Who Are You Living With?

Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.

Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

Alright, so the title of our message is Who Are You Living With?

Now, if bad grammar, Pastor Robert, we know you're watching.

Sorry.

If bad grammar just sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard, then the title for you is With Whom Are You Living?

You're welcome, Thomas.

You're welcome.

So so proper.

With whom are you living?

But for the rest of us, who are you living with?

It's something we can remember.

Who are we living with?

Yes, so we're gonna start in Joshua 24, 14 through 15.

And this is where Joshua is talking to the Israelites, and they are on the, they've come out of Egypt, they're on the other side of the Jordan, and they're just they're living in the promised land.

And he says, Now therefore, fear the Lord, serve him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the river and in Egypt.

Serve the Lord.

Remember that phrase, because we're gonna come back to it.

And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell.

But as for me in my house, we will serve the Lord.

As for me in my house, we will serve the Lord.

The first thing is that the word house is much broader than an actual structure in which you live.

Whenever we see in Scripture where we talk about the house of David, it's talking much broader than the actual house.

We see that God blesses our house.

When God blesses our house, he's talking in this context that he blesses our life, he blesses our marriage, he blesses our family, he blesses our finances, he blesses all that your influence is there for it.

Like all of your work, your uh the places that God chooses for you to be at, God blesses those areas.

So whenever we're talking about as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

It's not just this actual house that we live in, but it's saying that God will bless everything.

But for as for me in my house, as for me in everything in my life, as for me in my marriage, we will serve the Lord.

Yep.

And so if we don't actively make that decision, if there's not an intentional decision made frequently to serve the Lord, we can easily open ourselves up to, you know, the things of the enemy.

We can have open doors in our lives if we're not careful, if we're not uh intentionally serving him.

It just kind of naturally creeps in, it just kind of naturally happens.

So um when I was in college, I went to Hillsong International Leadership College and uh studied worship there.

And while I was there, I like graduated high school, was 18 years old, got on a plane, and went over 8,000 miles away.

So we're there, I'm living uh in Sydney, and we have a holiday break.

There's some sort of holiday in Australia that we that we were gonna take a break.

So all of my housemates who are from different countries go home, and it's just me and my other housemate there.

But her family comes in town, so she goes to the city, and I'm home alone.

Now listen, I didn't travel across the world and be nervous about staying home by myself.

I was just fine.

But that night, it was the first night, I'm pretty sure it was the first night that I was there by myself.

I'm laying in bed, and the way that my room was set up is my bed was against this long wall that had a very large window.

And outside the house was a walkway and a fence to the neighbor.

Uh, you know, it was kind of just like a walk away from the front of the house to the backyard, little easement area.

So I'm laying in bed, I'm falling asleep, I'm just barely drifting, and I hear the garbage cans outside move.

And it just like piques my hearing a little bit.

But then I hear the gate to the front, to the back open and shut.

Now I'm like, that's not the wind.

So I sit up, I'm like, I'm like sitting up in my bed, and I turn towards where the window is, and the floodlight of the neighbor's house pinks on, and it just casts this light into my room, and in walks the shadow of a man.

It was like every scary movie I'd ever seen in my life came back to haunt me in this moment.

So I'm laying there and my heart starts racing, and I think to myself, did I lock the doors?

Did I lock the doors?

I was in college.

I definitely did not lock my doors.

So I'm freaking out internally.

I'm quiet as a mouse though.

And I'm having this moment of panic when I hear the sliding door of the laundry room slide open.

Immediately, I'm like, well, this is the time.

We gotta go.

So I jump up, I run through my uh bedroom door, I get to the kitchen, which is right outside the door, I grab the biggest knife out of the butcher's block that I can possibly find, I run back in my room, I move the chest.

It's like I have one piece of furniture in my entire room, and it's this big chest.

So I just like shove it in front of the door, I sit on the chest, and I call my dad.

8,500 miles away.

And I go, Dad, I think somebody's breaking in.

He's like, Bridget, hang up the phone with me and call 911.

I'm like, oh, duh.

I hang up the phone and I call the police.

So I'm sitting there with the police on the phone, the butcher knife in my hand, on like wedged up against my door, and you know, they're like, Okay, we're gonna send somebody to you, the the the officers are heading to your house.

So I'm on the phone with a dispatcher, and I'm going, I have a knife! If you come near me, I will kill you.

I was afraid for my life here, young.

Okay, the thing is, like in America, that totally flies.

We have like self-defense laws, but not so much in Australia.

She was like, um, please do not kill this man.

I gotta do what I gotta do, lady.

So I'm I'm wedged up against it.

I hear the door knock, you know, police, it's the police.

And so she says, you know, they're there.

So I'm I'm like, so do I go out?

She's like, yes, please go out of the room and go, you know, go to the police.

So I move the chest out of the way and I peek through the door and I don't see anybody, and y'all, I just fall as fast as I can with this knife and the phone, and I bust through the door to the police officers.

And after I've like calmed down, I'm sitting there on the curb because I don't even want to go back in the house.

They had cleared it, they had checked, they were like, Yeah, we actually the door, all your doors are unlocked, lady.

Come on.

Word to the wise, if you're in college, please lock your doors.

Um, so I I tell them though, like, I don't have anything of worth in the house.

We are broke college students.

I have no jewelry, I have I have barely furniture.

There's no we don't even have a TV, I have nothing of worth in there.

And he they said, Oh honey, he wasn't coming for your stuff.

He was coming for you.

He's probably been watching, because I walked everywhere, he's probably been watching you walk to school and walk home, and he knew you were the only one home.

That's a biblical principle that we can apply to our own lives.

Let's shut the doors that could be open to the enemy.

There are ways that we can open up the doors of our lives to our houses that we just talked through.

And if we don't intentionally shut those doors, we can be susceptible to the enemy.

And he's not necessarily looking for your stuff.

Now he'll use your stuff to get to you, but he's not looking for your stuff, he's looking for you.

So in that moment, like I found out I left my door open.

So what did I do?

I called my dad.

He couldn't really do anything in the natural, but you know, the purpose is I called my dad.

Well, when we realize that we've left a door open and we see that, we can immediately call our heavenly father and say, Lord, I I don't know what happened here.

I left myself vulnerable and open.

Hey, I made some bad decisions in my past that opened myself up to some things.

Hey, I just realized I really need to come clean about this hidden sin that's in my life, these old habits.

There's things that we can do in our lives to close the doors and open the doors.

Yeah, so the first thing Bridget did was call her dad, which obviously he can't just in the natural from over 8,000 miles away show up in the room, but our heavenly father can show up in the room.

And so point number one is who is in the house?

Who is in the house?

And we must invite the Lord into our house.

The most important thing, as she did, is call a dad, but we need to call our heavenly father and invite him into the house.

Now, I just want to share something.

When this scripture says, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Something about the Lord, this will sound maybe not so deep, but what is it that a Lord does?

A Lord, Lords.

A Lord, Lords.

And so if I were to invite Joey over to my house, and Joey comes over to my house, then I get to tell Joey what to do because he's Joey.

And so I'm saying, hey, Joey, guess what?

Thanks for being here.

This is your spot, this is where you'll stay, this is what you do.

We're gonna eat dinner at six.

I'm gonna go hang out and do some things by myself, and at dinner will be at six, and you can come join us, and then you go back over here, and then we're gonna do this and this and this.

When you invite the Lord to stay at your house, you like invite the Lord for all of the areas of your life.

Guess what?

He is the Lord.

You are to be hearing what it is that he tells you to do versus you telling the Lord what to do.

You can't tell the Lord, Lord, here's your corner, and here's the one area I want you to focus on, but then I'll gonna be over here, I'm gonna go do my own things, and then I'll be back for you.

That's not the way it works.

Instead, the Lord says, Hey, I know you wanted dinner at 5 30.

Not gonna work.

We're gonna have dinner at 6, and we're actually gonna go to this place because I want you to witness to somebody.

And then when after that, you're gonna come home and you're gonna spend time with your family and you're gonna do this.

That is what it means to make him the Lord of your life, that God is invited in and becomes Lord of our life.

Now, when I was a kid, I was scared of hell so many times that I prayed the salvation prayer hundreds of times.

I grew up in church, so I heard it all the time, and I was constantly praying it.

And but what I did is I did what I described, is I invited the Lord into my life, and I said, Hey, right here, this is your spot.

But it wasn't until I was 15 years old that I said, Lord, you're actually all of my house.

All of that I am, you are invited into, and I'm no longer going to tell you what to do.

Instead, I'm asking you to tell me what to do.

And that is what it meant for me to be saved and to be have a full relationship with God, is truly making him Lord of our life, but we must invite him into our marriage.

We must invite him into our life.

Yeah, that's right, because it's not just about salvation.

Obviously, it's about salvation, but it's not only about that.

If we're only inviting him in for eternity's sake, there's a whole missed opportunity for the everyday.

The Lord wants to partner with us in the everyday for our marriages, for our parenting, for our work, for our schooling, whatever it is that we are encountering in our lives.

He wants to be a part of that if we invite him in.

He's not gonna force his way in.

He's just not gonna do that.

He's not gonna force his way into your life.

He gave us a free will.

That means we can invite what we invite, we can resist what we resist, we can incur blessings and consequences depending on the chooses, the choices that we make.

If we don't partner for the everyday, we can miss out on the power that he has available for us.

First Corinthians 6 20 says, For you were bought at a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.

Yes, that is Bridget Knight.

Bridget is always cold.

I can't help it.

It was made for summer.

And so she is always bundled up, always cold.

And at night she'll be like, Oh, hold me.

She has scriptural proof that I need to hold her now to keep her warm that she reminds me of.

How can one stay warm?

She says, How can one stay warm?

And so uh, you know, a little side joke about us is uh when Bridget was pregnant and she would get very nauseous and so every pregnancy.

Every pregnancy.

And so she started eating every two to three hours.

So being a great husband and moral support, I started eating every two to three hours.

Now she would eat like a small snack, I did full on meal.

I really wanted to show that support.

And so through that, I started working on my dad bod, which just means you have more of a gut.

And so I looked a little bit more like a kebab after this, to where I was like skinny, but then just one big belly was showing up.

Oh my god.

And so I told her based off this scripture, I said, you know, you every night, I'm gonna go ahead and say I feel like this is a mature enough audience.

We she she likes to spoon.

And so uh that's where two of us come together.

And so here we are spooning, and I've told her, like, hey, I'm showing all this moral support to you by eating all this food, and I just want you to know this is great lumbar support for you.

And so I would want you to see the love that I have for you to care for you in such a way.

Reading on.

Quickly, quickly move on.

Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him talking about the enemy.

And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

A threefold cord is not broken easily, and so what that means is it is you, your spouse, and the Lord.

Now, it is a cord.

A cord is a braided strand.

And when you're braided together, when you, your spouse, and the Lord are so intertwined, you will not be easily broken.

However, it's whenever you start to unravel and unbraid the relationship with the Lord and your spouse that you personally are more susceptible to being broken.

And so we cannot be this cord and be three individual cords and say, Well, yeah, well, we can't be broken.

Instead, we have to be a cord all joined together, braided together, so that we will not be broken easily.

That's right.

So point number one was who's in the house.

Point number two is kick the squatters out of the house.

So you might be asking yourself, remind me, what is a squatter?

I have a definition.

A squatter is a person who settles in or occupies a piece of property with no legal claim to the property.

A squatter may gain adverse possession of the property through involuntary transfer.

So, what does this mean?

A property owner who does not use or inspect their property for several years could lose the title to another person who makes a claim to the land, takes possession of the land, and uses the land.

John 10 10 says the thief does not come except to steal, kill, and destroy.

The thief is looking for any land uninhabited by the Lord.

So if there's something in your life, there's something that you haven't fully given to the Lord, he is on the prowl.

He is searching for that land, and he will be a squatter trying to take possession of it.

And we have to have to be diligent to search out our life to see if there's any area that the enemy is coming in.

That something has unintentionally come in and you don't even realize that it's there until it's like too late, and then it's there.

Bridget and I had a squatter show up in our apartment at one point, a little bit different.

Okay, it wasn't a real squatter.

I mean, it was kind of another incident.

But what happened is we left town for a week, we come back in town, and there was this package of peanut butter crackers laying on the floor in the kitchen.

Listen, listen, listen.

Okay.

We get home, we open up the door, we put down our stuff, and right there in front of us is this half-eaten package of peanut butter crackers.

And James looks at me and goes.

We told our sisters to come by the apartment, check on it, and stuff, and I picked him up and was like, Your sisters are such slobs.

Throw it in the trash.

I was like, Yes.

So I blame their sisters.

So, yes, blame the in-laws.

So, so he blames my sisters, and I'm like, oh, sorry.

So we get all of our stuff, we go to bed the next morning, we get up and go to work.

Normal thing.

We come home.

Underneath the cabinets, another package of half-eaten peanut butter crackers.

This time I was like, Your sisters are such slobs.

Throw it in the trash.

She calls her sisters.

Yeah, I called my sisters because they were supposed to gather the mail, they were supposed to, you know, check on the place while we were gone.

So I call my sisters and I'm like, hey, one, where's the mail?

Can't find that.

Two, you left peanut butter crackers everywhere, and James is totally upset about it.

My sisters were like, okay, well, one, there was a snowstorm, so we never came to your house.

Go look in your own mailbox.

And two, if there are peanut butter crackers, we never came there, so it must have been you.

So then quickly, I go back to the trash.

I'm looking at it, like inspecting it like, is this chewed open or torn open?

Uh-oh, it may be chewed open.

So then I go to the pantry and I look, and there's only one more package of peanut butter crackers.

So, like, okay, but now we know.

Next day we go to work, we come back.

Where do we go immediately when we cut through the door?

And guess what?

They're missing.

No peanut butter crackers in the pantry.

And so then I'm Bridget and I both were searching the house, we're looking for this other package of peanut butter crackers.

We cannot find it anywhere.

At this point, we lived in an apartment.

It was built in the 50s.

And uh, and so basically here we are, we're looking everywhere.

We can't find it.

Well, at night, here we are, we're laying in bed.

Snuggled, as James just clearly explained to you.

Yeah.

So here we are, snuggling in bed, and lights are out, everything, and all of a sudden we have this ch ch ch ch chch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch so all of a sudden like I'm like we both set up and Bridget's like on top of her.

On top of him?

Because I'm like, where is this?

Where is it?

I will get eaten.

Yeah, I will get eaten first.

He's gonna take the still survive.

And so then all of a sudden she's doing all like navy steel stuff, telling me all this stuff.

Like steel team sticks, so it's like and I I don't know what's happening until all of a sudden I flip on the lamp, and all of a sudden, this giant beast of a rat runs right up from under our bed.

Bridget screams.

Loudly.

Loud.

When she does, it releases a louder scream in me somehow.

When I scream, it releases a louder scream in her.

And I'm like pulling the bell.

Louder screaming me.

And mine was as high pitched as hers, and I'm not about to admit that.

And so we were both just screaming.

And then we just started going, giant big potato rat, giant, because this thing looked like it takes a spud, like running, galloping like a wild bronco, and it runs right out of our bed down the hall, and she's screaming.

I'm just going, I don't have any like golf clubs, baseball.

It's a four by eight by eight foot long.

So I'm like carrying around an apartment.

And I was like, I don't know.

All I'm gonna do is like pull vaults over this thing.

I don't have any other option at this point.

So here we are, we're like exploring, we're looking for I go to Home Depot.

Wait, wait, wait.

But wait.

We also call his parents.

We're like, please let us spend the night with you tonight.

Oh, we weren't sleeping with that dude.

No, no.

And they were like, okay, you can come over.

Yeah, of course, come over.

So we stayed at my parents, and uh yes.

Then I go to Home Depot and I was like, listen, I got a problem.

I got rats, and so I need I need you to help.

And so they gave me this cute little thing, and I was like, You have not seen this beast.

No, no, no, that's not what we need.

I was like, I need and so they gave me uh the the grande, and I was like it looks like it was from a comedy sketch, it did.

It was huge, it really did, and so we set it up, and I set two of them up.

First, no takers, but I put cheese in it.

Then we're like, these dudes love peanut butter.

We put peanut butter on it.

We caught several disgusting rats.

Guys, you would think I am like exaggerating when I say they were big.

They were I have a measuring tape, and I measured the tails were over one foot long.

It was like a possum.

They were beasts in the land that just came after us.

It was so bad.

I I wouldn't even plan on telling this, but I will now.

So the worst part, I just thought of it.

I just came back.

Is for like multiple nights in a row, I kept saying, Bridget, are you eating crumbs?

There's crumbs in our bed.

These fat critters were in there just eating these peanut butter crackers in my bed.

So I change the sheets every night.

He's getting on me.

I'm like, no, I'm not eating the bed, you're eating in the bed.

So all that to say, there are squatters in the land, and you have to get fierce to fight the squatters that come in and come after you.

And so the enemy will come in, and you may have just left it alone for a week, like we did when we were out.

You might have an area in your life that you haven't given as much attention to.

Yeah.

And then the enemy comes in, and then the enemy comes and gives you a lie, and then adds to it, and then it grows until you have disgusting rats, the enemy, in your place.

And so James 4, 7 says, Therefore, submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

We had to make those rats flee from us.

It took some time, we got it.

So, point number one was who's in the house.

Point number two was kick the squatters out of the house.

Point number three is clean the house.

It's time to clean up that house.

Joshua 24, 14.

So remember I said, remember that little phrase when we come back to it.

So 14 starts.

Now therefore, fear the Lord, serve him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the river and in Egypt.

Serve the Lord.

So what is he referring to here?

He is referring to the idols that they started worshiping while they were in bondage in Egypt.

And he's basically saying, like drawing a line in the sand, you cannot serve God and the gods of your past.

You cannot bring what is from your past into the future and expect a different outcome.

You gotta clean that stuff out.

There is a significant thing that happens within the Jewish culture, the feast of unleavened bread.

We do it today.

And the Jewish service is this Friday.

Uh and so you may want to check it out.

It's gonna be good.

But the Feast of Unleavened Bread, what that is, is where they would take time and they would remove all of the leavened out of the house.

Any bread that had yeast in it, leaven means basically the yeast in it.

So any anything that had yeast in it, anything that was baked in that way, and they would clean out all the leaven within the house.

Yeah.

And part of the reason is because of where they came from, the Egyptians.

Yep.

So the Egyptians were the ones that basically advanced baking.

Like we wouldn't have the British baking show if it weren't for the Egyptians.

They had like 40 different types of recipe, like ways and to make it.

They cultivated the yeast.

So the Israelites had picked up on that in Egypt.

So the Lord is telling them they they're celebrating this feast of unleavened bread because they're celebrating that the Lord had brought them out of Egypt.

He's saying, remember this.

And he's saying, lay down those old things.

You developed a taste while you were in Egypt for something that I did not give you.

And now you are still, you're still snacking on those delicacies, trying to bring it into the new land.

And he's like, you can't do that.

You've got to lay that stuff down and not bring it into the future with you.

I'm asking you to put that away.

Yeah, God is saying that he wants to redefine and reset your taste to be from him instead of your culture.

Now, with that, the what does leaven represent throughout the Bible?

It represents rottenness, it represents fermented rottenness.

And that is what it rec uh it also is sin.

And we see Jesus referring to this even in the New Testament, whenever he talks about the leaven of the Pharisees, the leaven of the Sadducees, the leaven of Herod, he's talking about the sin of the Pharisees, the sin of the Sadducees.

And so he's referring to the sin because the sin is what puffs you up.

It's what causes you to expand into a way that you are not meant to be.

And so he is calling out the sin.

Well, in this, there is the feast of unleavened bread.

And so they for it coincides with Passover, and they would, for seven days, they would remove all of the yeast, all of the products that were made with yeast.

And so Pastor Greg Stone, our Jewish pastor, was even telling me that he remembers being when even when he was five years old, being up on the countertop and standing on the counter and looking in every single cupboard to make sure there's not even a single crumb.

And his mom was saying, All right, Greg, come on, you can come down now.

And he's like, No, mom, this is so important.

We have to get it all out because in the Jewish culture, you will be cut off if you do not remove it.

And so we even have heard of some families that now, even during the feast of unleavened bread, what they do is they will have the time where they remove all the leaven, but then the parents will even hide bread or something throughout the house and have the kids go out and find it all.

It is almost like a scavenger hunt for the kids.

And so here they are, they're searching for it, they're finding it.

And why they do that is to teach the kids that sometimes we have to search our house to see if there is anything in the house that does not line up with our spiritual convictions and our biblical convictions.

This is a practice that we need today, spiritually, that we on an ongoing basis, we search the house.

We search every area of our life and we say, Lord, is there any area of rottenness?

Is there any area of something that is puffed up that is not of you?

Is there any area of sin?

And we need to be able to search our lives and see if there's anything that doesn't line up with God.

Yeah, 1 Corinthians 5, 6 says, your glorying is not good.

Basically, what they were glorifying wasn't godly.

So what they were setting their mind to, what they were uh engaging in was not godly.

So he says, Your glorying is not good.

Do you not know that even a little leavens, little leaven leavens the whole lump?

What he's saying is just a little bit of sin, just the tiniest small amount of sin will corrupt your whole life.

Just the smallest slide.

It's such a slippery slope.

Some things just start so innocent.

It's just a conversation at work that starts.

And after a while you start having more conversations and more conversations, and then you start having more intimate discussions with somebody at work that you should not be having those conversations with.

Maybe you have a gym membership and you're at the gym and you start there because you want to get healthy.

But now you've developed a relationship, you've developed uh a fantasy, you've developed something towards another person that's not your spouse.

It's not where you need to be.

There's some places that like you may have subscription you need to get rid of.

You may need to unfollow some people.

There's some times in our lives where you know, in marriage you have conflict.

But if you don't press into that conflict, if you don't work through it, and you start retreating, you start having these coping mechanisms that pull you away, that can open yourself up to something that the Lord just does not want for you, and you don't want for yourself.

You don't want for your own marriage.

So it's time search out the leaven in your life.

Search out any area of rottenness that is uh hindering you from truly saying, I am the Lord's, and as for me in my house, and as for me in my marriage, we will serve the Lord.

With that, I want to end with a story, and this is about a really good friend of mine who's a businessman, and him and his wife, there was another couple in the church, and they were going through just a lot of spiritual oppression, a lot of spiritual attacks, and just it was really a hard season.

And so they asked my friend and his wife to come over to their house and pray for them.

So they went to their house and they're praying.

This friend of mine just has a really good, like amazing prophetic gift.

And so he they're praying for them, and he says, There's something outside this window.

And there's a spiritual attachment that's holding you back.

And he goes, What's outside this window?

And he said, I mean, there's uh some trails down there, and eventually, if you keep going, the lake is down there.

And he goes, No, no, that's not it.

There's something outside this window.

I was praying, the Lord told me we need to find out what's outside this window, what's outside this window.

And so the wife says, Well, I mean, the flower beds out there, and there's no spiritual attachment there.

And so then he says, No, no, I really feel like God told me this.

What is right outside this window?

And then the husband's head dropped, and he said, Well, when I was in college, I won a trophy.

Not for something very moral, but I won this trophy, and my wife had been telling me to get rid of it, but it was significant to me because I won something.

And so instead of getting rid of it, instead of throwing it away, I buried it in the flower bed.

It just so happened.

It was like a little figurine of another God.

And he said that that that's it.

There is spiritual warfare, there's spirits that attach to different things within our life.

So they dug it up, they destroyed it, got rid of it, prayed for the family, prayed for them, and the spiritual attack disappeared.

And so it's that there's some different things within our life.

And sometimes it is something that we're like, yeah, I know I shouldn't have that, and you know, it just I shouldn't watch that, but it's my guilty pleasure.

I just love it.

Yeah, but I paid like$9 for that.

Or no, I paid$900 for it, and you you're you're saying, I can't get rid of this, or maybe it's jewelry from an ex or something, and you're saying I just get rid of this.

How would I get rid of this?

And God may be asking us to purge out some things in our life.

God may be asking us to remove different areas of leaven in our life.

And you might think, wow, these James and Bridget, they're really extreme.

I can't even get my like high school trophy or whatever.

We have to realize asking you to do it, but is the Holy Spirit asking you to do it?

And we have to realize we are experiencing so much spiritual attack.

And we need to make sure there's not a single area of our life with an open door, like Bridget shared, where the enemy can come in.

So let's search out our heart, let's search out our mind and say, are we in such a way, have we structured a life to be able to say, as for me in my house, we will serve the Lord.

As for me in my marriage, we will serve the Lord.

As for me in my work, we will serve the Lord.

Yep.

So just like Joshua drew a line in the sand and asked the Israelites, choose for yourself today, whom will you serve?

We want to ask the same thing.

Choose for yourself today.

Who will you serve?

Who are you gonna make Lord of your life?

Pastor Craig last week said, I want us to all as a church pray for boldness for seven days.

And let's pray bold prayers.

I'm asking that we now take the next seven days and search out our life.

Let's allow the Holy Spirit, let's allow God to reveal things in our life that potentially could be holding us back from being fully committed to the Lord.

With that, I'd love to pray with you so just take a moment and let like we do every single week, we ask the Holy Spirit, Lord, what are you saying to me through this message?

Lord, I just pray, ask that you speak right now.

God, thank you so much for your goodness.

Thank you for just even your love and passion for marriage.

Lord, thank you that you care enough to come in such a way that we can call upon your name and you will be there.

That you are such a grace-filled God, but you are willing to work with us and as we get better and we become more and more Christ-like, Lord, I pray that anything that we need purged out of our life, that you would reveal it.

And Lord, I pray over the next seven days we ask for a cleansing so that we can be more pure to be able to experience you in a greater way.

In Jesus' mighty name.

Amen.

Amen.

We love you guys.

Love you so much.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you'd like to connect with us, text Connect to 71010 or visit gatewaypeople.com.

We hope you have a great week.