.

I don't do it like, but what I hate I do that.

What's going on here? I'm like, Paul, I feel the same

way when I need to go to sleep, but there's like social media

and there's something on Netflix and then there's this bad, a bag

of chips, that's calling. My name, right?

Like I get it. There are things that I like, I

want to do but I also don't want to do those things.

There's a battle inside us, right?

Where a mixed bag where a paradox.

It's interesting. Like Paul said this like a while

ago, internal family systems. If any of you therapy nerds out

there saying the same thing, right?

We have all of these parts inside us that are operating in

different ways and showing up in different ways and pulling us in

different directions. Everyone of us is a paradox.

We are beautiful and we are broken.

Both things are true. And the path forward.

I think this is, I want to dial in on this because sometimes in

the push, for authenticity. What actually ends up happening

is we say, I'm just going to embrace and celebrate the whole

back. Write everything that is

present. And I would suggest to you that

the path forward is not just settling for a divided soul.

Right. It's not just saying, okay well

there's all this going on, it's all good.

It's all to be celebrated great. Nor is it as I think sometimes

in the church, we do more often or is it self-hatred right?

Because there are parts of us that we dislike.

Wholehearted Integrity can accept and be with all of who we

are, the good Bad and the Ugly, but here's where it differs

from. This kind of counterfeit

authenticity wholehearted, Integrity, invites us Beyond it,

it offers us, an actual path forward towards wholeheartedness

and healing. Towards an undivided heart where

we increasingly align all the way from our values through our

feelings, into our Behavior will become the beautiful people that

God has designed to us to be. So, what is this path to Purity?

I think it's actually hinted here.

It's not a lot of text and I'm working with this morning, but I

think it's hinted here in Matthew 5:8.

Matthew 5:8

Jesus says, blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God,

you see it. You see the pathway.

It's precisely the opposite of hiding and pretending.

It's the opposite of settling for a divided.

Soul. The pathway to purity of heart

is coming out from behind our cover-ups, into the light to be

seen and to see God. In our Christian faith is

practice is called confession. And confession really is just

simply the act of naming. What is real naming?

What is true. And this is counterintuitive for

us friends, because it goes directly against some of our

instincts in this matter. Right.

Because our instinct to hide and pretend tells us, yo, if you

bring this thing into the light, they will reject you.

Right? If you bring this thing into the

light, then you cannot be worthy.

You cannot be loved. And sometimes it feels when

we're attempting to bring this thing.

That's so hard to name. That's wrapped in shame where

we're hurt or broken or traumatized into the light.

It feels like, oh my gosh, this would absolutely crush me.

It'd be so shaming that I could never stand it.

But I can say, and this doesn't make sense, but I can tell you

it's true, is that when we actually bring our shame to

Jesus, we bring it into the light and the presence of loved

that. Instead of being reinforced, or

us being crushed, somehow, it's diffused by his presence, maybe

I was witness to that. Anybody else out there, have

that experience. In first, John 1:9 scripture

John 1:9

talks about this. It says, when we confess our

sins, when we bring them into the light, Jesus Will purify us,

So purify us and the Greek word for Purity.

Here is the r is 0 from which we get the word cathartic

cathartic. I don't know if you've

experienced this but I can tell you there have been times in my

life where I was sitting on a point of Shame for a while.

And it felt to me, like, oh my gosh, I can't tell anybody about

this. If I do, I will die.

Terrible, things will happen. I will be rejected.

There are times looking back in my story where I was stuck in

that place for a couple of years, like for a minute.

I can tell you every time, every time I have vulnerably brought

those pieces of Brokenness, those pieces of hurt to

trustworthy people in my life who looked like Jesus, What I

have gotten is not shaming or more hurt, it's actually been

healing, it has felt cathartic, right?

And some of you know what I'm talking about.

If you've been down this road, you know what I'm talking about

when that thing that you've been holding and walking with alone

when you're able to share it with somebody else.

There's a freedom that emerges but it's not just cathartic in

the sense of releasing some kind of emotion because I can tell

you that when we're willing to face these places of Shame,

these places of injury and sometimes it's things that we

have done, sometimes it's things that have been done to us,

right? Sometimes we're talking about

sins, sometimes we're talking about trauma, but whatever.

These things are these places of injury and Brokenness in which

we feel unworthy and unloved, when we bring them into the

light, Right? It's not just a cathartic

experience. We're actually taking the first

crucial step towards wholeheartedness and integrity.

Just before John's call to conversion confession.

And first John 1:9, he says, two verses earlier.

1 John 1:9

In first, John 17, if we walk in the light, as he is in the

light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of

Jesus. His son purifies us from all sin

man. I could talk about that for a

minute. What is he saying?

He's saying when we bring these points of Shane and Brokenness

into the light, right? Two things happen.

One we have Fellowship. Right, we get connected.

You cannot connect based on a false Persona.

You can't be deeply. Loved when you are pretending.

But when we come into the light as we really are in all of our

Beauty and Brokenness connection happens, right?

And not just connection but we're actually purified.

All right, there's that word again.

Where purified? We move towards Integrity.

Why is it that Jesus says, blessed are the pure in heart

for they will see God. What?

If one of the people who are pure in heart get to see God.

I'd suggest to you this morning is that when we choose this

pathway of Purity, when we choose this, this pathway of

wholehearted Integrity. What we're choosing is to

abandon this strategy of hiding and pretending.

And we're entering the very presence of God.

And what then happens is transformation, what then

happens is wholeness because if you spend time in God's

presence, you will be changed. Right?

It's not a neutral. Transaction that relationship

will transform you friend. And honestly, I don't mean this

to sound like a threat, okay. Starfighter initiating.

I'm not sure what's happening back here, but Jesus said, Jesus

taught us. I'm gonna need a minute.

Jesus taught us that whatever is inside of us eventually comes

out right? Whatever is inside of us

eventually comes out. He said in another place there's

nothing hidden that will not be disclosed nothing concealed that

will not be known or brought into the open.

See. Jesus understood that God knows

all and everything eventually reveals itself.

This is incredible. How this happens?

Friends, some of you who are nerds, like me may have read

Bessel, Van, Der kolk Sex book, number one, New York Times

bestselling author. The body keeps the score to

talks about how trauma lives in our bodies, right?

And he says, a lot of things, but one of the things that van

der kolk, explorers in, this book is how traumas from our

life manifest actually physiologically in our bodies,

right? Is a crazy but profound read and

friends. When we choose to tolerate The

Divided self, granted some of us are doing it because we feel

like we got to protect ourselves.

We got to stay safe, right? But, when we choose to tolerate,

The Divided self, there is a cost that accrues to us, right?

Places of sin and wounding unhealed can manifest in all

sorts of ways. We're embodied being so

spiritual and emotional problems show up in, chronic pain, and

sickness Unforgiven an unhealed trauma can show up as hauntings

in new relationships, that continue to distort fresh

relationships with injuries that were incurred in the past,

right? The addiction that you think

that you have a handle on. If it remains hidden will grow

Until you find yourself. Engaging in Risky behaviors

that. You may end up getting exposed.

Jesus says, there is nothing hidden.

That will not be disclosed and friends for some of us that is

our greatest fear, right? That that thing that I've been

hiding would come out to the light that people would know it.

I get it, it's risky. But what I'm saying this morning

is that we actually have a choice.

We have a choice about how we bring these things into the

light. Right, it going to happen at

some point some way. But you can choose to be in

control of that process, you can choose to bring it to people who

are trustworthy in a way that allows you to be healed.

In a way that allows you to connect and find true belonging

and friends. I get it stepping into the light

is terrifying. It's scary.

It feels as though sometimes our shame will crush us or will be

rejected. But isn't it interesting that

the person that we are invited to bring things to is the one

who already knows? Hey, isn't it funny like anybody

else sometimes trying to hide things from God in here?

I do. Is anybody trying to hide things

from yourself that you totally know to be true?

But you're like, I'm gonna pretend that's not a real thing,

right? Isn't it ironic, we are silly.

Because we're embarrassed about these things, we try and hide

them from from the people who can help us right from ourselves

from God. Friends.

Jesus is the one who already knows, you completely and loves

you, absolutely. He is the one who knowing fully

all of your Brokenness. Still loved you so much to give

everything in order to be connected to you.

This is crazy. What I'm saying is that, Jesus

is one, who is worth holding your broken parts.

It's still going to feel like a risk, but Jesus is worth the

risk. Jesus is worth bringing it to.

Because friends, there is a reward for integrity.

When we move down the path of Integrity towards

wholeheartedness. The reward is intimacy.

If you will choose to move towards Integrity, you'll get

intimacy. And so, this text tells us

blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.

And be seen by God. Intimacy.

Friends. That's why it's worth it.

His transformation and intimacy are some pretty big payoffs.

It's worth the risk. You want to see God, you've got

to allow yourself to be seen. If we were to imagine this this

morning is a physical posture, I think it might look like

standing or maybe even kneeling with an open body position open

hands Open Hearts. Actually, let me invite you to

just get into that position. Now physically, whatever that

looks like for you and open body position, maybe on crossing your

arms, opening up your chest, raising your head, maybe there's

some muscles that need to be relaxed.

Maybe there's some shoulders that could be opened up.

Friends. We're going to move into a time

of response this morning. An opportunity to move towards

intimacy to move towards transformation. as we move into

confessions, we move into wholeheartedness And friends

I'll just name with you again. You know, it's risky, I get it I

feel it. It feels that way for me too.

But the reward for integrity is intimacy.

And you can trust Jesus. So this morning, as we move into

a time of worship, we're going to have the prayer rugs down at

the front. Here are open If you want to

calm want to pray, we'll have some space afterwards if you

want to talk to somebody. I'd ask you to consider.

What's true for you? What does that thing in your

life that you've been hiding been sitting on been pushing

down, have stuffed into the backpack that you're just trying

to make it alone. It feels like if you were to

surface you would just die. But you're carrying alone.

Where have you? Abandon yourself?

Or maybe you're in performance and projection you know you're

hustling you got a million connections, your Instagram

profile or your Tick Tock is popping but you still feel

lonely. Where's your life out of step

with your best and truest self? What are you trying to project

to the world? Or convince everybody else is

true. How might you bring what you're

noticing into like this morning? And with whom in your life,

might you take the risk to share Jesus and some trusted people

who are up for holding those tender wounded parts.

Did you pray with me? Did you pray with me?