Freedom | Surrender

Good morning.

I want to do a little experiment real quick.

Is is the fly on the wall bothering anybody else?

Yeah, I see that hand.

Thank you very much.

What in the world?

Get that thing out of here.

You know, we we're really strategic about not causing distractions and stuff.

And and yeah, it's for you, but it's primarily for me if I'm really honest with you.

I'm over here like just worship, just worship, and Lord, take the fly away.

What is the deal?

Anyway, I'm like a child sometimes when the distractions come.

Anyway, welcome to Freedom Church.

My name's Jason.

I get the privilege of being pastor here.

We're grateful that you're here, especially if it's your first time with us.

We never take that lightly or for granted, and we're glad that you're spending um your weekend here with us.

You know, I I want to do something a little bit out of the ordinary.

I don't normally do stuff like this, but um before we before we jump into week four of our series, our freedom series, you know, one of the things that we have said for years as a church is that we want to be a next generation church.

We want to be a kind of church where where kids and students are actually inviting their parents to church.

And you might not know this, but that is the kind of environment that we have here.

There are there are kids in our Freedom Kids environment who are coming here and have begged their parents to show up and they're and now they're here.

We have students that are here, and and and we have there's a growing, there's a growing student ministry here in our church.

And I and I I want to say that because we're we're underway into the school year post-Labor Day, and and I and I'm and I I want to make sure I celebrate the things that I want to see us continue to repeat in our church.

And I'm looking over here at this, he has no idea.

I'm gonna call him out.

I'm sorry, I'm gonna embarrass you, right?

This is Connor, he's a senior here.

Connor started coming here.

How long ago did you start coming here to Freedom Church?

Uh last year, March.

Last year, March.

And I I want you to know this because I I've seen this in you.

It's like you are taking steps that are out of your comfort zone, and you're stepping into your calling.

You're stepping into things that you didn't know that you had before.

There's gifts you're stepping into.

I'm super proud of you since you started coming.

Now your parents are coming to church here.

I mean, that's a big deal.

That's a that's a really big deal.

This isn't parents dragging kids to student to church.

This is just students going, Mama Dad, you gotta come to church.

That's uh isn't that awesome?

Let's do this.

You know what?

Yeah, we can clap for Connor and his family.

Let's just take a minute, let's put our hands together, and let's just tell Jesus thank you.

Like we mean it.

Tell Jesus thank you.

Thank you, Jesus.

I mean, I I you need to know this.

Like five and a half, six years ago, we wrote down on a piece of paper this will be a place where students invite their parents to church, and now we're living it out.

Right now, we're living it out.

And so that's what we're a part of.

And I just feel like if this is your home church, boy, you got a lot to be a proud of, lots to be excited about, and we're just getting started.

Isn't that exciting?

That's exciting to me.

Okay.

All right.

Welcome to week four of our series on freedom.

I know a lot of you, you're, you're, you're, you're right in the middle of the throes of your groups.

Well done.

Keep meeting in your groups, and there's a lot more to come through this series.

And last last week we we talked about this idea that you and I are that we're three part, like we're three-dimensional beings.

That we have a spirit, we have a soul, we have a we have a body, we have a we have a spirit that needs to be redeemed, we have a soul that needs to be restored, and we have a flesh that has to be surrendered.

Surrendered, a soul restored, a mind that needs to be restored.

And you know, that doesn't come natural, right?

Because you can have a redeemed spirit.

If you remember, we talked about your spirit can be totally redeemed.

You're you're right with God, but that doesn't mean my thoughts are, my mind is, my habits are, my inclinations, and and what my preferences are.

Those might not be all aligned, but my spirit is.

And so the Christian life, a life of following Jesus is is made up of this, of these steps.

The Bible, the big, the big theological word is sanctification, this this process of becoming more and more like Jesus, and honestly, becoming more and more like the person he designed each of us to be.

The cultural mantra around this, culturally, people love to say things like you got to be yourself, but discover and and be your live out your true self.

And like a lot of things in the culture, it's it's not entirely wrong.

Honestly, it's not even that bad of a mantra.

It's not even, it's not the worst advice.

The only problem is that when you have a soul that's not a spirit that's not redeemed, and a soul that's not restored, and a flesh that's not surrendered, you are incapable of even identifying your true self.

And here's why.

Because sin, sin deforms you.

I think what too many of us, and I'm talking about Christians, we have this idea that that sin is just a compilation of the don'ts in the Bible.

So for whatever reason, God said don't do it, so we don't do it.

And then we try to live our life like hopefully the score kind of bounces out by the end of by the end of our life.

Hopefully I didn't do enough of those things, right?

Often enough or whatever.

You know, hopefully, hopefully that hopefully the scoreboard is in my favor.

We don't like say it, but that's how we feel, and that's how we approach sin.

But you what you need to understand is that sin, sin deforms you.

It isn't a scoreboard.

It isn't anything like that.

In fact, it's not, I hope I don't sin enough, and then hopefully God doesn't reject you.

No, no, no.

Every time we sin, it deforms us because it's us rejecting him.

It's just it's just the opposite.

There was a story, I heard this years ago when I was in the Navy, actually.

We were doing like some training with like radiation weapons and you know radioactive materials.

And there's a story of this uh three, they were like like loggers or woodcutters or whatever they called them over there in the country of Georgia.

Country, not state.

I'm gonna be clear about that, okay?

The country of Georgia.

And they're in the woods, they're super remote, they're camping out there.

It's frigid cold up in that in that region.

And so they're in the woods and they come across these like two like pieces of metal, and they're just like emitting like a mount, a massive amount of heat.

Everything, all the snow has melted around them.

These guys get all excited.

This was in 2000, I want, I want to say 2001, right around that time frame.

And so these guys they pick these things up, they take them back to their camp, they actually put them in their tent that night, and they sleep, they sleep next to them.

We kept them super warm.

And um, well, they were extremely radioactive.

I mean, they were I think it was like strontium 90 or whatever, if you're an if you're a a nerd like me and are curious about that.

But anyway, it it was extremely damaging.

If you don't understand how radiation works, it it's it's invisible.

You don't you don't realize it by the time you realize that it's affecting you, you've already been affected to a significant degree.

Uh, it and it and it comes at you and it and it and it and it attacks you at a cellular level.

So you don't even you don't even realize what is happening.

One of those men eventually died.

All three of them were in incredible, like significant injuries.

It took a very long time for two of them to recover.

They never you you don't ever fully recover from from something like that.

It totally changes you at a cellular level from the inside out.

And I and I think that's exactly the picture of sin.

Sin deforms you from the inside out, and it might seem okay and it seems right, and it doesn't make sense why it's not right, but at the end of the day, you come to the end of your life, and it's and I and I assure you, it's not God looking at you and going, You've too much, too much sin.

I don't want anything to do with you.

No, no, no.

We've got to the end of our life, and we have so much of this in our life, we're the ones looking at God and going, I don't want anything to do with you.

Because it's deformed us, twisted up what we think.

Right becomes wrong, wrong becomes right.

But this is what we're talking about, right?

We're talking about getting free, we're talking about not living that way.

And there's some things though that get in the way.

We want a uh a soul restored and a flesh surrendered, and that set, I mean, that sounds easy, but that's not always quite that simple.

There are some things that get in the way of that process.

And this morning I want to give you, I want to give you kind of four.

We're calling them in your book this week, if you're following along, we're calling them blockages of the heart.

Things that that get in the way of a restored soul and a surrendered flesh.

Here's the first one.

The first one is is selfishness.

Selfishness has a way of getting in the way.

You know, I I think most of the time when we think about the word selfish, most of us we instantly go to like narcissistic behavior, right?

Where it's just everything somehow, we just get hyper self-consumed and I want, I get, I acquire, I build, I and it's all it's me, me, me, me, me, me.

And it's not that that's not selfishness, but that's just one version of selfishness.

And and I don't most of us who this is a problem, it it doesn't always look like that.

Honestly, what it often looks like is like chronic irritation.

Chronically irritated.

Where we where we run around and we're just like we're just frustrated.

No one ever seems to like live into the like what they're supposed to do.

You know, no one's driving quite right, right?

Nobody's nobody's ever doing anything just quite right.

Everything's just a little bit off.

We're just chronically irritated everywhere we go.

It's like we tell ourselves we're enjoying our life, but nobody knows that we're enjoying our life, right?

Why is that?

It because because deep down, like we we we we do this, we we fantasize like this, we we dream like this, we envision a world where we're king and we're in charge.

And everybody around us is finally doing everything that they're supposed to do, right?

I.e.

what we want them to do, right?

Everybody.

This is what it is, and at the root of that, it sounds innocent enough because it lives between our ears, and and sometimes it kind of breaks out because we're our irritation gets the best of us, but but deep down, like beneath the surface of that is this is this authority problem that God is king and you and I are not.

That's at the heart of selfishness.

Look at this.

This is James 3, verse 16.

James 3:16

It says, For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder in every evil practice.

One of the things I I I see this a lot, and you know, and I do a lot of pastoral counseling and talk to a lot of people, especially over the years.

And and and it's amazing.

One of the things that people will come in oftentimes and or want to talk about and spend a lot of energy and a lot of time trying to come to the get to the bottom of it is as I call them like symptoms.

We love we love to focus on symptoms because we just go, my money's a little bit off, my my relationship's not quite right, my I I don't know what to do with my kids, I don't know what to do with I mean, there's all these things, and and by the way, those are all valid things that need to be addressed.

And we probably do need some like coaching around some of those things, but but those aren't causes, those are symptoms.

Those are symptoms oftentimes what when we're dealing with what feel like big rocks, and they're they're they're actually not at the root of it.

They're just they're just an overflow of a disordered life.

They're just the consequence of a disordered life.

And so, what does disordered life look like?

Something disordered life looks like.

I can't get my money together, I can't, I can't get my relationships together, I can't ever seem to get my marriage together.

I can't ever see like that's that's disordered life.

And and and it's probably not because you don't have a great strategy for those things.

At the heart of it, there's oftentimes just selfish ambition there.

It's selfish ambition that's kind of stirring all that up.

It's a it's a disordered desire that's creating disordered symptoms in our in our life.

But there's a there's a solution, and the solution is surrender.

It's surrender.

I love that we talked about that through through worship.

We sang about that through worship.

There's this, it is this posture of surrender.

And it's not like it's not like the white flag kind of surrender where like my enemy has finally defeated me, I give up, I'm done, you know, slavery is in front of me moving forward.

Like it's not that kind of surrender, right?

It's a different.

It's like it's the it's the kind of surrender where somebody says, I know the way to win at this particular thing that you're trying to accomplish in your life, and you just deciding to go, you know what, I'm gonna trust that you know what you're talking about, considering that you've been there, done that, and know a lot more than me, instead of me in my pride continuing to believe that I'm just gonna figure it out on my own.

Do you see the difference?

One's not it's not a defeat, it's actually quite the opposite.

It's the pathway to start well, winning.

You know, it's it's a way of surrender.

And here's the here's the real reality for us is that it is difficult to surrender when you're unsure of whether the one you're surrendering to is good.

Like if you're if you're unsure, if that person really does have your best interest in mind, it's gonna be really difficult to entrust like parts of your life to that person.

And so it's easy to say surrender, but if you're struggling to surrender to God, if you're struggling to surrender certain areas of your life to the Lord, at the root of that is you need a revelation of God's posture toward you in there.

God's actually God is actually for you.

He actually, he, I mean, he didn't just he didn't die for himself, he died for you.

Right?

He didn't he didn't do this just so just for himself, he did it like we are a part of the story.

Yes, everything in our life flows to the cross, flows from the cross.

It's all about Jesus, but he went there for you and me.

When you get when you start getting a hold of that, it becomes easier and easier to begin to surrender your life to him.

Here's the next blockage of our heart bitterness, bitterness, bitterness.

You know, bitterness is not something that just exists in a vacuum.

It comes from somewhere, right?

It comes from somewhere, and by the way, not not illegitimate usually, usually it comes from legitimate sources, like a legitimate reason to be bitter.

Like very real reasons, understandable reasons.

It's not typically petty.

Bitterness usually has a has a really strong source.

You know, the Bible talks a lot about words like transgressions.

A transgression is is something that somebody does to wrong another person.

It's a legitimate wrong.

This is why the Bible, the Bible actually uses the word debt, debt to describe a transgression.

This is why if you when Jesus taught us to pray, one of the lines in his prayer is forgive our debts as we forgive those indebted to us.

That's kind of an odd language to use when we're talking about sin.

But that's the way sin is.

Look at this.

Because I know I I've I've run across all types of people over the years, and we have all these, we come up with everybody, everybody comes up with a winning strategy, right?

We all come up with our way that we're gonna win this.

And you and if you don't do it the Jesus way, we're all gonna come up with our own way, right?

We're gonna come up with a way that makes sense to us.

And I've heard people just say, well, I'm just like, I just decide I'm just not gonna be offended moving forward.

That's not that's not the worst thing.

It's it's possible to to be in a place where you just go, I'm in a place where I don't absorb the offense.

I I get that, there's a difference, but but you can't avoid the offense coming.

You you can't avoid it.

In fact, this is what Luke 17 says.

He said to his disciples, Jesus, it's impossible that no offense should come, but woe to him through whom they do come.

You can't stop this.

Offense is going to come your way.

You you you can't live your life without somebody wronging you.

It will happen.

It will it is not a matter of if it is a matter of of when.

And and and you can you go, well, I like that call to debt stuff business.

That was pretty good.

I'll call that due.

You know, call the debt due.

It's like, yeah, you can call it due.

That doesn't mean they're gonna pay up, right?

That doesn't mean they're gonna come, and that doesn't mean anything, right?

So, what do you do in in the meantime?

Look at Proverbs 18.

A brother wronged is more unyielding than a fortified city.

Disputes are like the barred gates of a citadel.

What is it what is that describing?

It's describing what happens when you hang on to the bitterness that comes your way.

Your heart, I mean, just think about a for your heart, your mind becomes like a fortified city, impenetrable.

God's coming along, he's trying to speak things to you, he's trying to encourage you.

Boom, you don't even hear it.

You don't even want to hear it.

You you have no interest.

Why?

Because nobody seems to understand the pain and the debt that's been caused in your life.

This looks like all kinds of things.

You know, I mean, this is a major source of inner vows for a lot of us.

You get wounded, you get hurt, whether you're a kid or an adult makes no difference.

It happens at every stage of life, and you have these moments and you just go, you know what?

When I get to this place in life, I will never fill in the blank.

You know, so my dad wounds me, and so I tell myself I'm I'm I'm never gonna be like him, and then you get a little bit older, and because you've been hanging on to that bitterness and you've been hanging on to that for so long, you end up finding yourself harsh with your kids, and you never thought you would be, but you are.

And really, it's because they just don't understand that what you're trying to do is for them.

Do you see how that cycle starts going around?

It's a common story.

Your spouse betrays you, and now suddenly you just don't trust anybody.

The church hurts you, and now suddenly you're suspicious of every pastor.

Somebody rips you off, somebody robs you, somebody takes advantage of you, and suddenly generosity just feels dangerous.

Can't even be generous anymore.

And I think we all have to ask ourselves, it's like, am I these things that have come at me, these things that that will come at you and I throughout our life, am I passing along something that somebody else put in me?

And I think you have to ask yourself that.

Am I am I am I am I hanging on to and projecting things on other people that somebody else has put on the inside of me?

Now, if they come, what's the answer?

Because offense is gonna come.

So how do I handle offense?

What do I do with it?

Here's the solution.

The solution is forgiveness.

It's forgiveness.

Now I will say this, we're gonna talk more about forgiveness next week.

Today, today, by the way, we started a new section in our book, so you're getting a little bit of an introduction of a lot of the things that we're gonna talk about over the next the remainder of this series.

And next week, we're gonna talk about this very topic of forgiveness.

I'll just give you a little bit of, let me just let me just give you a little bit of a little foreshadow of it.

Um, it's not what you think it is.

Forgiveness is not what you you think it is.

It isn't.

At a base level, forgiveness is is recognizing being able to fully in a healthy way recognize that somebody has wronged you and owes you a debt, but you at the same time going, I trust that God can make this wrong right better than I can.

You trust him.

I believe God, that's called justice.

God can do justice better than I can.

That's forgiveness.

It doesn't mean that you're Restored.

It doesn't mean that they're your best friend again.

It doesn't mean that you're having dinner over the holidays moving forward.

Woo! But that's not, they haven't forgiven me.

Isn't it funny?

The people who have caused the harm love to be the referee about whether or not you have forgiven.

I gotta save that for next week.

I'm getting excited.

Come back next week.

Okay.

I'm gonna tell you, forgiveness is for you.

Because it feels like everything in you feels like you're letting that other person off the hook.

You're not, you're not.

It has nothing to do, you're letting yourself off the hook.

You're going, I won't call your debt because praise God, I don't want anybody to call my debt due either.

And I'll trust God with that.

Doesn't mean it's all right, doesn't mean any of that, but it just means I'm not gonna hold it against you, right?

And this gets really hard because I'll give you the key.

You can't follow your feelings.

You can't follow those if if you're gonna live like this.

It won't work.

And by the way, you can forgive without feeling forgiveness.

You can do that.

You don't, you can be a I'm I'm that's an act of faith right there.

I'm that is an act of faith.

I don't feel like it's forgiveness, but I'm extending forgiveness.

You can do that, but you can't follow your feelings.

It will lead you down a path you didn't you don't actually want to go.

Selfishness, bitterness, surrender, forgiveness.

Here's the here's the next blockage of the heart.

And and honestly, it's a close cousin to bitterness and it's it's rejection.

It's rejection.

And what most of the time, usually, the primary source of rejection in our life is words that have been spoken over us.

That's that's the primary source of rejection in our life.

People have somebody said something along the way, and it has gotten in us and it has and it has shaped us.

And it comes out in all kinds of different ways.

Rejection does.

I mean, it looks, it looks, it looks different.

It doesn't always look the same.

I mean, you know, you you find yourself in places where you're just like you're averse to all conflict.

That's a that's a that's a that's a sign.

It doesn't mean that it is, but it's a sign that there's a there's a kind of seed of rejection there at some point in your life.

This you you you feel the need to run every time things things are not kind of going your way.

That's a seed, it's it's a protection mechanism that says, I won't, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I know where this is going because I've been there and I've been hurt.

And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go and put the wall up, stiff arm, I'll put my hand up.

I'm just gonna kind of put some distance because now I get to avoid feeling what I once experienced before.

Do you see this?

You know, all of us, these these blockages of the heart, no, nobody's exempt, right?

So we don't we may not struggle with all of these things, but we but all of us struggle with with at least one of these things.

For for me, this is probably, if I'm honest with you, this is probably the one that I've had to navigate the most in my life is this like rejection, this like sense of rejection.

And whether it was outright or or real, but you know, I remember early on in my life as a young kid, and you know, I was always pretty tenacious, and and I was always, you know, I was pretty bold as a kid.

I was always just kind of ready.

I was I'm no problem going first.

But but there were some things that were said to me early on when I was a young kid, maybe whether it was a I've always been a pretty slim guy.

I I've tried my hardest to like some of you are like you you're you're like you you look at food and you gain weight.

I am the exact opposite.

I if I when I get sedentary, I lose weight.

Okay, and you're like, well, that must be nice.

No, it's not nice, okay, to be honest with you, okay.

I feel like I'm withering away, you know, and it's like that doesn't, I don't like that.

And that now I'm now I'm now 40, you know, and I'm it's it started to change a little bit.

And I'm excited.

I know I'm embracing middle age.

Thank you, Jesus, you know.

But somewhere along the way, when I was a kid, it was just like you're small, you're you're skinny, and that may not it doesn't even mean it doesn't even mean anybody was trying to be anything to me.

But see, I heard that when I was young and it did something to me mentally, it messed with me, it got in me.

So the older I got, you know what I did?

I started high-risk behavior became more and more attractive.

You know why?

Because it didn't matter when I was skinny, when I was engaging in high-risk behavior, people loved it.

People were like, wow, couldn't see themselves doing it.

So it didn't matter if it was the way I drove, or whether it was just a prank with my friends in high school, just pushing the limits all the time.

Just pushing the limits.

Oh, you you know when will do it?

Woo! Watch me, I'll do it.

And see, and that that doesn't sound like much, except at the at the root of that is a seed of rejection.

And so we engage in behaviors and we do things, and and and again, what it is, is it's it's us putting up walls, and we're trying to protect ourselves against the wound that's been created.

But the problem with self-protection is that it keeps the wound unhealed.

That's the that's the problem.

We're not actually protecting ourselves, we're protecting the wound that's actually still hurting us.

And there's got to be a there has to be a healing process that happens.

This is Proverbs 18, verse 21.

Proverbs 18:21

The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.

And you know, you know what the solution to a to a rejection seed that's been planted inside of you, the blockage of rejection that's getting in the way that's keeping you from even being able to hear hear God's voice in your life and Him wanting to restore your mind and your soul.

Like the thing that's getting in the way for a lot of us is that the loudest voice in our in our mind is the voice of rejection that was planted there all that time ago.

And see, and here's the solution the solution is is God's words.

That's the solution to rejection is God's words.

What is that what does that mean?

Okay.

I'm not talking about the the superficial, somebody told you you were ugly, and so now it's just like every day get up and tell yourself, you are beautiful, you are beautiful.

I'm not talking about the the positive counterpart to the negative thing that somebody tried to say to you.

What I'm talking about is that somebody has said something to you and and it got in you, but now you know God's word and what has been spoken over you there.

So now you're no longer in the business of trying to prove that you're worthy, trying to prove that you can earn it, trying to prove that you're somebody that you're not.

You're not in that business anymore.

Why?

Because I know what God says about me.

That's the difference.

And I'm and I'm gonna tell you, it's the only way out of that.

It's the only way out of that.

The solution to a spirit of rejection that's been planted inside of you is to get God's word on the inside of you.

Some of us really struggle to read scripture, we struggle to learn it, read it, and I and I and I do understand, I do understand that it's ancient Near Eastern literature, and it wasn't even written to you, like it was written to other people, and then we're trying to like understand that, you know.

That's complicated.

It really is.

But can I tell you that that is usually not the primary reason that that's that's keeping us?

We we tell ourselves it is, but there's a spirit behind that.

There is a spirit behind that.

There is a there is an enemy that would love nothing more for you to relegate scripture as something I'm not qualified to understand it, and I can't, and so therefore I put it on a shelf.

And you know what it does?

It keeps God's word from being spoken over you so you can hang on to rejection and bitterness moving forward.

Keeps you from surrendering because you don't, you fail to, you, you're not true, you're not growing in your understanding, your knowledge of how good God is in your life.

So you're able to like make excuses for no longer surrendering.

And I'm telling you, you got to know God's word.

You need God's word inside of you.

This is Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

It says, now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds.

They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them.

Isn't that interesting?

Not alienated based on the environment or the bad people or the toxic environment they find themselves and my workplace or this my kids' school.

Nope.

It's the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their heart.

Here's the fourth blockage of the of the heart, and it's evil thoughts.

Evil thoughts.

That sounds a little bit grim, sounds a little bit evil thoughts, you know.

Um kind of modern minds.

That's not normally the language that we want to use around that, right?

Evil thoughts, evil thoughts.

Here's the here's the truth about the way we come to Jesus.

We come to Jesus with the hard drive of our minds totally full.

Like there isn't one of us, I don't care how young you are, there isn't one of us that comes to Jesus as a blank slate.

We're all showing up with experiences, stories we've told ourselves, things we have seen, things that have shaped the filters through which we make sense of the world around us.

We are hardwired, our minds are pre-wired, like we we come to Jesus with a lot of stuff full of information and experiences.

And it's not all bad.

And honestly, on the surface, it doesn't even always look bad.

You know, I highly doubt any of us are sitting around at home writing down our scheme to like, you know, take over the world, commit atrocities, murder our neighbor.

If you are, we have a prayer team at the end of the service for you.

You should connect with them.

But I doubt that that's most of us, if any of us, right?

But that's usually what we think of when we think evil, evil thoughts.

There's a lot more going on.

Look at look at look look how much attention is given to your mind.

Look what he says in Ephesians 4, just a few verses down in verse 23.

Be renewed in the spirit of your minds.

There's something there that that is that when we come to Jesus, it's like there's a renewal that that needs to take place.

Which means, which means that your defaults when you come to Jesus are likely wrong.

I'm not trying to gaslight you here and try to try to tell you that you're you're incapable of being able to see right from wrong.

I'm not saying that.

I'm just saying that there are there are things that seem right to us, and they're not because we've been our experiences and the information we've gained outside of Christ have kind of soured us or they've kind of polluted our ability to kind of see through that sometimes.

And so look at Romans 12.

It says, don't conform to the pattern of this world.

What's that?

It's the way that makes sense.

That's the pattern of the world.

The path that makes sense.

But be transformed by the renewing of your mind, a renewal of your mind.

And see, for a lot of us, the thoughts that go through our mind, and I'm talking about thoughts around things that are good, things that are things that are good.

The way that we think about raising kids, the way that we think about relationships, the way we think about our marriages, the way we think about sex, the way we think about our careers and and about building lives for ourselves and making money and all these things, the things that are that are good and beautiful, and the things that God made for us to like participate in and like win at life in and encourage one another in.

Like these things that are great, and they're great.

I'm talking about those things.

Those things where we don't initially go, I don't know if that's an evil thought or not.

And which is understandable when we've been rehearsing those thoughts in our minds for 25 years, they become normal.

It becomes normal, which is why there's there's this need for this word right here.

It's a it's kind of a Bible word, but it's appropriate.

And the word is this cleansing.

There's a there's a cleansing that has to happen.

This is what first John said.

He says, He's forgiven me of my sins and he's cleansed me from all unrighteousness.

They're not the same things.

Forgiveness of sin and a cleansing that happens, it means this.

It's that it's that you can be forgiven of your sins, but that radiation has got you at a cellular level, and he wants to cleanse you from the inside out and and renew you.

Do you see that?

There's a cleansing.

You know, for a lot of us, it's like even the the good things that I mentioned.

It's like there's there's lots of things that are that are worth pursuing, they're worth your attention, they're worth your your energy.

But for a lot of us, we're we're we're seeking the the motives are are twisted up.

We seek pleasure and we make pleasure the primary thing.

We we we seek accomplishment, we make our ego the primary thing.

We don't even realize we're we're doing it.

We don't even realize that that even though outwardly we're saying Jesus is Lord, inwardly our motivations were Lord.

We've dethroned him, we elevated ourselves, and we made ourselves king.

This is what happens, and the process for that is not that you're not forgiven, you are.

He's forgiving you.

It's that we need to be cleansed, it's that there's a renewal that needs to take place.

And see, and this is the beautiful thing about Jesus.

This is what Jesus does, this is what Jesus did.

He said, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus isn't just, well, they can't get it right, I'll go take care of business kind of thing.

No, no, no.

He he comes into it, he he enters into all of this stuff.

He enters into our world, and then through that process, he teaches us what it means to be fully human.

When we say your true self, to be yourself, Jesus models what it means to be your real self, your true self.

And see, in all these blockages of the heart, the selfishness, the bitterness, the rejection, the evil thoughts, it deforms us.

It makes us into somebody.

You and I were never intended to be.

We were never intended to live like that.

And yet, so Jesus comes into our world and he lives this out with no blockages to his heart, no selfishness, no bitterness, no rejection.

No, was he rejected?

He was, but he had this way of not, he didn't have he didn't absorb it in a way where he absorbs it and then projects it.

He absorbs it, but he doesn't transmit it to the people around him.

There's nothing, there's no evil way or evil thought inside of him.

And it's not like, well, of course, he's God.

No, no, no.

He is modeling to you and uh and me, there is a way to really be human, and he's going, This is the way to be a human being.

This is the way, this is the real way I designed you to be.

I designed you, I designed you to live without these things.

There's a pathway forward.

Sin might deform us, but this is it.

Jesus is in the business of restoring us.

And this is why when he leaves, he says, Listen, it's better that I go.

Why?

Because I'm not just giving you a great example.

This isn't just a good example to follow.

No, he said, it's better that I go because I'm going to send you my Holy Spirit.

I'm going to give you my Holy Spirit because there are things that you are incapable of doing without the personal, very real presence of the Holy Spirit in your life.

And so he says, I'm we need the Holy Spirit.

Look at this, this is Psalm 139, verse 23.

Psalms 139:23

This is what the psalmist says.

He says, Search me, God, and know my heart.

Test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

This is this is the one first thing that we need to do when it comes to inviting the Holy Spirit in our life.

You need to invite the Holy Spirit to show me, show you, show us.

Show us what?

The things we don't see.

Search my heart, oh God.

See if there is any selfishness in me.

Lord, show me that.

Search my heart, God.

Is this is there a is there a is there bitterness and unforgiveness in my life?

Is there a spirit, is there a rejection that I've been hanging on to forever for however long it has been?

A week?

My whole life.

Is it there?

And we need him to show us this stuff because boy, we we are masters at justifying ourselves.

We're masters at making excuses.

We're good at it.

We're good at it.

It's it's scary how good we are at it, to be honest with you.

It really is.

It's amazing.

And it's easy.

We can point at other people.

Sure, we can point at other people.

I mean, it's amazing how many times we've been in, we've all been in situations like this.

It's like two people can experience something, that person walks away, they tell an entirely different story from what actually happened.

And you're like, wait, people believe them?

Why do people believe them?

It's like, and that's easy to point at.

We're totally capable of the exact same thing.

And it may not even be other people.

It's amazing how how how quickly we can come to God and we and we convince ourselves that we're good.

God and I are good.

It's like, whoa, hold on a second.

It's amazing how good we are at that.

We need the Holy Spirit to show us.

Look at this, Psalm 51, verse 10.

Psalms 51:10

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

We also need the Holy Spirit.

We need to invite the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit, change me.

Show me and now change me.

Change, by the way, is not some spiritual fantasy.

Change isn't like, well, that would that would be nice, but you know, it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks.

That's that's not no no no, it's not spiritual fantasy, it's the promise of the cross.

By way of the cross, you can now become like Jesus.

You can actually mature.

Your your mind and your soul, you can be restored.

You can do that.

That's the that's a promise of the of the cross.

For too many of us, you know, for for most of us, the majority of us, we think weakness is our problem.

That's what we think.

We think we think the problem is is weakness.

In fact, that might even be some of our prayer life.

God just make help me be strong enough in these moments.

I don't want to, I don't want to fail.

I don't want to submit myself to that.

God, I don't want to succumb to that.

We think that weakness is our problem.

Weakness is not your problem.

God can work with weakness.

The problem is the delusion of strength.

It's all the areas of our lives that we think that we're strong enough to do things with on our own.

It's those areas of our life where we just go, it's okay if I go there, it's okay if I spend time with them, it's okay if I watch that, because I'm strong enough to keep myself in check.

That's the problem.

Hey, you know what?

I I know what I need to do.

I know I'm tired of hearing it.

My goodness, the pastor's gonna talk about it again this weekend, I'm sure.

I'm tired of hearing this, and then we and we just I know what I need to do.

We walk out of here and we think, I'll get around to it.

The problem isn't that you're weak, the problem is that you have a delusion of your own strength.

Oh no, we need the you need the Holy Spirit to change you.

You cannot change yourself.

You can't.

And you might be able to do it at a superficial level and create a facade and get enough people around you fooled, but the but the but the cellular deformity that has happened in your life as a cause of sin is in you are incapable of reaching into your soul and making that, putting that back in order.

You can't do it.

Only the spirit can do that.

Holy Spirit, show us, Holy Spirit, change us.

Ephesians 5, 18.

Don't get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery.

Instead, be filled with the spirit.

Be filled with the spirit.

What is that whole thing?

No, this isn't just Paul in the middle of his epistle, his letter, just like, you know what?

I think it's worth saying, moving forward, stop getting drunk.

Okay, yeah, don't do that.

Because it leads to debauchery.

He's using that as an example.

What he's saying is he's saying, there is a there are there are things and behaviors that you can you can participate in.

And they have a promise of alleviating the pain in your life, they have a promise of doing something for you.

But when it's not in Christ, it leads to something that actually taxes you and takes away from you and ultimately causes you harm.

That's what he's saying.

And so for you and me, he I I if I think if he was writing it today, he'd say, stop benching.

Watching Netflix, it leads to debauchery.

That's what he would say.

Stop scrolling.

Right?

These things that we do to sort of like cope, and that's not to like come down and be condemned.

That's not what we're doing.

We're just Jesus is going, He's going, There's a there's a better way.

And the alternative is this be filled with the Spirit.

Holy Spirit, show me, change me.

Holy Spirit, fill me.

Be filled with the Spirit.

There are things, only the Spirit, your things you and I are looking to for other things in other people, other relationships.

We're convinced if I had that thing, if I had that person, it would it would make the difference.

It doesn't make the difference.

It might in the short term, but not in the long term.

You need the spirit to fill you.

You need the spirit to fill you.

This is the process.

This is the pathway to the deformities that sin has caused in our soul and in our flesh.

The Spirit of God, Jesus, by His Spirit, wants to come into our lives and He wants to bring order to the disorder.

He wants to restore your soul.

He wants, He, but He's the invitation is to surrender your flesh.

And that's impossible and that's difficult to do.

Honestly, impossible, but it but it isn't impossible with the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit, change us.

Holy Spirit, show us and fill us.

Let's pray.

Jesus.

Jesus, we thank you.

We thank you that that you didn't just leave us on our own.

But you gave us your Holy Spirit.

Thank you.

You you even said that it's better that you go away than it than it is for you to stay, because you want to give us your Holy Spirit.

And so we want to receive your spirit.

We receive that.

Holy Spirit, we invite you to show us those areas of our life.

If there's blockages of our heart somewhere along the way, whether it's whether it's the selfishness that we've sort of just for whatever reason have gotten a hold of, whether it's bitterness because somebody has wronged us, whether it's rejection because of something somebody said to us, or whether it's just the habits of our own thoughts over the course of living our life, whatever that might be, would you show that to us?

And then would you change us?

Would you change us?

Would you give us the tools?

Would you show us paths to take?

Would you help create in us new habits and new ways of living our life?

Would you bring relationships that would be strategic in our lives that would be encouraging?

And would you would you help us in our groups as we commit to gathering every week?

Would you, would you through our group and our group leaders and our group members, would you would you speak to us through through key relationships?

Holy Spirit, fill us.

We receive you.

Fill us.

Fill us.

Forgive us for going everywhere but to you.

And would you breathe new life, fresh wind into our sails?

Would you fill us by your spirit?

Thank you, Jesus.

If you never committed your life to Jesus, that's the first step.

That's the promise.

He promises to give you his Holy Spirit when you surrender your life to him.

And if you have not committed your life to him, this is what we're talking about.

God in the flesh putting on display to you and me how to how to become fully, how to live and be fully human.

And he did that for us.

He did that.

He did that in a way that you and I are incapable of doing it.

And the world didn't accept him and the world didn't celebrate him.

They actually rejected him.

And they crucified him and they killed him for it.

And he didn't turn around, even though he could, with a glance of his own eyes, with a snap of his own fingers, he could have wiped us all out, but he didn't.

He absorbed it.

He didn't transmit that.

He didn't project that.

He absorbed it and he forgave.

And he forgave and he forgives you and he forgives me.

And the way we partake in that and participate in that and receive that is we believe him.

We believe him.

Jesus, we believe you.

We believe that you died on that cross.

We believe you that you absorbed all of our pain and all of our brokenness.

Jesus, we believe you that you that you took our sin and our shame.

We believe you that you died the death we deserved.

We believe you.

That's faith, church.

We put our faith in you.

We're committed to following your ways for the rest of our life.

Thank you for saving us.

Thank you for making us brand new.

Thank you for your Holy Spirit.

Thank you for making us more like you.

Thank you for showing us what it means to be a human being.

Thank you for giving us an invitation to participate in the life you actually made us to live.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Come on, church, put your hands together right now and tell Jesus thank you this morning.

Thank you, Jesus.