A Heart that Honors God and Forgives Others | Jerry Harris

Well, good morning, Crossing Church.

How are you doing today? It is good to see you.

It's good to be in the House of the Lord.

It's good to be with the people of the Lord.

And I'm just glad that I get to share this day with you.

From this vantage point, it this is Veteran's Day weekend.

I would just ask if you would indulge me for a second.

All of you that are here at all of our locations here, would you

please stand if you're a veteran and let us recognize you, would

you please do that right now. Thank you.

Thank you. There's so many of us that take

for granted the incredible freedoms that we have in this

country and it didn't come by accident, came because you've

continued to protect that and we thank you and appreciate you.

I want to welcome all of our campuses that are joining with

us today from all over these three States and online and

inside. So thankful for each and

everyone of you and a special shout out to our Kirksville

location that's celebrating 15 years today.

That's awesome. And there's there's a lot I'd

like to preach to you in just a little bit, but I want to share

something with you a little bit more personal.

Many of you don't under know the history of this church, but this

church started at his Payson Rd. Christian Church in 1974.

It was March of 1974 and there are 57 families that 57

individuals, excuse me, that volunteered to start this new

church from Madison Park Christian Church, which is just

over their ways. And young families at the time.

And they, Freddie Griffith was the senior pastor at Madison

Park at the time. And he had a vision that we

would have a church on the South side of Quincy.

And of course, he would have never dreamed of what would have

happened today with with what God has done.

And so those 57, we have many of those charter members that are

still a part of our church. But there were some at the time

who stayed back even though they wanted to be part of that

launch. They stayed back because there

was only about 200 left after 57 went to start this location.

Two of those people that stayed back at Madison Park were Howard

and Connie Bryson. And they stayed back for a time

until that Madison Park was able to kind of get their legs back

underneath them. And then they came later and

Howard and Connie were well, Howard was on the eldership when

I was brought on. So my first experience with the

Crossing involved him and he had volunteered, and he volunteered

for years to be the treasurer of the Crossing.

And you know, there's a lot of people in the church that do

incredibly important work, but they don't have any desire to be

noticed or to, you know, to be mentioned or to have stage time.

They just serve the Lord and they do it with joy and

gladness. And Howard and Connie are two of

those people. And they now if you're at

another location, you probably don't see where I'm pointing,

but the 2nd row and the two chairs right there in the center

2nd row they were that was kind of their place to sit and I

would always be able to see them first service on on Sunday

morning. What is so critical to

understand about Howard from an eldership and treasure position

is he had the conservative mind of an accountant.

He was an accountant for many years and he had the

conservative mind of accountant, but he also had the incredible

faith. And so he would talk about how

this was like practically impossible And then he would say

but we can do this. And so many of the really big

decisions that were made in the early days of the crossing that

allowed us to be 11 locations wide.

And all these other things were were established in those in

those early days. And I'm just so indebted to him

and so thankful for him and for Connie.

And this last week on Facebook, his family posted that he's in

Hospice care. And you know, there's a part of

me that just that really hits me hard.

That's very sad. But you know what?

He's going to graduate. He's going to graduate.

And all the things that he's had faith in and he's hoped for and

he's desired. God's going to provide that for

him. And I just wanted to take a

moment out of the sermon time and just be thankful for Howard

and Connie Bryson. Would you do that along with me

right now? Just be thankful for them.

Just they might be listening. Family might be listening.

Thank you, Howard. Thank you, Connie, for your

great faith and for your heart. And I love having examples like

that to help instruct my heart on the way I should be.

And this series, Handle with Care is a study in David's heart

and how he wanted to be someone after God's heart and what I can

take from his life an example to to infuse in the mind.

So I'm thinking about that, thinking about the human heart,

and it caused me to think about my oldest son.

His mother-in-law has had heart trouble for many, many years, to

the point where she was on the heart transplant list.

And a year ago there was a donor.

And so she was going to have the opportunity to have her heart

replaced with another heart, which was a very big deal for

her to extend her life. And by the way, she has had that

heart transplant and she's doing very, very well.

She's doing great, healthier than she's ever been.

That's awesome. But.

But as they were preparing for the surgery, the doctors, a

whole team of doctors, they came in and the doctors began to

explain to her what she might experience, what things might

happen and through the process, both in the operation and post

operative, and they said some really interesting things.

They informed her that there might be mood changes, that

there might be personality changes, that there might be

radical differences in appetite, even memories that were not her

own. Is that kind of weird to you,

that there actually maybe be something in that donor heart

that would be transferred to its new living host?

Now some doctors think that isn't true.

But there's actually doctors who not only have noticed this, but

have actually written about it. There's a book that she well, I

asked her for permission to share this said that she had

read called When Death Becomes Life notes from a Transplant

Surgeon. And what it explains is there's

actually four kinds of memory that are, that is cellular

memory, epigenetic memory, DNA memory, RNA memory and protein

memory. In her case, of course, you

know, the question is, So what changed?

Anything happened. I mean, meaning.

And she goes, you know, every week I wanted to go to Pizza Hut

and have a thin crust, pepperoni and mushroom pizza.

And after I had my heart surgery, I no longer have any

desire for a thin crust, pepperoni and mushroom pizza

from Pizza Hut. So that was about it for her.

But spiritually speaking, thinking about that, spiritually

speaking, we all need a heart transplant.

We really do. We've been learning about the

human heart, and we've been using David as this example

because he was described as a man after God's own heart.

And I want you to think about that statement that David wanted

God's heart instead of his own heart.

To be a man after God's heart means you want his, not yours.

That he knew that there were a lot of things in his heart that

really shouldn't be there or needed to be replaced with

something better. And you know what?

I think we are the same as David there.

I think that any of honest person here right now would say,

yeah, there's a lot of things in my heart that probably would be

a whole lot better if they were replaced with the things of

God's heart. I think we might all agree with

that to some extent. David's son Solomon told us that

we had to be very careful how we treated our hearts, and he, he

wrote about it in Proverbs Chapter 4, verse 23, said above

Proverbs 4:23

all else, that's pretty big right there, that statement,

Guard your heart. Guard it for everything.

A very big word, all inclusive word.

Everything you do flows from it. So how are we doing?

How good are you at guarding your heart?

How open and susceptible is your heart to worldly things,

negative things, cynical things, discouraging thing?

Or are you doing a good job of guarding your heart?

That's important. It's an important question for

us to ask ourselves because our hearts, it's at the core of

everything that we are. And if someone gets a hold of

our heart, they get a hold of us.

You know, Jesus reasserted that truth in Matthew 1518, he said.

But the things that come out of a person's mouth come from the

heart, and these defile him. It was said in the context of an

argument he was having with the religious leaders who made a big

deal about, like, what kind of utensils you use when you ate,

how you prepared your food. And it was all about all all of

this legalism because they said if you didn't do these things in

the right way, it that that it would somehow pollute you.

Because this stuff would come into your mouth.

Yeah. And then it would, it would mess

up your heart. And Jesus goes, it's not what

goes into a man's mouth or a person's mouth that defiles him.

It's what comes out of his mouth because it proceeds from his

heart. Makes a lot of sense now.

We've learned now, kind of getting into David.

We've learned that David was still just a very young man when

he was anointed to become the king of Israel.

The time Saul was the king, a man named Saul and David honored

Saul as king and served the king by soothing him, playing his

harp and when he was having fits of madness carrying his armor

for him. And it wasn't until David

defeated Goliath that something radically changed in Saul's

attitude toward David. David and Saul's son Jonathan

were best friends at the time, and Saul made David the leader

of his army. He, David, won every battle that

Saul sent him out to fight, and he was universally loved.

David was just loved. He was.

He was loved by Jonathan. He was loved by the soldiers, he

was loved by the people of Israel.

But something in Saul's heart grew very dark, to the point

where he wanted to kill David. That dark David ended up running

for his life, and Saul actually tried to hunt him down.

And maybe if we understood the difference between Saul's heart

and David's heart, it might inform us, you know, because

what are the things that we learn from Saul's heart that we

don't want? What are the things we learn

from David's heart that we do want?

And how do we contrast those two to develop a deeper

understanding of how to guard our hearts?

That's where I want to take you today.

You see what when you read the Bible narrative about Saul, his

heart didn't start out that way. In fact, he was a guy that

people would say had everything he needed to have in order to be

a great king. In First Samuel 9, it said that

he was a man of standing. We'll talk about what that means

in a little bit. It also said that he was really

handsome and that he stood a foot taller, like a head taller

than everyone else, all of the people around him.

So he just stood out in a crowd. He was just a bigger guy and it

was a nice looking guy and and people thought really highly of

him. He had the great reputation, all

of that. But he's also described in First

Samuel 10 and it goes to deeper than just those outward things

it says. Then Samuel took a flask of

olive oil and poured it on Saul's head and kissed him,

saying, Has not the Lord anointed you ruler over his

inheritance? And the spirit of the Lord will

come powerfully upon you and you will prophecy.

So he was not only a king, he also had the gift of prophecy

and you will be changed into a different person.

So obviously there were things in Saul's life in his heart that

needed radical change. Once these signs are fulfilled,

do whatever your hand finds to do, for God is with you.

Wow, that's powerful. And as Saul turned to leave

Samuel, listen to this. God changed Saul's heart.

And all these signs were fulfilled that day.

So he had all of the had the whole package.

Handsome guy, tall guy, man of standing.

And then here comes the Holy Spirit.

And God's going to give him victory wherever he goes.

And he's, and he's got the ability to prophecy as well as

that. It's all this stuff.

How could he not be a great king?

Well, what does it mean to be a man of standing?

You know, that's how you're viewed by other people.

That's your Rep, right? How you're viewed by other

people and being viewed highly by others.

That can be a really good thing, but it can also be a bad thing

if you crave it right. He also is viewed as having a

humble heart. And the reason he's viewed that

way is there's a story of him when he's supposed to be crowned

as king, hiding in the baggage and luggage, because he he just

really didn't want to do that. And we we read that and we go,

oh, he must have been a humble guy.

Was he a humble guy, which would have been a really good thing?

Or was he more of a fearful guy? He's afraid of taking that

responsibility. What it does show you about

Saul's heart is even at that time, even though God had

changed him, he had a tendency to want to trust in himself

rather than in God. The fact that he was tall and

handsome would help people to recognize him as king.

But putting too much trust in yourself can cause a big

distraction between what you think of yourself and what God

is wanting to do with you and through you and where the real

power and authority comes from. So let's explore Saul's heart

and do this comparison and contrast, OK?

And I'm going to key in on four stories, and I'm not going to

spend a lot of time in those stories.

But just to give you an idea of the substance of Saul's heart,

first, he had a heart that lean toward disobedience to God, to

not just trust God and do what he said.

The story that goes with this is when he was going to fight a

major battle against an invading army.

But before they would go into battle, one of the things they

would do is sacrifice to God so that, you know, the glory would

go to God, the glory to victory would go to God.

And they would have, like, a worship service to God before

they would actually go fight the battle.

And they're waiting for Samuel to get there because he's a

priest. And priests are the ones who can

offer sacrifices. And so they're waiting, and

they're waiting. And Samuel's not showing up, and

he's late. And so Saul starts to get

nervous. And we got to go fight this

battle, and we can't keep waiting forever.

And so Saul decides as king that he'll offer the sacrifice.

And no sooner does he offer the sacrifice, Samuel shows up and

he goes, what have you done? Didn't I tell you that you need

to wait for me? Here's what Saul was doing.

I mean that it wasn't just disobedience.

Saul was trying to operate as a priest as well as a prophet.

And the king. And there's only one person in

all human history that was all three Prophet, priest and king.

You know who that was? That was Jesus.

And he wasn't allowed to take any of that stage time from

Jesus. Now that something that Saul

wouldn't have known at the time, but it was enough for him to

just be obedient to what Samuel said and Samuel said.

Because you've been this disobedient and this very

important thing, your heirs will not be on the throne.

So he was disobedient and had a disobedient heart.

Second thing you see is that he had a heart full of pride and

selfishness that where he thought he knew better than God

like an egocentric heart. There's a story about him

fighting a battle with a with a nation or a group of people

called the Amalekites. They went to war against Israel

and he was going to fight for Israel and Israel succeeded in

the battle. But Samuel had instructed Saul

that because of the incredible sin of the Amalekites over so

many years, he wanted them wiped completely out.

So they were supposed to kill every soldier, and they were

supposed to kill even the animals.

The Bible uses the term the ban under the ban.

In other words, these are you have to do this well, Saul

started thinking in his own mind.

Some of these animals are really nice.

It's a shame to have to kill all these animals.

And why do I have to kill the king?

Wouldn't it be better if the king had to pay homage to me

than other people would realize just how great a king I am?

So what does he do? He spares the best animals, and

he spares the king. And I remember the story where

Samuel comes back and Saul goes, Look, we've defeated the army.

Look at all we've done. Isn't this great?

And Samuel says, what is this bleeding of sheep in my ears and

the lowing of cattle? Did you forget what I told you?

Did you forget what God told you?

He was full of pride and selfishness #3 He was full of

jealousy. Now we're going to delve into

that deeper in a moment, because David became a scapegoat for all

of his shortcomings. He wanted to blame David for

everything that was going wrong inside of his heart.

And #4, he had a heart full of fear.

He had a heart full of fear. He trusted in himself and he

didn't trust in God. Now this is how I know this,

because the last battle that he fought, he died in, and he

wanted to know if he was going to win the battle or lose the

battle ahead of time. Well, the person that you're

supposed to talk to would be a priest or a prophet and seek the

answer from God. But but you know what he did?

He went to a woman who was a witch, The witch of Endor, which

is a term that the Old Testament uses for a medium.

Someone who practices the art of divination, being able to

foretell the future even though he was a prophet himself.

Now what's absolutely interesting about this is that

he had already made it a capital offense to be a medium, except

for some reason, even though mediums were either expelled

from the country or killed, Saul happened to know of one that was

still around, so he was the exception instead of the

example. Do you see what I'm saying?

He goes to this witch of Endor while I win the battle and

something happens that he doesn't expect.

And I don't think the witch of Endor expected it either,

because Samuel, even though he had died and been dead a while,

he appears and says by this time tomorrow, Saul, you're going to

join me. This is your last day on earth.

He was fearful. Now David's heart was very

different than that. And we see it in two times that

David had the opportunity to defend himself by killing Saul

when he was hunting him, but did not do it.

But before those opportunities, those two opportunities, David

had no doubt that Saul wanted to take his life.

In fact, Saul had tried to take his life four times before that.

The first time we read about in First Samuel 19, one to three,

it says Saul told his son Jonathan.

Now, by the way, David was given Saul's daughter in marriage.

He was married to the Princess. He was married to Saul's

daughter, which makes him what relative to Saul he Saul

son-in-law, right? Saul has a son named Jonathan,

which is David's best friend. But it's not just his best

friend, it's his what? It's his brother-in-law, right?

Saul told his son Jonathan. The father-in-law told the

son-in-law all the attendants to kill David.

But Jonathan had taken a great liking to David and warned him.

My father, Saul is looking for a chance to kill you.

Be on your guard tomorrow morning.

Go into hiding and stay there, and I'll go out and stand with

my father in the field where you are.

I'll speak to him about you and I will tell you what I find out.

Saul was already plotting to kill David and already assigned

people to kill him. The second time he tried, David

was playing the harp for him to soothe him, and he picked up a

javelin, tried to pin him to the wall with it, threw it at David.

David dodged A javelin throw across the table.

The third time, Saul sent soldiers to his daughter's house

and son-in-law David's house to kill David while he was in bed,

but David escaped his grasp. The 4th time, word got to David

that that Saul was trying to kill him and so he ran to

Samuel. The high priest or the priest

and God intervened three times to prevent the soldiers that

Saul sent from killing him and that time Saul lost it.

He tried to kill his own son Jonathan.

He found out that there were a group of priests that had

protected David and helped him to escape 85 of them, and had

them all massacred. Eventually David did escape and

he went to a place called Ingetti.

Now, I've been to Ingetti a couple of times.

It's really interesting place in the southern part of Israel.

It's at the North End of the Dead Sea, so it's all desert and

rock and sand and very lifeless. And you go a little bit east

from the Dead Sea. There's a pathway, you can walk

it and there's like nothing, nothing growing or living.

And then suddenly you see this green and it's an Oasis and

there's this beautiful waterfall and a a beautiful pool and

there's, you know, caves and stuff all around there.

And it's like like what you would expect in your mind is an

Oasis. Well, that's where David was

hiding. He was hiding in Ingetti.

Well, Saul hears about it. This is what happens in First

Samuel 24, after Saul returned from pursuing the Philistines,

he was told David is in the desert of Ingetti.

So Saul took 3000 Abel Young at 3000, an army from all Israel,

and set out to look for David and his men near the crags of

the wild goats. He came to the sheep pens along

the way, and a cave was there, and Saul went in to relieve

himself. OK, that's a pretty vulnerable

position, right? In a cave.

Relieving yourself. David and his men were far back

in The Cave. Oh, David's back there.

And his men, The men said, This is the day the Lord spoke of

when he said to you, I will give your enemy into your hands for

you to deal with as you wish. Then David crept up unnoticed

and cut off a corner of Saul's robe.

Then David went out of The Cave and called out to Saul, my Lord

the king. When Saul looked behind him,

David bowed down and prostrated himself with his face to the

ground. And he said to Saul, Why do you

listen when men say David is bent on harming you?

To this day, this day, you've seen with your own eyes how the

Lord delivered you into my hands in The Cave.

Some urge me to kill you, but I spared you, I said.

I will not lay my hand on my Lord, because he is the Lord's

anointed. See my father.

Look at this piece of your robe in my hand.

I cut off the corner of your robe, but did not kill you.

See that there is nothing in my hand to indicate that I am

guilty of wrongdoing. A rebellion.

I have not wronged you, but you are hunting me down to take my

life. May the Lord judge between you

and me. May the Lord avenge the wrongs

you have done to me. But my hand will not touch you.

As the old saying goes, from evil doers come evil deeds, so

my hand will not touch you. So Saul realizes that his life's

been spared and takes his 3000 soldiers and goes home.

But he doesn't stay there long. He hears that David is in the

desert, so he brings that same army out again to kill him again

for Samuel 26, seven through 11. So David and Abishai went to the

army at night. So he's camped out in the

desert. Saul is intense, and David is

out there in the desert. And so at night time they creep

into the camp. And there was Saul, lying asleep

inside the camp with his spear stuck in the ground near his

head. Abner and the soldiers were

lying around him, and Abishai said to David, today God has

delivered your enemy into your hands.

Now let me pin him to the ground with one thrust of the spear.

I won't strike him twice like I'll give him a merciful and

quick death. But David said to ABBA Shai,

don't destroy him. Who can lay a hand on the Lord's

anointed and be guiltless? But the Lord forbid that I

should lay a hand on the Lord's anointed.

Now get the spear and a water jug that are near his head and

let's go. And the same thing happens.

He calls out the saw. He goes, Look at this.

Here's your spear. Here's the water jug next to

your head. I could have taken your life,

but I spared you again because I will not kill the Lord's

anointed. Each of these experiences shows

you that David has a much different substance to his heart

than Saul. Let's look.

Look at them. We talked about Saul was

disobedient, right? David instead was very obedient.

He recognized that God had placed Saul as king and he was

not going to usurp the authority of Almighty God.

He was going to stay obedient to God. #2 Saul had a prideful and

selfish heart, but not David. He had a humble heart.

He knew that he had been anointed to replace Saul.

He could have justified killing him, but he didn't because that

was up to God to do. He wasn't going to do that

himself. He was leaving that

responsibility to God, #3 Unlike Saul, he wasn't jealous.

He didn't want anything that Saul had to give him.

All he wanted was what he received from God's own hand.

And #4. Unlike Saul, he wasn't fearful.

Although his life was on the line, he trusted that God would

protect him. Now here's what I want to do.

I want us to apply that to ourselves.

OK? You just got a lot of Bible

lesson. What does that matter for us?

What can we take from the stories that we learn about

Saul's heart and the contrast to David's heart?

So that God can do something in our heart?

So that we would guard our hearts so that we could be like

David, a person who wants to be after God's heart?

Number one, keep God on the throne of your heart and your

life. Keep God on the throne of your

heart and your life. You hear Clayton say it a lot.

God's way is the best way. Now, a lot of us want God to be

in our heart. We want God to be in our life.

We might say I want Jesus in my heart or I want Jesus in my

life, but that's really not far enough.

God doesn't just want to be in your heart.

He doesn't want to just be in your life.

He wants to be on the throne of your heart and your life.

That's why when people get baptized at the crossing, we

don't say because I want Jesus as my savior.

We say because I want Jesus to be my savior and my Lord.

We don't want him to just occupy a place in our heart.

We want him to be in charge of our heart.

And you know what? That's an easy decision, then,

to do what God wants rather than what I want.

If he's the one making the decisions Jesus said in Matthew

633, seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness, and all these

things will be given to you as well, that he has to come first,

his Kingdom and his righteousness.

As long as David kept God first, God took care of David's needs.

Listen to me. He'll do the same for you.

If you keep God first in your life, he will take care of you.

He'll protect you. David really wasn't honoring

Saul by sparing his life. He was honoring God by sparing

Saul's life. Ultimately, this is all about

honoring God. It's not very lateral.

It's pretty vertical #2. Don't let the cares of life

become obstacles between you and God.

You need to turn those obstacles over to him.

In Matthew 625, Jesus said, Therefore, I tell you, don't

worry about your life, boy. Isn't that easy to say and hard

to do? Don't worry about your life,

what you will eat or drink, or about your body.

What you'll wear is not life more than food and the body more

than clothes. You know, Jesus goes on to say,

consider the lilies of the field.

Consider the birds of the air. You know they don't look what,

They don't participate in any of these things.

And yet your Heavenly Father takes care of them.

And if he can can take care of that, don't you think he can

take care of you? You need to recognize that all

you have is coming from God and make sure that He's the one

getting the credit for that. And when you face a challenge,

trust that God is with you and he'll take care of you.

You know, we can look at the relationship between David and

Saul, and we might argue back and forth whether or not David

forgave Saul. But what does that mean?

I think a lot of us, we misunderstand forgiveness.

We use statements like forgive and forget, which is a complete

lie, because as much as you like might like to forget, you can't,

right? Or you might think that if I if

I ask forgiveness, then I should be restored in some way.

But that doesn't mean everything goes back to the way it was.

And the relationship between David and Saul didn't go back to

the way it was. But David was not going to let

that become an obstacle between him and God.

Because the primary thing in forgiveness isn't this way.

The primary thing is this way because when we don't forgive,

we don't have a heart that's forgiving to other people.

It creates an obstacle between US and God.

That bitterness that we let take root in our heart, it can just

crack our faith in half over time.

And David wasn't going to let that happen.

So his forgiveness was I'm not. I am not going to retaliate

against you. The Lord can do what He needs to

do with you, but I'm not going to let that become an obstacle

between me and my heavenly Father.

So don't let the cares of life become obstacles between you and

God #3 Put God first in the most valuable things in your life.

Put him first. Matthew 621 says for where your

treasure is. Jesus says there your heart will

be also. That's true, right?

But it makes you think as What is it in my life that I

treasure? Well, I don't think that's that

hard to answer. Here are the three things that I

treasure ready my time, my relationships, and my money.

Would you agree with that? Like the three biggest things

that you might treasure in your life, your time, your

relationships and your money. But what's the problem with the

way I said that? It's really not my time, because

every moment of my life I'm living out.

I'm living by the grace of God who gives me that time, right?

It's not my time, really aren't your relationships, because God

has orchestrated your life in such a way that those

relationships aren't accidental. God knew about those

relationships before you do so, though they're really not yours

either. And what about your money?

It was never your money. You're a steward of what God has

given you, right? Listen to me.

It's harder to lose something when you realize it was never

really yours in the 1st place, when you realize that God

allowed you to use it but it's not really yours.

Saul was driven mad by trying to hold on to things that were

really never his to begin with. The difference in the two hearts

is that David put them in their proper place.

If I want to have a heart that imitates what David wanted, to

have a heart after God, I need to make sure that God stays on

the throne of my heart and life. I I need to be careful to guard

my heart so that the cares of life do not become obstacles

between me and God. And I need to put God first with

the most valuable things in my life.

And you know what? That can begin here, right now,

and right here. You can't change the substance

of your heart by yourself. And some of you were listening

to me describe Saul, and you may be identified more with him

sometimes I do too. But you can give your heart to

God, and then he can do things with your heart that you could

never do by yourself. And you do that when you come

into an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

How are you doing guarding your heart?

How are you doing allowing God to transplant the things of his

heart into your heart? We're moving to a time of

decision now. There's some of you that are

here right now, and what you're doing is you're trying to be the

hero of your own story. You think that if you could just

muster up enough of whatever that is, you could set things

right in your life. You could get it worked out,

whatever it is, whatever vision you have of what you want to be

or supposed to be. But I'm telling you, every time

you turn over a new leaf, it looks the same on both sides.

And some of you are pretty frustrated because you've done

that a lot, you know, and and maybe you've tried to access God

and say you know I want God in my life so that I can Have you

ever watched the. I mean there'll be football all

afternoon, right? And you see these guys, they go

in the end zone and they give glory to God.

You ever see that they go in the end zone and they put their

hands up in the air and it's like you to you gods you got.

You ever see them do that when they lose, they fumble the ball.

Give them the glory to you. God, you ever see, You ever see,

yo, you don't see them celebrate when something doesn't happen

the way that they want it to happen.

A lot of times we want things to happen the way we want them to

happen. We'll give glory to God then.

But you know God gets the should get the glory in all things,

right? Not just the things that make

you feel good about yourself. That means he's on the throne.

You're not. And some of you are just weary.

You don't want to admit it. You try to show everybody else

that you look great and everything's great when it's not

great, because you keep trying to do this yourself, in your own

power, in your own strength, and you can't do it.

That's what Saul was doing. He was relying on himself for

these things when he had all of the access to God and all the

gifting from God, and he didn't. So do you.

You have access to God right now, but you have to come into a

relationship with him. For some of us today, what we

need to do is just say, I surrender, I give up, I need

you. There's going to be somebody

right there, up there by the baptistry that would love

nothing more than to talk to you about what next steps are in an

intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

And there's nobody stopping you today but you, some of you are

going. Well, I don't want to be

hypocritical. Well, you are.

So am I. That's the human heart.

But God will change all that. He can change all that.

The beautiful thing about the human heart is that someday it's

going to be a perfect heart. I told you about Howard Bryson

earlier. And that he's on Hospice care,

which means he's not going to be that much longer for this world.

But you know what's going to happen in that moment when that

heart, that human heart, that flesh heart beats its last, God

is going to finish his work. He's going to give him a new

heart and a new body and a new mind all at once, and he's going

to fill his lungs with the air of heaven.

And you can have that. If you come to Christ, he'll

finish what he starts. Some of you here today, you, you

have a relationship with Christ. You made that decision, but

you're still struggling. You're struggling right now.

You're not having a good day or a good week or a Goodyear or a

good decade. The fact is you can come to him

now. You know that's not a one shot

deal with God. He's there every day.

There's stuff in your heart that needs to change.

Sometimes we get caught up in the lower story.

It's like, you know, I don't know, circumstances take you

down into the basement of your lower story, right?

And while you're down there, somebody locks the door and you

can't get back out, right. But I have a saviour who holds

the keys, and he can unlock that door.

And he can get you out of that basement if you humble yourself

and come to him. That's what these steps are for.

For you to come up and just humble yourself before the Lord

and let him have his way. You can do that today.

Nothing's stopping you. Let the burden fall off.

He'll take it. He'll clean up the mess.

After we're gone. Would you stand with me and

let's pray together? Heavenly Father, I pray that all

the strongholds and all the defense mechanisms in our hearts

right now where we try to guard our own heart, but we're not

trusting in you to guard that heart.

I pray that Father, before you they would all come down, and

that you would have total and complete access to the hearts of

your children, these your children, and you would do

something amazing and incredible in each and every one of us.

I pray in Jesus name. Amen.