Let me add my good morning.
As has been mentioned a couple of times already, today we are beginning a new series.
And I thought before we begin, it is worth just stopping to acknowledge a lot of people
have been working to get us ready for this series.
And two people that I particularly wanted to just thank, even though they're not in
this room, is Matt Giglin, who has done a stack of the graphic work for this series,
which you'll see in the Bible studies and here on the platform on the screen.
And also Romeo Sanuri, who is part of our 1115 congregation, who helped make these happen.
So we are blessed to have people with considerable gifts and also with generous hearts who like
to use those gifts to bless us.
It is our prayer that this series will feed and encourage you, will challenge you, will
draw you closer to God, will spur you on.
And that has been the heart behind every bit of work, whether it's a picture, a word on
a page, people standing at the door, songs that have been chosen by our teams.
And so how about before we begin, we just come before God and ask him to do that work in us.
Father God, we thank you for this incredible opportunity together as your people.
We thank you for the reminder as we work through Leviticus that what we are doing now is meeting
with you together.
Father, what we do when your word is open is encounter your presence.
And so we ask that the result of this morning and every week that we gather in this series
would not be a good service or some more information, but it would be that we are changed,
that we are transformed, that we are better equipped to live the lives that you have given
us through the death and resurrection of your son.
And so please draw us close to you this morning.
Give us an incredibly vivid view of you and your glory that we might be better equipped
to live the lives that you have given us.
Amen.
I remember the night I became a Christian.
It was quite possibly, even to this point, the most overwhelming night of my life.
I was 14 years old.
I was on a camp and I cried.
Well, 14-year-old boys aren't supposed to cry, especially when there are girls around
who they're trying to impress, but I did.
I wept.
I was absolutely leveled by this incredible, unconditional love that God would offer to
even someone like me.
Even as a 14-year-old, I had a reasonable awareness of the parts of me that were fairly
unlovable.
There was probably more bits that I wasn't aware of, but there was enough there for me to
know that loving me took effort.
And so to hear about this incredible love just blew me away.
Even though I had parents that loved me well, I had good friends in my life, it was clear
to me that night that there was something special about the way that God loved me.
There was something more about that love.
And I was just overwhelmed.
I was just filled with gratitude and I was convicted.
And at that moment, I was absolutely committed to live every second of every minute of every
day of every week of every year that God would give me in service of him.
I knew that this was a life-defining moment.
It happened on a camp in January of 1996.
I remember where it was.
It was at Illaroo Farm.
I don't know if that campsite even still exists.
And I came home from camp still absolutely on fire for God.
Just so excited to be a Christian, ready to change the world, ready to be totally different,
ready to leave behind what I used to be like and the reputation that I had and all those
sorts of things, ready to be different and leave sinful habits behind.
12 months later, I went on the same camp as a 15-year-old.
And I remember at the same point in the camp where they were giving people the opportunity
to start following Jesus, explaining what he had done and how much he loved them,
I had this moment of deep and intense guilt.
Because standing there, I suddenly realised that that resolve, that commitment, that conviction
that I had had only 12 months earlier, had almost entirely worn off.
In fact, if I'm honest, probably by mid-February of that year, it was gone.
I was back into the usual rhythms of life and the new me that I was aspiring to seemed like
a kind of embarrassing overstatement.
I hadn't arrived as this new person that I was supposed to be if I was going to follow Jesus.
Now, I knew and I firmly believed that God's love for me wasn't going to be undone by my sad
and maybe even pathetic attempts at following him and living for him.
But I also knew that there wasn't much in my life that said,
hey, Sam is different now to what he was 12 months ago.
There wasn't much evidence to say, hey, Sam's a Christian, whereas he wasn't before.
And so now the preacher's standing at the front of the room,
inviting people to put their trust in Jesus, to become Christians,
and I'm sitting there thinking, well, something clearly needs to change,
but I can't do that because I've already done that.
I did the becoming a Christian thing.
I did the going down the front, praying the prayer, putting your hand up,
whatever you want to call it.
So what was I supposed to do with this incredible guilt and correct perception
that not a whole lot had changed?
I mean, I don't know about you, but if you've been around church for long,
you've heard enough testimonies or stories of Jesus
that go something like, before I met Jesus, I was a jerk.
I met Jesus and now look at me.
That wasn't my story.
Before I met Jesus, I was a jerk.
Then I met Jesus and 12 months later, I was still a jerk.
In fact, let's be honest, there's some of you who think that I'm still a jerk now.
But seriously, in that moment, I was feeling this obvious awareness
that I wasn't anywhere near where I was supposed to be.
I couldn't do that first step.
I'd already done that.
So what do I do now?
And so I figured, as somebody who had said I'd become a Christian,
had been hovering at church and youth group for 12 months,
everyone around me assumed that I was going great.
I had two options.
Rather than admit how kind of pathetic my attempts at following Jesus were,
I could play it down, not just to them, but to me as well,
and go, maybe it's not so bad.
Maybe I am moving forward more than I think.
Or I could try a lot harder and make up for the fact
that I'd wasted this first 12 months.
I figured they were my two options.
I knew there was a standard that, or at least I felt this pressure
that I had to live up to some sort of standard,
I didn't want to be another Christian hypocrite.
I wanted God to still love me.
I wanted to be as good as all these other Christians around me seemed to be.
And really, if I'm honest, I think what I expected was
that I was supposed to be like Jesus.
I even had a WWJD band to remind me I was supposed to be like Jesus.
And maybe that's a pressure that you feel, trying to follow Jesus right now.
Maybe you're not having that moment like me on camp,
but with a little bit of a push, a little bit of self-reflection,
you feel a discomfort of, I'm supposed to be here,
and in reality I'm somewhere down here.
Christians never explicitly say,
hey, you've got to be perfect.
We wouldn't use that word,
but think about the way that you respond to moral failure.
When you come across it in other people,
do you find yourself wondering whether or not they're really Christian?
Do you find yourself measuring who the best Christians are
based on their level of goodness or their level of morality?
Or what about in your own life?
When you become aware of sin in your life,
are you tempted to justify it as not so bad?
Because let's be honest, it's uncomfortable to carry guilt.
It's uncomfortable.
Or maybe when you find sin in your own life,
you feel that increased pressure to somehow make up for it.
Somehow pray more, serve more, give more, attend more.
Does it all just get compounded by this fear
that people might find out about this sin?
Somehow the secret might get out.
Find out what?
That you're not as good as you're trying to pretend that you are?
Find out that you're not as perfect as Jesus?
Wouldn't that be a shock?
And so you're trapped in a cycle of doing everything you can to cover it up,
to keep your failure a secret,
to not let anyone else know that you make mistakes.
And every time you do that, you increase the pressure on yourself
to hold up this standard of godliness.
You increase the pressure to maintain this show,
this pretense.
And maybe it adds guilt that just drives you.
And so you're serving a lot.
You're ticking all the obvious boxes of following Jesus,
but deep down you are feeling this incredible pressure.
You are driven by this ridiculous weight.
Because somewhere along the line,
you and I and most of us started to believe the lie
that as a Christian, you had to be perfect.
Or at very least, you had to be better than most people.
Better than the people who aren't at church.
We started expecting ourselves to have kind of arrived as Christians.
And maybe it's from a verse like verse 5 in 1 John 1.
We open the Bible and it says,
This is the message we've heard from Him and declare to you.
God is light.
In Him there is no darkness at all.
And if we claim to have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness,
we lie and do not live out the truth.
And so we start to panic.
We think, well, I want to live in fellowship with God.
I want to be a Christian.
And so I can't acknowledge darkness.
I can't acknowledge failure.
Because then, apparently, I'm a liar and I have no fellowship.
And so we feel this pressure.
But you've got to understand, that's not what this verse is saying.
That's not what any other verse that might sound even vaguely like that is saying.
Because the next verse says,
If we walk in the light as He is in the light,
we have fellowship with one another,
and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.
So we're already walking in the light and yet we still need purification.
So it's not telling us we need to be perfect.
But somewhere along the line,
our own fear and insecurity has meant that is a lie we have begun to believe.
And I want to begin this series by saying that if there is any part of that sentiment that resonates with you,
if there is even a hint of this that you think,
yeah, that sounds right.
I need to be better than the people around me.
I need to be good enough for God.
You need to hear that that is a lie.
You need to really listen today and throughout this series because Jesus wants to show you what He means when He says,
My yoke is easy.
My burden is light.
following Jesus is a journey.
It's about becoming something.
It's about being slowly and progressively transformed.
If you're a Christian, if you're following Jesus, you are not a finished product.
I can say that with absolute confidence.
You are on a journey and you have not yet arrived.
You are not at the destination.
You are not done.
Margaret Graham, who is the wife of the famous evangelist Billy Graham, has on her tombstone,
end of construction.
Thank you for your patience.
Jesus says following Him is like being on a narrow road.
It's a road that leads to life.
It's a road that ends in the perfect life, in the perfection that maybe we desire.
But being on the road is not the same as being at the end of the road.
Anyone who has kids and has been on a road trip with those kids knows that there is an obvious
and important distinction between being on a journey and arriving at your destination.
You've sat in the car and heard the haunting chorus of,
Are we there yet?
And after answering no for the thousandth time, maybe you chose to get a bit creative.
We're on the way.
We're almost there.
Or maybe, you know, the doozy, which I believe is untrue.
But anyway, it's not about the destination.
It's about the journey.
Your kids will quickly teach you that that's not true.
The whole point of a journey is to get somewhere.
You know, the journey might increase your joy on the journey if you do fun things,
but you are on a journey to get to somewhere.
And kids are pretty astute.
They will work out that no matter how you spin it, being on the way, being on the journey,
and actually arriving at your destination is not the same thing.
The joy of the journey, the point of the journey is only served when you arrive.
And so if you're a Christian, you haven't arrived yet.
You need to hear this.
Jesus says he will carry his work on.
He will make sure you arrive eventually.
But that arrival, that completion will be at the end of the journey.
That will be heaven.
That will be when we finally get home.
The Christian life is a journey between two points.
It's the point that I just talked about when I was 14,
when you discover that on the cross, Jesus died so that you could be forgiven.
And you receive the new life, that the journey begins there.
And the other point is heaven, when finally one day you'll be face to face with God,
every bit of sin and sickness and evil and everything that is bad in you and in the world is totally removed.
But right now as a Christian, you live between those two points.
Following Jesus is a journey.
And so this series is about how do we live on that journey?
What does it look like to not just wander aimlessly, but actually to flourish, to thrive on this journey?
What does it look like to maintain momentum, to keep going, to find joy, to grow in your delight in God on this journey?
What does it look like to not just shut your eyes, block your ears and hope that eventually one day you'll be home?
What does it look like to love Jesus and enjoy him more and more every step of the way?
In heaven, we will be perfect, sinless, just like Jesus.
But until then, that's not a standard that Jesus expects of you.
That's not the measure he's holding up next to your life.
And as long as we keep expecting that of ourselves and each other,
we're making it more difficult for one another to do this journey.
In fact, for some people who are checking out Jesus,
some people who are trying to decide whether or not this whole Christian thing is worth it,
this expectation, this unwritten law that we have about being good enough,
is enough to turn them away.
Because, again, they correctly understand, hey, I can't do that.
And for some Christians, it's this unwritten standard,
this pressure,
that makes following Jesus far harder than it's supposed to be.
Being a Christian means being unfinished,
which means every person in this room who is following Jesus is unfinished.
Every person in this room who is following Jesus right now has sin.
Whether or not anyone else knows, you know.
You have sin in your life.
Maybe sin you've been wrestling with,
maybe sin you've grown comfortable with,
but you have sin in your life.
The issue is not if you fail as a Christian,
but what you do when you fail as a Christian.
Have a look at verse 8 with me in 1 John 1.
If we claim to be without sin,
we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
Now, none of us is actually walking around saying,
hey, I'm perfect.
Well, at least I haven't heard that.
But what we do by not actually specifically acknowledging
our areas of failure or weakness
is essentially imply that we're perfect.
We essentially give off the sense that there's nothing wrong.
And what we're doing by not regularly recognizing and acknowledging sin
is, in brackets, claiming perfection.
Making God out to be a liar, according to this verse.
Or walking in the darkness.
Putting on a show.
Not showing what's really going on in our life.
And if you talk a big game like that as a Christian,
if you walk around acting like you've got it all together,
then people will expect you to have it all together.
If you're not confessing sin,
it's a fair assumption that you either don't have any,
or at least you don't think you do.
And that's a recipe for pressure.
For you and the people around you.
That's a recipe for insecurity for you.
Because what happens if you suddenly do become aware of your failure
after you've been pretending that you're perfect?
And ultimately, it's a recipe for hypocrisy.
That's why the world looks at the church and thinks,
why would I want to be one of them?
They say this and they do this.
And so I just want to ask the question,
I want you to ask yourself the question,
why do we do that?
Why do we try and act like we're better than we really are?
What is it that we think we gain?
Who is it that we're trying to impress with our apparent perfection?
I mean, we know that we do it.
That's where we get our hypocrite tag.
We know that we do it because so often people who aren't like us,
who aren't as moral as us,
who don't have the same background or upbringing as us,
feel incredibly uncomfortable in our churches.
So why do we do it?
Why do we hold ourselves and the people around us
to a standard that is clearly impossible?
Because it's not a pressure the Bible ever puts on you.
It's not a pressure Jesus ever puts on you.
Jesus never says, hey, you're saved by grace,
but you stay in depending on how good you are,
depending on how much progress you've made.
See, the power of failure and sin over us is the fear that goes with us.
The power of it is the fear that we have
that somehow we might lose God's love for us.
It's a fear that Satan loves to grab hold of.
Satan is sometimes called the great accuser.
And what he does in those moments of failure
is he presses the button that we already have
of being insecure before God.
He reminds us of something that's actually true.
We don't deserve to be loved by God.
But he does it in a place where suddenly we're feeling
that pressure more acutely.
And he will just keep reminding us how bad we are.
putting the pressure on us to either improve,
be better, or give up.
So many well-intended Christians live with this pressure
when they fail.
They try harder and harder to be better.
They serve more and more to cover up the guilt
for their moral failure.
But inside, they're just wracked with guilt and petrified
that God is going to stop loving them,
that people are going to find out what they're really like.
But you've got to understand,
Jesus doesn't respond to failure like that.
I mean, in verse 9 it says,
If we confess our sins,
he's faithful and just
and will forgive us our sins
and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Jesus responds to your shame and guilt and sin and failure
with the gentle invitation to come back to him.
With the gracious offer of unconditional forgiveness
and cleansing and purification.
When he looks at your sin,
his response is,
Confess it to me.
Hand it over and find that I respond
the same way I did the first time you did this.
With forgiveness and love.
This verse doesn't say he might forgive us.
He doesn't say he'll,
when you come,
weigh up how many bad things you've done before,
what your track record is.
It says he is faithful.
He is just.
He will forgive you.
He will purify you.
So often,
our failure leads to insecurity and fear
when it comes to following Jesus,
but it actually doesn't have to.
Failure is going to be part of the journey,
but God in his grace
has actually transformed your failure
into an opportunity
for you to get deeper security in him.
God actually sees your failure
and thinks this is an opportunity
for you to be even more certain
that I love you.
One of the things that I love to do
with both my boys
is building with blocks.
Sometimes they ruin
my excellent creations,
but I overlook that
because they're little.
But something I've noticed,
particularly in my eldest son,
Bailey,
is this fierce independence
when it comes to building.
It's also,
you know,
that's kind of a euphemism
for he doesn't like sharing,
but he also likes to do things by himself.
And so sometimes he'll be struggling
to get the next piece on his tower
or to attach this
ridiculously inappropriate piece
off the side of this house
or zoo that he's built.
And I'm sitting there
kind of trying to be patient.
Do you want daddy's help?
He says, no.
Okay?
I'll keep watching
while he fumbles about
for a little bit longer.
You know,
the internal wrestle in me
just wanting to fix it
and make it work.
But I sit
and I patiently wait
and eventually
I get to the point
I think, okay,
I'll offer again.
He's starting to get agitated
and frustrated.
You know,
pieces are about to be thrown.
There's about to be a tantrum.
And I say,
would you like daddy
to help you do that piece?
He shuts me down
a little more aggressively
the second time around.
And the struggle is
that in that moment
his desire is actually good.
He wants to grow
in his capability.
He wants to get better
at this thing.
He's frustrated
that his skills
are not moving forward,
that he can't actually
get this piece to fit
the way that he wants it to.
But that good desire
becomes toxic
when it stands
between him
and the one thing
that can actually
solve his problem.
In this case,
namely me.
Sitting there
offering to help.
that good desire
to be capable
is toxic
because in that desire
he rejects help.
And in the same way,
our good desire
to please God,
the rightness
of wanting to live
increasingly
holy lives,
of wanting to increasingly
be more and more
like Jesus,
that's a good desire,
the rightness
of responding
to failure
with shame
and guilt
becomes toxic
when it drives you
away from the one
thing that can help you
become more like Jesus.
The one thing
that can help you
deal with shame
and guilt.
The only way
you can deal
with sin
and failure
in your life
is through Jesus,
through his death
in your place
and he's saying
every time you fail,
not just once,
once upon a time,
every time you fail,
come back to Jesus.
I mean,
did you catch
this kind of
strange little sentence
at the beginning
of chapter 2?
It says,
my dear children,
I write this to you
so that you will not sin.
But if anybody
does sin,
we have an advocate
with the Father,
Jesus Christ,
the righteous one.
He is the atoning
sacrifice for our sins,
not only for ours
but also for the sins
of the whole world.
Jesus is the only thing
that deals with sin.
He is sufficient
to deal with
all of your sin
and not just your sin
but the sins
of the whole world
and this is written
to Christians.
It's written
to dear children,
to those who have
begun the journey,
to those who at some point
decided to start
following Jesus
and here we're being told,
don't leave
confession behind.
Don't leave
acknowledging that
you're inadequate
just to the beginning
of the journey.
this is a regular
part of the journey
following Jesus.
Putting your hand up
saying,
God,
I still need your grace
just as much as I did
when I began.
Every time you sin,
there is still grace,
there is still forgiveness
and it's offered freely.
The only thing
that can stand
between you
and that forgiveness
is your own pride,
your attempts
to self-justify
your actions,
your attempts
to impress people
and God,
whether it's
from playing down sin
or trying to make up
for it,
so long as you think
that somehow
God needs you
to be good enough
for Him to love you,
you will spend
your whole life
crushed
by a standard
that you will never
live up to.
So long as there is
even a skerrick
of belief in your mind
that God's love
is dependent
on how good you are,
you will spend
your life trapped
in a cycle
of guilt,
failure,
denial,
pretense,
judgment of others
and ultimately
the fear
that one day
God and everyone else
will find out
what you're really like
and treat you
the way you deserve.
God knows
what you're like.
The Bible
said that Christ
died for us
when we were
still sinners.
Christ died
for us
fully aware
of everything
you had ever
done up to that
point,
fully aware
of everything
you were going
to do
from that point
forward,
more aware
of your deepest,
darkest secrets
than you are.
He already
knows
grace.
And when you
fail,
grace is on
offer.
Again,
this isn't an
if you fail
issue,
this is a
when you fail.
When you fail,
God offers
grace.
He offers
forgiveness.
And this matters
more than just
in the instantaneous
sense of not
feeling bad,
of kind of
escaping that
discomfort of
shame.
encountering
God's grace
like this
again and
again is
essential to
journeying well
as a Christian.
Essential to
this journey
between what
Jesus has done
on the cross
and what he
has prepared
for us in
heaven.
Confessing sin
is an assurance
building activity.
It's a gift
that God has
given us.
It is a tool
that God has
given us so
that we don't
just fall over
the finish line
one day and
think,
thank God
that journey
is over.
But so that
we hit the
finish line
with momentum.
So that each
day we get
more and more
excited for
what the future
is because
we're tasting
that future
in the momentary
grace that we
get every time
we come to
God without
failure and
hear the
words,
you are
forgiven.
Completely,
irreversibly,
unconditionally
forgiven.
I mean,
think about
what you did
when you first
became a
Christian.
You confessed
now,
it might have
been clumsy,
it might have
been vague,
it might have
been general,
but on some
level,
when you became
a Christian,
you said,
God,
I know I
don't deserve
this,
I know I
don't deserve
to be loved
by you,
but please
forgive me.
And he
did.
In that
moment,
he did.
And every
step since
then,
if you're still
going as a
Christian,
has been a
response to
that moment
of tasting
and experiencing
God's
incredible love,
of having
the weight
lifted.
But what
regular
confession of
sin does
is draw you
back to
that experience.
Draws you
back to the
power of
that experience.
It's kind
of like a
long distance
relationship.
I don't know
if you've ever
had a relationship
with somebody
across oceans
or states
or whatever
it might be.
If you don't
speak to or
see the person
that you love
regularly,
it's inevitable
that over a
period of time,
the power of
that love to
drive your
actions and
emotions is
going to
slowly decrease.
Now,
it might still
be sufficient
to keep you
faithful,
to keep you
committed to
that person,
but it's not
going to have
the same
drive as if
you are face
to face
enjoying that
person's
company regularly.
It's not
going to have
the same
impact on
you as if
you were
actually in
their company,
delighting in
all the things
that drew you
to them in
the first
place.
It's not
going to have
the same
drive that's
possible when
distance is
removed and
you get to
enjoy that
person day
in and day
out.
Now,
in the same
way,
your first
time experience
of God's
grace when
you became a
Christian,
if you are
one,
is ultimately
powerful enough
to get you
to the end
of this
journey.
I want to
make that
really clear.
That grace
that God
showed you
in forgiving
you once
is enough
to get you
to the end.
God promises
he's not
going to let
you go
if you've
taken step
one and
said,
I want to
be forgiven.
God has
you and
he will
make sure
you get
to the
end.
But God's
desire,
again,
is not that
you collapse
over the
finish line.
God's desire
is not that
you bang
your head
against the
wall and
following him
throughout your
life and
then one
day think,
again,
full life,
a joyful
life,
a secure
life.
He wants
your momentum
to build
in following
him.
He wants
you to be
more confident
of his love
for you at
the end of
your life
than you
were day
one when
you hadn't
even had
the chance
to disappoint
him yet.
He wants
you to
grow.
He wants
you to
keep tasting
grace and
confession is
a gift that
he has given
us for us
to taste
grace.
It's an
opportunity he
has given
us that we
might taste
and experience
his incredible
love.
It is a
chance to
air our
dirty laundry,
to show
him the
deepest,
darkest parts
of us,
the things
we're most
ashamed about
and find
that again
he says,
I love you
and I
forgive you.
And again
he says,
I love you
and I
forgive you.
And again
he says,
I love you
and I
forgive you.
And as you
do it once,
you suddenly
think,
wow,
he even
forgave that.
And so
the next
time you're
more confident
and you do
it again
and you think,
wow,
he loved that.
And he gets
this track
record for you
that's not
just theory
you've heard
about,
but it's
love that
you've
experienced.
And so
more and
more we
need to be
people who
confess sin
to God.
and as we
do it,
who discover
that his
love is
more powerful
than our
pride,
our lust,
our greed,
our selfishness,
our laziness.
And every
time you do
it,
it'll be like
reliving a
mini version
of that first
moment that you
tasted grace.
That first
moment,
initial joy
of discovering
that God
loves you
more than
you can
possibly
comprehend
and that
he will
always love
you.
Every time
we stop
to confess
sin,
we get the
chance to
experience that
joy afresh.
And so
we need to
be people
who confess.
We need
to be people
who are honest
about how
we're going,
who walk in
the light,
that's what it
means,
who show
what's really
going on because
we're not
trusting in
our ability
to fake
meeting a
standard.
We're trusting
in God's
love for us
that is
stronger than
our failure.
And so if
you're not
regularly asking
for forgiveness
from God,
and I don't
mean generally
like, hey
God, I
haven't done
very well
this week,
I mean
specifically.
Like, hey
God, I
thought this
about that
person this
week and I
know that
doesn't
honour you.
Like, hey
God, I
lied about
this in
this way
because I
was more
worried about
my reputation
than yours
and I know
it's not
okay.
specific
confession.
If you're
not doing
it, then
God's love
will seem
small, distant
and inadequate.
You'll find
yourself like I
did a year
into my
journey of
following Jesus,
not really
going anywhere.
prayer.
So often, any
lack of energy
or enthusiasm
that Christians
have can be
traced back to
an entree-sized
encounter with
God's grace.
Expecting
yourself to
survive the
whole meal
after just
snacking when
God has
offered you a
buffet.
All-you-can-eat
grace for all
of your life,
for every sin,
for every
failure.
prayer.
If you're
feeling flat,
if you're not
feeling enthusiastic
for God, if
you're not
driven to
love Him,
maybe if
those words
that I
talked about
at the
beginning where
I was just
busting to
follow Jesus
with every
minute,
sound familiar
but from
the past,
you're not
going to be
able to fix
that by
trying harder.
You're only
going to fix
that by
feasting on
grace,
by airing
your dirty
laundry and
discovering
again that
God loves
you anyway,
probably more
than you even
realize.
We regularly
confess here at
church at St.
Paul's.
We pray prayers
together to do
it.
We sing songs of
confession but
there's always the
potential in those
that we can say
the words,
let it go past.
So I want to
push you right
now.
I'm basically
finishing here.
I want to push
you to take
this grace
opportunity.
This isn't just
a right now
thing, this is
about every step
of the journey.
What we're doing
in this series is
trying to hand
you the tools
that we believe
God has given
us so that the
journey towards
home is one
where you get
more and more
momentum, more
and more excitement,
more and more
confident and so I
want to push you
as we finish
today to take
the opportunity
to confess sin
to God.
Specific sin.
If you're sitting
there and you
can't think of
anything, two
things you need
to know.
You definitely
have something to
confess because
we're all unfinished
and you've gotten
really good at
denying it.
Ask God to
un-teach you
that.
Ask God to
show you what
it is that's
unfinished.
If that's
your thing
you need to
confess, start
there.
Confess that
God, I've been
practicing this
faking for so
long that I
don't even know
the areas that
aren't good enough
anymore.
But right now,
take the
opportunity and
confess for
yourself.
We're going to
sing to confess
together in a
moment but before
we get there, I
want you right
now to go
through the
process.
Stand before
God, admit
who you are
and find that
his response
is the same
as it will
always be.
I love you.
I forgive you.
So.
forth, hope you
help us.
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