Killin' It

It is so good to come in the house of the Lord and you don't have to try, you don't have to beg and you cannot earn.

God is so good to His children, so good to his children.

So if you'll just for a few moments, if you'll remain standing, I will read our main verse today and then we will dive into what God has for us today.

So, if you have your Bibles, I want you to turn to Psalm 139.

We're going to read verses 23 and 24.

If you got it, say amen.

If you need more time, say hold up.

I have found that sometimes, even in my digital app of the Bible, that takes me longer than it does to grab a real Bible and flip open.

Ridiculous.

How many buttons do I have to go deep in to find just one verse?

But whether you're digital or whether you are paper, it still holds the same power.

Verse number 23,.

It says this and I want you to pay attention to this.

I hope that this is your heart's anthem.

We're not going to play around today.

I'm not going to pull any punches.

I'm going to give you exactly what God's been punching me with all week.

Search me, oh God, and know my heart.

Test me Say what I'm telling God.

It's okay to bring the test.

I remember my time in high school and tests were not my thing, but I'm offering up to a sovereign, almighty God who knows everything already, to say Lord, whatever your will is, test me and know my anxious thoughts.

Verse 24 says point out anything in me that offends you and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

Let's pray, father.

We thank you so much for your presence.

That has already been evident here today.

I ask a special touch on this service today.

Holy Spirit, speak through me, let your words penetrate, let your scriptures penetrate the hearts of the people that are listening today.

Let us not leave here the same, but let's be transformed, never to turn back to our evil ways.

In your name we pray Amen.

You may be seated today, if you can.

It is good to be in the house of the Lord.

I say it every Sunday because I believe it.

It is good to be with the like-minded people.

Thank you, baby.

It is good to serve.

Yesterday we had the pleasure of serving a complete stranger that we never knew, we never met, and about 10 of us went and moved a man who had had a heart transplant and we packed up two or three loads on a trailer.

We never met the guy.

Do not be so small-minded that you only serve the people that you know, because the people that you don't know that you choose to serve could be the next pastor that is birthed in this church.

The next miracle could be someone else's biggest mess up.

Don't overlook the small, because we all know, no matter the size, no matter the stature, in the hands of God, david and Goliath, he didn't stand a chance.

His brothers mocked him.

He came there to bring a lunch.

He didn't go there to fight, but he had already been prepared in the field of waiting, where he had already been anointed, but yet he had to go back in the field and work.

Yet he had to go back in the field and work.

Speaking of work, y'all remember my 15, my challenge of 5-5-5, right, five minutes of prayer, five minutes of worship, five minutes of reading the Word of God.

I'm going to add an extra one to it.

You ready for it?

You ready to step it up a little bit?

It's going to be the challenge of 16.

Like what's one going to be?

All right, five minutes of prayer, five minutes of worship, five minutes of reading God's Word and every week, invite one person to church.

Is that fair?

Because I guarantee you, if you're reading your Word, if you're worshiping God, if you're getting on your face before him and his presence is walking with you, this place will not have enough seats, because we have something the world needs.

But before the world can see that in us, we have to pray this scripture search me, oh God.

It is not fun to have someone see behind the curtain, in the dark corners of our hearts.

Every week, invite them to church and with your life you need to be living an example to where they think they need to come.

Search me, oh God.

Show me where I need you.

I submit myself completely.

I want to share something with you.

I'm a little embarrassed, it's.

You know.

I share some weird stuff in the pulpit.

That's fine.

So last week anybody else make it through the windstorm man.

That day I went over to lake palestine.

I't know if I posted a video, if I just sent it to some people, but it looked like the ocean and I took a video and I said my goodness, this thing, I'm in Galveston.

Water looked exactly the same.

So Thursday morning, when I was about to go to Lake Palestine.

I worked out, I was about to shower and I don't know why.

I think God's up there and he's like oh, here's a unique time to do something to Stephen.

I'm about to get in the shower and all the lights shut off In the master bathroom.

It's surrounded by closet and office on the other side of the walls, so there are no lights, and this is not the first time that electricity has left the house.

When I was in the middle of getting a shower, it's like God's like hey, what can I do to make him very uncomfortable, complete darkness.

The electricity went off, and so I have learned a little bit from this.

Being a photographer.

You have lights, you know you use things, so I have a light that comes on and stays, so I have those.

And then I bought some extra flashlights that on the side of it, you push the button a few times and it's like a lantern.

So I hung that thing on a little curtain hook and I took a shower.

Like whatever, all I need to do is fill the water, and I, the entire morning, spent the morning going through and flipping on switches, and I was there when the electricity went out.

I promise you I'm not as slow as sometimes I look Like it was like you have something in your life that you know doesn't hold the power, but yet you're still trying to flip the switch.

How many times in our life, in our hearts and in our minds, we are in the dark and we keep flipping switches that do not contain the power we need?

It was impossible for me to stop.

I came back home the electricity we got a notification that the electricity came back on.

I come back home and there's random lights throughout the house, everywhere that I walked, and you know you have those two-way switches.

So if you do it one time, you're not sure if you got it or not, because it could be in a down position.

And you come back home and every light is on and I'm like I'd made up for lost time when they turned the electricity off on me because I had every light on.

They got their money one way or another, but I kept switching the light switches that had no access to power and I could not stop myself because I had the habit, I had the mindset, I had the undesirable thing to not do it and yet it overcame what I knew, the knowledge I had.

Have you ever been in the place where you had the knowledge of something but you still did it anyways.

That is terrible.

I would flip the switch.

I can't even tell you how many times in my life, in the flesh, I will flip a switch, expecting a spiritual power to come from that switch.

And only fleshly things.

You know, flesh only produces flesh.

Spirit only produces the spirit.

You cannot act in your flesh and manifest a spiritual result and manifest a spiritual result.

You cannot act in the Spirit, because if we're all being led by the Spirit and being directed by the same Spirit, our spirits will bear witness with each other.

I can't tell you how many times I have allowed my flesh to do the talking.

And we're the name tag Christian.

You know, sometimes we like to be labeled as Christians and that is awesome.

We're trying to be Christ-like.

But you've got to stop doing it by label and start doing it by definition.

That is what will change your surroundings and change this city.

Our flesh doing the driving, our reacting, is still being the flesh.

Over and over and over, we flip the switch, expecting a different result, and we were there when the power left.

And we're still flipping the same switch, expecting a different result.

Yet we still keep flipping the switch.

Today, I want you, when you leave here today, I want you to be challenged to walk a little bolder, to speak and testify a little louder.

I want you, I want this church, to find their joy again, to where we look like a bunch of crazy people because we're so happy all the time.

Because when we have the joy of the Lord, that is our strength we have weak Christians filling the pews.

Because we don't have joy, we replace it with complaining and complacency and we don't allow the Spirit of God to move in our lives and we lack the joy it takes to be strong when the bad times come.

And I want you.

These last two weeks y'all have been awesome.

Y'all are always awesome, but I mean last Sunday.

These last two weeks y'all have been awesome.

Y'all are always awesome, but I mean last Sunday y'all about blew the top of the roof off.

Y'all were getting after it.

We need every service.

I need you every single service.

Every week, before we come to Sunday, you need to be fasting and praying for your pastors of this church, for the board members and for this body and if you have something against them, pray harder.

It's hard to be mad at somebody when you're praying for them.

If my wife upsets me, which she never does, let's just say that on camera right now.

She never does, she is perfect.

But let's just hypothetically say that she did something I didn't like and we have attitudes with each other.

And then I want to come hug her and she's like stop, I'm over it.

But sometimes she holds on a little longer.

I go and I let off steam and I'm done.

I come back and she's like no, you can't hug me after you just talked to me that way.

I'm like what are you talking about?

That was like 15 minutes ago.

I don't live in the past, lady.

So things like this that we hold on to it becomes the lens that we see life through, and then we always filter things through our negativity.

I want us to be able to worship and live our lives, and worship in church in spirit and in truth, in such a free way, not bound by agenda or schedules, but we let God do what he wants to do in his service, because this is his church.

If we want to be free, what does free mean?

Not under the control or under the power of another, no longer combined or imprisoned without cost or payment, released from captivity, confinement and slavery.

Fear no longer has a place in my heart and in my mind.

My past no longer can hold my feet to the flames, because I have been saved, I have been redeemed and I have been washed in his blood.

And you can take that devil.

When we find this freedom and this fire in our hearts, there is nothing that can stop this church from having a mighty move of God every single week In this body of believers and in your households, because I believe revival is not in a building, the fire of God.

They went to a place to dwell and wait, but the infilling was not in that place, it was in them.

We have to be willing vessels that allows God to do whatever he wants to do, despite our mess-ups, despite our hang-ups.

Search me, oh God, hallelujah, did y'all see that?

Search me, oh God.

Everything inside of me, every single dark corner, everything that I am looking at, that I shouldn't be looking at in the privacy between just me.

We have computers in our pockets and we can find sin with just a push of a screen, and some of it won't.

You don't even have to go look for it, it'll come find you.

We are no longer bound by the chains of our flesh when we submit who we are and we say God, search me.

This is a word that isn't said very much, but we need a Holy Ghost conviction in our churches again, because conviction produces the change that is necessary for God to be able to do what he wants to do.

There is no pastor that is too holy.

There is no board member that is too high on the horse that God cannot humble and bring down.

There is nothing in this church that does not belong to God, from the top to the bottom.

Everything we preach, say, pray and fast about is directly lined up with the scripture, and if it is not, you better check me.

I open myself up to you.

If there's ever something that I say, and listen.

You try talking in front of a bunch of people.

Sometimes my mouth will run off and I may quote a wrong scripture.

I may say something.

That's okay for you to come and talk to me, but don't you talk about me to someone else, because that's what the church is real good about.

We love.

Hey, pray for you ain't worried about praying.

You want somebody to be on your side.

When you have sides.

They also call that division, and God is not the author of division.

We are free when we submit who we are, when we submit how we think, when we submit even how we feel, because if you have feelings driving your car or emotions driving your vehicle, you are going to wreck and you're going to bump a lot of people on the way, because who the son sets free is free.

Indeed, the devil cannot take away that freedom from you.

The devil cannot take away your salvation.

You have to willingly allow him to take it.

You don't have to live in the shadows of your sin.

Get that flesh out of my face, devil, because you know what the devil likes to do.

The Bible calls him the accuser he likes to bring up.

He's really historical.

Some wives are like this, not mine, but they're not hysterical, they're historical.

They remember everything that happened and everything will be thrown in your face.

Let me tell you something.

The Bible says that his mercy and his grace, they are new every single morning.

So if you wake up and you have true forgiveness in your heart, it doesn't matter what happened last night.

You can come to a Sunday morning service and be just as free as everybody else when you leave this place, the devil will try to rattle those chains beside you and say, nah, I remember these.

You could kick him in his face and say shut up.

I have submitted myself to the one true God and I live only for him now, because who the son sets free is free indeed.

So the title of my message today is I'm killing it or killing it.

And I thought of this title and then realized that it was gonna be on Halloween and you can see, I found some Halloween text, just because I don't know.

But listen, the flesh is not a dog that we put on a leash and we carry it around with us and put it up when we don't want it.

It is not something that is to be taken lightly, because your flesh will try to take you down every single day.

All all the devil needs is one time when you're not paying attention, one time when you're not on your guard, and the devil will get in your mind.

He will bring thoughts, he'll whisper little things in your ears, say oh, remember this, oh, remember this time.

You have the authority of Jesus Christ to say shut up, I'm killing you, you have no place here, you don't live here anymore.

We have the authority and the permission to kill our flesh.

Every single day, turn to your neighbor and say I'm killing it, I'm killing it, I'm killing it.

I'm not letting the flesh reside in my house anymore, because this house belongs to the Lord.

But every morning and this might gross some of you out, if some of you are kind of squeamish, I'm not going to show any picture, don't worry about that.

But I want you to think of this.

I want you to seriously think about this, because what happened to Jesus was not a PG rating event.

His flesh was ripped, he was mangled, he was beat, he was whipped, he was pierced and he was nailed to a cross.

They were not his friends, they did not hold back, they were the rulers of that domain and they wanted everyone to a cross.

They were not his friends, they did not hold back, they were the rulers of that domain and they wanted everyone to know it.

It was not something to take lightly or to think that, oh, I guarantee you the little crucifix thing with Jesus out there, he didn't look that good.

I want you to take that same respect of what happened to Jesus and I want you to apply it to your flesh every day when you're leaving no witnesses To your flesh, your heart, your mind, your soul to make.

Every single morning you wake up, a time of prayer, a time of preparation.

You're 15, five minutes praying, five minutes worshiping, five minutes reading, and I want your flesh to be a murder scene.

Is that dark?

It's a little dark.

But how many things in your life have been robbed out of your hands because you will not submit to God but you allow the flesh to overcome you?

Our flesh laughs in our face and lies to us and we're allowing this thing to stay alive in our minds, hearts and souls.

It is time for us to start killing what has been killing us.

You might think that's pretty disgusting.

That's kind of vivid.

You're right, because this is not a game.

In the church house, we love being comfortable.

We love that we are loved, while the enemy runs rampant in our midst.

The world has not come to the point that it's in right now.

The world cannot be blamed for sin.

They cannot be blamed for the way the world is.

What has happened.

Is the church people?

I'm going to get all up in your business.

Is the church people?

I'm going to get all up in your business.

The church people don't want to offend anybody and don't want to say what's right and what's wrong, and if it is in the word of God, it is true, whether they say it is or not.

The world is in the condition that it is in because the church people up until recently have not really stood up for what they should have been standing up in.

Everybody is welcome in this church and in this building, but we have allowed sin, complacency and contentment to be injected into our veins and we're asking why are we sick and dying Because we no longer have the truth that we proclaim?

We have allowed the world's truth and I put that in heavy quotations because it fluctuates from day to day, apparently but when we start standing up for the real and accurate truth of God, the Bible says that his spirit will draw men to him.

People are, they're so confused and lost.

I remember when I was in the depths of my sin.

I did not want to hear someone talk about Jesus, but I remember the way someone who knew Jesus treated me in a loving way and that is what brought me back.

If we show the love of God, jesus gave this commandment.

If you show the love of God, jesus gave this commandment.

If you show the love to each other, that is how the world will know my love.

The church needs to make sure that we are loving each other and not backbiting.

I'm just going to leave that right there, all right.

Nobody wants to get offended.

Does anybody here like to get offended?

Or you just going to leave that right there, all right.

Nobody wants to get offended.

Does anybody here like to get offended?

Or you just love to be corrected?

No, I don't like it at all when my wife is correcting me and 85, 95% of the time she's actually right.

But it's not something that I enjoy.

But it's the result of being offended.

It's the result of being corrected.

It's the result of submitting myself to God and to the Spirit to say, wow, I didn't even see that.

It's a joy to reap the benefits.

You have to break the ground before you can plant the seed.

The Bible is offensive Because if we do not get offended, we will not be willing to change.

If you never get offended, you won't change.

If you never see that you are wrong, you will never change.

If you never get offended, you won't change.

If you never see that you are wrong, you will never change.

It's our human nature that when something is wrong with us or within us, that we want to immediately either hide it or justify it.

Am I the only one?

Listen to what Paul writes here?

This is the message translation.

So I looked up this scripture and in all the other ones they were like this big and on the message it was like that.

And I'm like, why is that so long?

So I start reading.

I'm like, okay, well, this is coming here.

Sunday, 1 Corinthians 15, verse 31.

1 Corinthians 15:31

Listen to this.

This challenged me and fired me up.

And why do you think I keep risking my neck in this dangerous work?

I look death in the face practically every day I live.

Do you think I'd do this if I wasn't convinced of your resurrection and mine as guaranteed by the resurrected Messiah Jesus?

Do you think I was just trying to act heroic when I fought the wild beast at Ephesus, hoping it wouldn't be the end of me?

Not on your life.

It's resurrection, resurrection, always resurrection.

That undergirds what I do and say, the way I live.

If there's no resurrection, we eat, we drink and the next day we die, and that's all that there is to it.

But don't fool yourselves.

Don't let yourselves be poisoned by this anti-resurrection loose talk.

Bad company ruins good manners.

The church needs to find its joy again, because in the joy of the Lord we find our strength.

The church needs to live in sanctification and holiness again, not the world's version.

And holiness again, not the world's version.

If you always are spewing negativity and slander, you are the problem.

If you use Scripture, hold on, hold on, put your seatbelts on.

If you use Scripture to justify your contentious spirit, you are wrong.

Don't use God to justify your bad behavior.

I don't want to be in that seat.

We have to every day go toe to toe with our flesh or it will ruin our testimony and our witness.

Because there is power in your testimony.

There is a special substance that when you start to say it out loud and you testify, other people start being encouraged.

They start understanding who God really is.

When you start displaying who he is to you, people won't want anything to do with us if we have this argumentative spirit, this negativity, because the world already knows what the flesh looks and feels like.

We will not have anything that they need if we are mirroring who they are.

They need to see the love of Jesus displayed, true love, not false doctrines spewing out of the progressive churches.

I'll call out churches on that.

So how do we kill our flesh?

Here's something that I know, and I don't have to know you personally and hang out with you a lot to know this.

We all have something to work on.

We all have places in our hearts that even my best friend, my wife, doesn't even know about, because I'm too ashamed of what I did or I'm too embarrassed by who I was.

There's a reason the Bible says to confess your sins one to another, because when you put it in the air for one, it purifies and it gets out of you and goes into the air.

And then now you have the strength of someone else who can hear you and pray for you and now you're no longer alone.

The devil is a master at the great divide.

If he can find the small cracks in our lives and in our churches and our families and get us mad at each other, he can divide us.

God is not a God of division.

Now his word, but his word comes to correct, instruct and guide us to the better path that God has for us.

It's not to beat us over the head and think that God's mad at you and he hates you.

He longs for a specific and unique relationship with you.

It's so crazy that God of the universe loves us so much that he will create a unique way to speak to me so that my hard head will listen, that he loves me so much that he will allow some serious correction to come in my face so that I will actually remember the lesson, because God knows that's how I learn, but I don't do it twice.

You teach me once I remember that lesson, I'm not doing it again.

So how can we kill our flesh?

We're going to look at this passage and we're going to break it down into three ways to kill your flesh.

Number one is admit that you're the problem.

Now, why are you?

The problem has nothing to do with your personality, has nothing to do with how you're raised, has nothing to do with where you come from, has nothing to do with any of that.

It has to do with we are all born in flesh.

So each one, specifically we, are the problem.

We're all born into sin.

Number two we have to separate yourself from all fleshly desires and distractions.

Number three don't follow your heart.

That is the dumbest advice that anybody could ever give you.

Your heart will deceive you.

You ever been in high school?

I say high school because that's kind of the first that I remember you were just in love with somebody.

Oh man, I'm in love.

They weren't worth your time.

You may have went past high school and ended up marrying somebody and you found out quick this ain't love.

This is another word that starts with an H.

Horrible is what I was thinking of.

Church people, I apologize.

Wow, don't follow your heart.

So we're going to look at this.

Paul writes this in Colossians 3, 5 through 11.

We're going to look at some scripture and we're going to dissect this a little bit.

Unpack it, verse 5,.

It says this so put to death the sinful earthly things lurking within you.

Number one admit that you're the issue, that you have flesh, that we all have flesh.

You know you can never correct somebody who will never admit that they need correcting.

You cannot solve issues if they never think that.

Maybe some of the greatest marital advice that I've ever received in my life was from me going through stupidity of my first marriage.

My life was from me going through stupidity of my first marriage.

I did not think that I was wrong and I would stick to my guns and I would not budge.

I probably would not be coming up on seven years of marriage if I never backed down and said baby, I'm sorry.

You know I have said sorry to her and I still thought I was right, because being right or wrong doesn't matter in this instance.

Being right or wrong doesn't matter in relationships or in a church.

It's when you submit to the other person and you say you know what I could be, or maybe my outlook is wrong, or maybe I understood a scripture wrong.

I mean people in church will argue about scripture like they argue about anything else.

Maybe I understood a scripture wrong.

I mean people in church will argue about scripture like they argue about anything else, when half of it doesn't even matter.

You look up two sides of the coin and you can find something that goes this way and you find something that goes that way.

Let's focus on what really matters, and that's coming to the salvation of Jesus Christ and bringing souls to the cross.

Admit that you're the issue.

I could be at fault.

You know there's something inside I don't know if it's a man thing, I don't know, I've never been a woman, so I'm assuming it's a man thing that this inside of me, wanting to be the man.

And if I'm doing something and she thinks that I'm not fixing it right, well she's just telling me I'm not a man.

She's downing me, I'm a man and it really has nothing to do with that.

She can see it in a different way that I can't, and most of the time, if I don't look at someone else as a subtraction but I look at them as an addition, it actually will help my life become better, will help my life become better.

I am the problem.

The flesh is inside all of us.

You are born into a sinful nature.

Flesh is the enemy.

When I say flesh, I'm talking about that innate sinful nature inside of us.

And the Bible says that we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, not this, but it's that spirit inside, the spirit hovering over people that automatically want to do evil or gravitate towards wrong things and we want to just break over their head with the Bible.

And it's not them, it's the sinful nature that we're all born into.

So when we have that, when we look through that lens, we start to have more compassion towards people who maybe aren't acting like they should, because we've all been there, we've all said something dumb.

We've all argued with somebody over a stupid fact that didn't really matter.

We all have messed up, we all have sinned.

We all fall short.

So we cannot hold our impossible standards of how we see somebody else as what they should be, because that's not the facts.

The facts are we are all flesh.

Paul said this in Romans 7, 15.

And if you've ever felt this way, we're very kindred spirits.

I do not understand what I do, for what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate to do I do.

He knows this about himself and he's confessing it.

He says I know that I shouldn't do it, yet I still fall into sin because we have our flesh that we fight against every day.

Verse 1 uses a very specific word when it says so put to death the sinful earthly things lurking within you.

It says lurking, which means remaining hidden to ambush.

Your sinful nature is not your friend, it's not your pet, it is not something you can use later and pull out of the closet like a bow and arrow, or something that I'm going to fight the enemy today with my flesh.

It's more hardcore.

No, it will destroy you.

It is the enemy.

Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust and evil desires.

Don't be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater.

Well, that just shot the American dream in the face.

We love things and money.

I don't know about other countries, but here in America I love it.

I love it.

I love when I can go buy my wife stuff whenever she wants.

She hates it.

She hates when I buy things, she hates when she's buying things, but that's how we balance out.

I'm a spender, she's a saver.

She's not sinning in this, but I will work myself to death so that I can buy more things.

Work myself to death so that I can buy more things.

Am I the only one?

Am I the only truth person in here?

Sometimes I like nice things, if you haven't noticed.

I like nice shoes.

I love clothes.

I don't always get to get what I want, but I love it.

But sometimes, when we allow things to be so the main part of our focus on who we are, it becomes idolatry.

Let me just slap this in the face Facebook can be idolatry.

Youtube can be idolatry.

Your family can be idolatry.

I don't know if it's going to be this coming Sunday, but one of my titles coming up is I hate you.

And Jesus told somebody.

He said hate everything.

If you want to follow me, you have to hate everything.

That makes more sense now, doesn't it?

The flesh is not your friend.

Don't be greedy.

It's an idolatry situation.

Worship, and worshiping the things of this world, because verse six it says because of these sins, the anger of God is coming.

You used to do the things when your life was still part of this world, but now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander and dirty language.

Don't lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds.

Number two separate yourself.

Have nothing to do with who you used to be.

When I decided and God changed me that I was not going to be doing meth anymore, I wasn't going to be going to the clubs, I was not going to have alcohol touch my lips anymore, I did not stay in the same zip code I got.

I went an hour away.

God provided, he says he'll provide a way out of temptation.

And when I got out of jail, god knew that I did not have the strength to fight off that temptation.

He provided a way.

You have to get away.

It may be you have to leave some friends behind.

It may be you have to leave some family behind and listen.

These are hard and tough situations.

But if you want to kill your flesh, you have to sever the ties to who you used to be completely or it will always be an anchor while you're trying to swim and you will drown.

Separate yourself, let this penetrate your heart.

What you consume is what you will contribute.

What you surround yourself with is what you will submit to.

Stay away from those who are submissive to their flesh, because if you don't, you soon will follow them.

I never understood it until later in my life.

My dad would always tell me you know, if you don't have Christian friends, stay away from them, because they'll drag you down.

And I said no, I'm a Christian.

I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior Didn't make me any less stupid.

Sometimes you got to sever the past, sever some friends and let go of who you used to be, because if you don't, they every time will drag you down.

Put on your new nature and be renewed as you learn to know your creator and become like him In this life.

It doesn't matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave or free.

Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.

Number three do not follow your heart.

Follow your heart.

Anybody ever told somebody that before?

I have?

Before I knew how dumb the heart is.

I thought I was giving good, sound advice.

Well, how do you feel about it?

Just follow your heart.

No, do not follow your heart.

Why?

Jeremiah 17, 9 says the human heart is the most deceitful of all things and it is desperately wicked.

Who really knows how bad it is?

I do.

I have followed my heart on so many occasions and ended up in places I never would have dreamed.

1 Corinthians 6.18, it says this Flee from sexual immorality.

All other sins a person commits are outside of the body, but whoever sins sexually sins against their own body.

Do not fight sexual immorality, you must flee from it.

Flee from it.

You do not have the power to fight it off.

You do not have the strength to fight it off.

You do not have the strength to fight it.

If you try to fight instead of flee, you will fall.

If you allow your flesh to be your regular company, you will become accustomed to the visits and never wanted to leave, sister Barbara.

If you'll come up.

Every person here has been a teenager at some time.

Have you ever or had a parent or a kid?

You may have done this you probably are all guilty but you have pictures of you back in your day and you look good.

You had the right jeans, you had the right shoes, you had the right poofy hairdo, you had the right shoes, you were styling and profiling and there wasn't nobody that could tell you different.

When I went out of high school into college, I had an afro.

I did Straight up afro On purpose.

I do not have naturally curly hair, so that means I got a perm.

I got a perm, I don't care.

When I walked I bounced that thing bounced on my head and that's exactly why I was like.

I thought I was the stuff.

And we today, like a lot of us, we can look at our past in pictures.

Like man that looks good, woo, I look good, woo.

Oh.

I tell my son he's like is that you?

Yeah, it is boy back when I had a big beard when he was a kid.

He's like man because I had a bigger beard than I had a few months ago, long hair down to here.

I thought I looked good until my dad showed me the day I got out of jail and he took me to go cut my hair and he showed me a picture he took of before and after, from a different perspective that I had never seen before.

I never knew I looked that way until I saw it from a different view.

You may be allowing the flesh to ride as your passenger in your life and you can't even know they're there.

You don't even know.

You may sometimes get tired and say I'm going to take.

Every single time your flesh will deceive you.

It will leave you beat up on the side of the road and you won't have a clue what happened.

It is the flesh who is the enemy.

Wearing the flesh is like putting on those old shoes that maybe you still have.

Those jeans.

I had jinko jeans.

You might know what that is.

They had big old pockets that went all the way down.

I could put anything in there.

Some of y'all probably don't even know what it is, but I had a pair of fubu pants.

Y'all know what that is, boy, they look good.

I was like, oh, come on now.

I had a belt that was long hung down over here.

It's all right, I had an Afro too.

Yeah, I even had chains.

Yeah, they were fake diamonds but nobody knew until they fell out.

I would take pictures of myself with my chains on, thinking I was cool.

It's like when you put on and you look back and you're like man, then you get a little maturity.

And then you look back and you're like did I wear that?

That was a style.

I don't know if it was a style, but it's what we could afford.

I'm not sure.

So, poor man's style.

But it's the same with the flesh.

When you come to Jesus and you look back, you're like I can't believe I even did that.

Sometimes a lot of us are a lot skinnier back in high school than we are now.

That's just the way it is.

If you go and get your little jeans from high school and put them on now, you'll be very uncomfortable and you'll probably make some people uncomfortable.

But the same goes with the flesh.

When you come to Jesus it don't feel the same anymore.

It's not the same as it once was.

It's time for the church to come to a knowing salvation of Jesus Christ and leave those genes in the past and to stop trying to put on the flesh in times that it just feels good.

Sometimes you put things on from the past and you just feel good again.

It brings you back to memories.

It brings you back to places where you had fun.

It brings you back to maybe a family member or something.

You know.

There's things that we put on and they could be a good thing, but the flesh is not one of them.

You have to, every single day, be on purpose, intentional and kill your flesh Every single day.

Be on purpose, intentional and kill your flesh every single day.

And, like I mentioned earlier, it is so hard.

Every person in this room right now, every person watching at home you can see me, but you can't see you.

I can see me, but I can't see you.

This is the beautiful thing about being a part of a body of believers who love each other.

We can help each other in our blind spots, because I may have a little piece of flesh right here that I can't see, just like.

My dad showed me that picture and I'm like I can't believe.

I walked around like that.

I looked ridiculous, but in the middle of it I thought it was so cool.

I didn't realize what I actually looked like.

So here's what I'm proposing to you Allow yourself, in the body of believers, to not close yourself off but submit yourself to one another.

That's tough, because once we do that, all of a sudden the mirror comes up and we can see ourselves, because if you love somebody, you're not always going to tell them the good things, you're going to actually show them the bad, and that's tough to do.

But love is not always lovey-dovey.

Love actually listen to the way Jesus spoke to his disciples, specifically Peter Didn't know when to shut up, but Jesus loved him anyways and he still washed the feet of Judas.

Allow yourself to reach out to someone, because have you ever come to a place where you're hurting inside and you come to church and you interact with people at your job or in schools and you're like man?

No one even knows what I'm going through.

How can we know if you don't ever tell anybody?

Find someone you love, someone you trust, and that you trust that when you tell them, they don't hold up your mirror to other people?

That may be the most important key to that one, and I've said this before, but I want you to know that Sister Jessie and I are always available to every single one of you.

I always have my phone on me for that very purpose to be available If you need something.

Do not seclude yourself.

Don't stop coming to church because you got your feelings hurt.

Don't stop coming to church because you're mad at the pastor or you're mad at a board member, or you're mad at a musician or you didn't like the worship.

Talk to us, because when you expose the flesh, it has no option but to wither and die.

But if you suppress the flesh and you cover it up, it will grow into a monster.

Every time, bow your heads with me.

This morning, father, we thank you so much for your word and speaking to your people today.

I ask, lord, that the message today did not fall on deaf ears.

But, lord, we take it and apply it.

Search us, oh God, show your light on the deepest, darkest parts of our hearts and help us to get into your words so that we can hide it in our hearts and not sin against you.

Every service, from beginning to end, the altars are always open.

But I want to ask a specific question today.

Are you battling with your flesh?

If you are, just slip your hand up and right back down, nobody looking around.

This is very, very personal.

Right up, right back down.

I am battling with my flesh.

I need God to take this from me.

I need God to show me how to get rid of this in my life.

You know it.

I don't know it.

I can never even guess what's inside of your heart, but I know a loving God who cares so much for you that he will take that from you.

Just slip your hand up and right back down.

I need help with my flesh.

I need God to be the center of my life, the Lord of my life, and to take the flesh off of the throne.

God loves you so much that he brought you to a place here today to hear this message that you are loved and that he cares so much for you.

But even when we're acting stupid, he still loves us.

Before we were even born, he knew we would sin and he still sent his son.

That's how much he loves us.

And that brings me to my next part.

This is the most important beyond preaching, beyond worship.

Anything that we ever do needs to come to this one moment.

If you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, if you have not made him completely Lord of your life, just slip your hand up and slip it right back down.

I want to pray with you, jesus.

I need you.

Jesus, forgive me of my sin.

If you'll stand with me, we'll pray and as we're praying, I want you to make a very.

If you lifted your hand, I want you to make a very specific petition before the Lord God, rid me of my flesh.

God, rid me of my flesh, god, search me.

Lord Jesus, I ask right now, as we're all standing across this place and those that are watching online, god, that you, your sweet spirit, flood this place.

Let us be willing vessels to open ourselves up to you and to those you have given around us, to love us and care for us and uplift us.

God, help us to have our joy again.

Put that pep in our step, god, that you have done so much for us that we have to tell everybody, I pray, god, that you kill any part of us that is not bowing to your will, that is not bowing to your word.

Lord Jesus, we give you that place of authority in our lives.

Holy Spirit, lead and guide us.

Smother the flesh out of our everyday walk, lord.

Flesh out of our everyday walk, lord.

I pray over these people as they leave, that you order their steps.

Light a fire in them, holy Ghost, fire that cannot be extinguished.

In your name, we pray Amen.

God bless y'all.

Y'all have a great week.