A Better Salvation: To the Uttermost - May 24, 2026

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6, 19, pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

I've got to tell you about this time. I was stuck in a rut.

You've been there before? It wasn't just me, but it was me and my girlfriend.

We were stuck in the rut. And that was fun for a while. We couldn't go anywhere.

Don't worry. The girlfriend was my wife now.

I just want you to know, about 30-something years ago, it had to be over 30

years because we've been married for 30 years,

so maybe 31 or 32 years, we decided we were going to hop in my 1988 Astro van,

tan colored, not a white kidnapper van, just so you know. All right.

We decided we lived in the Central Valley of California. We wanted to go up to the mountains.

It was springtime, and so the snow was melting and just a beautiful scenery up there.

And where we lived, we were about an hour and a half, two hours from Kings Canyon

National Park, from Sequoia National Park up there.

And so we decided to go up. Let's go see the big trees.

And so we just had a good time. Went to Hume Lake, and we're talking about some

memories Melanie had there of getting bit by a snake there. at Hume Lake,

and they have a beautiful Christian camp up there. It's tremendous.

So we were having a good day. And then on the way back home,

we saw this beautiful meadow out there.

There was still a little bit of snow, but it was glistening in the sunlight.

And so I said, hey, let's go check this out. So we pulled over.

Now, this was back before cell phones, right?

Before cameras were on cell phones. But we had, I think, a little disposable camera.

And so I said, hey, let's go take some pictures of this. And so we went out

and we were taking pictures of the scenery.

Of course, I wanted to get some snapshots of my girlfriend. She was looking

good that day. And so got some of those.

And so it was a beautiful day.

But I didn't notice as I pulled the van over that I was right in kind of a permafrost type stuff.

It wasn't permafrost because we're not in Alaska.

We weren't in Alaska. But it was that kind of material. And so it created a

rut as I pulled in and pulled over. And so I was stuck.

Now, this was embarrassing.

To have this beautiful young lady with me and couldn't even get out of this

rut. And I gave it all that Astrovan could handle.

Of course, you don't do that when you're stuck in a rut because you get deeper stuck in the rut.

And so I'm thinking, what are we going to do? There were no pay phones around.

Of course, there were no cell phones around. And so I am one, highly embarrassed.

Two, trying to see if I could sneak a kiss in this whole advantage thing. That didn't work.

She was wise to my game there, even though I didn't plan it that way.

But it was about the time I was about to get frustrated that a group of young

people pulled up kind of on the opposite side.

They were actually coming down from Hume Lake, I believe.

And wouldn't you know it? It was about.

Five or six people, kids from my youth group, from Central Community Church

in Hanford, California.

They were coming down and they saw me there with my girlfriend.

They already knew you by then.

And so, you know, of course they're saying, oh, what are you guys doing out here?

You know, teenage suspicion.

What's going on? I'm like, I'm stuck. I'm stuck in a rut.

I'm right here. I can't get out. And immediately some of them were Boy Scouts,

I'm sure. they went off, they started breaking branches off a tree,

shoving them under the wheel, and they did all they can.

They were pushing the back of the Astrovan to try to get me moving so that we

could be rescued from this situation.

Eventually, after a lot of snide comments toward their youth pastor,

who's supposed to be their leader and know what to do, they got me unstuck,

and I thanked them and went home, and it's like, phew, all is well.

I'll see you on Sunday school. okay.

And so we went home, but it's interesting what happened after that.

Because as I fumbled over my words to my youth group as to what we were doing

there and why we were stuck, they remembered everything I said,

because in the Hanford Sentinel, later that week, there's a little column on the front page.

And that little column on the front page always has a highlight of Kings County.

And this highlight of Kings County was this.

Mike Curry explaining why he got stuck in a rut. And that's all it said.

So do you know what questions I got the following week or two until some other

salacious Kings County gossip was on there?

How did you get stuck in a rut, Mike? And what happened?

Well, some of us might feel like we kind of get stuck in a rut and we can't get out and we try.

We give it all we can. We gas the thing and we're just getting stucker and stucker.

Is that a word it is now? more stuck in the rut, and we can't make it out of there.

And life gets us like that. We encounter a habit that we just can't break free

of, and it just is going and going, and we just can't get out of it.

Sometimes it's an attitude that we possess. Somewhere along the way,

we've become jaded to something, and that attitude has just stayed with us,

and we can't ever break free from it.

Habits and attitudes, sometimes I've just got to say it, it's sin.

There's a sin that we're just, we love it sometimes more than Jesus or we do

love it more than Jesus because we keep at it and we just won't break free of

it we won't repent from it and it just sticks there and we're stuck in this rut.

Other times, it's just patterns of behavior that we just need to break free from.

I mean, there's all these things

that we get stuck in that we just can't find or fight our way out of.

And when that happens, we just wonder, sometimes even as believers,

how do we make this change?

For someone that believes in God, it could be hard to imagine that Jesus can

lift us out of this rut because we're Christians and we're just trying to figure

out why does this so easily knock me off course?

Why does my attitude get me? Why does this anger problem linger?

Why can't I overcome this temptation?

And we just seem to wonder, is my salvation in Jesus only good enough so he

can get me to heaven, or is there more right now?

And I want to tell you that there is more right now.

You wonder if Jesus can really change you in the here and now,

and I'm going to say a resounding yes, he can. As a believer in Jesus.

He can transform your life, and he can get you out of that rut.

And that's really the passage that I want to read from Hebrews talks about today.

So Hebrews chapter 7, I'm going to pick up in verse 23 and finish out the chapter.

Hebrews 7 · chapter mention

I'll just have you know some of the stuff that I was going to read today we

covered last week, so it's a little bit shorter in the passage today.

If you're willing and able, would you stand to honor God's word as we read it today?

Hebrews 7, verse 23. Now, there have been many of those priests since death

Hebrews 7:23

prevented them from continuing in the office, but because Jesus lives forever,

he has a permanent priesthood.

Therefore, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him because

he always lives to intercede for them.

Such a high priest truly meets our need, one who is holy, blameless,

pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens.

Unlike the other priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day,

first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for

their sins once for all when he offered himself.

For the law appoints as high priests men in all their weaknesses,

but the oath which came after the law appointed the Son who has been made perfect forever.

Father, thank you for your word. Lord, may it bless our life today as we dissect

it a little bit, and Father, find some nuggets that we can use this week as

we live and attempt to live for you, God, in this new life that you've given us all.

We ask this in Jesus' name today. Amen.

Thank you, and you can be seated. Hebrews 7.25 says that Jesus is able to save completely.

I love the way that King James phrases it. He's able to save to the uttermost.

I mean, completely all the way through. And he can rescue you. He can forgive you.

Not only that, he can restore and change a person completely all the way through

to the very core of who they are.

Deeply, fully, all the way.

It's not only about when you die and go to heaven, but I want to submit to you

today, and I believe what this passage tells us today, it's about what Jesus

can do and what He's been doing in your life already.

And so the powerful part of that, it seems maybe too good to be true,

and so I just want to give you three reasons this morning as to why we can trust

Jesus with the deepest parts of our life,

especially those parts of our life where we feel like we're trying to live for God,

but we just are stuck, stuck in a rut.

And what can God do to help us? Well, the first thing you can do this morning

as we look to the outline and again to the Scripture, it says that He can help

us because we have to understand how far His reach is.

His help can reach us no matter where we're at. The author of Hebrews,

in this part of Hebrews, compares the priests of the Old Testament.

And what he says is, hey, the priests were meant, and we've been saying this

two or three weeks, to represent humanity toward God and to be the mediator, the go-between.

But they were only temporary because they kept dying.

One would die and they'd have to have another priest of the same family come

alongside, the same Levitical family from Levi to be that priest.

That's the way it was set up.

But the scripture text today says, but Jesus is different.

Jesus lives forever because of what we sang about earlier, because he lives,

he conquers sin and he conquered death.

Because he lives forever, I want you to be confident of this,

that Christ's help never runs out. He's never done helping.

He's always on standby for you. And so this is the priest that we can trust.

And so what does this mean?

Well, first and foremost, it means that human help is often limited.

People get tired. Systems fail. Even those with good intentions and the good

intentions themselves run out.

But Jesus is not temporary.

Jesus does not fade. He does not leave you or forsake you. He does not lose interest in you.

And while people, even pastors might fail you, I've got to tell you that Jesus will not.

Sometimes parents will let you down. Sometimes your kids will let you down.

But Jesus will never let you down.

Even though human help is limited I want you to know that Jesus saves completely,

He can save you completely through and through As the scripture said,

and I love that word again To the uttermost,

It's an archaic word, maybe, but it explains what that means.

To the utter end of yourself, Jesus can save you, and he will save you.

And if he saves, I want to tell you, his intention is to save you completely.

It is to save you to the uttermost. There's no halfway salvation.

You're either saved or you're not, right?

If you're drowning out in a lake and someone saves you, they either save you or they don't.

It's not like they bring you up and give you mouth-to-mouth and then dunk you

back in the water or something. No.

How cruel would that be, right? You have all this hope and then, no. Psych.

Go ahead and drown. No. Jesus doesn't do that. Jesus saves completely.

He saves to the uttermost.

What that means, guys, is this and gals.

There's no part of your life that's too messy.

There's no part of your life that's too damaged. And there's no part of your

life that is too far gone from the reach of Jesus.

I want you to take that to heart because the enemy will tell you,

God doesn't want you in his family.

You're too far gone. I've got you all to myself. Those are lies from the enemy. Don't believe them.

You're not too far gone from God to help you.

Picture the mountain climber. You've gone out, but then your rope broke and

you've found yourself in a 150-foot ravine.

You don't have the equipment. You can't just bare knuckle it and climb to the

top and you're just stuck there.

Well, the good news about Jesus is he comes along and you're 100 feet down.

He doesn't throw you a rope that's only 100 or you're 150 feet down.

He doesn't throw you a rope that's only 100 feet long.

He's got a rope that will be longer than the ravine that you're stuck in.

So he can help. Pastor Mike might come along and say, oh, sucks to be you, man. Sorry. See ya. No.

Let me see what I got in the truck.

And I might only have a rope that's 25 feet. That's not going to do this person any good.

Jesus comes along and he's got a 200-foot rope. Hey, wrap it around yourself

a few times and I'll pull you up.

And we know that Jesus Christ is able to do that.

Another way to think about it is, think about you have a toothache.

I mean, a really horrendous toothache.

One that when your heart beats, it throbs. Are you feeling the pain yet?

Maybe, I hope you've never had to experience that, but are you feeling it?

And it's just so bad. And you go to the dentist. Why do you go to the dentist?

Because you want this thing fixed.

You go to the dentist and he says, here, sit in this chair.

And you sit in the chair and he gets that long, giant needle out to stick in your gums.

Don't want to make you cringe too much this morning. And he numbs it up.

And then he puts the chair down and says, all right, have a good day.

That'll be $400. We'll see you.

And you're wondering, well, I'm numb. I can't feel the pain anymore.

But you know, in about an hour, maybe two, if you're lucky, that's going to wear off.

And then the pain is going to be back. and it's going to be throbbing and you're

going to be hurting again.

And no matter what over-the-counter stuff you get, it's not going to remove that.

I mean, you'd feel like you got cheated there, wouldn't you?

When you go to the dentist and you want to get the root of that problem fixed,

whether that's pulling that sucker out or whether it's, what do they call that,

a root canal or whether they call it a cap in it, whatever they're going to

do to it, you want the full fix because you want that pain removed.

People will just try to numb it. They'll say, oh yeah, I see you got this big

life problem. Well, here, let me give you something to make you feel better.

But that something that makes you feel better is only temporary. It fades away.

You need that pain in your life. You need that root cause, that rut that you're

stuck in totally removed because you don't need that pain.

You don't want that pain in your life anymore. And that's what Jesus will do.

He'll remove even the very root of that problem.

Don't settle for just numbing. Settle for getting the whole problem solved.

Let God do that for you. You see, why this matters to you is this.

Jesus' power to save you goes one step deeper than your deepest pit.

Again, I go back to the lie the enemy uses that you're too far gone.

Jesus doesn't want any part of you. He wouldn't want someone like you in his family.

Baloney! I look to the scripture and I see all kinds of different kinds of people

who've been stuck in ruts in their lives.

People that had sins way far, far more than you perhaps have had.

I mean, even the guy that wrote the book of Matthew, Matthew,

he was a tax collector. He was considered a traitor to his own people.

And you know what? Jesus saved him.

We go on and on, even in the line of Jesus. We see many different sinners that

had deep generational sins that Jesus forgave.

That found forgiveness, that found redemption in God. When we consider that

Jesus has a rope long enough to get you out of your pit,

I just want to say that in a different way, that don't assume that your sin

and the depth of your sin and the patterns even of your sin are stronger and

greater than the grace that God wants to give you.

If you consider being stuck in the ravine, stuck in your sins.

Consider the rope, the lifeline that Jesus gives you, his grace.

And we know what the scripture says, what the apostle Paul said in Corinthians

is that his grace is greater than his affliction.

Jesus told Paul, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect,

complete in your weakness.

So are you trusting Jesus today? Trust him.

The passage doesn't only say that Jesus can help us. I think you're here today

in church, come to worship because you know that.

But the second truth that we find is this, that Jesus is still working for us.

It wasn't just a one and done. Okay, I died on the cross. Believe in me.

All right, peace out. You know, it wasn't anything like that.

His help is still active right now. I mean, in this very second, Jesus is still working.

Hebrews says here in verse 25, the end of verse 25, that he always lives to make intercession.

Now, again, it's one of those big churchy words, but the idea is simple.

Jesus isn't distant. Jesus is not passive.

Jesus is still involved for us, acting on behalf of those that will come to him.

So my question to you is, have you come to him?

Have you come to him in prayer and in the conviction of the Holy Spirit and

said, I am broken because of my sin?

I'm broken because I can't do anything but get stuck in this rut. Jesus, will you help me?

If you confess your sin, if you confess that brokenness, the Scripture says,

Jesus, he's faithful and just.

He will forgive you of those sins and not just forgive you, but cleanse you. Wipe the slate clean.

Isn't that awesome? That's above and beyond. But that's part of this intercession.

Jesus is cheering you on.

He's pleading before the Father.

Hey, Father, I know he's a knucklehead, but I died for him.

I want to make him not a knucklehead I want him to repent I want him to change

his attitude I want him to change his mind on some things I want him to turn

away from that stuff That keeps getting stuck in a rut And I want to see him,

Exalted or it could be a her as well But I don't really want to call Hers knuckleheads

because Don't know too many women who are knuckleheads I know a lot of guys

that are But guess what Jesus can save them too Thank you.

I've known quite a few who have been saved. So I want you to understand this.

It means that Jesus right now is still working on your behalf.

Right now, as you sit there, as maybe the Holy Spirit's talking to you,

maybe as the word is resonating with you, or maybe right now you're just mad.

What do you talk about, preacher? What are you calling me, preacher?

I mean, you could go down the whole list of things.

But even right now, Jesus is working on your behalf. whether you're pleased

with him or not pleased with him. He's working for you.

Jesus did not only something important in the past, but right here and right now, as I said.

Won't you know that Jesus will stand up for you when you're weak,

when you're just like, man, I can't do this anymore. Forget it.

Jesus is standing up for you saying, no, you can. I'm going to help get you through it.

Did you know that Jesus stands up for you when you're weak, but he stands up

for you when you don't know what to say.

And have you ever come broken to an altar of prayer? You've knelt down and you

just have all these feels, but you can't express anything to God.

I got to tell you, in those moments, the scripture says that the Holy Spirit

of God kind of translate those moanings and groanings, those things we don't

know how to make words for. We just know what we're feeling.

Jesus hears those. He's interceding for you.

He's going to the Father on your behalf. He's going to bat for you.

He does not stop working just because you struggle.

If you're a Christian and you're struggling with some things,

it doesn't mean you're not a Christian, okay?

It means that something in your life is being highlighted that you need to deal with.

Sometimes those struggles are external.

Sometimes they're internal and we're just trying to deal with this.

But external or internal, guess what?

Jesus is interceding for you. He's going to bat for you.

He's talking to the Father to you. And if he's talking to Father too,

he's going to talk to you as well.

Will you listen to that small, still voice?

Listen to his word. When it highlights something in your life, that might be off.

Did you ever watch those Rocky movies? Anybody besides me? Okay,

Marco, a few of you. Okay.

Man, for the life of me, and I didn't Google it, I was racking my brain trying

to remember who was in his corner.

I want to say Pauly, but I don't know if that's right or not.

But whenever Rocky would get knocked down, the guy in his corner was cheering

him on or chewing him out, one of the two.

I got to tell you, that reminds me of Jesus sometimes in my own life.

He's always in my corner.

And sometimes when I get knocked out, when I didn't block a blow,

I'm going to get chewed out.

It's called the conviction of God to say, hey, you made a stupid choice there.

You didn't control your tongue.

You made a dumb decision there, but we'll make it better next time.

Or sometimes, if I'm getting knocked here and there by the blows of life,

Jesus is there shouting encouragement to me.

Boy, I don't know if you've had this experience, but you've had a daily devotion

in your personal worship and you've read the scripture and it met the exact

need you were having that very moment,

That's when Jesus is encouraging you from the corner saying,

I'm not leaving you. You're not alone. Don't give up.

It's important to know that you've got someone cheering you on.

Because one of the things the enemy does is to isolate you and make you go way over here.

So you feel like you're alone. There's no one else around. It's just you fighting this good fight.

Trying to live up to the standard that God has for us in this holiness, this high standard.

It's kind of like the high jump. You run and you're trying to do the Falsbury

flop and go over it backwards and hit the mat.

But you start running and you just strip over your own feet and you hit your face on the mat.

I mean, that's what it feels like sometimes. The enemy wants us to think we're all alone.

We're over here in a corner. Nobody else is going to help you.

You got to figure it out on your own, but good luck doing that because even God's against you.

That's what the enemy wants us to feel. That's what he wants us to think.

But we have someone in our corner. If you're tired today, if you're feeling

overwhelmed, maybe if you're even feeling ashamed,

you don't have to pretend to be stronger than you are, but you can trust the

strength that Jesus wants to give you.

Jesus does not walk away from people who are in the middle of their struggle.

Jesus won't walk away from you in the middle of your struggle.

And I want you to have confidence in that.

I want you to trust Jesus in that because the scripture says he will never leave

you or forsake you and we'll have that coming up in Hebrews here pretty quick.

He's a friend, the scripture says, that sticks closer than a brother.

We've got some awesome families in this church and I know in these awesome families

that we have, brothers stick nearby one another.

Now, they're going to feud. That's okay. Brothers feud all the time.

Some of the best fights I ever had was with my brother.

But if anyone came up against me, guess who was there with me? Who'd been my brother?

And I would be there for him too. But Jesus is that friend that sticks even closer than a brother.

Well, there's one more part of this passage we need to see this morning.

Because if Jesus can completely help us, if he can save us to the uttermost,

if he's still active right now in our lives, then what kind of person is he?

This answer matters because the kind of Savior that he is will shape the kind

of change that he wants to bring to your life.

And really, it's an issue of trust. Are you going to trust Jesus to transform

you into the person he wants you to be.

You see, Jesus brings real change. The passage describes Jesus as completely

pure, good, unlike any other brokenness that mars humanity.

I mean, we could see that in verse 26.

He's holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens,

unlike any of the other priests.

We know, as the scripture says, he gave himself finally completely on our behalf

when he gave up his life on the cross, that that satisfied the punishment for

your sin and for my sin, for the sin of all people everywhere.

What Jesus did was sufficient for you. It was sufficient for me.

And that's good news, people.

You don't have to punish yourself because you're stuck in a rut of sin and you

can't get out of it. Jesus already was punished for that.

And he offers you a way out. He offers you forgiveness. He offers you the chance

to repent, to turn away from that, and to turn and to follow him.

His work is not unfinished, okay?

Jesus finished his work on the cross for you and for me, and his character is not compromised.

When Jesus was hanging on the cross and people were hurling insults at him,

probably throwing stuff at him, making fun of him, how he looked.

Jesus wasn't cussing them out from the cross.

Jesus wasn't calling down fire and brimstone to wipe them out.

Why? Because he's holy. Because he was dying for those people that were doing that stuff toward him.

His heart was broken for them. He gave himself completely for them.

And why did he do that? And why does it matter for us? It matters because Jesus is our way maker.

Jesus makes the way where there seems to be no way we sing a chorus like that, right?

When there's an impossible situation, which sin is an impossible situation from

our standpoint, because we can do nothing to change it.

We can do nothing to atone for it. But the good news is Jesus has already made the way for us.

As a matter of fact, what did Jesus say? Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus made the way. We couldn't be led into healing by someone that was sick.

Someone is lost, as we are.

All the Old Testament priests, some were good, some were not.

They could not make a sinless way for us to walk in, but Jesus could,

and he did. And he did it for you.

He did it for me. He did it for that person you're praying for that does not know Jesus.

Jesus is our way maker. And because he's our way maker, we know he was not damaged

in the way that were damaged.

He did not suffer from sin. The only sin he suffered from was your sin and my sin on that cross.

Jesus can take you and he can cleanse you to the deepest level that you have.

Those deep dark sins that only you and God know about, Jesus can take care of that.

As a matter of fact, he has taken care of that. He's just waiting for you to

seek his wisdom, his guidance, and his forgiveness on that.

So will you trust him today in those things?

God doesn't offer us something shallow in Jesus, some kind of self-improvement.

He doesn't say, oh, just go read this self-help book.

It's real change flowing from someone who is whole and complete himself.

Picture it. Jesus not only forgives us, but he reshapes us from the inside out.

The verse we started out with today, that Jesus brings us and creates us into

a whole new creation, a whole new nature is powerful.

In 2 Corinthians 5, you're a new creation in Jesus.

As a result, the old one is gone. The new has come.

And God wants you to live into that newness of life that comes through the way

that Jesus made, that comes through Jesus.

He changes our desires. He changes our habits. He changes our relationships.

And he gives us an overall direction for our lives.

His goal is not that we just get to heaven someday when we die,

but today he wants to make us whole even right now.

He wants to bring completion to our lives.

On this side of eternity, we could say. He wants you to live as the kind of

person that you can live and can be like today.

I know in the Church of the Nazarene, we quote the verse, be holy even as I am holy, says the Lord.

But it's that standard of holiness, that standard of completeness,

of perfection that God originally created us into, created Adam and Eve into.

That's the standard he wants us to live up to. And you can through Christ,

if you'll trust him in that step-by-step, day-by-day.

I watched a video this week about a pastor. His church is a pretty big church.

I don't know exactly how many, but I'm going to say in the tens of thousands.

As he was talking, he was given a testimony. And in this testimony,

he says, yeah, my youth pastor gave me a chance to preach when he probably shouldn't have done that.

And he says, yeah, I was really heavily into smoking. And so I go out and have

a cigarette and then come in and preach to all the youth.

Probably not a good thing to put on your resume, right? Especially in the Church of the Nazarene.

But he was being transparent and saying what he struggled with and how deep that was in his life.

And he came to know Christ, but had not surrendered that yet to Jesus.

So what changed his life and what he testified to was this. He met a girl.

And guess what this girl did not like?

The smell of cigarette smoke.

So because of his love for this girl, he quit.

He quit smoking, didn't quit the girl. That's probably another country song

somewhere along the way. Oh, wait, no, that's fishing. That has to do with fishing. That's right.

He didn't get a brand new girlfriend, but he found a newness in a relationship with Jesus.

As God's grace was unveiled to him and And he quit that and he continued on

to seek and to search out what Jesus had for him.

Jesus forgave him, but he also transformed his desires.

A lot of us won't quit anything until we love someone more than the thing that

has our affections at the moment.

And this matters because Jesus is not content to leave you with a divided heart.

As a matter of fact, in the book of James, it says, a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.

You can't have one foot in the world and one foot in heaven.

You can't do it. It's all in one way or the other. And for some, it's a process.

And for some, the temptation is they always go back to the world instead of

trusting what God wants them to do and what He has planned for them.

When we think about this being a divided heart, maybe you felt like that. The Apostle Paul did.

The Apostle Paul says, man, I really want to do what God wants me to do.

There's this thing that God wants me to do. I really want to do it,

but every time I try, then it just blows up in my face. And this is my translation, of course.

The good thing I want to do, I can't do it because I always end up doing the

thing that I don't want to do.

And he cries out to God for help. And maybe you felt like that.

You're in good company if you have, if the Apostle Paul felt like that.

But it's good news because God wants you to be pulled in the right direction.

God doesn't only want to forgive you. He wants to begin changing you at the

deepest level. And so I'll just ask, have you let him?

Have you let him change you? My encouragement today is to give yourself completely to Jesus.

Let him save you to the uttermost.

Not just a little bit of salvation. He wants all of you. So where does that leave us today?

It leaves us with a Jesus who helps to reach the deepest part of who we are,

to reach our sin, our deepest patterns that we're stuck in.

It means we have a Jesus whose care does not stop when we struggle,

but that continues with us to help guide us and lead us out of those struggles.

It means that we have a Jesus whose life is whole enough to make us whole,

who has been perfected, completed enough to bring us to that point.

So the question here today is whether we will trust Him with our real lives.

We trust Him today. As we wrap this up, maybe you've been around church for

a few years or maybe longer, or maybe you're still unsure kind of what you believe

if you really believe in Jesus, and that's the struggle that you're having.

Either way, I think the invitation is the same. Bring your real life to Jesus.

If you're struggling to even believe there is a Jesus or not,

or if you have faith and you've followed Him many years, maybe now's the time

to trust Him, to bring your life to Him.

What does that mean? It means you bring your guilt.

It means you bring your fear. You bring your habits. You bring your questions.

You bring your need to Jesus.

And he hears you. And he wants to save you. And he wants to save you completely.

If you look around at creation, even in its fallenness, God doesn't do anything halfway.

God's going to bring about completion in your life. So this morning,

I just say, ask God to forgive you, to lead you, and to bring that life-giving change to you.

If you feel stuck, if you feel ashamed, if you feel skeptical this morning,

if you're just tired, if you just think you're beyond Jesus' reach,

He's not offering you a temporary fix.

He's not offering you a painkiller.

He's offering a new start, the kind of deep change that you really need,

the kind of change you can't create on your own.

And that's what it means for him to save you to the uttermost.

So this morning, I just want to leave you with this. Don't just manage your sins.

Let Jesus conquer them. Would you do that this morning?

As the praise team comes and we have some time in closing, I just want you to

ask God to search your heart. Would you ask him.

Ask Him to bring up those things that you have hidden so deep you've never dealt

with that you need to deal with, because God wants to save that area of your life.

A memory, boy, a past pattern that you see continued in your own children or grandchildren.

Ask God to bring that to surface. And guess what? He will.

He'll change you. He'll transform you into a person you don't even recognize

anymore, one that is aligned with the will of the Father.

Let me pray for you before we sing. Father, I pray you speak to hearts right now.

As we sing this last song, Lord, as we then pray the benediction,

God, would you be glorified, Lord, by the choices we make, by surrendering ourselves to you.

It's in the powerful and mighty name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

Well, Stan. I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast.

You can find a copy of today's sermon, as well as other sermons,

and the sermon outlined from today on our church's website, www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.