You, But New

As we are coming to our time of congregational prayer, we’re going to continue to lift up the summer student camp, the student camp, the summer, the camp, student summer, the time in a couple weeks where Carter, myself, and a few other brave volunteers are going to take our middle and high schoolers. We’re taking them up to Anderson University for the Crossroads Summer Camp. So we are spending our Sunday morning prayer times lifting that week up. So for this particular week, we are praying for the leaders themselves to be refreshed and encouraged as they are wanting to capitalize on a lot of shoulder time with the middle and high schoolers to be able to pour into them and encourage them toward making decisions of faith, whether that’s decisions of salvation or decisions of discipleship.

So that being said, what I want you to do is just grab a neighbor and pray for the leaders themselves that they would be refreshed and encouraged that week at camp. Y’all take it. Oh yeah, the leaders themselves: Carter, myself, Michelle Moore, and Lee Luden. So if you want to pray for us by name, those would be the folks you pray for. Thank you all.

Father, thank you so much. God, thank you for a little over a year ago bringing Carter to us and the energy that he’s invested in our student ministry and the plans he’s made. God, I remember sitting with him after he, Becca, and Al came back from student camp last year and how excited he was about some of the students making professions of faith and others of them understanding their already faith in You just a little bit deeper. God, I pray that he would come away from that week at camp feeling the same thing but to a greater magnitude.

Lord, I pray that You would please bless Miss Lee and Miss Michelle as they are giving of their time, Lord, to come with us to not just be chaperones that make sure all the kids are following rules, but Lord, to be disciple-makers and to be enormous influences on the lives of these students.

Father, I pray for myself. I pray that I would come away remembering the joy of my salvation. God, I met You in high school. That was the season of my life when You rescued me from my sin of myself. God, I pray that I would come away encouraged and refreshed by that.

Lord, I want to say thank you. God, thank you for bringing us here today. Thank you, like Miss Caroline said, for the fathers of the room that made the decision to come to church today. Lord, I pray that You’ll bless them for that. And I pray that we would all walk away from here just a little sharper in You. Not just knowing some more things about Your Bible, but loving You a little more deeply, a little more powerfully, and with some more purity. Father, we love You. We really do. And we want to live for You and for Your name here in this community. We’re asking that You get a hold of us in this time so that that would be realized. Thank you, Lord. Amen. Amen.

Well, thank you. It is Father’s Day today, and Father’s Day for some of us is an extremely sweet time because we get to reflect on a really warm influence that we have felt as children or as adults. For some of us, Father’s Day is a hard time. Maybe we have had a hard father or some bad experiences, or you desperately want to be a father and for some reason the Lord never gave you that opportunity. It’s obviously a day to honor dads and father figures, but I also know that being a father myself, it is not easy. Even just being a woman, being a student, just being somebody that wants to make an impact on this world and walk with Jesus, that’s hard.

I feel like especially lately it has been so heartbreaking to see so many men, fathers and Christian leaders, public figures, role models personally, to see folks fall into sin. Walking with Jesus is hard. Making a difference is hard. Whether it’s well-known figures like the lead singer of DC Talk that came out two weeks ago or folks you’ve never even heard of in our community, it is simply hard to watch when our mentors and our leadership influences fall. And let’s be honest, it’s not just hard to watch others struggle with their sin because it’s not just them. I feel the same battle in my heart. Even as a pastor, I have to Fight every single day to take off the old Jeremy and to put on the new one. And I imagine if you’re being honest with yourself, you feel that, too. Every single day, you feel this inward battle of, do I be the old me or am I going to be the new me? We all have these moments where the old habits and the old mindsets want to come creeping back in and we’re trying to keep shuffling them back out.

That’s why Paul writes what he did in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 17. If you have your copy of God’s Word, I want you to go ahead and open Ephesians chapter 4, verses 17-24. In this passage, we’re going to read some pretty strong language from the Apostle Paul. But His desire is not to shame us. It’s not to induce some sort of fear in us. His desire is to lovingly challenge us by saying you are not the old you anymore. You are not the old you anymore.

So today, no matter where you are in life, whether you are a father, a parent, a mother, an adult, a student, a child, whoever you are this morning, what we are going to learn is about how to leave behind the old you and how to live in the new you that Christ has given you already.

Ephesians chapter 4, verse 17, it begins with this call to a higher standard. If you are a notetaker, you’ll see some spots on the bulletin insert. The first one is a call to a higher standard. Follow along with me. Therefore, I say this and I testify in the Lord. You should no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thoughts.

Paul starts off this passage with that word therefore because he’s trying to say, “Hey, in light of the past 16 verses, I’m going to say something else.” We heard Carter preach an incredible sermon a few weeks ago, one that was shorter than any sermon I’ve ever delivered that made me feel extremely self-conscious about my preaching time, where Carter was saying, “So what? In light of everything you’ve learned in chapters 1 through 3, so what?” And then last week we looked at God’s design for the local church. How we are supposed to grow up, but God has given its leaders to the church so that that growth will happen. Therefore, in light of God’s design for the church, in light of God’s desire for your life, that’s the therefore. Therefore, we are called to a higher calling, a higher standard.

Specifically, Paul says that we should not walk like the Gentiles do. Now, see, this is not an attack on ethnic groups. It’s certainly not on unbelievers, but it is a warning to Christians not to live like non-Christians. If you don’t believe me, just think back to the life of Jesus. Jesus spent the bulk of His time with people who did not look like Him. Jesus spent the majority of His time with the non-Christians, the non-spiritual people, some of the times the non-Jews, the Gentiles themselves. Jesus welcomed and He loved the outsiders. And in fact, His harshest words were not for the folks on the outside of faith. His harshest words were for the leaders on the inside.

Here’s the deal for you and me. We need to recognize this. Non-Christians will live like non-Christians. That shouldn’t surprise us. When your family member who doesn’t profess faith in Jesus, when your neighbor who doesn’t walk with God, your fellow countryman who has no relationship with Christ, when they do things that Christ says not to do, that should not surprise us. What should surprise us? It’s when others on the inside live like those on the outside. Paul looks at us and he says, “Let’s not do that.” He calls us to a higher standard.

And after doing that, Paul exposes the lifestyle of the lost. Verses 18 and 19, this is how the Gentiles walk. This is what their lives look like. They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that’s in them and because of the hardness of their hearts. They became callous, gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more.

Paul exposes this lifestyle of the lost. And when I read these verses, I think about myself before I started following Jesus. I think about my life before I was rescued. And I see an incredibly desperate situation that I used to live in and that some of our family and friends, co-workers and neighbors still live in. First off, folks that don’t walk with God, they are darkened in their understanding. Simply put, they do not understand God. They don’t understand Jesus. They don’t understand the gospel. I would put it this way. Wrong ideas about God always lead to wrong actions against God. If you do not understand God on His terms, you cannot please Him according to His desires. You just can’t do it. When you don’t know God, you can’t walk with Him.

They the folks on the outside, they are darkened in their understanding because of that be they become hardarted against Him. It’s not just ignorance inside of them. It is a rebelliousness and a numbness to the darkness that they walk in. That’s the type of people Jesus came to. Folks whose hearts looked like the hard calluses on a working person’s hands that no longer feel or are sensitive to anything. That’s their spiritual heart before the Lord. They don’t feel the badness of their sin. They don’t feel the pain of the darkness they live in. They don’t feel those things anymore.

Don’t miss this connection. There is a link between knowing the truth about God and wanting to do the things that please Him. When you don’t know the truth about who God is and how He works, there will be a deadness on the inside of your life that just does not care. Those that is the state of folks on the outside. When we see folks who have hard hearts toward God, we should feel the way God felt about them, which was compassion. We should desire to help them see God the way God is. A gracious and loving and patient and a merciful Father who would love to rescue them out of the pit of their own selfdestruction.

Man, for believers when we study the Bible, that ought to teach us not just facts about God, but that ought to warm our hearts toward walking with Him. We ought to have a renewed desire to please Him, to produce fruit from Him, for Him. But the state of the lost, the state of those who don’t walk with God, man, it’s it comes with this incredibly sad assessment, I guess. Verse 18, look at it again. Darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God. And you jump down and they’ve given themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more.

Man, when folks don’t understand God, when they don’t see Him for who He is, when they don’t know His heart for them, their life not only is cut off from the life of God, which was quoted for us already this morning, being in the presence of God is the fullness of joy. At His right hand are pleasures forever more. They are denied fullness of joy. They are denied pleasures. They’re seeking after pleasure. They are seeking after joy. Such were some of us. Seeking after the things that the world promises can provide us satisfaction, but that’s not where they’re at. In fact, what’s happening is it’s a it’s an insatiable appetite and a desire for more and more.

It’s like going to the fall fest and getting the bag of cotton candy. Just because it’s big, just because it looks good, you think it might satisfy your hunger. But the moment it it hits your mouth, it shrivels up and just kind of becomes nothing. And it makes you want more and more of it and it starts to rot you out from the inside out, that is impurity. That is a lifestyle excluded from the life of God.

And it’s like this slow drift happens where you start off and you see, you say, “I don’t see the danger in this thing I’m dabbling in. I don’t see the danger in this relationship or this vice I’m in.” And then you get to I don’t need help. I can control this. I can stop this anytime I want. I am totally in charge of my faculties. I’ve got the discipline to get rid of this. And then you you jump from there or you fall from there and you say actually I don’t even want what God’s offering because this thing is providing the temporary fix that I’m looking for and all I need to do is to go back one more time and I’ll be okay. And then you fall all the way to the bottom where you say, “I don’t even think that there is a God. If there is, He doesn’t love me or He could not love me.”

Man, when we interact with people on the outside of faith, we ought to see them for who they are, not enemies, not our barrier to the type of civilization we want. Folks on the outside are those who are desperately in need of God’s grace and His loving kindness. Folks desperately in need of a personal interaction with the loving God of the universe.

When we interact with folks who are making a mess of their lives, we ought not be repulsed by that. If that were the case, then Jesus Christ Himself would never have come to earth. The holy, spotless, perfect One did not look at us in our darkness and our brokenness and our sin and our messed upness. And He didn’t look at us and said, “Get it together. Once you clean yourself up, then I’ll enter into your experience. Once you have increased the morality, then you’ll be acceptable to me and I’ll start being able to kind of dole out the religious activities.”

That’s not what Jesus did. While we were still sinners, what did Christ do? Christ died for us. God’s plan all along was not to send Jesus into this world to condemn this world because why? The world was condemned already. God sent His Son so that whoever would believe in Him would not die but have everlasting life. And guess who needs everlasting life? Dead people. Us. We need everlasting life.

When we see folks who are making a mess of their lives, we should not look at that and say, “God, thank you that I’m not like that guy. Oh Lord, thank you that I’m not that bad.” In fact, Jesus told a parable about that one time. Right? There’s these two guys at the temple worshiping, worshiping. Jesus says, one of them, he’s standing up front. He’s taking his money, just keeps dropping it in the plate. “Oh Lord, thank you that I’m not like those people behind me. They haven’t put anything in here in a while. God, thank you that I’m not living in the stuff they’re living in.” He feels pretty good about himself because he’s pretty moral, pretty religious guy.

And then there’s this other guy, and you get the sense, you get the sense, you can barely hear what he’s got to say. He’s bowed down. He’s beating his chest. He says, “God, have mercy on me. I’m a sinner.” That first guy was a Pharisee, a religious leader, pastor. Second guy, tax collector. Never would have been allowed into the Bible studies. Never would have been allowed into the men’s and the women’s ministries. Would have we would have looked a little funny at them if they would have shown up at 5:00 on Wednesday night for supper, which you should come 5:15 Wednesday night. We’re going to have a great supper.

And Jesus says, “Of the two, one went away forgiven.” It wasn’t this guy with all of his good stuff. It was this one who was lost in their brokenness and in their messiness, but who cried out to the Lord. If that’s you today, there is freedom. You see, you have been made for a life with God. You have been uniquely designed to be loved by God and to give your love back to God in a free exchange. That’s who you have been made to be. God loves you like crazy. He’s loved every single person in this world like crazy.

But our very first parents, Adam and Eve, the first people ever made, they were tempted by Satan in the garden. I really believe this. I really believe there were people and there was the Satan, the enemy of God, and he took the form of a serpent and he starts talking to them. Red flag number one, you see a snake start talking to you, you should probably just walk away from that, right? They didn’t walk away. They thought, I can handle this. And they let Satan just lie and twist truth. And they said, “Okay, maybe we’ll dabble in this a little bit.”

God had one rule back then. Don’t eat a particular fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You you should know the story. They decide to break that rule. And as they break the rule, they don’t just eat fruit, but they have gone against God and said, “God, we don’t need you.” And they try to fix their mess. They try to cover themselves and they start blaming each other about whose fault it really was. God looks at them and He says, “Hey, you’ve made a mess of things. You’ve made a mess of your life. You’ve got to get out of this special home I’ve made for you. But don’t worry, or at least take heart. There will come a Savior, and He will defeat the one who has deceived you. Jesus comes on the scene as that Savior, the one who would defeat the serpent that still tempts us today. See, you and me, we’re kind of like Adam and Eve. We’re actually a lot like Adam and Eve. We fall into our sin and we walk in the brokenness that we’ve inherited from them, and we try to get out of it. We try to numb the pain sometimes by taking in substances. We try to drown out the deafening noise of our smallness and our fear and our anxiety with social media. We try to overcompensate for how insufficient we feel in ourselves by the successes and the accomplishments that we can make. Our 401ks or our investments or the toys that we drive around in. That is who we are. But every single one of those is like a bungee cord. And you can get away from the source a little bit, but eventually it’s going to rip you right back. That’s what we do to ourselves.

There’s only one person that can free us from the sin and the darkness that binds us, and that was Jesus Christ who came from heaven and lived a perfect life in your place and in my place and in the place of every single person who has ever lived. And after fulfilling all the good things, after following all the rules, after loving God with a whole heart and a whole mind and a whole will, Jesus not only lived perfectly, but He died as a sacrifice for us on the cross, fully absorbing the wrath and the consequence and the penalty you and me deserve for our wrongdoings. You see, before the Lord, we are all guilty. There is not a single person in this world that does not have guilt before a holy God. The question is, do you feel the shame that comes with that? You know, the shame is how you feel on the inside about what you’ve done. Jesus came not just to declare us free from our guilt, but also to release us from our shame so that we could know there is a heavenly dad that loves you perfectly. Even when guys like me screw up and we mouth off at our kids, we don’t love them the way that we’re supposed to. We are not as kind or as gentle as God intends us to be. There is a heavenly Father who only loves you. He will discipline you, but He always does it out of kindness and love for you. Jesus represented that Father to us. And He died on the cross, but He didn’t just stay dead. He is our living hope, not our dead hope. And on the third, the silence was broken because the roaring lion came out of the grave and said, “They are free. Free, free indeed to walk with me.” That is what’s available to you. And only Jesus Christ can cut the binds that hold you to sin and hold you to darkness so that now you can walk in freedom.

That’s what God wants for you. He wants freedom for you. If God wanted rules for you, then man, there’s no hope. Fact of the matter, you can be a pretty good person, but there’s not a one of us that’s kept all the rules all the time. The Bible says, in fact, that all have fallen short of God’s standard. Billy Graham didn’t keep all the rules. St. Augustine didn’t keep all the rules. John Calvin didn’t keep all the rules. Your grandma didn’t keep all the rules. Great folks. Your grandma probably loved the Lord with all of her heart. But she knew that God had amazing grace for her based off of the merit of what Jesus Christ the Son did in her place. God wants freedom for you. All you have to do is recognize your sin before Him and ask for it.

That should be our heart towards those who walk in darkness. But again, remember as we come back to this passage in Ephesians chapter 4, Paul is not just talking about God’s heart for those on the outside. He is warning those on the inside. So read verses 20 through 24 with me. Remember, he has just talked about the lifestyle of the Gentiles. And he says, “That’s not how you came to know Christ. Assuming you heard about Him and you were taught in Him as the truth is in Jesus to take off your former way of life, the old self that’s corrupted by deceitful desires to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.

After issuing a call to a higher standard and exposing the lifestyle of the lost, Paul presents the lifestyle of the found. The lifestyle of the found. Paul starts off by talking about how you have come to know Christ, assuming that you heard about Him and were taught in Him as the truth is in Jesus.

Here’s the deal. For anybody in the room today that’s still settling some things about God and about Jesus, you need to hear me say, “Ultimate truth is in Jesus.” Jesus even had the audacity to call Himself the way, the truth, and the life. And He had the perfection to back it up with how He lived. Obviously, there are true statements that Jesus Himself did not teach. You will not read in the Gospel of John that 1 + 1 equals two. What you will read in the Gospel of John is I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the resurrection and the life. I am the good shepherd. I am the doorway to the sheep. The truth that you need to live by and die by is found in Jesus Christ. He’s the foundational truth to the new life that I believe you want. Why else would you be here today? I believe everybody sitting in this room wants to be a little bit better. You wake up in the morning and you look at yourself and you say, “Man, I just want to improve just a little bit today.” Jesus and the truth that’s found in Him is the secret to growth. It’s the secret to your new life.

As we look at that new life, three verbs guide us through verses 22 and 23. Put off, be renewed, and put on. What does the new life in Christ look like? It looks like this. You put off, you be renewed, and you put on. In fact, that’s really all I I I want you to take away from the message this morning. Put off, be renewed, put on.

Put off. We put off our former way of life, which is corrupted by deceitful desires. Make no mistake about it. The you that you were born as needed Jesus to die for. The old you is who Jesus had to die for. The person who actually does kind of like the things God doesn’t and who dislikes what God does. The person who is prone to wandering into darkness. The old you that God had to save you from has to die. You have to put it off. That means we cannot excuse or justify any part of our lives that doesn’t resemble Jesus Christ. If somebody had a 24/7 camera on me and they said, “Hey, these three moments from yesterday don’t line up with the Jesus I read about in scripture.” Jesus doesn’t change. I have to change. If Jesus wouldn’t do what I do, then I’ve got to change. I’ve got to cast that habit and that lifestyle aside. I’ve got to put off the old me. Man, practically that means you ask God to reveal wayward stuff and you confess it to Him when you see it, too. God sees everything. He sees every thought you have. He sees every word you utter, whether others hear it or not. He sees the way you treat people. He sees the things you live for. He sees everything. God already knows the ways you don’t live like His Son. The question is, are you open to Him pointing that out or not?

After you put off that old self, after you resolve in the power of God to not live like you, you are supposed to be renewed. Ultimately, to be renewed means that God would transform you deep on the inside. Paul says we’ve got to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, the very core of us, where everything comes from. But how how are we renewed? We look at Colossians chapter 3 for a little clue because Paul explained it elsewhere. Colossians chapter 3, verses 8-10 says this. But now put away all the following. And these are the types of things that God wants to point out. Put away these things. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, filthy language from your mouth. Don’t lie to each other since you’ve put off the old self with his practices and have put on the new self. And here it is. You are being renewed in knowledge according to the image of your creator. How do you gain knowledge? Where do we learn about our creator? The Bible. We are renewed as the Holy Spirit empowers our study of God’s word. Man, it’s not magical incantations. It’s no secret formula of candles or a bath at bedtime. You are renewed as your heart is exposed to God’s heart and you let your heart be changed. Practically, this would mean that you embrace what’s been called the power of four. We looked at this a few Wednesday nights ago. It’s pretty crazy. The Bible Engagement Institute conducted what’s one of the most ambitious studies on the nature of spiritual disciplines that’s ever been done. They surveyed 40,000 participants ages 8 to 80 years old. Elementary students way on past or way on to young adults 80 years old. Here’s what they learned. If you read your Bible one time a week, there is negligible change in your life. One exposure to God’s word a week won’t actually produce very much change. Which means if right now is the only time you’re opening your Bible or being exposed to it, I would not expect—I would not encourage you to expect this to do very much for you. Two times a week, maybe you don’t just come on Sunday morning for service, but you also come for Sunday school at 10 o’clock, which we should all be in. Two times a week. That doesn’t do anything for you either, surprisingly. Three times a week. Maybe you come for Sunday school, you come for Sunday morning service, and you even come for Wednesday night Bible study at six o’clock. We have for all ages, which you should be here after that delicious dinner at 5:15. Three times a week. It don’t do anything for you. You’ll be really good in your church attendance. You’ll probably pick up some knowledge, but the way you actually live Sunday afternoon through Wednesday morning and then Thursday through Saturday, that’s not very different. It’s the fourth time. I’m not sure what it is yet. It is—I’m not sure why it is yet, but the fourth time, the fourth time you are exposed to God’s word in a given week, that’s when things start changing in your life, if that is a consistent habit for you. Self-reported studies of those 40,000 people from eight years old to 80 years old. So that’s a whole different—that’s an incredible range of life experiences and stressors. Loneliness at that fourth time per week, loneliness goes down by 30%. Anger goes down by 32%. Bitterness toward others down 40%. Spiritual stagnancy, just not feeling like you’re living for anything, down 60%. Pornography consumption down 61%. Extramarital sex down 68%. It’s not just the bad things that go down, but at that fourth time a week across multiple weeks, guess what also happens? The good stuff comes up. You are 200% more likely to share your faith with somebody else if you’re engaging in God’s word four times a week. You are 230%—over two times more likely—to help somebody else grow in their knowledge of Jesus Christ. Man, if you want to be renewed, if you want to walk in the new life that God has already designed you for, if you are done being you, pick this up four times this week and do that again for the next month and watch what God does. God’s word powerful enough to create solar systems on a whim. Powerful enough to speak to Adam and he comes alive. God’s word powerful enough to conquer your anger, to conquer your pornography addiction, to help you have the courage to share the gospel. God’s word is what does it. So, you put off the old self. You are renewed in God’s word and you put on the new self. And I’m really got to hustle here. The new self. That is the one that God has created in His own likeness. In other words, as some people have said, you may be the only Jesus someone interacts with this week. Your life is supposed to remind others of the life of Jesus Christ. For Christians, I believe that so much of our dissatisfaction in life is related to the gap between how we currently live and who we’ve been made to be. We feel this gap because God has made me to be gentle. He has made me to be kind. He has made me to be self-controlled. But I live in hostility. I live in maliciousness. I live dominated by my desires. And that gap is our dissatisfaction in life. The way you close that gap is by you saying, “God, I’m done with me. Give me more of You and help me to put that on so that what I aspire to be is who I become.” Man, I want to offer you some freedom, though, because we don’t work for a new identity in Jesus. You work from it. None of you have to work to become loved by God. None of you have to work to become made in God’s image. You work from that. You are that already. Let me remind you of what God has already said about you in Ephesians chapter 1, verses 3-14. Man, bear with me. Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ. For anybody in this room who professes faith in Jesus, who has been saved, you’ve been rescued from your sin, this is your identity. God has chosen you in Jesus before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless and loved before Him. God predestined you to be adopted as His son through Jesus Christ for Himself according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace that He lavished on us and the beloved one in Him. You are redeemed through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, that the according to the riches of His grace that He richly poured out on us with all wisdom and understanding. God has made known to us the mystery of His will according to the good pleasure that He has purposed in Christ as a plan for the right time to bring everything together in Christ, both things in heaven and things on earth in Him. In Him we have also received an inheritance. This is true of you. In Him we have received an inheritance because we have been predestined according to the plan of the One who works out everything. Not some things, not most things, but everything in agreement with the purpose of His will, so that we who’d already put our hope in Christ might bring praise to His glory. In Him, you have been sealed with the promised Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. And when you believed, the Holy Spirit is the down payment of that inheritance until the redemption of the possession to the praise of His glory. Clearly, I’m excited about this, but I don’t know if it’s hit any of y’all. This is who you are. So, you don’t have to force yourself to say, “How hard do I have to work for God to love me, God? I put my faith in You. I got baptized. I give money to You. I read my Bible for You. But, do You love me?” And God, with a resounding echoing cry, “Cover your ears.” He says, “Yes. Yes, I love you.” When Jesus died on the cross and said, “It is finished,” He was saying, “I love you. I want you. You’re mine.” Man, that’s the identity you work from. The question in front of you this morning is this: Are you still living in the old you, or are you walking in the new you Jesus has already given you? Man, I’m not—Please leave that up for a moment. I’m not asking that to shame anybody. I’m asking because I know we have folks who want to love the Lord with all that they’ve got. They want to make a difference in this world, but they are still walking in the old them. But there’s others in this room that I know walk in joy and freedom because they are walking in the new them. Man, you don’t have to fake it. You don’t have to come in this this place on Sunday mornings and plaster a smile on your face and act. You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to fix yourself before you come to Him. God is the one that’s already declared His love for you. God’s the one that renews you. God is the one that knows you better than you, and He’s the one who wants to give you a new life. If you have never really taken the step to follow Jesus, or if you have taken that step and you have drifted from Him, I’ve got a simple invitation. I’ll be down front, and somebody probably invited you to church this morning. I guarantee the person that invited you to church this morning will wait for you and I to have a conversation and me to pray for you. If coming down front feels a little bold, then my desire for you is that the person that invited you, you would talk with them on the way to lunch, and you would say, “Hey, Jeremy described a lifestyle I don’t have. How do I have that?” And I trust The Holy Spirit will speak there, man. Let’s stop carrying around the old us. Let’s walk in the new us.

Pray with me, please. Father God, thank you for today. You’ve done everything necessary not just to save us and put us in the good bucket. God, You’ve done everything necessary to transform us, to renew us, to make us new people, new creations. And I’m begging for the person in the room this morning who has never experienced that. You would get a hold of their souls and You would, You would make that happen. Please, God, as we sing this final song, Holy Spirit, can You please just grab someone’s heart, like a good dad puts his arm around his child, You grab them and You would just say, “I, I love You and I want more for You than what this world has to offer.” You would, God, please give them the boldness to come down front to pray or at least to ask the person that invited them this morning. Thank You, Lord.