Everyone's a Critic | Ps. Keith Pittman

Welcome to the Celebration Church Orlando podcast.

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If you have your Bibles, I want to invite you to join me in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter number seven.

Over the past several weeks, I would say since the beginning of the year, we've been examining the words of Jesus as found in what is referred to as the Sermon on the Mount.

This is the literal message of Jesus speaking about the kingdom ethic, breaking down what does it mean to be a follower of Christ in a world that is so polarizing.

If you missed any of our messages, and there's a good chance that maybe you have, we have them all available on our podcast.

They're all available on our YouTube channel.

So I would certainly love for you to go back and engage them because we are building a little bit of momentum.

And as I've said in previous services, that it's impossible to engage the Sermon on the Mount, which covers Matthew 5, 6, and 7, and not feel encouraged and challenged simultaneously.

Because Jesus confronts us where we are, but he leads us to where we're called to go.

And today we're going to continue in that theme.

A quick side note is that last week we did talk a little bit about God and money and and and more so having a the mindset of a kingdom.

And one of the resources we wanted to make available to our church is letting them know that we do have um some coaches that are a part of our legacy team who've made their expertise, their wisdom, their experience available to our church.

So if you're in here and and maybe you just need help on establishing a budget, we don't want to take it for granted that that some of those baseline things are things that some of us may struggle with.

Maybe you just need um some strategy and some support outside perspective on the effective ways to pay off debt or even just beginning a plan for the future.

Um you don't have to do it alone.

You don't have to Google and take shots in the dark, but we do have some people on our legacy team who are offering their expertise, their gifts to just walk alongside.

This is not financial advice, but it's more so just perspective in a way that can hopefully help.

So if you can benefit from that, um come and join us outside at the in the courtyard at our connections tent, and we would love to connect you with someone from our team.

Looking at Matthew chapter number seven, we're gonna be reading verses one through six, and I would like for all of us to read this together.

This has kind of been our tradition that we will do as a community, and so the Bible's gonna come up on the screens, it's gonna come up on the Bible in the sky, and I just want all of us on the count of three to read verses one through six together in community and to be encouraged by God's word.

One, two, and three.

Do not judge others, and you will not be judged, for you will be treated as you treat others.

The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged.

And why worry about the speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own?

How can you think of saying to your friend, let me help you get rid of the speck in your eye when you can't see past the log in your own eye?

Hypocrite, first get rid of the log in your own eye, then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend's eye.

Don't waste what is holy on people who are unholy.

Don't throw your pearls to pigs.

They will trample the pearls and turn to attack you.

Somebody say, ouch.

Today I want to take a couple of moments and we're gonna move a little quicker through this for the sake of time, but I want to take a few moments to talk about something that I think every one of us can get in the lane of if we're quite honest with ourselves.

But today's theme is freedom, and I'm hoping that today's message can begin to set some of us free.

So if you're taking notes and I hope that you are, I want you to write down today's message title, and it is Called Everyone's a Critic.

Let's pray and let's see what God wants to speak to us today.

Lord, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for your presence, we thank you for the grace that you make available to us.

We don't count it as common that you visit us, that you're amongst us, you dwell among us, and that you speak to us and stir our hearts and draw us close to you.

So, Father, I just pray over the next few moments that you give us open eyes to see you, open ears to hear you, and open hearts to receive everything that you have for us.

It's in Jesus' name that we pray.

Amen and amen.

I was talking with uh a young man last week.

He's in about fifth grade, and and as we're having this conversation, I asked him how were things in school going.

And he shared with me, he said, Man, like things are going really well.

I said, Well, how how are your grades?

And he proceeded to take out his smartphone, fifth grader smartphone, took out a smartphone, um, and and he logged into his portal and began to break down some of his most recent grades.

Now, I I understand that when my kids were in middle and definitely high school, they had access to the grade portal.

They would log in, they would look at things, we would look in things.

That was a kind of a part of the process.

I had no idea that now elementary students were now logging into the portal to look at their grades.

And it occurred to me just how privileged this young man was because he will never know the anxiety of working on an assignment, waiting the next day for the teacher to walk down the aisle and put the piece of paper that has been marked with red on your desk in front of everyone.

See, some of y'all don't even know what I'm talking about.

But some of y'all know the pain of what it feels like when you've been working on an assignment, and then that teacher begins to throw passive aggressive statements out the next day when they say things like, Some of y'all did really good.

And then some of y'all, Caleb, didn't do so good.

Like they would just look you dead in the eye, like, Why are you looking at me?

Like they, these kids are so lucky.

I still remember when I was in fifth grade, and Mrs.

Woods, I see you.

I remember I had worked on this assignment the night before, and I just knew that I had perfected the assignment.

I felt good about myself.

I handed it in, I smiled, I went to my seat.

I knew the next day that I would be one of the ones that she would smile at and have the grade on there with a circle on a smiley face and invite me to have extra time at recess and maybe even an extra cupcake when we go to lunch.

This is what I had seen in my mind.

But the next day when we were sitting there waiting for the grades to be passed out, she kind of went down the whole line of some of you did really good and I'm so proud of you, but some of you didn't follow instructions.

And as she said these words, I couldn't help but to notice that I felt like she was like looking at me.

And then she began to walk down the aisle.

And and I don't know what kind of marker she used, but it definitely wasn't, it definitely wasn't regulation.

Because you could see the red bleeding through the sheet from space.

And as she's walking down the aisle and handing down these papers, I saw when she got to mine, and she had the little glasses, she kind of wrote them down her nose and looked at them, and she lifted the sheet up, it looked like a crime scene.

And she laid it down on the desk.

And she had written all these kind of messages.

It looked like Morse code and calligraphy all in one.

And it turns out I didn't follow the instructions appropriately.

I actually had done too much work.

Now, I actually had to handwrite this.

This wasn't the days where you get to type and all that.

I handwrote this and she crossed out entire sections saying, hey, make sure you follow instructions.

Now, that experience was very, very humbling, but was also very humiliating.

Because I remember everybody looking at me, everybody kind of snickering at me a little bit, and and guess what, guys?

I made it overcome.

I'm okay.

But I remember that moment, and I remember thinking to myself, like, man, like that's that feeling is awful.

I I never want to make someone feel like that.

At in fifth grade, I remember literally saying those words, like, I don't want anyone to ever feel that way.

And now we fast forward 40 years, and if I can be honest with you, there are times that I can walk through life with a red marker in my mind, and I'm circling things that I see in other people's lives.

If I'm really honest with myself, there there are absolutely moments where I recognize that we all have a propensity to recognize the flaws and the brokenness in others.

And I think we all do it whether we want to admit it or not.

So let me let me give you an example.

Maybe you guys can be with me a little bit.

I can't tell you how many times I've been sitting in the comfort of my home on a Sunday afternoon, and I had some very strong critiques for a field goal kicker that mixed a critical extra point.

Not this year, because my team won a Super Bowl, but maybe some of y'all losers out there know exactly what I'm talking about.

There's always next year.

Or maybe maybe I've been sitting at home one time and I remember watching, um, I remember watching uh the someone sing the Star Spangled Banner during some really big event.

And me sitting there thinking, like, mmm, she really missed that note, didn't she?

As if I could do better, as if I would be on that same platform and keep that same poise.

We've all been there, we've all been at that place where maybe we're at a restaurant and you're trying to have a romantic evening with your with your love, and then right off of your periphery, you hear a kid who is losing their absolute mind.

This happened to me yesterday, for if you guys are curious.

Megan are sitting having a romantic moment and X thing on.

I'm like, girl, you know I love you.

What do you love about me?

I'm like, I love that you love me.

What do you love about me?

And we're having this great moment, and then I hear this child screaming like they're on the verge of being abducted.

And at first, you're like, okay, it's fine.

And then you know how it is, you get a you kind of give that passive aggressive look.

You don't want to say anything, but you want the parents to know, I see you and I see that you're not doing anything about your child, and you're ruining it for all of us.

We've all been there, you kind of look over and glance, and then before long you look over and glance again, and and then you begin to think to yourself, this is what happens when you gentle parent.

They've completely lost control.

We know what it's like when we see somebody who dresses differently than us, and we begin to create an entire narrative around them.

We we know what it's like for that couple that is struggling in their marriage, and we begin to say, well, well, maybe if he spent more time with her and didn't work so hard, then maybe their marriage would be strong.

The list goes on and on of how we all have the ability to build our own narratives and walk around and look at others with our own red marker, highlighting the flaws of others.

And some of us, I know, are saying to ourselves, like, but Keith, but but but what it what am I not allowed to have an opinion?

Am I not allowed to share an observation?

And I get it because we all have it, and I believe that we need to have our opinions.

It's a it's a part of us expressing our shared experience, but there's a very fine line between an observation, opinion, and then becoming an opponent.

Beginning to speak words that are negative.

Let me let me give you uh a practical example.

Hey, um, how how was church today?

To which, of course, you would say, church was absolutely amazing.

There was this handsome guy up on stage, he had just got a fresh haircut and he just preached a profound message.

Um, changed my life.

Okay, so that's one way you can answer it, and we will accept that.

Another way you could answer it could be, man, church was really, really good.

We had communion, we had baptism.

Again, that's perfectly fine.

You could even say, church was really good.

We ran a little bit late because we had baptism, but man, it was a powerful service.

All of those things are within the realm of an observation, an opinion, perspective.

But watch how quickly we can drift into being critical.

Man, church was really good.

The message was a little bit long, and I don't I don't even know why we did communion at at the end of baptism.

I think those things could be completely separate.

And and we had a great time in worship, but we probably should have kept on worshiping and we probably shouldn't have gone into the message.

And before long, my observation drifts into an opinion that turns into a critique.

And we never consider for one single moment that the very thing we are critiquing may have been somebody else being obedient to God.

We we never considered for one moment that the very thing that we're challenging could have been inspired by God.

So I believe there are moments when we have to recognize that all of us can drift into this lane of having a critical spirit.

A critical spirit is not just something that you think, but it's the way that you see things.

A critical spirit thrives in the shadows of our minds and begins to create assumptions in areas where we don't have enough information.

A critical spirit whispers judgment and feels justified with us saying things like, I'm just being honest, or I'm sharing my perspective, or I'm gonna be truthful, or I'm gonna keep it real.

We can disguise all of these things, but at the end of the day, it's a critical spirit.

Let me encourage you.

Honesty without love is brutality.

And if we don't have a relationship for that honesty, we need to learn to have a conversation.

So maybe you're wondering, Keith, do I do I have a critical spirit?

I'm glad you asked because I have a couple of things that I have gone through that maybe you can resonate with.

You may have a critical spirit if you find yourself focusing more on what's wrong than what's right.

That man, I see things that are wrong more or quickly than what's right.

I struggle with celebrating highs, but I am great at identifying lows.

That's evidence of a critical spirit.

You you struggle with celebrating the success of others.

You you see it, but there's also a side of you that feels like they don't deserve it.

You also may have a critical spirit if maybe you feel like that's good, but I think I could have done it better.

Or it could have been done much better.

If if you may have a critical spirit af you can give a compliment, but you like adding a critique on the back end.

It's like, oh man, I really, really love your house, but man, it's sure as far, isn't it?

So passive aggressive, and we don't realize that that's a critical spirit that is trying to find a way to voice itself.

You you may have a critical spirit if you assume the worst about people's motives.

You you may have a critical spirit if if you need to correct people, if they say something in a conversation and maybe they misspeak or maybe they didn't get all the facts right, but but you can't get past it unless you correct them and get them back on track.

I know that sometimes I can do that, particularly in my home environment.

And it seems so subtle.

Oh, you said this, but you actually meant that.

Does it really add any value to the conversation?

More often it doesn't, but it's because I needed to get it out of my system.

You may have a critical spirit if you find it difficult to enjoy things without pointing out the imperfections.

We can go on and on.

But another sign that you may have a critical spirit is that you struggle with apologies even after you know that your assumption was wrong or misguided, and you find ways to create justifications for it.

We all are critics, we all can step into that space of having ideas, and I believe that Jesus, in his infinite wisdom in Matthew chapter number seven, begins to address all of us by saying, don't judge others without recognizing that the same way that you judge others, you're inviting judgment on yourself.

I want to give us three ideas that I think can challenge us, that I think can inspire us and help us to move forward.

The first thing that I think we can do to deal with the critical spirit that all of us has is examine yourself first.

Examine yourself first.

Jesus says to this community that has been following him.

He says to him, He says, Listen, before you jump into looking at everyone else, take a moment to examine what's going on in your own life first.

In other words, you're so busy with your red marker highlighting everybody else's mistakes, everybody else's flaws, that you are completely ignoring your own mess that you literally had to step over in order to make said observation.

Jesus is simply saying, Listen, we need to take some time to evaluate ourselves because maybe my own pain, maybe my own struggles, maybe my own my own trauma has become a lid in which I see the world through, and I am projecting something on you that is inconsistent with the intent of your heart.

Jesus is simply saying that that when we have a critical spirit, it's often a mirror that's reflecting unresolved issues within ourselves.

In the realm of psychology, there's this philosophy called IFS.

It stands for Internal Family System.

And basically what that means is that inside of all of us, we have these varying aspects, these varying parts that makes us who we are.

And sometimes you may have heard somebody talk about my inner child.

That's all coming from this concept of psychology and IFS.

But one of the things that's so fascinating about this is there's also this concept in that called the critical parent.

And what the critical parent is, that is the voice that has been influential in your life as a part of your early upbringing that shapes the way that you see the world, and that also shapes the way that you see yourself.

It doesn't necessarily always mean that it was your parents, but it does mean that it was coming from those formative years where maybe some of those voices shaped the way that you see things.

A critical voice when you're young begins to affect the way that we see ourselves when we're old, and it can produce what we call perfectionism.

If you were raised in an environment where the room was never clean enough, if you were raised in an environment and maybe the dishes were never clean enough, and if you did do the dishes, well, you should have put them in a dishwasher that way.

And if you vacuum the floor, then the line should have been going perpendicular instead of going the other way.

Like there's always these moments that if we're not careful, they can seem so subtle, they can seem so innocent, but it begins to shape in our minds that it's never good enough.

Psychologically, what we recognize is that if you're in an environment that has been spoken criticism over you, you become overly critical of yourself and you become very critical of others.

Jesus is challenging us in this moment and saying, let's examine ourselves first to understand where this is coming from.

Let's understand first where why we feel the way that we feel, why are we speaking the way that we're speaking?

Because maybe it's possible there's a little bit more to it.

I know that there are moments when when I can look at the world through my lens and I can begin to speak to things, but I'm actually projecting thoughts of my own.

You know when you're very critical of yourself, it comes out in very interesting ways.

And some of you may think, like, no, I'm I'm pretty confident in self.

Let me let me do this quick diagnosis on you.

Do you ever find yourself needing to narrate areas of your life that no one asked you to narrate?

Let me talk a little step closer into your personal business.

Do you have you ever been in a space where you invite some people over and then when they get there, be like, oh, I'm so sorry, the house is a mess.

I'm I'm working on cleaning it up.

No one asked you that.

And no one's thinking about that.

But because of your own internal dialogue that has been messaging that you probably received over the years, your assumption is that when someone walks into your space, they're criticizing it, so you want to get ahead of it.

So I'm so sorry, don't my my car is a mess right now.

I'm I'm I'm gonna get it clean tomorrow.

Again, why do we feel the need to project that?

Because in our mind, there's a voice that we've heard that has told us that it's not clean enough, so we need to get ahead of it.

Oh, I'm getting my hair cut tomorrow, man.

Like, don't pay attention to my scruffy beard.

I wasn't until you just said something about it.

The reason why we do that is that's often our inner child looking to get acceptance, and we're justifying why it's not perfect, and it's often connected to the voice of the critical parent.

You guys didn't know y'all came here for therapy this morning, did you?

I gotta pay for these student loans somehow, so there will be a bill at the end of the service.

Okay.

But but we're told in God's word, in Psalm 139, it says, God searched my heart.

God, why is this a bother for me?

Why is this frustrating?

Why is this so triggering for me?

What exactly am I trying to resolve?

We need to examine ourselves first.

Jesus then goes on to say, You hypocrites! He doesn't mention any words, he doesn't back up, he says, You hypocrites.

The very thing that you're critiquing in someone else is the very thing that you're hiding behind.

Jesus uses this Greek term that is literally connected to acting.

You're acting like you have it all together while criticizing everyone around you.

You're acting like you got it all figured out, but the very thing you're critiquing is also in your life as well.

Have you ever had a conversation with somebody and they're telling you about something, and you're like, bro, you do the same thing.

Have you ever had a conversation with somebody?

And they're telling you, like, man, you're always late, and it's like You got here a minute before me.

Like, what are we talking about right now?

Like, I'm gonna try to stop.

Have you ever talked with somebody?

And and and they have the ability to point out things in others, and they can't even see that the very thing they're talking about is in their life.

Yes, it may express itself differently, but it's literally the same thing.

Jesus says that's hypocrisy.

What he's saying is you do not have the moral high ground.

And even if you are a little stronger in that area, none of you have moral superiority because none of y'all are me.

So stop judging others because their sin looks different than yours.

That's where we clap as a church.

Here's the second point.

Here's the second point.

Be curious, not critical.

Be curious, but don't be critical.

I don't want you guys to miss what I'm saying.

Because Jesus is very clear.

He is absolutely saying after you do some self-examination and deal with your own issues, the time may come for you to have a conversation with someone.

The time may come where you need to confront something with someone.

The time may come where you need to have some love conversation, some what we call um graceful confrontation.

There may come a time where you need to have a conversation with someone.

When that time comes, the approach matters.

If you have a relationship with someone, you want to make sure that you're approaching them with curiosity, not criticism.

I believe that when we look in the gospels and we recognize that Jesus is perfect theology, you're gonna hear me say this over and over again.

Jesus is perfect theology.

If I'm ever looking for the best way to express something, I don't get lost in examining the nuances of someone's vocabulary.

I looked at how Jesus expresses it.

How did Jesus handle this?

And then I find scriptures to support it.

Jesus is perfect theology.

And what you find is that when Jesus is having confrontations with people, whether it's Pharisees, that was a different approach.

If it was people that were in sin, that was a different approach.

Jesus approaches them with curiosity.

He would always pose these unique questions.

Approaching someone with curiosity means I'm not looking at you like, what's wrong with you?

Why did you do that?

Approaching them with curiosity is, I wonder what's their story that led them to do that.

I wonder what the backstory is that connects to that.

I believe nothing exposes and reveals this more than when you are a parent.

Because what I can tell you is, as a man who has raised three children who were now adults, there were absolutely these seasons of my life where I would declare, as for me and my house, we're gonna serve the Lord.

Tray up a child in the way that he should go, and so when they get older, they won't depart from it.

Absolutely.

And then they become teenagers, and then they begin to have their own opinions, and then they begin to have their own feelings, and brace yourself, parents.

Your kids begin to reveal that they're different than you.

Nothing is a more of a crisis as a parent than when you're trying to raise your kids to be a reflection of your perfections while hiding all your flaws, and then you begin to see that they're different from you.

I found that my compassion is often connected to my reality.

And as a parent, when I began to recognize the complex nuance of my kids' lives, I began to recognize I need to give them the space and grace to grow.

So when I have a conversation with them, I'm approaching them with curiosity and not condemnation.

I'm approaching them with, hey, what's going on with you?

Tell me about when you made this decision, what was happening with you, instead of you know better.

Because what that does is that shuts people down.

I often think about when God created Adam and Eve and they're in the Garden of Eden, and there's this beautiful moment where God says to them, Listen, I'm giving you everything you want.

You can have eternal life, you have access to this tree.

I want y'all to live with me for eternity.

Unbroken fellowship.

Or you can have this tree where you can define right and wrong on your own terms, you're gonna drift away from me, and there's gonna be a significant consequence.

But you choose.

I learned a valuable lesson by looking at that text.

You can't parent away free will.

God didn't do it, and we can't do it.

So we begin to recognize in that space that even being put in the most perfect environment, the human nature still craves something that was contrary to what their father wanted.

And when God confronted them about that, he says, Where are you?

Do we honestly believe that the all-knowing, all-powerful God didn't have a clue of their geographic location?

He knew exactly where they were.

He was entering a conversation with curiosity and saying, Where's your heart right now?

Because I noticed that you're distant from me.

Where are you right now because I noticed that we're not in fellowship?

What I truly believe is that when we recognize the areas that we need to confront in one another, when we approach it with curiosity, it creates space for there to be a conversion.

This is beautifully expressed in the story of Jesus and his conversation with the woman at the well.

The Bible tells us that he knew that she was married five other times, and the dude she was living with, or in my old church tradition, the dude she was shacking up with.

Do we still say shacking up?

Do y'all know that term?

I come from a Pentecostal holiness church, like, oh, they shacking up, like they living together, like shacking up with isn't her husband.

Jesus knew all of this.

So he could have walked up to her and be like, listen, you wrong.

You got all these husbands, you're living with this dude right now, you out of line.

But instead, Jesus sits down and says, Hey man, I sure am thirsty.

Can you give me something to drink?

I'm thirsty.

I've seen that you're pretty thirsty, too.

But you're thirsting after the wrong things.

Because if you notice, when you drink that, you're thirsty again.

What if you drank from something that was actually more fulfilling?

And he led her on a journey of conversion that she then took back to the very same town, and we saw a revival.

You see what happens when we approach somebody with curiosity and love.

Here's my third and final point.

Use discernment.

Use discernment.

Jesus talks about the importance of recognizing the difference between a person who can handle what we're about to say and a person who can't.

He uses this very paradoxical statement of not throwing pearls before swine and all that type of stuff.

Let me give you the quick rundown version of it.

Ultimately, what he's saying is don't use godly wisdom with people who aren't walking with God if they can't handle it.

Don't hold somebody to your Christian biblical standard if they're not walking in fellowship with God.

They're not in a space where they can handle it.

So begin to build a relationship first and then use discernment on when the relationship is strong enough to handle the weight of what you're about to see or what you're about to say.

The truth of the matter is sometimes we're so focused on wanting to be heard that we lose sight on how we're being received.

Because if what I'm speaking doesn't produce transformation, then maybe they weren't in a position that they could hear it as of yet.

So use your discernment when is the best time to have these conversations.

Not only may that may they be resistant, rebellious, and sidestepping the gospel and accountability, and that's just a part of people's individual journey.

But there also may be a space where they just feel very vulnerable, and they probably are aware of some of these things in their lives, and then you need to engage it very gently.

I've Meg and I, we just got um a new car last week.

And it's been nine years since we got a new car.

Nine years.

Our current car has 154,000 miles on it.

That car has been with us in winter environments, summer environments, everything in between.

So we finally got to a place like, hey, it's time for us to get a new vehicle.

And it's been nine years, guys.

So I forgot how exhausting and vulnerable you can feel when you're going through the car buying process.

Like if you don't do that on a regular basis, and it's been almost a decade for us, I forgot that feeling.

We saw the car we wanted, we put in our application, I know what my credit is, I know what I can afford, I know where we are, but even when I hit submit, I was waiting for someone to approve me.

I was waiting for someone to tell me you're good enough.

I was waiting for someone to tell me that you're accepted.

And when I got an email back and they're like, hey, Mr.

Pim, we have a couple of questions.

Can you send us your last three months of bank statements?

Now they're gonna be judging every time I go into Chick-fil-A.

And literally in my mind, what I'm thinking is that there's somebody sitting behind a desk with a red marker.

Man, why'd he go there at 12 o'clock at night?

Doesn't he know that's not good for his body?

I'm thinking of everybody that's sitting there with their red markers judging every financial decision I made, and I remember sitting there fully knowing your boy got great credit.

I'm amazing.

But I still was sitting there thinking to myself, bro, what if they don't accept us?

That anxiousness.

Imagine how a person who's struggling in sin feels when we say, Hey, can I have a conversation with you about something?

Hey, man, I've noticed some things in your life that I want to talk to.

Just consider for a moment how they feel and make sure we enter into that territory with grace and sensitivity because we may never know just how vulnerable they are.

If my conversation doesn't produce fruit that brings about life, then maybe I need to change the way that I had said conversation.

This is how we engage in a grace-filled way.

When Jesus confronted people, it was done through the lens of curiosity.

However, when he was talking to Pharisees, he was more direct.

When he was talking with the when he was talking to his disciples, he was more direct because they had the expectation and the relationship that they could handle the weight of that.

So absolutely, if there's somebody on our staff that I need to have a conversation with, I can be more direct.

Absolutely.

If you're on one of our teams and we need to have a conversation, we're gonna be very grace-driven, but we may be more direct.

But you have to discern where people are so we can make sure that we are received and not just heard.

What I recognize is that a message like this can reveal a lot of things in all of us, if we're honest with ourselves.

It can expose where maybe we're critical of others, which if we're honest, we are.

It can also expose where we've been critical of ourselves, and if we're honest, we we probably are.

And right now, maybe you're thinking of areas of your life that have red marks all over it.

There's a circle here, there's a circle over there, there's a all these things, and you're feeling the sense of condemnation and shame.

What I want you to know is that the beautiful thing about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is that he's not standing in front of you with a red marker, he's standing in front of you with his red blood that covers every one of your sins.

The Bible says there is no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus.

And so instead of us looking at this sheet that is filled with the red of all of our flaws, we can expect to embrace the reality that Jesus covers it and it's under the blood.

So maybe you came here today and you've been carrying some of this with you.

Your next step may be to get baptized, to leave that old man behind, to leave that those old messages behind, burying it in the water and rising up in the newness of Christ.

Maybe you came here prepared to get baptized, but I also suspect there's some of us that God is nudging us and saying, There's some things that you need to leave in the water so that you can rise up in the newness of life.

We want to give you an opportunity to do that.

So we're gonna go into a time of reflective worship.

And if you came here prepared to get baptized, I'm gonna pray over us and then ask you to step out into the aisles, and we're gonna have team members that would love to help you get changed and situated for that.

But but maybe as you're sitting here reflecting, God begins to nudge on your heart that there's some things that you need to bury in the water as well.

As you feel that, I want you to get up and go out and let a team member know that's right outside these double doors that you know it's time for you to get baptized.

Because what I recognize is these transformational moments need to be sealed with an activity on our part.

Father, I thank you so much for your word.

I thank you for your presence, I thank you for your spirit.

And I ask in the name of Jesus that as we go into this time of reflection, that you can help us take that next step.

That God, I pray that we can experience your healing grace, that we can walk in the fullness of life, recognizing that when you see us, you don't see us through the marks of our sin, but you see us through the shed blood of Jesus that makes us new again.

As we take steps to get baptized, let us recognize and celebrate the fact that we get to leave it in the water in Jesus' name.

Thank you for joining us to learn more about Celebration Orlando, a church devoted to reaching the lost, equipping the found, and helping the hurting.

Follow us on social media using the handle at celebrationorl or visit our website, celebrationorl.org.