What’s Next? – Live Free

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason and Liz Burns in Access Church in Lakeland and Bartow, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Well, let's get to work today, everybody.

We are in part two of a four-part sermon series.

The series is called What's Next?

And in this series, we're asking the question: what does God have for all of us?

One of the things I love about God's word is it's very clear from the beginning to the end of the Bible that God has a spiritual journey for all of us to take.

One of the things I love as a pastor is I don't just see myself as a pastor or a preacher.

Sometimes I see myself as a spiritual tour guide.

I want to help you get closer and closer to Jesus and to become more and more like him, and that's what this series is about.

Whether you've been a Christian for 30 seconds or for 60 years, either way, God has a next step for all of us, and we're gonna work through that together.

If you missed last week, we said this.

This is important.

Not to know about him, not just to know about him, but to actually know him, heart to heart, soul to soul.

If you miss last week, I'd love for you to pick it up because I think there's a lot of a lot of people out there that say they love God, but the real truth is they love the benefits of God, but they don't really know him.

God's desire is that you would know him.

Today I want to help you take step two in this journey, but to get it started, uh, one of my favorite things in the world is I love being a dad.

It's like my favorite thing.

I love my kids.

I've got the three best out there, I love them so much.

And there's so many things that are fun, but one of my favorite things about being a dad is my kids speak an entirely different language than I do.

I I don't know if you've parents have experienced this, but it's fun to me.

They come home with words and I'm like, wait, what does that mean?

And I love it, and I never want to be the crotchety old guy who's like, speak English.

I don't want to be that guy.

I just think it's funny when they say words that I don't understand.

Like, let me give you some examples, okay?

And if you're young, this will make perfect sense to you.

If you're old, I'm gonna teach you a new language.

How does that sound, all right?

Um, my kids say the word business.

Have you heard business?

Uh busin means good or delicious.

Like my kids will say, Mom, that meal was busin' busin.

That means good, good.

That was a real good meal.

Okay.

Here's some other fun ones.

This is just, write these down.

I'm gonna help you stay young, everybody.

This word is the word sleigh.

Uh now, my daughter says this one all the time, and usually it would have like six more A's in it, like sleigh.

That's how she says it.

And sleigh means good or great.

And so she'll come out and she'll be like, Dad, outfit, fit check, sleigh or no sleigh.

Okay, you got it?

Okay, here's another one.

This is my favorite one.

I like this one.

Glazing.

Have you heard this one?

Glazing means to compliment or to celebrate somebody, and I love this one.

Sometimes I'll preach and I'll come off stage and Joey be like, Dad, not trying to glaze you, but that was an awesome sermon.

I love that one so much.

Here's another one.

Have you seen this one?

Unk?

Have you seen Unk?

Unk is not short for uncle.

Unk means old guy.

And so uh for my 43rd birthday, my son Gavin wrote, Happy birthday, unk.

And when I learned what that means, I figured out he wrote something to me, so I wrote something for him.

I wrote him out of my will.

That's what I did.

Unk, okay.

Here's one more that I think is super fun.

Taking L's.

Have you heard this one?

Taking L's.

Now, this is this is not brand new.

This has been around if you're a sports person.

Taking L's means taking losses, taking a loss is what it means.

And I like this one so much.

Um, I can give you practical examples of this.

For example, um, this week, one day I woke up you know early in the morning, got up, and I unplugged my phone and I went about my day, and I looked down and my phone was at 2% battery, like it didn't charge all night.

That's taking an L all day.

I couldn't catch up.

I just felt like I was struggling all day.

Okay, you understand?

Here's another one, you will get this one.

My trash pickup comes on Monday mornings, and so on Sunday nights we put the trash out.

Well, a couple weeks ago we put the trash out like we always do, and the pickup must have been running late for some reason because when my boys got home from school, one of them, I won't tell you which one it was, Joey, he uh he he he was trying to do something sweet and he pulled the trash cans in, and he must be so strong that he didn't realize that it was still full of trash.

That's a hard L, everybody.

That's a hard one.

That could tear a family apart.

That's a big problem, right?

You understand?

I I think it's possible as followers of Jesus that whether or not you and I realize it, we take some L's in our relationship with God, and I want to kind of explain it like this.

You see, the first step in the spiritual journey that God has for us is we gotta know God.

He wants us to know him.

The second step is that God wants you to get free from all of your issues, all of your pain, all of your hurts, all of your hangups.

He wants you to stop tripping over your past and stumbling into your present and your future.

And the problem is, according to the most recent survey I can find, 87% of Christians never get here.

So Jesus has saved them, they're going to heaven, but the rest of their life they're gonna feel like they're walking through hell because they can't get past the issues that hold them up and hang them up.

Today I want to talk to you about the idea that God wants to not just save you, but he wants to free you from your issues.

Jesus one time was talking to the book of John.

He was talking to this group of Jewish people who were now following him.

So do the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, John 8 31.

If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.

I could translate that and say, if you want to be a real true follower, a student of Jesus, you've got to obey what he says.

Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

So this group of Jewish people answered him.

We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone.

How can you say that we shall be set free?

Like we we have the great pedigree.

We come from Abraham, one of our forefathers of faith.

We come from him, his lineage.

Like, how could you say this to us?

And so Jesus replied, Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.

So, like, regardless of your upbringing, regardless of what you believe, if you are subjected to sin, you become a slave to it.

Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever.

And then Jesus drops this line.

He says, So, if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

I want you to look at these two words.

If you were to take an honest audit of your spiritual journey, would you say that you walk free?

Would you say that freedom is your normal, that you don't wake up in the night thinking about your past, you don't you're not hung up on issues from your past, you're not still struggling with addictions and habits and negative cycles.

Like, is this true for you?

And here's the thing I've learned after following Jesus for a long time and walking with hundreds of people over the years, is that salvation is a moment.

You can pray a prayer, you can choose to follow Jesus, and it is a moment, it is a decision, and Jesus does it.

He saves us.

Salvation is a moment, but I want you to see this.

Freedom is a journey.

It doesn't happen overnight.

You don't just pray a prayer and all of your problems and all of your pain and all of your hangups and hurts disappear.

That is a process, but it's a process worth going through because God wants you to walk in freedom.

Now, last week I said this.

I said, God has a spiritual journey for all of us to be on.

I want to take you as a tour guide through it.

You can find this as early in the Bible as Exodus chapter 6.

Exodus 6 · chapter mention

You can find it all the way through the book of Revelation, but in the book of Ephesians, Paul gives it to us in one prayer.

Quick time out for a moment.

In a few weeks, we're starting a new series of messages.

Every summer, I do something that I love so much.

We take a book of the Bible and we dig into it.

We go verse by verse through the Bible.

It's awesome every summer.

This summer we're doing the book of Ephesians.

Some scholars call it the crown jewel of the New Testament.

I love it.

It might be my favorite book in the Bible because it deals with who you are and how God actually sees you.

You're going to want to be here for that whole series, I promise you.

In Ephesians chapter 1, Paul records a prayer.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

Now, this is cool to me as a Bible guy because the Bible talks a lot about prayer.

It says we should pray, but it doesn't really give us a lot of actual prayers.

And in this prayer that Paul records of his, he's going to give us the four steps in the spiritual pathway that God has for us.

Ephesians chapter 1, verse 16, he says, I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation.

Ephesians 1:16

And here's why.

So that you may, number one, know him better.

We talked about this last week.

God doesn't just want you to know about him.

It's not all intellectual knowledge.

He wants you to actually know him heart to heart.

Here's the second part.

He says, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.

Come back to that in a moment.

In order that you may, number three, know the hope to which he has called you.

And I want you to understand this.

This phrase means that God has a unique purpose for each and every one of your lives.

Later in the book of Ephesians, Paul says that before God laid the foundations of the earth, he had you in mind.

He knew that the world would need you right now.

You need to discover your purpose so you can live it.

And then it's the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.

This is actually the goal that God wants to set you in a family of like-minded people to do the things that he's called you and equipped you to do so that together you can make a difference that changes the world.

Now, as a church, we believe this so much that we've literally built our whole church, all three locations, the thousands of people who are a part of it now.

We have literally built our whole church around these four prayers for us.

And this is the four goals God has for us.

And here's what they are.

We want you to know God, to actually know Him.

Find freedom from your hangups and your hurts and your yesterdays.

Discover your unique purpose so that you can make a difference.

And that's my goal.

I want you to get to the place where you're like, man, I feel so alive.

I want you to wake up every morning and say, I'm so excited to tackle today.

Like that's what making a difference looks like.

Now, in the verse we just read, the second thing Paul says is to find freedom, he says, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.

This is weird.

It's weird because, like, I remember in college I took an anatomy 101 class, and your heart doesn't have eyes.

Like Paul says, I pray the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.

What does it mean?

He's not talking literally, he's talking figuratively.

And here's what he's saying: everything you do in your life gets filtered through your heart.

What does it mean?

It means every relationship, every friendship you start, before you even get to the first conversation, you're judging based on your experiences in the past.

If you have been hurt and betrayed and walked out on by people, you will start every new relationship believing that this person is another example of someone who will hurt you, leave you, and walk out on you.

I think people come to our church every single weekend and they don't trust the church, they don't trust our church, they don't trust me, they don't trust the people around them.

And the reason they don't is somewhere in their past, they got hurt by a person, hurt by a pastor, hurt by a church, and so therefore they assume that every single church is going to do that to them.

And so the eyes of their heart, honestly, they're broken and jaded and completely, completely missing the point altogether.

God wants to heal that so that every step, every part of your life, every new relationship, every new friendship, every new opportunity, you come in with a heart that is healed and whole.

Now I said this a moment ago, and I want you to see this.

Last week we said that God's desire is for you to know him, he wants to save you.

But I want you to see today that there's a second step in this process, and here's the second step it's that God's gonna heal your heart.

So let me show it to you like this in scripture, okay?

In the book of Ephesians, chapter two, Paul says, God saved you by his what?

By his grace when you believed.

Okay, God, God saved you not because of you, but because of him when you believed.

Now, this word believed is a big word because again, this is one of those words that we think it means that you you know or you you believe in your mind that he is God.

But the word believe is a bigger word than that.

Like when all of you came today and sat down in your chair, you sat down with a full sense of confidence and trust that the chair would hold you and sustain your weight.

That's what it means, right?

When it comes to believing in God, this is what he's after.

That the full weight of you, the full weight of your heart, the full weight of your trust, that all of you would be fully entrusted to him, to follow in God.

He says, God saved you by his grace when you went all in with him.

And you can't take credit for this.

It is a gift from God.

Salvation?

It's not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.

I love this verse so much because here's what God wants you to understand.

God saved you not because of you, not because you did something or gave enough money or served enough hours.

God saved you because of his love and his unfathomable grace for you.

Are you with me?

But I want you to get this.

Now, this is important.

This is this is some Bible, ready?

We're not saved by our good works.

Ready?

But we are saved for good works.

Okay.

God doesn't save us because you did good stuff.

He saves us, and then the result should be that you do some good stuff.

Okay, the book of Philippians, Paul says it like this: He says, So work hard to show the results of your salvation.

Okay.

May the world around you know that Jesus has saved you, changed you, and made you new.

You should work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear, for God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.

So, what is the work that God wants us to do?

I believe the work God wants us to do is becoming more and more like Jesus.

Well, what does that mean?

It means that God saves you, but when he saves you, not everything is made magically better and new all at the same time.

So let me try to explain it like this.

Genesis chapter 1, God creates the world, he speaks the world into existence.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

By the end of chapter 1, it says, verse 27, I believe it is.

It says that God pushes the dirt together and he forms mankind.

And it says that God created mankind in his own image.

This is an important thing for you to understand.

You are not just a body, you are not just an accident, you are an image-bearer of the creator of the universe.

God created you in his image, okay?

But the image of God is God is one God in three distinct parts God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.

We call this the Trinity, or God is a tri-une God.

God the Father is God who's for us.

God the Son, Jesus is God who is with us, and God the Holy Spirit is God who is in us.

One God, three parts, okay?

In the same way that we that God is one God in three parts, you are one person made up of three separate unique parts.

You are a tri-une being, and those three parts are God made you with a body, a soul, and a spirit.

He teased this out for you.

Your body is the physical part of you.

That's the stuff you can see, touch, and feel.

It's the physical part of you.

And this is a good part of you.

I hope you love your body, I hope you work hard for your body, I hope you take care of it, I hope it's good to you.

I hope you diet and eat well.

I hope you get lots of exercise and plenty of rest.

All of us have a body, and the funny thing is when you're young, you think it'll last forever, and then you get to your 40s.

And when you get to your 40s, you stand up and like you just make noises, like, ugh, and like you never did that in your 20s.

It's because even though it's awesome, eventually it breaks down.

Then you have a soul.

And your soul is the mind, the will, and the emotions.

This is that emotional part of you.

And a healthy person has all of this kind of in check, but we all know how life goes.

And there's some times when it's like our mind gets ravaged, our will it's subjected to like temptation, and our emotions can be all over the place.

Like our soul can be good, but we can also still be ravaged with anxiety, fear, depressive thoughts, and all kinds of stuff in between.

So you got a body and a soul, but then there's this third part of you, which is your spirit.

This is the part of us that is like God.

This is the part of us that will live on forever and ever with God for eternity.

Now I want you to see these three things.

Go to the next slide.

Look at all three of these things.

This is who you actually are.

You are comprised of three things.

So when a person makes the decision to take the first step in their relationship with God, uh, Paul says in this letter to Corinth, he says that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

What he's talking about is your spirit becomes brand new, made new with God, instantly good.

The thing is, if you make the decision to follow Jesus, your spirit is made new with God, but you might still have some issues in these other two areas that you need to work through.

Like you can follow Jesus and still deal with temptations and struggles.

Come on, let's have a moment of transparency.

Have you ever started a diet on Monday and then by Tuesday you said, I'll start it next Monday?

Come on, anybody have this?

Or have you ever made the decision to follow Jesus and you still struggle with lust or thoughts that you shouldn't have?

Have you ever made the decision to follow Jesus and it's like you just you can't quite seem to get your habits and your appetites in check?

Okay?

How about this one?

You make the decision to follow Jesus and you still deal with anxiety.

You make the decision to follow Jesus and there's still depression that you have to kind of fight off.

You make the decision to follow Jesus and there's just days where fear seems to have the final word for you.

What it means is it doesn't mean you're not saved.

It means that he saved you, but you've got some work to do in these other areas of your life.

Is this is this kind of making sense to people?

Like, like this gets hard for us.

It's hard for us because we think that salvation is like one final moment, and it is for our spirit, but finding freedom means in the areas of our body and our soul, we've just got some stuff to work through.

So, as your pastor, let me give you three goals.

Okay, like this is the target for me when it comes to you finding freedom.

If you have your message notes, write these down.

I want you to get these.

Number one, I want you and I want everyone in our church to once and for all get victory over sin.

Victory over sin.

Where it's like, sure, you're dealing with temptation, but once and for all you realize that greater is he than me than he that is in the world.

Like I have power over this.

Let me let me define sin this way.

Sin is what I do to myself.

These are my bad decisions, this is my sinful behavior, this is the my stealing and lying and cheating and fracturing relationships, these are my betrayals, the things I did.

And sin has this way of devastating friendships and relationships, but ultimately it devastates our relationship with God.

But it's what we do, it's what I do and what you do.

So in the book of Romans, Paul talks about this.

And pay attention, this is Romans 7, 21 to 25.

This is the end of Romans 7.

Hold on to that for a moment.

Paul says, So I find this law at work.

Although I want to, I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

Okay, um, I I used to love Saturday mornings as a kid because you'd wake up and have some cereal, and then all morning on TV was cartoons.

And there's this thing that happens in every cartoon.

A person is in this struggle between good and bad, right and wrong, and an angel will appear on one shoulder and a devil on the other shoulder, kind of like this.

Have you seen this before?

And it's like, I want to do good, I want to listen to the good one, but there's always this one.

Come on, it's like, I want to want a salad, but he wants a donut.

Come on, anybody with this?

This is what this means.

So Paul says, so I find this law at work, although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

And then he goes on, he says, For in my inner being, that's my spirit, I delight in God's law.

But but I see another law at work in me, and that law is waging war against the law of my mind, that's your your soul, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.

What a messed up, jacked up, wretched man I am, he says.

Who will rescue me from this body?

He's talked about your body, your soul, and your spirit.

This body that is subject to death.

Then I love this.

He said, Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I want you to understand this.

You serve a God who specializes in delivering you from the stuff that has a way of devastating you.

And if you find yourself subjected to struggles, you feel like you can't break free, and you can't once and for all get free from the things that hang us up and hurt us, once and for all, you can get victory over sin.

Number two, my goal for you is this not just victory over sin, but I want you to find healing from your wounds.

Now, this is important for you to understand.

Sin is the stuff I did, but wounds are the things that were done to me.

Statistically, one in every four women in society today have been on the receiving end of some sort of sexual abuse.

They're victims to sexual abuse.

Everyone has been hurt, betrayed, stabbed in the back.

Everyone has had a person that they trusted walk out on them.

What happened?

All of those moments they tend to wound our soul.

Psychologists say that there is something called the early and the often factor.

Some of us are full-grown adults at this point in our life, and we can't get past something like that that a teacher or a relative said to us when we were in kindergarten.

It was said over us early.

Or it's something we heard over and over and over again as a kid, and we believed it as true about ourselves.

And all of these things settle in as an identity that has wounded us.

And I just want to say to you look at me.

What someone did to you doesn't define you.

It's a wound.

I want you to hear me.

Wounds do One of two things.

They either get healed or they get infected.

And a lot of us, we've allowed those wounds of our past to become infected, and we're touchy to everyone.

We build walls and relationships.

We won't let anyone close to us.

And I just want to say to you, that was never God's intent.

God's intent would be that that wound becomes a scar, and the scar becomes a testimony that you share to other people who are walking through what you've walked through.

God wants to heal your wounds.

Back in the book of Ephesians again.

I can't wait for that next series.

Back in Ephesians 4, Paul says, and don't sin by letting anger control you.

Hear me on this.

Anger is not a sin.

It's not.

Anger is always a secondary emotion.

It's not.

But he says, don't sin by letting anger control you.

I would say that feeling anger, flashing anger, not a sin.

Letting it control you, that would be a sin.

He says, don't let the sun go down while you are still angry, for anger gives a foothold to the devil.

Now I want you to see this.

This phrase, don't let the sun go down while you are still angry, is actually a very popular phrase.

In fact, you've probably heard it at a wedding before.

It's something that's said at weddings, and it's usually given as marital advice.

True story.

Years ago, I did a wedding for a sweet couple in our church.

And after the wedding ceremony, we go to the reception.

At the reception, the DJ did something that I thought was really fun.

He said, I want every couple, every married couple out on the dance floor, and we're going to find out who's been married the longest.

So they played music and we danced together.

And he said, All right, music stop.

He said, if you've been married for less than one hour, have a seat.

And only the newly married couple and everybody cheered for them, and it was a cute moment.

Then he played music and he said, if you've been married for one year or less, have a seat.

Five years or less, have a seat.

Ten years, fifteen, twenty years.

And eventually he made it all the way down to the couple who won, who had been married for 55 years.

And we all cheered for them.

The DJ walked out onto the dance floor with the microphone and he said, All right, give us a secret.

It's really not even for us, but for this newly married couple, give us the secret to being married for 55 years.

And the sweet old lady snatched the microphone out of his hand.

And she said, You know what the Bible says.

Don't let the sun go down on your anger, so we never go to bed angry at each other.

And the husband reached over and grabbed the microphone and he said, Yep, and I haven't slept in six weeks.

That's funny.

That's funny.

I don't think that that's what the verse means.

That's probably good advice.

Like it's probably good to not go to bed angry at each other.

I think that verse means this.

Don't let the sun set on one season of your life where you carry anger from this season into the next season, and here's why.

What happens when you keep carrying anger is over time you lose sight of where the anger came from in the first place, and then everything in your life catches the shrapnel of your life.

So don't do that.

If you're gonna have victory over sin and healing in your wounds, you're gonna have to make some decisions to forgive and let go of the thing that hurt you.

Forgiveness isn't about letting someone off the hook.

Forgiveness is about your heart getting set free.

You need victory over sin.

You need healing from your wounds.

And here's number three.

This is a weird one, but you need authority over the enemy.

What does this mean?

Well, it means that whether or not you can see it, there is a spiritual battle happening all around you.

There is a supernatural war being waged all around us.

The book of Ephesians, chapter six, Paul says, Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.

Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.

He is scheming against you.

He says, For our struggle is not against flesh and blood.

It's not against what we can see, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

There is a spiritual battle happening all around us.

In the book of Isaiah, there's this interesting verse where Christians love this.

They love to quote this verse.

The verse says, No weapon formed against me shall prosper.

That's a beautiful verse.

Except I read it a little skeptically and I think, okay, cool, but that means there are weapons formed against me.

Whether or not they prosper, they're still formed against me.

Part of finding freedom is realizing the work of the enemy around you so you can put a stop to it in your life.

Now, earlier we read this.

We read Romans chapter 7, the last few verses.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

And literally we read the end of the chapter.

If you had your Bible, the next verse would be what we're going to read.

And here's what I want to read.

I just read you my goals for you, three things.

And I want to show you my hope and how you can do it, how you can actually walk in freedom.

The first thing is as I read this verse, I want you to take a deep breath.

If you need some encouragement today, go home and read the rest of this chapter.

Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

If you feel like you've struggled, if you're like one of the 87% of people, Christians, who get stuck in their yesterday, stuck in their past, stuck in captivity and not walking in freedom, take a deep breath and exhale as I read Romans 8, verse 1.

Romans 8:1

So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.

Ready for this?

Take a deep breath.

If God doesn't hold your passion against you, you don't have to either.

This means God is for you.

He says, those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit.

But letting the Spirit control your mind is what leads to life and peace.

So the first thing you need to do, if you're gonna walk in freedom, is you can stop condemning yourself.

You can pay attention to the things you think about.

Are your thoughts, is your mind, being controlled by you and your past?

Or are you saying, Holy Spirit, give me your wisdom for how to handle this situation?

That's number one.

Number two is this I need you to start thinking about who your friends are.

And here's why.

According to Scripture, right relationships are the key.

If you want to find freedom and walk in freedom, it's gonna talk about, it's gonna be uh based on having right relationships.

Every business expert will say this: you become like your five most important friends, really?

Like if your friends are healthy, if you have five healthy friends, you'll be healthy friend number six.

If you have five friends who pursue the things of God, you'll become number six.

But the negative is also true.

If you have five friends who are alcoholics, guess what you will become?

If you have five friends who are addicted to things online that they shouldn't be, you probably will become number six.

Like we become like the most influential voices in our life.

Now, this is important when it become when it comes to things like finding freedom from your yesterdays.

In the book of Proverbs, Solomon says this he who conceals his sins does not prosper.

But whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.

Why does this matter?

You need friends to whom you feel privileged to confess.

You need friends who you feel like you can share your heart, share your truth, share your pain with.

Here's why.

God will not heal what we conceal.

And a lot of us hide.

And let me say this as directly as I can.

You will always be as sick as your darkest secrets.

Who knows you and who loves you.

See, we get caught in this weird cycle.

First John says this.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

So here's the weird cycle.

We get trapped in a sin, trapped in a habit, trapped in an addiction.

And we say, Oh, God, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.

And 1 John says he does.

Every time he's like, Yes, yes, I forgive you.

I forgive you.

And he does.

We even do this.

Oh, God, if you'll forgive me, I'll never do it again.

Just forgive me, I'll never mess up again.

And then, like, we do.

We ask for forgiveness and we promise to not do it again, and we do it again and again and again and again.

Why?

Well, the promise of God is that he forgives us.

But if you want to walk in healing, look at this.

In James chapter 1, James chapter 5.

James 1 · chapter mention James 5 · chapter mention

Therefore, confess with your mouth.

Use your words to speak it out.

Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other that you might be healed.

I know that's awkward.

I know all of us want to put on a show and we want everyone to think that we've got it all together, but the only way you will find healing freedom is to ask God to forgive you and then ask God's people to help heal you.

So, what do I want you to do?

Well, as your pastor, my goal is to give you handles every time I speak.

Like if I preach a message and it doesn't apply to your life and your family and your kids and your job and your money and your every part of your life, then I failed you.

I want to give you some practical handles on today, and let me tell you, if you find yourself skeptical, if you're like, oh, that's just a commercial for the church, I hear you.

But let me say this to you this is all a part of God's pathway for you to grow to become more like Him.

If you want freedom, I'm gonna give you three personal challenges.

Number one, I challenge you to get baptized.

Why?

Because baptism is a public declaration of your personal decision to follow Jesus.

When you're baptized, here's what you're saying: my former sinful life is dead, buried, and gone.

When I come out of the water, it symbolizes the fact that Jesus made me new.

Let me say it to you like this: something supernatural happens when you come out of that baptismal tank.

It's like something breaks off of you.

If you haven't been baptized, or if you haven't had a meaningful baptism experience since you made the decision to follow Jesus, here's my challenge to you.

Two weeks from today, Sunday, May 18th, we have a water baptism coming up and it will not be complete without you.

If you want to get baptized, stop playing games and go to access.tv slash info.

I love it.

We've had baptisms here for years.

We had our first ones in North Lakeland recently.

Love you, North Lakeland.

And for the first time ever, we're having our first baptism ever in Bartow.

Come on, somebody.

It's awesome.

But I need you to sign up.

Let us know so we can help you, teach you everything you need to know, and get you in that tank.

Here's number two.

I want to challenge you to join a church.

Now notice I said, a church and not the church, our church.

I hope it's our church.

We love you.

We'd love for you to be here.

I think it's a pretty great place, a pretty safe place.

I think it's a pretty wonderful place.

But I want you to join a church.

Why?

Because if you bounce from church to church to church and never plant yourself, you will never grow deep roots.

People jump from church to church to church and they're like, why am I not growing?

It's because you'll never grow a plant if you're constantly uprooting it in the same way.

You'll never grow past your issues or past your current state of maturity, jumping from place to place to place.

I hope it's access.

If it's not, let me know and I'll help you find the right place for you.

Here's how you can know if access is right for you.

Every month on the first and second Sunday of the month, we do something called Next Steps class.

Why do we do this?

It's to help you know if Access is the right church for you.

That's week one.

That's happening today, by the way.

And then the second week, week two of the month, we do a class that's all about you.

It's discovering your giftings and your talents so that you can use them to serve other people.

That's the highest point in your life of serving other people.

If you haven't done this yet, if you've just played games with church, stop it.

Jump all in and see what God will do through you.

You can register at access.tv slash info.

If you haven't even started the process, you can literally start next Sunday on step two.

You can do step one and two in any order.

We just want you to jump all in and see if this is the right place for you.

And here's number three.

Are you ready?

We want you to get baptized, join the church.

Then you need to find your people.

And let me say this to you: church will come alive for you when you get out of rows and you get into community.

Church will come alive for you when you stop showing up at the last possible minute and blowing out the moment service is over, but when you have people that you know and that you love, people that you can confess to God and He'll forgive you, and then people that you can confess to them so you can find healing.

How do you do that?

Well, we do that three times a year in what we call access groups.

Access groups are when we get out of our roads and we get into community together and we share our life with each other.

We're um at the end, we're kind of in an in-between.

We're in a break right now, and one month from now, we launch access groups again.

You can go to access.tv slash groups, but I want to challenge some of you with one extra step.

For so many of us, we love groups.

We have hundreds and hundreds of people across our cities that are involved in groups, and I love that so much.

But I want to look at you, I want to look right in the camera to our locations, and I want to say this.

We have way outgrown the number of groups we have.

And I'm not content to lead a church full of spiritual consumers only.

If you're new to our church, jump in, join a group.

But if you've been a part of our church for a while, it's time for you to offer to someone what someone had the courage to offer you.

Open your house, open your home, meet at a Chick-fil-A, meet at a Panera, and gather people around a common interest and see what God can do through your courageous yes.

What does it mean?

It means this.

If you would like to lead a group or if you're just open to learning more, go to access.tv slash groups, sign up there that you're interested in leading a group, and our team will get with you, get you everything you need.

We'll hook you up.

All right.

Here's how I want to end today.

I want to end by praying over you that you and I will be the kind of people who get to walk in freedom.

True freedom once and for all.

The kind of people who leave and say, Jesus, you saved me, but I'm not content just being saved.

I want to get past all of my hurts and my hangups and my yesterdays.

And I want to walk in the freedom you have for me.

Then after I pray for you, some of you may be here and you say, Jason, I don't even know if I've taken that first step.

But today I want to make the decision to really, truly know God.

Would you bow your head at all of our locations?

Close your eyes for just a moment.

Let me pray for you.

God, would you give us courage today to be free?

Once and for all, truly free.

God, for so many of us, we've been hung up tripping over our past, stumbling into our future, because we just can't seem to get past our past.

But God, your word, your plan, your path for us has always been that we would make the decision to follow you, and then as a second step, we would become like you.

So, God, give us the courage to pursue true freedom.

God, for some of us, it means that we just need to confess to you today and we need to receive forgiveness.

But for most of us, it means that we need to find people in our life that we can journey with and we can confess to that we might find healing.

God, I thank you for a church that's not just content, just feeling like we've done enough to get into heaven.

But may we walk through this life in the freedom you have for us.

We thank you for that, God.

With your head still bowed and eyes still closed, if you're here today and you don't know if you're right with God, whether that means you've never started a relationship with him, or maybe you just feel like you've walked away from your relationship with God, maybe you prayed a prayer, but when we talk about knowing God, you don't even know if you really truly know him.

If this is you, I want to give you an opportunity right now.

If you would say, Jason, today I want to pray to start or restart a relationship with him.

Would you raise your hand right now if this moment's for you?

Thanks.

Yep, yep, thank you.

If this is you, would you pray this prayer with me?

Look, praying a prayer changes things when you mean this with your heart.

Would you say, Jesus, today I give you my life?

Would you be my Lord and my Savior?

Would you forgive me of my sins and change me and make my life new from the inside out?

Jesus, I believe that you're the Son of God.

I believe you gave your life for me.

Because of your great sacrifice, I believe my life can be made new.

So, Jesus, today I choose to follow you.

For the rest of my life, I will follow you.

I give you my life, and it's in your name we pray, Jesus.

Amen.

Church fam, can we celebrate together?

Love it.