Confess | Jeremy

[SPEAKER_00]: this many people want to come out to talk about confession.

[SPEAKER_00]: Confessing your sins.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, this is exciting.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jeremy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a grateful believer.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am working on my co-dependency.

[SPEAKER_00]: My insecurities in my pride.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, tonight we are moving on from where we've been for the last six weeks in the inventory process of step four.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's where we take what we have learned or what we have written down in our inventories, and it's time to admit it to ourselves, to God, and to someone we trust.

[SPEAKER_00]: James 516 tells us, therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other, so that you may be healed.

[SPEAKER_00]: The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then that goes along with principle four, openly examine and confess my hurts, hang ups and habits to myself, to God, and to someone I trust.

[SPEAKER_00]: Blessed are the pure and heart for they will see God, Matthew 5-8.

[SPEAKER_00]: So before we get into the Acrostic tonight, I have a few examples of confession that have been made over the years.

[SPEAKER_00]: The first one is this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody know what that is, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: it's messy, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a Loch Ness Monster, okay?

[SPEAKER_00]: In 1934, this picture was taken, okay?

[SPEAKER_00]: which confirmed the legend of the Loch Ness Monster, the legend of the Loch Ness Monster, had been around since the 6th century.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, a man named Christian Spurling, along with his stepdad and another man named Robert Wilson, I think it is, who was a surgeon who actually took this picture, conspired to give us this hoax.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just wiped wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: What had been a legend for so long since 1934, since we had proof, actually was this.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a plastic animal's head attached to a toy submarine.

[SPEAKER_00]: Mr. Spurling confessed this on his deathbed when he was 90 years old.

[SPEAKER_00]: It had been a hoax the whole time.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, the next one is

[SPEAKER_00]: Anybody know this guy your tennis man who is this guy Andre Agassi right and the 1990s this guy was the man at tennis right I think he has like 17 major titles or something like that Well what happened to this man was it literally happened before the 1990 French open

[SPEAKER_00]: His hoax, literally fell apart.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was in the shower and his hairpiece started to fall out.

[SPEAKER_00]: He called his brother and his brother in him to try to put his hair back together, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It literally caused him the 1990 French open because he was too concerned with people finding out that his hair was fake.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was Brooke Shields whom he later married who suggested that he ditched the hairpiece.

[SPEAKER_00]: She said that I should save my head.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said it was like suggesting I should have all my teeth out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nevertheless, I thought about it for a few days, and the agonies it caused me, the hypocrisy and the lies.

[SPEAKER_00]: It took him about 11 minutes to become a different man.

[SPEAKER_00]: Can I get the next one?

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, he said a stranger stood before me in the mirror and smiled.

[SPEAKER_00]: My wig was a chain, and those ridiculously long strands in three colors, like an iron ball, which hung from it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Can anybody relate with that?

[SPEAKER_00]: What we've been covering up, what we've been hiding is heavy in it, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Holding us down, holding us back to who we really are.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we started principle four, we quickly learned that we are now going to have to put the work in if we want the life that we are looking for.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's be honest, not a single person in this room came in on a wind and straight getaway, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: We were lost, we were struggling at the end of our rope.

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of us, I know, I was looking for a way out of that darkness that had become our life and into the light.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you are here tonight, you have probably come to the realization that it's not a one and done.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can't just move through several steps and get our inventory done and think that we can walk away a new man.

[SPEAKER_00]: recovery or woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: Recovery is a process and the steps are a good God for us to know where our recovery is and where we're going.

[SPEAKER_00]: We started by we were admitted that we weren't God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Life is completely out of control.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's principle one step one.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then we admitted we are powerless to control anything in our life and we decided to give Christ a complete care and control.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then the first thing that he asks us to do is to make a list of all of our hurts habits and hangouts that we've been trying to hide for so long.

[SPEAKER_00]: Inventory and step four is the actual first boots on the ground work that we actually have to do, and now we're at our second task, and that is confession.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why John Baker decided that we'd use to be a cross stick for the first letter, the whole across it, but I like to say coming clean, coming clean works too, you can write that now.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have to come clean of our failures and our resentments.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have to bring those skeletons to the table, y'all.

[SPEAKER_00]: First to yourself, then to God, and then to someone that we trust.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have to own those hurts habits and hangups

[SPEAKER_00]: Getting them on paper was just the start of the healing process.

[SPEAKER_00]: We still got work to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: Proverbs 28, 13 says, people who can steal their sins will not prosper.

[SPEAKER_00]: But if they confess and turn from them, they will receive mercy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Charles Spurgeon, who is a 19th century theologian said,

[SPEAKER_00]: The unhappiness is in not making the confession.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that goes right along with this saying right here, and this is John Orkberg.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says to be fully known and fully loved is the most healing gift one human can give another.

[SPEAKER_00]: Has someone ever told you that they loved you?

[SPEAKER_00]: And you're like, if you only knew, bro, if you only knew, girls, you know, hey girl, I just love you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you see how I got the kids on the school bus this morning, you'd be saying something different.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or guys, hey, bro, man, I love you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you knew how I drank last night and how I treated my wife, you might not be saying these same things.

[SPEAKER_00]: hiding from who we really are, hiding our emotions, our insecurities, our addictions, our character defects, how fearful we are.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can fill in the blank there, whatever you fill is necessary.

[SPEAKER_00]: But aren't we tired of feeling like that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Are we tired of feeling that way?

[SPEAKER_00]: We all desire to be loved.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's how God made us to love and to be loved, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: But how can I really love you and how can you really love me if I don't fully know you?

[SPEAKER_00]: If you're still hiding something in your past and not bringing it to the table with me or I'm doing the same thing to you, we don't really know each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can only love you from what I've seen.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can only love me from what I've shown you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Romans 14, 11 through 12, as surely as I live says the Lord, every knee will bow before me, every tongue will acknowledge God.

[SPEAKER_00]: So then each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all, we will obey God.

[SPEAKER_00]: There ain't no doubt about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: One day or another, we're going to have to explain ourselves to him.

[SPEAKER_00]: We will have to confess in the sooner that that happens, the better off we are.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's look at this example, David gives us in Psalms.

[SPEAKER_00]: Psalms 32, 33, 35 says, When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.

[SPEAKER_00]: For day and night, your hand was heavy on me.

[SPEAKER_00]: My strength was set as in the heat of summer.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my inequity.

[SPEAKER_00]: I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to break this scripture down a second for recovery purposes.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I kept silent, when I kept silent, when we continue to hide our sins,

[SPEAKER_00]: It's exhausting hiding my hurts habits and hangups.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know about y'all, but it wore me out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Trying to put on one face when I really live in another.

[SPEAKER_00]: We lose sleep, we stay anxious, we're constantly looking over our shoulder, knowing that one day, the hammer is going to fall.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will be exposed someday.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why would we want to live like that?

[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't dig all that stuff up and step forward to be disobedient to God and continue to hide it, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: For day and night, your hand was heavy on me, yeah, it was.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I was in my addiction, God was with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't necessarily blessing me from what the things that I was doing, but he was definitely teaching me something.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he knew that one day it would all turn around.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity.

[SPEAKER_00]: Confession, y'all.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgive the guilt of my sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's all it takes y'all.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's all we have to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: We confess, he forgives, and we walk and fill us up with him.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is nothing left to hide.

[SPEAKER_00]: The reality is that openness, truth, and honesty bring freedom out there.

[SPEAKER_00]: The guilt is gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Romans 8, one Paul says, there is no condemnation now for those who live in union with Christ Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Romans 3, 23, 23, 24 says, for everyone is sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have all fall short.

[SPEAKER_00]: We all fall short of God's glorious standard.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight.

[SPEAKER_00]: He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what happened on the cross show.

[SPEAKER_00]: We became free.

[SPEAKER_00]: May and what kind of love is that, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: What freedom does that bring when we finally grasp that heat what he did for us on that cross?

[SPEAKER_00]: The things that I did in the past, the things that I'm going to do because we're all going to continue to sin whether we want to or not.

[SPEAKER_00]: It just happens.

[SPEAKER_00]: For so long we have been hiding, allowing sin to control us, our shame and our guilt has kept us from even glancing at the cross, much less turning towards it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But when we finally do, when we have the boldness to walk out this step right here, step five because step four's tough, step five is tougher.

[SPEAKER_00]: but we become free.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we confess that baggage, those hurts, hangups, and habits, no longer have power over us.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are allowed to lay them at the foot of Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are allowed to lay them at the cross.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, take these.

[SPEAKER_00]: They are yours, you tell us, and Matthew 11, come to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: All you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

[SPEAKER_00]: Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble and heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we remove the guilt we have been carrying for so long, everything becomes lighter.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have the weight of our past keeping us down.

[SPEAKER_00]: So,

[SPEAKER_00]: The con part of confession or confesses over, and now that we have fessed up, these last four of the across-to-gore areas of our life that we will change because of we work step four and five.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the first one is face the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now,

[SPEAKER_00]: I get the honor to host the Monday Zoom meeting for men at noon on Monday's.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm one of four people that get to host that each week.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you've never joined that meeting, come talk to me after this, I'll get you hooked up.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the focus question that I had for that was about facing our truth, okay?

[SPEAKER_00]: There's three different ways that I feel like we face our truth once we get to this step.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, number one, we face the truth of our past.

[SPEAKER_00]: We face the truth that we have heard a lot of people.

[SPEAKER_00]: In our chaos, we have to give people time.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have to allow them time to heal.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the same goes for us, maybe somebody has hurt you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you need time to heal.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's part of facing the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: The second facing the truth is this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Saturday night, I got a text message from my mom at 730.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I had been on the lake all day Saturday.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we're sunburned and tired, and I get a text from my mom saying that my stepdad, who lives in Palm Coast, Florida, had had a seizure.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they were headed to the emergency room.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, Ali and I jumped in the,

[SPEAKER_00]: jumped in the car and made that six-hour trip.

[SPEAKER_00]: We got there about three o'clock in the morning and we walked into the ICU and the first thing I see is my stepdad sitting there sedated with the tube down his throat and the only only thing that we had heard was stroke, seizure, not regaining consciousness before he got to the hospital.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when we walked in there, the first thing I'm thinking is, he's a vegetable, he's a vegetable.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, a thousand thoughts going through my mind, but because of this place and because of Jesus, I was able to face the truth and see that no matter what is happening in this hospital room, God's glory will come out of this, no matter what happens.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ali and I prayed over him after that, and four days later, he made a miraculous recovery and was able to go home yesterday afternoon.

[SPEAKER_00]: All glory to him, all glory to him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus tells us in John 14, six, I am the way the truth and the life.

[SPEAKER_00]: No one comes to the Father except through me.

[SPEAKER_00]: It also means this to me, and this to me is the most important.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we confess, we get to face the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: We actually are able to lift our eyes to Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're not turning our head down because we're of the shame and guilt anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're able to look our Savior in His eyes and seek Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: The next blessing of confession is that it will ease your pain.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the E. The pain will ease up.

[SPEAKER_00]: The pain you have lived with for so long, as well as the pain that you have caused other others.

[SPEAKER_00]: A couple of summers ago, me and Ali took the boat down in my mom's house, like I said, she lives in Palm Coast and we duck it on the inner coastal, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So we get, we like to enjoy riding up and down the inner coastal, watching the dolphins because the dolphins like to jump in your wake and it's really cool and you throw

[SPEAKER_00]: You can catch as much blue oysters or blue crabs as you want to, but that's another story.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, the whole family loaded up, everybody put my step down, loaded up in the truck, went and got on the boat for the day, and we're riding out to this place called Mantansus Inlet, where the ocean and the intercoast will come together, and there's a big sand

[SPEAKER_00]: So we're headed that way and I'm talking and carrying on, looking over here at my sister and all of a sudden I look down at the depth finder and we're in two feet of water and I'm crashing over oyster beds.

[SPEAKER_00]: And all of a sudden the boat cuts off and we are miles from anything, from anywhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: So needless to say, me and my sister had to

[SPEAKER_00]: And my wife, Ali had to swim the boat back to the nearest boat launch place and call we had called my stepdad to come meet us there.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they could I stay there with the boat so they could go and get the trailer so we could get the boat out of the water, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, during that ride, my mom told Ali that, had it been five years earlier, I would have

[SPEAKER_00]: I would have blamed every single person in that truck, in that boat, for they were the reason why I ran off out of the channel, not me, it wasn't me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I would have made the entire trip miserable for every single person involved.

[SPEAKER_00]: But because of the tools that this place has given me, I wasn't mad because I don't

[SPEAKER_00]: my happiness in a boat.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't find my happiness in a bottle anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't find my happiness in a blunt, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: I find my happiness in Jesus Christ and that's it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Psalms 32, one, three, two tells us, oh, what joy for those who's disobedience is forgiven, who sin is put out of sight.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, what joy for those who's record the Lord and it's cleared of guilt, whose lives are lived and complete honesty.

[SPEAKER_00]: I live my life now with no reason to lie about anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know about you, but lying as always calls me pain and the life is so much easier when you can be who you are and you don't have to cover anything up.

[SPEAKER_00]: How exhausting is that, y'all, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And the pain that I caused others with the laws that I used to tell when they would find out about me, it's just indescribable and it's just comforting to know that I can go to the same people now and they believe the words that are coming out of my mouth.

[SPEAKER_00]: So,

[SPEAKER_00]: Another thing we do in the midst of our addiction and character defects is blame someone else like I did, like I would have done on that boat, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So the first S is for stops the blame.

[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all we have been blamers since sin entered the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: Genesis 3 2.

[SPEAKER_00]: The man said, the woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey bro, one me, it was her, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So Adam Blamed Eve, well no, actually Adam Blamed God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then Eve says in the next verse, the serpent deceived me, she replied, that's why I ate it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So she blamed the serpent after Adam Blamed her in God, and that's where the blame game actually originated y'all.

[SPEAKER_00]: Matthew 73 says, and why worry about the spec in your friends eye when you have a log in your own?

[SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you all this, every person in my addiction I thought had specs in their eyes while I was ignoring the one in my own.

[SPEAKER_00]: And not only people, things as well, the battery on my car was dead, my girlfriend was arguing me all night last night, blah, blah, blah.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I'm three hours late to work.

[SPEAKER_00]: No y'all, my head was all fired because I just quit drinking two hours ago and lost track of time.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I'm late.

[SPEAKER_00]: At least that's what my story looked like to my peers and my co-workers when I finally got there.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then there's also this side to it.

[SPEAKER_00]: We blame ourselves for what others do to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if I hadn't spoke up about his porn addiction, maybe he wouldn't have knocked me down.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or if I had been better to her, maybe she wouldn't have cheated on me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And even sometimes we blame ourselves for things that happened that are completely out of our control.

[SPEAKER_00]: If I hadn't taken, if I had taken that call from him that night, maybe he would still be with us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or if I had said to her that she needs to go to the hospital, you're not looking so good, maybe she would have had a chance.

[SPEAKER_00]: Blaming someone else for our issues solves nothing, blaming other things for our issues solves nothing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And for coders like me, blaming ourselves for other people's crap, doesn't fix anything either.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the easiest ways to tell if someone is doing well in their recovery is they stop blaming and they start looking for solutions to the problems.

[SPEAKER_00]: So y'all the bottom line is this, if it's on you, own it,

[SPEAKER_00]: If you were to blame on it, get it out of you and move on, but if it's someone else's, walk away.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just walk away, don't own that because it's not yours, don't.

[SPEAKER_00]: The last ask and final letter in our cross extends for accepting God's forgiveness, and I am way behind God's, I'm going to fly through this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Remember how I said that we are not super sinners and bigger sinners than the next guy we are not.

[SPEAKER_00]: No sin is too big for God to forgive.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, if you live your life for Jesus and know how, know that He is your Savior, Jesus did the hard work for us, y'all.

[SPEAKER_00]: All you have to do is believe.

[SPEAKER_00]: Second Corinthians, 5, 19 tells us, for God was in Christ restoring the world to Himself.

[SPEAKER_00]: No longer counting men's sins against them, but blotting them out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Once we accept God's forgiveness, we are finally able to pick our heads up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look people in the eye and see the light out of the darkness we came from.

[SPEAKER_00]: We see our actions and ourselves in a new light, the light that Jesus gives us.

[SPEAKER_00]: So in closing tonight, I want you to understand this more than anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: Recovery does not stop at step four.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know it's relieving to get it all on paper, but it does not stop there y'all.

[SPEAKER_00]: If we want forgiveness for these things from the past that have changed us down, we have to take them to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is for a forgiving and loving God, but hear me here.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you want healing, you have to take it to someone else.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have to have someone to walk beside us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Someone to be fully known too, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Someone who can fully love us because there are no more secrets.

[SPEAKER_00]: None.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't hold you accountable for things.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you're still hiding something, I can't do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if someone can't hold you accountable, those chains will still be there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Aren't you tired of carrying them?

[SPEAKER_00]: Find someone you trust, be fully known so you can be fully loved.

[SPEAKER_00]: The person may be holding the key that unlocks the chains, unlocks that pain from your past.

[SPEAKER_00]: And one last thing, if you're an accountability partner or a sponsor, okay?

[SPEAKER_00]: It is not your job to fix them when they confess to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It is your job and your only job that you have is to be his witness or her witness.

[SPEAKER_00]: Be there, be the shoulder to cry on, be the arms to put around them when they need you the most.

[SPEAKER_00]: If they ask you for advice, give them some, but don't offer it on your own.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's pray.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, we love you and we thank you for this step.

[SPEAKER_00]: This step is a life changer.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it

[SPEAKER_00]: if it's done properly, can make things different in our, in our, in our recovery.

[SPEAKER_00]: It, it frees us from those chains.

[SPEAKER_00]: It lets us allow us to give things to you and lay them at your feet.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Lord, be with us as we do this.

[SPEAKER_00]: In Jesus name.

[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.