SPEAKER_01: When I was a child, please remember this.
SPEAKER_01: When I was a child, I um I was at a birthday party and we were praying.
SPEAKER_01: And after we prayed, I was that kid that pointed out that somebody had their eyes opened while we were praying.
SPEAKER_01: To which somebody else was like, so you did too.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not kidding, guys.
SPEAKER_01: I don't think it occurred to me that I had my eyes open.
SPEAKER_01: I was that concerned about making sure everybody was following the rules that it didn't occur to me that I was breaking the rules of closing your eyes while you were praying.
SPEAKER_01: And uh that is what we would call Pharisee thinking.
SPEAKER_01: Um, if you don't know what a Pharisee is, a Pharisee was somebody who was around in Jesus' timeframe and they were very concerned about God's law, which is good, but they got so concerned about it they uh they often forgot about God's heart with it.
SPEAKER_01: And so Pharisee thinking is thinking, oh, I'm gonna compare myself to other people who aren't following the rules I'm following, which then makes me feel really good.
SPEAKER_01: It's realistic thinking with no room for grace.
SPEAKER_01: It's self-congratulatory perfection.
SPEAKER_01: Like, look at how good I am when really the rules we follow still do nothing to God's standard of holiness.
SPEAKER_01: And we are in the same boat as everybody else.
SPEAKER_01: But we can easily fall into Pharisee thinking because it can make us feel good about ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: I am working on this kind of thinking and can sometimes fall into this trap.
SPEAKER_01: I thank the Lord for it because in the sense that I feel like God reveals more to me about how I can be more like him.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's not that I'm getting older and this is getting 100% better.
SPEAKER_01: It's that I'm just like noticing it a lot more.
SPEAKER_01: For example, um, well, I'll just start with this.
SPEAKER_01: I texted my husband earlier this week and I'm like, hey, prep for my message.
SPEAKER_01: I need you to later tell me how I can like be somebody who has Pharisee thinking.
SPEAKER_01: And he replied back saying, You should ask your mom because this is a no-win situation for me.
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, fair.
SPEAKER_01: But also, I thought of a few, so don't worry.
SPEAKER_01: Um, I I didn't even have to ask my mom.
SPEAKER_01: There have been a few times, not many and not recently, but there have been a few times where I've asked my husband to put his laundry in the laundry basket and he forgot.
SPEAKER_01: And I will see hit the laundry on the floor and it's the end of the day, and I'm tired, and I'll pick that laundry up and I'll be bringing it to the laundry basket, and I'll literally think he did this just to annoy me, which is like ridiculous because he probably just forgot, but that doesn't occur to me in that moment.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and while I'm doing this and putting the laundry in the laundry basket, I'm passing many items in our home, none of which belong to my husband because he's a minimalist and owns like three things in our house.
SPEAKER_01: And I am not a minimalist.
SPEAKER_01: And we have children that are young, and we have a community of people that are like, hey, do you want these shoes?
SPEAKER_01: Your daughter will probably fit into them in like three years.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I probably should.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we just we get these things and I'm like, I don't want to pay for this stuff.
SPEAKER_01: So we have a lot of items.
SPEAKER_01: And my husband would love if we had less.
SPEAKER_01: But he gives me grace, and he also gives me grace knowing that not all the items are where they're supposed to be, because he knows I'm doing the best I can during the day.
SPEAKER_01: And he gives me a lot of grace for that.
SPEAKER_01: But I, in this moment, with his like three items that he forgot to throw in the laundry basket, am not giving him any grace because he forgot to put it in the laundry basket.
SPEAKER_01: That's Pharisee thinking, and that's where um I can be reminded oh, I need to work on this.
SPEAKER_01: I need to give my husband grace, just like he's given me a lot of grace.
SPEAKER_01: Today we're gonna be looking at a parable.
SPEAKER_01: Um, a parable is a story that Jesus would tell with a spiritual truth.
SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna be looking at one that Jesus shares while he's at a Pharisee's house.
SPEAKER_01: So remember, Pharisee.
SPEAKER_01: Um and we're gonna dive into it in Luke 7.
SPEAKER_01: It says, one of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went to the Pharisees' houses of Jesus and reclined at the table.
SPEAKER_01: And behold, a woman of the city who was a sinner, a lot of people think she was a prostitute, when she learned that he was reclining at the table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with her with the hair on her head, and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment.
SPEAKER_01: Now, when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus, answering him, not that Simon was talking to him, but Jesus is God and knows everything, said, uh, said, Simon, I have something to say to you.
SPEAKER_01: And he answered, Say it, teacher.
SPEAKER_01: A certain money lender who had two debtors, one owed 500 denari and the other fifty.
SPEAKER_01: When they could not pay, he canceled the debt of both.
SPEAKER_01: Now which of them will love him more?
SPEAKER_01: Simon answered, The one I suppose for whom that he cancelled the larger debt.
SPEAKER_01: And he said to him, You have judged rightly.
SPEAKER_01: Then turning towards the woman, he said to Simon, Do you see this woman?
SPEAKER_01: I entered your house, and you gave me no water for my feet.
SPEAKER_01: But she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.
SPEAKER_01: You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet.
SPEAKER_01: You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore I tell you, her sins which are many are forgiven, for she loved much, but he who is forgiven little loves little.
SPEAKER_01: And he said to her, Your sins are forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: And then those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, Who is this who even forgives sins?
SPEAKER_01: And he said to the woman, Your faith has saved you.
SPEAKER_01: Go in peace.
SPEAKER_01: Simon and the woman represent two distortions that we still have today: Pharisee thinking and prodigal thinking.
SPEAKER_01: A prodigal is someone who wastes what they beg what they've been given with reckless living.
SPEAKER_01: And we can fall into prodigal thinking where we're like, well, yeah, I know Jesus died, but I'm always gonna struggle with this sin.
SPEAKER_01: And so we identify with it and we hide in shame with it.
SPEAKER_01: We think, yeah, I'm I'm always gonna struggle with the addiction of alcohol or gluttony or gossip or um porn or cutting, or we hide in shame because we've done things we've regretted.
SPEAKER_01: We've had sex with somebody who wasn't our spouse, or we've had an abortion, and instead of confessing that to the Lord and living in the repentance that He wants to give us that restore us from that, we are defined by it.
SPEAKER_01: Other prodigal thinking is where we are proud of it.
SPEAKER_01: I see on social media a lot people posting their sin instead of confessing their sin.
SPEAKER_01: We've confused what the Bible says that sin is, and some people think sin is good and good is bad.
SPEAKER_01: We see this with sexual sin a lot, a lot.
SPEAKER_01: We have pride in our sexual sin instead of understanding God's good plan for who we are meant to be.
SPEAKER_01: Pharisee thinking, we already talked about this, but it's where we're comparing horizontally to people instead of comparing to God's standard.
SPEAKER_01: And when we do that, we're suffocating our heart with pride and not allowing the grace to get in there to do the change that he needs to do to fix our heart, our heart that's hardened and broken by sin.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we confuse outward decency and religious busyness or even posting things on social media with the actual heart transfer transformation that God needs to do through his grace.
SPEAKER_01: What's grace?
SPEAKER_01: It's giving, it's God giving us the forgiveness and favor that we didn't earn.
unknown: That's right.
SPEAKER_01: It's God giving us, I'll say it again.
SPEAKER_01: God giving us forgiveness and favor that we didn't earn.
SPEAKER_01: Pharisee, prodigal, we didn't earn it.
SPEAKER_01: There's a quote I like, and it says, one can be addicted to either lawlessness or lawfulness.
SPEAKER_01: Theologically, there's no difference since both break the relationship with God, the giver.
SPEAKER_01: What did Jesus say?
SPEAKER_01: He said, When they could not pay, he canceled the debt of both.
SPEAKER_01: Effort couldn't solve the debt, self-comparison couldn't solve the debt, could not erase the debt, self-improvement cannot cancel the debt.
SPEAKER_01: Only forgiveness changes the heart.
SPEAKER_01: That's why grace is necessary.
SPEAKER_01: Without grace, pride hardens our heart, shame suffocates us, and love never deepens.
SPEAKER_01: It's always surface level.
SPEAKER_01: And when I look at our culture without Jesus, that's what I see.
SPEAKER_01: But we get to be people when we put our faith in Jesus who are not prodigal thinking or Pharisee thinking, we are grace thinking.
SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of people we get to be.
SPEAKER_01: So I tell you a little story about a girl named Sidney.
SPEAKER_01: If you guys have heard her, she's an Olympian champion.
SPEAKER_01: She wrote a book called Far Beyond Gold.
SPEAKER_01: Highly recommend it.
SPEAKER_01: Um, she, before she was a Christian, she really struggled with her identity's worth.
SPEAKER_01: And even though she would be successful on the track field, it never seemed to be enough.
SPEAKER_01: And there was a lot of fear and anxiety and loneliness that she experienced.
SPEAKER_01: Despite growing up in a Christian home, the gospel hadn't sunk in for her.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we gotta make sure our kids know it.
SPEAKER_01: We can't just assume the gospel, and then we gotta pray because you can tell it all day long, but you need your kids for God to reveal it to the heart.
SPEAKER_01: Because the gospel, the fact that God had made her and loved her, and that sin had broken that relationship with God, and that redemption, what Jesus did on the cross is what she needed to fix that, that hadn't um that hadn't connected all the dots for her.
SPEAKER_01: And so in 2020, Sydney had no clue what to do with her anxiety and her fear and her loneliness.
SPEAKER_01: Self-improvement and self-care were not doing the trick.
SPEAKER_01: She started realizing the only this problem was not a physical problem, it was a spiritual problem.
SPEAKER_01: She writes, I knew I needed to overhaul my life, change how I thought about my worth and my purpose.
SPEAKER_01: But everywhere I went, I was I went for help, I was only getting temporary solutions for my problems, remedies for symptoms of anxiety and sleepless nights, not the disease of self-focus and misplaced identity.
SPEAKER_01: See, Sydney was realizing that her pain was stemmed from not being right with God.
SPEAKER_01: And this was the same situation that Simon and this woman were also in.
SPEAKER_01: But one observed Jesus politely, the other surrendered to Jesus publicly.
SPEAKER_01: Two different people that were close to Jesus, but had two very different responses.
SPEAKER_01: So our bottom line today is Pharisee and prodigal share the same problem: a debt they can't pay, and a Jesus they both need.
SPEAKER_01: But how do we pay?
SPEAKER_01: What do we do to God if we have nothing to pay for our debt?
SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you asked.
SPEAKER_01: Two points, guys.
SPEAKER_01: First one is bring your whole life to Jesus, not just polite respect.
SPEAKER_01: Hold nothing back.
SPEAKER_01: It said in Luke 7, then turning towards the woman, he said to Simon, Do you see this woman?
SPEAKER_01: I entered your house and you gave me no water for my feet, which was customary in that time because they'd be walking around with their sandals and they'd be dirty, so people would give them water to wash their feet.
SPEAKER_01: But Simon did do that.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, But she has wet my feet with your with my her tears and wiped them with her hair.
SPEAKER_01: You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet.
SPEAKER_01: You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.
SPEAKER_01: She weeps and wipes and pours and kisses Jesus' feet.
SPEAKER_01: And Simon hosts and acts like he's interviewing Jesus and withholds surrender.
SPEAKER_01: This woman in this story is single.
SPEAKER_01: And in that time frame, if she had been married and her husband divorced her, divorced her or left her, and her family wasn't there to take her in, it would be devastating for her to try to find money to provide for shelter and food.
SPEAKER_01: And the perfume, the flask of ointment that she brings, is super expensive.
SPEAKER_01: And yet she decides, even though that could be something that could help provide for her and give her money for food, she decides bringing it to Jesus is more worth it.
SPEAKER_01: In addition, if she was a prostitute, this was something that she might have used in her in her job.
SPEAKER_01: It could have been self-identifying for her sin.
SPEAKER_01: And yet she decided this was worth giving up and bringing to the literal feet of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I think this is a lesson for me and you, where sometimes we can get so used, not used to, but like, yeah, used to.
SPEAKER_01: We can think the sin in our life is it's us.
SPEAKER_01: We're just always gonna struggle with it and it's who I am.
SPEAKER_01: But that's not true.
SPEAKER_01: If Jesus died on the cross and rose again, and not just died on the cross, but like endured a ton of persecution before that, for the sake that for you to identify with him and not your sin.
SPEAKER_01: See, I'm Elena Bennett, but I'm not Elena Bennett's the Pharisee.
SPEAKER_01: I'm Elena Bennett's who has been redeemed by God's grace.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes I struggle with Pharisee thinking, but because of God's grace, I can go back to Jesus, I can call on the name of Jesus, like we were singing in that song, and that goes away.
SPEAKER_01: And I understand who I am in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Like, nope, all right, that's done.
SPEAKER_01: No, I'm gonna give grace to my husband.
SPEAKER_01: I that wasn't right.
SPEAKER_01: I shouldn't have said thought that, but I'm moving on.
SPEAKER_01: I am moving on because I'm not a Pharisee, I am God's kid, and you are too.
SPEAKER_01: If you have put your faith in Jesus, you don't longer have to identify with your struggles, you can identify with who you are as God's kid.
SPEAKER_01: Pharisees and prodigals share the same problem: a debt they can't pay, and the Jesus they both need.
SPEAKER_01: Sydney was learning this as well.
SPEAKER_01: She wasn't learning the importance of full surrender.
SPEAKER_01: And lucky for her, her future husband was the one that kind of helped her realize this.
SPEAKER_01: Um, Andre is here, and Andre was a football player and started following her on Instagram, and he had a blue check mark on his Instagram, and she was like, Who's this?
SPEAKER_01: She starts scrolling through his page and she's intrigued because Andre's posting about Jesus in like all of his posts, and she was like, This guy is posting as if Jesus is part of everything, not just like a separate part of his life.
SPEAKER_01: She realizes she was living like the girl from inside out.
SPEAKER_01: I think we have an image of that where the girl from inside out has different islands: the family island, the goofball island, the hockey island, and the friendship island.
SPEAKER_01: But Andre was living like Jesus was the foundation of all of those, like a part of all those.
SPEAKER_01: She, Sydney, was living like faith was a separate island than her school island or her family island or her track island.
SPEAKER_01: And so, long story short, I highly recommend reading the book for the whole story.
SPEAKER_01: They start dating and studying God's word.
SPEAKER_01: And Sydney realizes over time that her next step in following Jesus was fully surrendering.
SPEAKER_01: See, she hadn't done that yet.
SPEAKER_01: She hadn't asked God for forgiveness.
SPEAKER_01: What's forgiveness?
SPEAKER_01: It's God canceling the debt we owe because of what Jesus did.
SPEAKER_01: It's canceling the debt we owe because of sin.
SPEAKER_01: And sin is when we do or think things that go against God's design, which we're all guilty of.
SPEAKER_01: She realizes, okay, I need to fully surrender.
SPEAKER_01: I need to ask God to forgive my sins, and I need him to be king of my life.
SPEAKER_01: She realizes that full surrender to the Lord is not giving up her freedom, it's truly finding it.
SPEAKER_01: Finding her identity solely in Christ was the cure to her self-focus and her misplaced identity because no amount of self-care or counseling were gonna do the trick.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was the one that needed to restore her.
SPEAKER_01: And self-care and counseling are great tools to point you to Jesus, help you see clearly Jesus more, but they were never meant to actually fix your heart.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the only one that can do that.
SPEAKER_01: He's not meant to be an island, he's not even meant to be a bridge to the islands of your life.
SPEAKER_01: He's meant to be Lord of all of it, and things will not be okay until he is king of all of them, until we learn to walk in that grace thinking.
SPEAKER_01: So bring your whole life to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Help let him restore you, change your heart, which brings us back to our point one.
SPEAKER_01: Bring your whole life to Jesus, not just polite respect, hold nothing back.
SPEAKER_01: Teens, you might be here and you might be like, Yeah, this is great, but this applies to you in the sense you might be living your life to keep up with the performance, to keep up with your friends.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to encourage you when we're grace-minded thinking people, we're not living our life to keep up with the performance.
SPEAKER_01: We're living in the life that God created us to live.
SPEAKER_01: Like we actually get to just live, not keep up with the performance.
SPEAKER_01: And so I encourage you, teens, if if you feel like that might be where you're at, take time this week to journal to the Lord, like who you really are.
SPEAKER_01: Because God already knows who you really are.
SPEAKER_01: But when you reveal it to him, when you show it to him, he can start putting pieces back together.
SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, this is where you need my word to help you know that at the end of the day, I'm the one that you need, not your friends, not your grades, not your sports, all of that.
SPEAKER_01: Those are all good, but Jesus needs to be the Lord of it first.
SPEAKER_01: Pharisee and prodigals share the same problem: a debt they can't pay, and a Jesus they both need.
SPEAKER_01: The instinct to judge others while ignoring our own need for grace is exactly what Jesus is addressing in this story, which brings us to our second point.
SPEAKER_01: See your debt clearly and receive mercy deeply.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was saying in Luke 7, a certain money lender had two debtors, one owed 500 denarii and the other 50.
SPEAKER_01: When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both.
SPEAKER_01: Now which of them will love him more?
SPEAKER_01: And Simon answered, Can you just picture him answering this?
SPEAKER_01: The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt?
SPEAKER_01: And he said to him, You have judged rightly.
SPEAKER_01: And then later, Jesus says, Therefore I tell you, her sins which are many are forgiven, for she loved much, but he who is forgiven little loves little.
SPEAKER_01: The point is not which person is better.
SPEAKER_01: The point is both people are bankrupt.
SPEAKER_01: The issue isn't the size, it's the awareness.
SPEAKER_01: In the book, give them grace, dazzling your kids with the love of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Um, I think we have a picture of that.
SPEAKER_01: Elise M.
SPEAKER_01: Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson give us an example of how to teach our kids about God's grace.
SPEAKER_01: And I think this book is just excellent for everyone, whether you have kids or not.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I'm gonna give you an example that she gives in her chapter four that's appropriately titled Jesus Loves All His Little Prodigals and Pharisees.
SPEAKER_01: And in it, she gives the story.
SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm gonna take a little sip more.
SPEAKER_01: She gives a little story of David and Susan, a brother and sister.
SPEAKER_01: David's like seven, Susan is like nine, and their mom has just sat down, put her airpods in, she's about to read her book, and they're playing at the pool, having a good time.
SPEAKER_01: Again, I don't know if I said this, I'm summarizing this and giving it a little bit of a lena twist, but you know, you can read it yourself.
SPEAKER_01: So they're Susan and David are about to play at the pool and they're playing Marco Polo, and David, the little brother, starts to cheat.
SPEAKER_01: And Susan, the big sister, is not okay with this.
SPEAKER_01: But David, it's hard for David to beat his big sister if he doesn't cheat.
SPEAKER_01: So he thinks this is justified, but she thinks it's wrong because he should follow the rules.
SPEAKER_01: And there's a fight, and now they're walking over to their mom, and their mom, who was just about to enjoy some peace and quiet, is now impatient because her kids are disrupting her.
SPEAKER_01: But she takes that impatience to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: She's like, Oh, hey, Lord, help me, help me in this moment.
SPEAKER_01: Give me words to teach my kids about your grace.
SPEAKER_01: And she takes David close and she's like, David, you know that breaking the rules is wrong.
SPEAKER_01: And that uh Jesus died for rule breakers, even rule breakers who break the rules of Marco Polo.
SPEAKER_01: So you need to like apologize, and this wasn't okay.
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, Yeah, I get it.
SPEAKER_01: And he walks off and she's like, I don't I don't know if I handled that right.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if anything's sinking in.
SPEAKER_01: And she prays, Lord, I want to teach my kids about your grace, but like, how do I apply your grace on this weekday afternoon at the pool with a seven and a nine-year-old?
SPEAKER_01: So she pulls Susan close and she says, Susan, was it okay to yell at your brother?
SPEAKER_01: And he she Susan's like, No, I know it wasn't, but he always cheats.
SPEAKER_01: And her his mom is like, Yes, this is true, but did you do you know do you know that rules are not the most important thing?
SPEAKER_01: To which Susan's like, What?
SPEAKER_01: Rules not the most important thing?
SPEAKER_01: She has been taught up to this point in her nine-year-old life that following rules is what keeps her in good standing, and she likes to be in good standing.
SPEAKER_01: And so she sits there and she's like, Susan, do you understand that mercy is more important than rules?
SPEAKER_01: Susan Um Susan's a little confused by this, and his mom, her mom goes, Let me tell you, Susan, about the law of love.
SPEAKER_01: To which Susan's face kind of softens, and she's like, Wait, the law of love?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the law of love is the law that Christ kept perfectly on your behalf.
SPEAKER_01: We are all law.
SPEAKER_01: Law breaking rule haters.
SPEAKER_01: David breaks the rules by not following the rules of Marco Polo.
SPEAKER_01: You break the rules by being angry with him and acting out on that anger.
SPEAKER_01: I break the rules by being impatient with you.
SPEAKER_01: We are all rule breakers.
SPEAKER_01: None of us keeps the rules perfectly, but Jesus came and he loved us perfect.
SPEAKER_01: And he kept all the rules.
SPEAKER_01: And instead of making us pay for breaking the rules and not loving us and not loving, he loved us anyway.
SPEAKER_01: And do you know how much he loved us?
SPEAKER_01: And Susan perks up because she knows the answer to this.
SPEAKER_01: And she says, He died on the cross for my sins.
unknown: Yes.
SPEAKER_01: He took the punishment for our sin to show us something that is more important than the rules.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know what's more important?
SPEAKER_01: Faith working itself out in love.
SPEAKER_01: Like Galatians says, the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself out through love.
SPEAKER_01: So you see, Susan, if you truly believe that uh if you truly believe that Jesus died for your sin, you can love your rule-breaking brother.
SPEAKER_01: And you can love your rule-breaking brother.
SPEAKER_01: And then because of how beautiful Jesus is and how beautiful his love is for you, you can go back to the pool and remember that loving your brother the way Christ loved you is more important than following the rules of Marco Polo.
SPEAKER_01: See, it doesn't matter if you're David the rule breaker or Susan, the one that gets angry or the mom who gets impatient.
SPEAKER_01: We are all independent sinners.
SPEAKER_01: We all need God's grace.
SPEAKER_01: So the real question in this parable is not which person, uh, the real question in this parable is is do we realize how much we've been forgiven?
SPEAKER_01: Because here's the thing when grace hits home, love is what flows out.
SPEAKER_01: And then we can be grace-thinking people.
SPEAKER_01: And when we're grace-thinking people, grace is what gives us the motivation to show up at church and serve, to love our family, to give that grace to our kids or our spouse when they don't deserve it.
SPEAKER_01: Grace is the motivation to be generous.
SPEAKER_01: And when we are grace-thinking people, we can keep that's that is how we kick that Pharisee thinking out the door when we're grace-thinking people.
SPEAKER_01: Grace is like the neighbor whose window gets broken because the kids were playing next door with the baseball, and the baseball hit the neighbor's window, and the neighbor says, You know what?
SPEAKER_01: I'll fix the window.
SPEAKER_01: I'll pay for it all.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna make you or your parents, because they're probably the ones that's gonna pay for it, pay for the window.
SPEAKER_01: There was a debt that was broken.
SPEAKER_01: There was a debt that needed to be made, and the neighbor's like, I'll do it.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Jesus does for you and me.
SPEAKER_01: I see that a lot in my marriage.
SPEAKER_01: There, um, let's say it this way: I have a lot of words, and my husband has not as many.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I can be much more of an open book, and my husband's much more personal.
SPEAKER_01: And there have been times where I will be sharing and talking, and I'll share something that was really something Kyle should have shared and not me.
SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell him about it, and I'll I'll have I'll regretted it.
SPEAKER_01: And and I'll be like, I'm sorry, I should not have said that.
SPEAKER_01: And he will offer me grace because I can't take back those words that were said.
SPEAKER_01: And in those moments, I see a reflection of what Jesus does for me all the time.
SPEAKER_01: And it makes it that much more easier to want to give grace to other people in a marriage.
SPEAKER_01: It's almost like this is why God did marriage.
SPEAKER_01: In a marriage, it should be a reflection of but let me let me rewind.
SPEAKER_01: In your marriage, that person sees like the 10% that nobody else sees.
SPEAKER_01: And there's some good stuff in there, but there's a lot of bad and ugly stuff as well.
SPEAKER_01: And in a healthy marriage, that person accepts you and loves you despite that brokenness.
SPEAKER_01: And that is a reflection of what Jesus does for every single one of you.
SPEAKER_01: He calls us to fully surrender to him.
SPEAKER_01: And I said this earlier, but he already knows all the brokenness that you have.
SPEAKER_01: But he's asking you to come and be vulnerable with him, like this woman was in this in this story.
SPEAKER_01: This wasn't a parable, like this happened.
SPEAKER_01: He's asking us to be like her and to fully surrender so that he can start doing the work to restore, because he's not gonna do it unless you want it.
SPEAKER_01: He's a good God, he's not like making us robots.
SPEAKER_01: And he asks us to fully surrender to him.
SPEAKER_01: How does this apply to our everyday thinking?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're in a marriage where it is super easy to just rehearse the offense over and over, not just the offense, but all the offenses.
SPEAKER_01: And for you, grace thinking is remembering the grace that Jesus gave you and doing one kind thing for your spouse without them expecting it.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe for you, um, you're a single mom and you're here, we're so glad you're here.
SPEAKER_01: You belong here.
SPEAKER_01: But it's easy for you to like be embarrassed by your past.
SPEAKER_01: And for you, grace thinking is thinking here I am, Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: If I put my faith in Jesus, he now defines me.
SPEAKER_01: And your grace thinking is coming to this church with the confidence of who Jesus is and letting us support you and love you and encourage you.
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe you're somebody in this room and you're older than half the people here, and you've been serving and you've been showing up, but you've allowed apathy, you've allowed apathy into your spiritual life.
SPEAKER_01: Where you're like, I keep coming, I keep showing up, but there's no fruit.
SPEAKER_01: And for you, grace thinking is spending some time in what Jesus did on the crucifixion, spending some time thinking about what Jesus did for you and allowing grace to be the motivation to keep going, grace to be the hope that even if you don't see fruit yet, that doesn't mean God's done yet.
SPEAKER_01: You're reminded of the disciples on Good Friday, and you're like, whoa, they thought everything really ended, and it didn't.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I should just keep showing up.
SPEAKER_01: Because as long as you're here, God still has a story for you to be living out.
SPEAKER_01: When I was a teenager, um I would read passages like Luke 7, and I would get a little worried because I'm very black and white.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I'd be reading Luke 7, and I would think, like, oh, do I have to sin like this woman in order to understand that the love of God like she will?
SPEAKER_01: And then I would think about the Bible in context, I would think about God's standard of holiness, and I'd be like, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_01: Elena, I don't have to do that.
SPEAKER_01: I have to like realize where God's given me grace and be like her and fully surrender.
SPEAKER_01: Just the other day I was reading Psalms 15 and it talks about what a godly person is.
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, yeah, still don't measure up to this.
SPEAKER_01: Lives with integrity, does what's right, speaks truth sincerely, guards their words, treats their neighbors well.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, Lord, I need you to help me with this.
SPEAKER_01: But again, like I was saying earlier, I'm not like walking around with my head down.
SPEAKER_01: Because I've learned what a good father he is, I'm like kind of ready for him to just show me where I can grow because I want to grow.
SPEAKER_01: I want to grow into the story he's told me to be, to he want to grow into the person that he's made me to be.
SPEAKER_01: I think this is why God calls us often to have childlike faith.
SPEAKER_01: Church, if we had childlike faith, if you think about it, a kid that's learning to walk, that's totally outside of their comfort zone.
SPEAKER_01: But their parents that they love and like they know their parents love them the most is encouraging them to keep going.
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, okay, well, this is really weird, but I guess I'll keep trying.
SPEAKER_01: And they fall down and they get back up and they do it because they trust their parents.
SPEAKER_01: That's what God's calling us to do as a church.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Lord, this is weird.
SPEAKER_01: I want to stay in the cage of sin, but I understand your love is fierce, right?
SPEAKER_01: That's what his love is fierce, and it's so much better than the temporary satisfaction of sin.
SPEAKER_01: That if this is what you're calling me to do, then I'll try it, I'll keep going, I'll walk towards that.
SPEAKER_01: And if we're truly living out childlike faith, we're throwing out that fair sea and prodigal thinking.
SPEAKER_01: And we recognize when we fall down, God's there to pick us up.
SPEAKER_01: Because what's a kid do when they fall down?
SPEAKER_01: They cry for their parents or they get back up and try again.
SPEAKER_01: When we sin, we can recognize, yeah, on this side of heaven, this will be a struggle, but it's not who I am.
SPEAKER_01: And I can keep going on Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I can call on his name and drive that the I mean, we're gonna sing that song.
SPEAKER_01: That's the truth of who God is in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have to stay there.
SPEAKER_01: We can be like the kid with how like faith, and we can remember that our testimony isn't about the sin we did, it's about the savior who saved us.
SPEAKER_01: If he didn't save us, hell would have been our dis destiny.
SPEAKER_01: This is why, you guys, when people say, I have a boring testimony, I'm like, honey, do you know what your testimony is about?
SPEAKER_01: It's not about your sin, it's about your savior.
SPEAKER_01: It's about your savior.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter what the sin was.
SPEAKER_01: Well, it matters that the sin was there, it doesn't matter what it was because it's separating you from God and your savior saved you.
SPEAKER_01: So share your testimony.
SPEAKER_01: Share your testimony because it's about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, Jesus' amazing grace that transforms us from the inside out.
SPEAKER_01: Because when we surrender our lives to Jesus and we make him the leader of our life and the forgiver of our sins, we're changed by his fierce love and we start walking in his grace.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, we want to be that kind of people.
SPEAKER_01: Please help us recognize when we have prodigal or Pharisee thinking and help us throw it out the window as fast as we can.
SPEAKER_01: And Lord, as we do that, we know we're gonna notice it more and more.
SPEAKER_01: But help us take it because we want to live out your plan.
SPEAKER_01: You change everything, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Your love changes everything.
SPEAKER_01: Help us to be the kind of people that recognize that, and from that, as our foundation, we live out your plan.
SPEAKER_01: In your name I pray.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody said, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: All right, folks, that's all the time we have, but thank you so much for listening to this sermon.
SPEAKER_00: If you got a lot out of this, feel free to share this with somebody who might need it.
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SPEAKER_00: Feel free to check all that kind of a thing out.
SPEAKER_00: Also, if you're interested in leadership type stuff, go ahead and check out another podcast or any other blogs or videos or anything over at BibleLeadership.com.
SPEAKER_00: And whatever else you do, make sure that you believe God for something big today.