The Human Life Before Christ | First Steps on the Spiritual Journey

This morning our teaching scripture comes from Romans

Romans 7:14

Chapter 7 verse 14 through chapter 8 verse 2.

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am a flesh sold

into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own

actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I

hate. Now if I do what I do not want,

I agree that the law is good, but in fact it is no longer I

who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

For I know that the good does not dwell within me, that is in

my flesh. For the desire to do the good

lies close at hand, but not the ability.

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want to

do, I do. Now if I do what I do not want,

it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good,

evil lies close at hand for a delight in the law of God, in my

inmost self. But I see in my members another

law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the

law of sin that dwells in my members.

Wretched person that I am, who will rescue me, rescue from this

body of death, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So then, with my mind I am enslaved to the law of God, but

with my flesh I am enslaved to the law of sin.

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are

in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of

life is Christ Jesus, who has set you free from the law of sin

and of death. God bless the reading of the

Word. Hi, everybody.

We're probably a little light on attendance this morning because

I put that text in the newsletter.

So, you know, if anybody looked it up, they were like, maybe

I'll go to brunch. So a few weeks ago, I watched

the 2010 film The Way, directed by Emilio Estevez and his

father, Martin Sheen. Has anyone seen that movie?

Yeah. So Sheen plays Tom, a California

ophthalmologist whose son Daniel drops out of his PhD program to

travel, a choice that Tom finds foolish.

And early on in the film, Daniel dies hiking the Camino de

Santiago, the ancient pilgrimage route to the Cathedral of

Santiago de Compostela, the the traditional resting place of the

Apostle James in Spain. And so Tom travels to collect

his son's remains, but ends up walking the Camino himself in

his son's honor, and he meets several fellow pilgrims along

the way. So I'll be honest, I'm sorry if

you like the movie. It's pretty mid, but there's one

scene that really stayed with me after watching it.

Near the end of the journey, the pilgrims find themselves worn

down from the road, tired, sore feet, the whole thing, and they

spend a night at a luxury hotel in Lyon, Spain.

And by this point, we've come to know most of their flaws and

their quirks and their insecurities, the reasons that

many of them have come to the Camino.

And in the privacy of each of their suites, we see them sort

of ease back into their patterns of drinking and flirting and

numbing out. Yost, who is from Denmark,

joined the pilgrimage to lose weight so that his wife might

take him back. And so we see him eat an

enormous meal and then weep into it.

Jack is an aspiring novelist, and he has a manic episode in

his room, sort of babbling into a tape recorder, trying to

capture the perfect memory of the trip so he can write his

book. Tom is chasing some kind of

enlightenment and grappling with the loss of his son, and he

collapses in front of the TV. And Sarah, who swore she would

quit smoking at the end of the journey, lights another

cigarette. The pilgrimage they have found

has not fixed them remotely. It's a picture of the human

life. The journey that we are all on

is one that exposes us, but it is not a journey that can heal

us on its own. And so we are full of the best

intentions and at the same time full of restless longings that

sort of pull our lives in One Direction or another.

And it's only to the degree that we're willing to give a

realistic assessment of our condition and wrestle with what

that means for the journey, that the journey itself can have any

kind of effect. So last week Jared introduced

the new series that we're starting on the spiritual

journey and essentially looking at, you know, what does it mean

for us over the course of a life to pursue the love and

fellowship of God in community with one another?

And so this week what we're going to do is we're going to

look at the very beginning of that quest that we're calling

the spiritual journey. And so we're talking about the

human life before Jesus. So Romans 7, the passage that

Tori read for us is famously debated.

Is it before Christ? Is it after?

Is it Israel under Torah? Is it Adam's story?

Is it Paul's autobiography? Is it sort of a psychological

assessment of the apostle or humanity as a whole?

What I want to do this morning is completely sidestep all of

those questions and not even begin to wrestle with any of

that. I want to make the claim that

it's relevant in the sense that it names the human condition

apart from knowing the love of God, and it names an aspect of

the human condition that continues once we have known the

love of God. I think this is a text that's

universally relevant to every human being who could possibly

read it. It describes finding the love of

Christ for the first time, and it describes the ongoing tension

that we feel until God's Kingdom comes in its fullness.

And so the experience that Paul is describing is one that we all

share. And if you heard that and you

couldn't see a little bit of yourself in it, I just want to

suggest that you should maybe do a little bit of self reflection

because we're talking about the human life before Christ.

I want to emphasize that in this passage and in lots of others

throughout the Scriptures. The Scriptures point us to a

real ontological change, a real sort of crossing over, like from

being one thing, from having one experience of life to that thing

changing and becoming different. So if you've been around for a

while, you remember earlier in the year we did this long series

on being saved. What does it mean when the

Scriptures talk about being saved?

How, how do we think about the idea of conversion or having a

life that's converted to Christ? And, and we, we emphasize

throughout that series that this is a thing that happens in a

moment and it's a thing that's unfolding across the whole

landscape of our entire lives. And what I want to just say

right up front is that this morning we're going to draw some

attention to the moment. You know, it can feel really

comfortable to not sort of point to that moment and say there is

a moment, there is a real change that takes place in us when we

decide to live a life toward God.

But the truth is there's there's a lot of of literature that

would say that there's something observably different when we

decide to sort of hand our lives over into the faithful

stewardship of Jesus Christ. So every spiritual tradition

talks about some kind of restlessness, some kind of

hunger, longing, A loneliness, A fundamental ache that's at the

heart of our experience of human life.

And in many ways, that's where the spiritual journey begins.

You know, if, if you can think about your own story and where

you may have made a decision to sort of live a life toward God,

You can probably think of a time when that that internal tension,

when that ache became such that you were either drawn to beauty

in such a way that you would say, I'm going to begin my life,

begin to live my life differently.

Or there there was sort of a a palpable anxiety.

There was that that tension got to a place where it was like, I

need relief from this. Something must help me resolve,

you know, what I'm feeling inside.

And what I would say is that universally, all of our efforts

to explain spirituality or God are named at this.

What do we do about the desires that we feel that are both

helpful and destructive? Judaism says that the answer is

covenant faithfulness. Islam would say that submission

of 1's life to Allah is is what'll get us there.

Buddhism says it's detachment. Hinduism says it's union with

with all of creation and you know, with all that's out, all

of all of humanity. Sikhism says that it's devotion

and service. Secular humanism would say that

it is authenticity and the fully realized human life.

You know, each of these take the ache seriously and there's

something beautiful and there's something to be learned from

each of those perspectives. But this morning's text says

something distinct. It says that the answer is not a

path that we climb. It's not a philosophy that we

follow. It's a person who comes to us.

And so in the Gospels, it's never, here are the five steps

to inner peace, or here's a checklist.

And if you move through this checklist and you integrate

these practices into your life, you'll become, you know, a whole

sort of more enlightened spiritual person.

It's always Jesus the man saying, come follow me.

It's Jesus who says to weary fisherman, leave your Nets and

come with me. It's Jesus saying to hungry

crowds, I am the bread of life. It is Jesus saying to the

grieving sisters, I am the resurrection and the life.

And so the ache cannot be resolved by our own discipline

or devotion. It can only be resolved by

meeting Christ himself who carries us where we cannot carry

ourselves. At least that's the claim that I

would like to make. And when I say that Christianity

makes a unique claim in Christ, a particular claim in Christ, I

don't mean the chest thumping version that's tangled up in

culture wars or lust for power or influence.

The difference is not domination or nationalism, and it's not

about drawing battle lines or proving some kind of

superiority. It's a person.

That Jesus way of life is not about grasping for control.

It's about being met by the uncontrollable love of God in

our own weakness with its tenderness and its mercy.

Are you with me so far? So talking about life before

Christ is not about some kind of elitism or supremacy or

superiority. The love of God we're talking

about is not absent from any person on the face of the earth.

We just this is so important to start there if we're going to

consider the spiritual journey and what that means.

This love of God, this boundless, capacious,

indescribable love of God is not absent from any person on the

face of the earth. It's the only power that is

strong enough to turn the tide for good.

And I would make the claim that it's present everywhere we see

truth, goodness, and beauty in the world.

But we can't afford to collapse this into the shallow idea that

we're all fine as we are and we're all just one big happy

family. Because the world itself

testifies that that isn't true. The tension and the ache that we

feel inside of ourselves testifies that that is not the

case. Our violence, our divisions, our

addictions, our inability to love well.

And so that's why the New Testament is so insistent that

there's a decisive moment of receiving Christ, of opening

ourselves up to God's love in a way that is new and

transformational. And even when many turned away

from Jesus because his teaching was too difficult, Peter gave

the response that grounds our whole confession of this

capacious love of God. He said, Lord, where else would

we go? You have the words of eternal

life. We have come to believe and to

know that you are the Holy One of God.

And so that claim is at the heart of all of Christian faith,

that God's love is wider than we could ever imagine, wider than

our categories, wider than our boundaries, wider than our

ability to even comprehend the love of God.

It's a love that won't let go. It's a love that reaches into

every life, and it's a love that's open and generous and

inexhaustible. And many, I would say many who

who even call the church home, would look at the true

boundlessness of the love of God and say that's too good to be

true. And yet it's this very love that

comes to us not as an idea, not as a vague feeling in the

universe, not as something that we just sort of find our way

toward, but with a particular face and a particular voice and

a particular expression in human history.

It comes to us in Jesus Christ. And so why this text?

Why, why this, you know, I don't know, I don't know about you,

but I, I kind of laugh when I read this text at this point

because it sounds a little bit manic, like it's like got 3

Stooges vibes. There's this sort of like I, I

picture the meme of the guy with all the string in the, in the

cork board and the pins and the pictures and he's trying to pin

down like, you know, I can't do the things that I want to do,

but I, I do the things that I don't want to do.

And, you know, he's just sort of the circular talk.

And it's like, isn't that kind of, at least that's what's going

on inside of me. In case you wonder.

I don't know that maybe it's just me, but I do not understand

my own actions. Paul says that at the at the

outset he names this divided will, knowing the good but

failing to do it. Have you been there?

I know I should put my phone down at night, but I don't.

I know I should eat healthy, but I find myself again at Rita's on

Henderson Rd. If you ever see me there, just

like bid me home, just just let you just know that like, it's

not, it's not like good it's not.

I had to have no good reasons for being there.

Fortunately, I've never seen any of you there, so I continue to

get away with it. The ice cream wins.

I, I, I want to be gentle with my kids, but I snap.

I plan to forgive, but then I find myself rehearsing a fence

over and over in my head. Paul starts here with something

that is humorous, and it's honesty he's saying.

I don't get myself. It's this everyday bewilderment

of wanting one thing and doing another.

In a minute, we'll look at the extraordinarily powerful forces

that are at play that, like, create this dynamic inside of

us. But what he's naming here is, is

super ordinary. It's the fascinating puzzle of

human inconsistency. Why do I contradict myself so

often? You know, like a lot of us have

what I'll just call fake values in our lives where if someone

were to ask us like, what are you about?

You know, what sorts of things are important to you?

What do you value and hold up? And we would sort of give a

list. And then if you, like, looked at

your life and like, what do you actually do?

And where do you spend your money and who do you spend your

time with? And so on.

We would find that a lot of the values that we think we hold

really close are actually fake. That might sound kind of strong,

but I just think it's the case. We've all felt this stuff.

You know, we make promises to ourselves and we break them.

We set goals, but we don't tell anybody that we've set the

goals. And so then we just sort of like

move the bar a little bit lower because I'm really only

accountable to me. And so, you know, maybe I'll go

to Rita's three days a week, I don't know, instead of 2 or

whatever it is for you, I don't know.

But this, this impatience sneaks out, you know, and like little

moments of not wanting to listen well or finding myself only

being half present in conversations when I would say

that I really value intentionality and presence with

other people. It's not that I don't know

what's good. I know it well enough.

The problem is that my actions don't line up with what I know.

And that's what Paul means when he says I don't understand my

own actions. It's the daily gap between our

intention and our follow through, this experience of

being unreliable even to ourselves.

And it's where our inability to trust other people or trust God

often comes from. It's like, if I can't even trust

myself to follow through on the things that I say I want, how

could I possibly trust community or trust God, who so often seems

far from me? And that gap leaves us

scratching our heads. Who am I if I can't live up to

my own values? And then he says it's sin that

dwells within me. And look, you know, we don't

like talking like that. I mean, polite people don't talk

like that. People often personalize

failure. You know, I'm just weak.

I'm just bad. I just don't have enough

willpower. But Paul works this powerful

explanation in the text if you really read it.

He he externalizes this before he personalizes it.

He says that sin this, this like incongruence that we experience

is a power at work in US that when, when scriptures talk about

sin, it's talking about more than just individual missteps.

It's talking about a power that enslaves people and, and a thing

that we sort of become unwittingly involved with.

And the patterns and the habits of our lives are sort of

unconsciously conformed to this thing.

And, and it's not just about good or bad willpower.

I'm so grateful for this text for this reason, because we're

not permitted to reduce morality or behavior to good or bad

willpower. You know, I don't know about

you, but I have spent way too much time in that vicious cycle

of sort of thinking, like if I just, you know, get the right

structures in place, if I just sort of mobilize my will, like

with enough force and with enough consistency, I will be

able to do the things that I want to do.

And he names a power that's at work.

He calls it sin. And it lives in habits, but it

also lives in systems. So there's consumerism, there's

lust as entertainment, There's contempt as politics.

And so all of these things sort of work their way into our

inside life like weeds. And the connection to the

spiritual journey is, is precisely the way that we

interact with this dynamic before Christ.

This power just has its way with us, like we are defeated by it.

And what what Paul's saying in this text is that in Christ,

when we're moving toward learning to give our lives away,

learning to imitate the generosity of God, the kindness

of God, the compassion of God, we start to see these things for

what they are and we move away from sort of our our futile

resistance against them. And we learn what it is to

resist in the spirit strength. We learn what it is to develop a

life of prayer and a life of nearness to God that enables us

not to think that we have to mobilize our will into these

situations or change things by just sheer force.

We learn little by little that Jesus is inviting us into a

lifetime of increasingly understanding what's taking

place in the world around us and what's taking place in the world

inside of us by undertaking this journey inward.

That can is really the only thing that can meaningfully

address what's going on. But more on that later.

He moves to talking about a law at war within himself.

And there's all this language about the law and the law this

and the law that. And look, I'm not going to, you

know, bludgeon you with that this morning.

There's a lot of, like, different ways that we can

understand precisely what he's talking about.

But after recognizing the confusing nature of this

division that we're experiencing inside of us, the ways that

we're noticing the power of our disordered desires, we come to

this warfare language. There's a war going on inside of

me. There's a law at war within me,

another law at war with the law of my mind.

How do we understand that? I don't think this is just inner

angst. I really think that this is a

cosmic battle that's playing out on the scale of the human heart.

And So what he's saying is like, what we see out there is what's

taking place on the stage of my own inside life as well.

It's an echo. Like everything that you can see

in the world is taking place inside of you and I.

That's a heavy thought, isn't it?

That, you know, we all feel 2 laws when we're stirred by

beauty in the form of art or music, but we also seem to be

irresistibly attracted to like, pornography or just vapid empty

entertainment. The same person who can hear a

song and weep or we can look at a beautiful painting and feel

like super compelled can be sucked into doom scrolling.

That's what he's talking about. Another law at war with the law

of my mind. We all feel 2 laws when we

forgive, but then we like very quickly find ourselves still

wanting revenge. Or we give, but then we find

ourselves secretly resenting letting go of what we've let go

of. This inner war has been noted

across centuries and cultures. This isn't just Paul in the

scriptures. Plato pictured the soul as a

charioteer pulled by two horses. One that was well behaved, one

that was incredibly unruly. Marcus Aurelius wrote about the

soul as a battlefield. Similarly, Buddha said the

greatest victory is to conquer oneself.

So everyone sees the war within. That's not unique to the text

that we're looking at. The scriptures use the language

that Paul is using here. Sin at work in us.

But what it comes down to is that we're full of passions that

drive us. We are not neutral.

You know, the, the, all of the energies in our, in our life

pull us toward God or away from God.

The writer and theologian Ronald Rohlhizer in his book The Holy

Longing, says desire can show itself as aching pain or

delicious hope. Spirituality is ultimately about

what we do with what we desire, what we do with our longings,

both in terms of handling the pain and the hope that they

bring us. That is our spirituality.

So what I want you to hear in this is that this isn't just

about sin and bad and, and, you know, try to control the stuff

that's like out of control and whatever.

But this is this is a way of thinking about beauty in our

lives too, that you know, the, the, the beautiful longings that

we experience for community, for peace, for justice, for nearness

to God. Like all of those things are

sort of handled in the same way. Paul, Paul is saying that they

all sort of come under Christ in this unique way.

In Romans 7, he's saying that spirituality is what we do with

desire and without Jesus. Desire masters us and in Christ.

And this is important to hear because it's not just, it's not

just on or off in Christ. Desire is healed and reordered.

It doesn't go away. We don't master it.

So it's important that we say, you know, apart from Christ,

desire masters us. But it's not, it's not the case

that in Christ we master desire. In Christ, we learn what it is

that like these, these passions, these things that we experience

in the internal life are given a place to go.

We're given sort of some scaffolding to like, hang some

things on and think about what do I do with the just

restlessness that's inside of me?

Humans are caught up in this war of loves pulling us toward the

love of God that's energized by creativity and beauty and truth

and goodness and the other that seeks to tamp down and decrease

faith and hope and love in our lives.

And so then it seems we sort of hit the bottom.

Bri and I were having a conversation about this text.

And we get to wretched person that I am who will rescue me

from this body of death. And she was like, you know, I

don't think my therapist would find that to be very helpful

self talk. And I was like, yeah, I think, I

think you're probably right. I think that's a little bit

harsh. But listen, he's talking about

like this cry that's at the heart of every conversion.

And what I'll say is like, it's the moment that we sort of turn

our lives over to God, but it's ongoing.

Like, again, maybe it's just me. I'm going to assume it's just

me, but I'll just share my like, I hit this point with some

regularity, you know? And then it's like, what do I

do? Like, who can save me?

It's the cry of every stage of discipleship.

It's the cry of every step along the path that is the spiritual

journey. And so I know we're talking

about the human life before Jesus, but I just want you to

hear that like this is happening like in all of us at every

moment as we learn to give our lives away, as we are getting

our lives together, whatever it, whatever it looks like, you

know, it's like we, we are regularly coming to the place

inside of us. And, and all this is, is like

learning to do it more regularly and in a manner that's like a

little bit less harmful to self, a little bit less condemning to

self. We'll get to that point in the

text as well. But man, we never outgrow the

need for rescue. We, we just learned to come to

terms with it over and over and over and over again.

And so, you know, the way that Central Vineyard has been a

community historically that's attuned to that, that's attuned

to that like, you know, come and receive, like the rescue of God

in the arms of Jesus, in the arms of brothers and sisters who

are sort of together on this mission of living the Jesus

lifestyle. Like this is it.

We learn to come to terms with it more quickly.

Where where conversion and rescue from the forces that are

at work inside of us and in the world are at once a major shift.

They are a transference into another Kingdom.

It's a it's a completely different way of thinking about

our lives. And it becomes a way of seeing

the world. It becomes a way of processing

what we go through day in and day out.

And so we come to realize that no matter how many times we

rearrange our calendars or change therapists or read this

book or that, or, you know, get more time for mindfulness or try

a new accountability strategy or whatever it might be, we come to

the end of ourselves and we know we need rescue.

We know we need rescue because the world around us needs

rescue. And it's mirrored on our inside

lives, Henry Nellen writes in The Return of the Prodigal son.

Confronted with the impossibility of self

redemption, I now understand Jesus words to Nicodemus.

Do not be surprised when I say you must be born from above.

Indeed, something needs to happen.

I cannot be reborn from below, that is, with my own strength,

with my own mind, with my own psychological insights.

There's no doubt in my mind about this because I have tried

so hard in the past to heal myself from the from my

complaints and failed and failed and failed until I come to the

edge of complete emotional collapse and even physical

exhaustion. I can only be healed from above.

That conversion that being born from above, being saved, as we

said in our series earlier in the year, is never just one

thing. There's a temptation to make

this sort of our only tool. And I'll just say as an aside, I

think that's why in a lot of evangelical churches who

emphasize an altar call and A, and a, an invitation to follow

Jesus, which we'll do in a minute when that's the only tool

in your tool belt. You hear stories about people

who say, you know, I, I felt like I needed to come forward

every week. I felt like I needed to just

kind of keep giving my life over to Jesus over and over and over

again. And it's because there's no

imagination for what an ongoing conversion might look like.

And so the only note that we know how to hit is, you know,

come to the altar, we'll pray the prayer and, you know, and

then we'll do it again next week.

And what I, what I just want to share is like a hope for, you

know, some vision in this community that, you know, what

it would look like for us to to sort of have a life together

where we know what it looks like to continually sort of bring our

lives before God and before other people.

But we don't need to repeat the exercise of, of that like first

moment. Does that make sense?

And so Romans 7 and 8 describes the pivot.

It's one of the most beautiful turns, one of the most beautiful

lifts in all of Scripture from self rescue to Christ rescue.

You have Paul doing all these mental gymnastics about, you

know, how could I possibly whatever overcome any of this?

And and then and then we land thanks be to God through Jesus

Christ our Lord. Romans 7 and 8 describes this,

this pivot and one of the ways that we've described this in our

Vineyard family. I'd like to just do this really

quick. And if this is new to you, let's

hang out this week and talk about it.

But it's, it's something called set theory.

So bounded set is about who's in and who's out.

And I think I have a little image that sort of represents

this who's in and who's out based on behaviors.

And so here's what it might look like.

We have sort of a, a list of rules, a list of boundaries, and

we can encircle the people on the inside and on the outside,

you know, do you sort of check all the right boxes?

If so, you are inside the red circle, a centered set asks

which way are you facing toward Christ or away?

And I, I just think that's the precisely the journey that

Paul's naming here that you know, who's in, who's out.

We don't have, we don't have a hard line that's drawn around

some people in the center. What we see is that there are

sort of people facing all different directions.

Their, their orientation, their disposition toward like the

things of Jesus is a little bit different for each person.

But what we're looking at is sort of the arrows, like where

are the arrows pointing? And this, this thing that Paul's

unpacking here is precisely that it's, you know, the, the, the

orientation of our heart before God.

That's realization that I cannot save myself.

I cannot fix myself. And so, you know, behaviorally

all the sort of cultural markers that would have distinguished

good Christians from bad Christians in the past.

That's not really the conversation that that we're

having here. What the conversation that we're

having here is, you know, what does it look like for me to

recognize that on the spiritual journey, there comes a point

where I need to turn around and go a different direction.

And then the rest of my life is, is just sort of like how, how am

I remaining oriented toward that, toward that invitation of

God, toward the love of God coming into my life and

transforming the way that I understand myself and the world

around me. And so there's this turn in the

text. Thanks be to God through Jesus

Christ our Lord. You know, we've, we've looked at

the features of the human life before Christ and now we see

that the spiritual journey is not a one and done moment where

Jesus fixes us overnight. The first time we hear there is

no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, it changes

everything. But even after years of

following Jesus, we need to continue to hear it again in new

corners of our lives, in unexplored places, in our inside

lives. It's it's new, new failures and

new fears that cross our paths. It's new sort of moments of

wrestling and of doubt. And every time the answer is

still there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus before

Christ. The this this divided will is

nothing but frustration. It's nothing but this sort of

hamster wheel of like, what do I do with everything that's going

on inside of me? And in Christ, we, we still feel

this division, but we know where to take it.

We have some tools for sort of coping with it into the presence

of God with other people in prayer.

So before Christ, the power of sin leaves us defeated.

But in Christ we still uncover its pull in our hearts and in

the world. But now we see it for what it

is, and we learn to resist in the spirit strength.

So there's this lifelong navigation of the interior life

in Christ, a process of being reformed and reordered and

healed over time. And there is a moment where we

take the first step on that journey.

And with each successive step, we continue to return to this

very promise. So that's why Romans 7 is so

relevant. Before Christ and after Christ,

the questions don't change. What do I do with my desire?

What do I do with sin? Who will rescue me?

And the answer is always the person of Jesus.

The difference is that the journey unfolds and the answer

deepens in detail and in nuance and in intimacy.

And so as I sort of conclude, I'll invite the worship team

back up and Tori, if you have anything for, for ministry,

you're welcome to pitch in. But if not, that's OK.

So I know some of you are tired. You've you've tried to change

yourself or you've hoped that life experience or time or doing

more, pushing harder would sort of heal the inner struggle.

And you just can see like as Roman 7 is naming it, clearly we

can't rescue ourselves. And so I just want to say that

today the invitation is to not try harder to not lean further

into a lifestyle of hustle or, or a need to sort of find find

this rescue for yourself, but to turn to Christ, the one who says

there is no condemnation to receive forgiveness, to receive

life and a new way of being human.

And so we'll have prayer folks around the side of the room.

And I just want to encourage you, if you have never made that

decision, if you've never had sort of a, a point where you

said, you know, I, I want to follow Jesus, I want to learn.

The the Jesus way of living, I want to give my life over and

and find what it is to know that there is no condemnation.

We just invite you to come and you know, I think for many

others, I just want to invite you to receive the work of Jesus

into your life in a new way. And So what I'd like for us to

do as we turn to worship is I'd invite you to stand.

And I just want to read the end of this passage over us.

And, you know, I, I get a sense as I've prayed and thought about

our time this week. Many of us sort of long for the

nearness of God. And we ask the question, like,

God, where are you? Why can't I perceive what you're

doing? Or, or you know, and I think

there's something about the church gathered being the body

of Christ that when we hear encouragement from another

person, or we like experience the touch of another person in

prayer, we hear the words of God, we experience the touch of

God from the, the body of Christ on the earth.

And so I would just encourage you like if you, if you just

need a little bit of that touch, if you need a word, if you need,

you know, any of that, come, come and receive prayer.

So there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are

in Christ Jesus for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ

Jesus has set you free. And so I just pray for each and

everyone of you that today and in an ongoing way, you would

know the, the freedom that Christ brings, that any

condemnation that sort of sits in your in yourself talk in your

subconscious, whether it's from other people, whether it's from

yourself, whether it's from from the devil.

I pray that that would go right now in the name of Christ and

that you would experience interior freedom to live the

life that Jesus invites you to live.

Amen.