SPEAKER_00: Hey, but why don't we open up our Bibles to the book of Galatians?
SPEAKER_00: Galatians, we're gonna go to chapter number six.
SPEAKER_00: Galatians, chapter six.
SPEAKER_00: If you did not bring your Bible, we're gonna put the verses on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: We have been in this Summer Strong series.
SPEAKER_00: I loved in June that we went through Joshua.
SPEAKER_00: I love in July that we went through Acts.
SPEAKER_00: And now for the month of August, we are reading through.
SPEAKER_00: Did you guys catch that?
SPEAKER_00: Is it an acronym or cross stick?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure what it is, but uh Giants enjoy.
SPEAKER_00: What do we say?
SPEAKER_00: Protein and cardio.
SPEAKER_00: We made that up.
SPEAKER_01: Tell everybody what that means.
SPEAKER_00: For sure.
SPEAKER_00: I hope my fingers are clean.
SPEAKER_00: Uh giants enjoy protein and cardio.
SPEAKER_00: The G is for Galatians, the E is for Ephesians.
SPEAKER_00: The P is for Philippians, and the C is for Colossians.
SPEAKER_00: These are the books of the Bible that we're reading through the month of August.
SPEAKER_00: I want to encourage you, grab your Bible throughout the week.
SPEAKER_00: Married couples, read it together.
SPEAKER_00: Single people, grab your Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Teenagers, young adults, grab your Bible because as you read it, it reads you.
SPEAKER_00: Your heart gets transformed.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's alive and active.
SPEAKER_00: Galatians chapter 6, verse number 7.
SPEAKER_00: It says, Do not be deceived.
SPEAKER_00: God cannot be mocked.
SPEAKER_00: A man or a woman sow, a man reaps what he sows.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever sows to please their flesh from their flesh will reap destruction.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever sows to please the spirit from the spirit will reap eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: If you like to take notes, the title of today's message is Tricked.
SPEAKER_00: Tricked.
SPEAKER_00: Um we are in a really unique day today.
SPEAKER_00: In this day and age, you know, everything is obviously on a screen.
SPEAKER_00: Most things are on a screen.
SPEAKER_00: You have most of your life on your phone.
SPEAKER_00: You can do what you want to do from your phone.
SPEAKER_00: Most of us are on social media.
SPEAKER_00: For some of us, that social media is still Facebook.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, shout out Facebook.
SPEAKER_00: But others, you know, there it's TikTok, it's Instagram.
SPEAKER_00: I guess maybe another platform is Twitch, you know, that's out there.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of different things that are happening where, you know, we're we're interacting online.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and now obviously now we have chat and we've got Claude, and we've got, I don't know, there's probably something else out there that I don't even know about right now is Gronk.
SPEAKER_00: What is it?
SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
SPEAKER_00: Gronk?
SPEAKER_00: Grk.
SPEAKER_00: Gronk.
SPEAKER_00: Am I saying that right?
SPEAKER_00: So there's, I mean, all these things that are out there.
SPEAKER_00: Um, one of the things that is unique, and a friend of mine just told me this the other day.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he typed into chat, he said, Hey chat, tell me, uh, give me some insight and some studies on like the church and AI and um any studies that are out there, and chat uh spit back out to him.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, here's this Barna study here, and here's the here's a footnote here, uh, and was citing all these sources, and then uh my friend went to go check all the sources and they weren't true.
SPEAKER_00: Chat spit out to him stuff that looked factual, but it actually wasn't even real.
SPEAKER_00: A bunch of dead sights.
SPEAKER_00: So when you and I tend to interact with anything online, we think this is truth.
SPEAKER_00: This is real, this is factual.
SPEAKER_00: And little do and I don't mean to tell you like Santa Claus is not real, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Some of y'all right now are like, are you serious?
SPEAKER_00: Like, I can't trust chat like that, and I'm telling you, no.
SPEAKER_00: But it's interesting to me.
SPEAKER_01: You have to check the source.
SPEAKER_01: What's interesting sometimes my TikTok will tell me a certain celebrity passed away, and I believe it.
SPEAKER_01: And then, because it seems real, it will show you their pictures, it will do, is it just me?
SPEAKER_01: It'll do a montage of their life, and then I look it up, and it didn't really happen, they're still alive.
SPEAKER_01: So you gotta check the sources.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she's crying, uh sending flowers.
SPEAKER_00: Why does this matter?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because we are giving even more authority to AI than we are to God's word.
SPEAKER_00: We are trusting what we type in and what's spit back out to us more than we are trusting what we are reading here in this sacred text.
SPEAKER_00: We are saying, yeah, I believe that for sure, and then we're coming to God's word skeptical.
SPEAKER_00: This is what has been preserved and is lasting, and this is what is real and alive, and I'm not anti-AI at all.
SPEAKER_00: What I would say is AI can't be your God.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And for many of us right now, we are taking what we put into chat, and we're saying that's the truth, rather than saying, how does this stack up against the truth?
SPEAKER_00: That's God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Even more importantly, the truth, who is Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God.
SPEAKER_00: So in the book of Galatians, uh, Paul's having uh he's he's writing a letter, and this letter is uh is a really fascinating one.
SPEAKER_00: Um, when you read it, he he says some things that are that are quite interesting.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, chapter 3, verse number 1.
SPEAKER_00: You can look at this.
SPEAKER_00: I think I have it on the screen uh for us.
SPEAKER_00: It says, You foolish Galatians, who bewitched you?
SPEAKER_00: Who tricked you?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, who put a spell over you?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, who is it, Galatians, that that came in and is trying to distort the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ?
SPEAKER_00: Because you are only saved through the finished work of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You're not saved through the works of the law.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot be made right with God by your behavior.
SPEAKER_00: You are made right with God by what Jesus did.
SPEAKER_00: You're not made right with God because you're good, you're made right with God because Jesus is good and what he did was good enough for you.
SPEAKER_00: And there's some people coming in, and they're trying to distort that truth.
SPEAKER_00: They're trying to say what Jesus did was not enough.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna add some other stuff to it.
SPEAKER_00: If you add some works to it, then you will be enough.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the apostle Paul says some crazy things in here in chapter 5 of verse number 12.
SPEAKER_00: I did not ask them to put this on the screen, but it's in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: It says, as for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, this is in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: He's fired up, he's angry.
SPEAKER_00: In one part, he says, I'm writing this in my own hand.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see the large letters that I'm writing?
SPEAKER_00: Because someone's trying to come in and trick you.
SPEAKER_00: They're trying to get you to get off of the truth of who Jesus is and what Jesus has done, and that is enough.
SPEAKER_00: And he's trying, and they're trying to make you think that you can add something to the finished work of the cross, and you can add zero to it.
SPEAKER_00: The only thing you can do is believe and have faith in Jesus, and by grace through faith in Christ, you can be saved.
SPEAKER_00: So he's preaching this with passion.
SPEAKER_00: But this performancing is hard for a lot of us to get through our heads.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because many of us grew up in homes where performance was rewarded.
SPEAKER_01: So you you love your ribbons and your trophies, and you feel like you earn your family's love by your performance.
SPEAKER_01: And so then somehow that can trickle into your relationship with God, and then you start to think that you have to win a trophy or a ribbon or do a winning performance in order for Him to love you.
SPEAKER_01: And so then your Christianity becomes works-paced instead of the finished work of the cross.
SPEAKER_01: And we're not saying to not be excellent, we're not saying to not be your best, but what we're saying is to rely on what Jesus did because his strength is sufficient.
SPEAKER_01: And when we try, when I try to be a wife in my own strength, it is trash because it's all my flesh.
SPEAKER_00: I would not say it's trash, honey.
SPEAKER_01: It's trash.
SPEAKER_01: It is, it is, it is trash.
SPEAKER_01: It's trash.
SPEAKER_01: But when I say, Holy Spirit, lead me as a wife, help me to know how to word something that I need to grab Earl's attention, but help me to word it in a way that would be spirit-led.
SPEAKER_01: When you're leading a company, there's a way that you can motivate and encourage and inspire your team to crush it.
SPEAKER_01: But you need the Holy Spirit, because if you say it in a way that feels very selfish, demeaning, talking down to them, challenging their worth, you're not going to wake up the gifts on the inside of your team.
SPEAKER_01: But when you say, Holy Spirit, lead me, guide me, anoint me to lead this team with language from heaven that can translate into the marketplace, that's going to wake up something on the inside so we can produce what you've called us to produce.
SPEAKER_01: But you don't want a bunch of, you want of, I know we need performance, but I'm saying we need spirit-led so that we don't end up being like a robot.
SPEAKER_01: You don't want to be a robot leader, you don't want to be a robot spouse, you don't want to be a robot parent.
SPEAKER_01: And even though you might have been raised by someone that you felt like your love was based on your works, we're here to hug you and shake you a little bit to say that Jesus does not just love you because of your works.
SPEAKER_01: So let him grab you by the hand to walk out what you've been called to do.
SPEAKER_00: Man, that is so, so good.
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, you can clap for that for sure.
SPEAKER_00: For those who have been followers of Jesus for a little while, I want to talk to you for just a second.
SPEAKER_00: Because when you have been living by grace for a long time, you and I can start to think, oh, I know better.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Since I know better, I should have done better.
SPEAKER_00: Since I didn't do better, I'm worse off, and I just need to kind of sulk or go back to square one.
SPEAKER_00: And that's a lie from the very pit of hell.
SPEAKER_00: The same grace that saves you in the beginning is the same grace that sustains you when you're 25, 35, 45, 55 years in.
SPEAKER_00: You do not at some point in time get so spiritually deep that you graduate from the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, the more you know Jesus, the deeper you go into his grace, and the more you begin to understand I didn't deserve any of this in the first place.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't deserve it in the beginning, and I don't deserve it now.
SPEAKER_00: So, God, thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00: So it's out of that gratitude that I live my life of with joy and enthusiasm to worship you and serve you.
SPEAKER_00: I don't one of the reasons I believe that people have been following Jesus for a long time sometimes lose their fire, is because they move from grace to works.
SPEAKER_00: And there's not a light in your eye, there's not a joy when it comes to the things of God, because it become became a burden to you.
SPEAKER_00: Everything came became about what you do and how you do it and the performance, and you're doing this song and dance for God.
SPEAKER_00: And if you think you're doing a song and a dance for God, then you do not understand who God is and what Jesus Christ has done for you.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're brand new to faith or you've been in church for years and years and years, this is for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want you tricked, we want you living your life for God's glory, hearing his voice and following in his steps.
SPEAKER_00: Uh go with us here to Galatians chapter 5, uh, just one chapter back, verse number 13.
SPEAKER_00: Look at this.
SPEAKER_00: It says, You, my brothers and sisters, we're called to be free.
SPEAKER_00: You're called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: We can't cross this out of our Bibles.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, serve one another humbly in love.
SPEAKER_00: Go down to verse number 17.
SPEAKER_00: Look at this one.
SPEAKER_00: For the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: They're in conflict with each other.
SPEAKER_00: So that you, watch this.
SPEAKER_00: This is wild.
SPEAKER_00: So that you are not to do whatever you want.
SPEAKER_00: You are not to do whatever you want.
SPEAKER_00: Turn to your neighbor and say that.
SPEAKER_00: Tell them, tell them.
SPEAKER_00: Say, you are not to do whatever you want.
SPEAKER_00: Tell them.
SPEAKER_00: Now, as you're saying that to them, they're saying it to you.
SPEAKER_00: You are not to do whatever you want.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this this is talk about countercultural.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, some of y'all are hearing this right now, you're going, I wish this wasn't in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Can I pretend that I forgot this?
SPEAKER_00: Can I can I pretend like we did not read this verse?
SPEAKER_00: Can we go ahead and just skip over this one?
SPEAKER_00: Nope, we can't.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot do whatever you want.
SPEAKER_00: If you and I want to live a life that's pleasing to God, so again, we're not talking about performance to earn something from God.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're talking about living our lives for his glory because of all that he's done for us.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very different motivation.
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to be the best husband I can to Onika, not to try to convince her to love me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to be the best husband I can to her, not only because she loves me, but because Christ has loved me so completely.
SPEAKER_00: So now out of that love, now I'm trying to love her.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very different motivation.
SPEAKER_00: When my motivation is I'm trying to get something from her, now I can it can lead to resentment if she doesn't give me the very thing that I'm trying to fish for.
SPEAKER_00: But if it's coming from a place of love, rather serve one another humbly, out of love, what would it look like if our church, if our families, if our friendships actually match this verse, I think that's revival, like we've never known.
SPEAKER_00: I think people look at that and go, there's something different about that right there.
SPEAKER_01: And when it says conflict with each other, it means that because it's not easy.
SPEAKER_01: It's not easy to do what the spirit wants you to do.
SPEAKER_01: It's way easier to do what you want when you want.
SPEAKER_01: But you also then can reap a dumpster fire when you live a life of doing what you want when you want.
SPEAKER_01: And so the Bible is helping us to ask the Holy Spirit to lead us and to guide us so that we don't just get used to sewing to our own selfish desires.
SPEAKER_01: Because then we end up, like our message titled, tricking ourselves, and then we end up unhappy anyways.
SPEAKER_01: And so that's why we have scripture to be our guide, to be our map, to teach us.
SPEAKER_01: And it sounds so it's not exciting to say deny yourself.
SPEAKER_01: Like that's not flashy, that's not sexy, deny yourself.
SPEAKER_01: But there's so much fruit in surrendering your life to the finished work of the cross.
SPEAKER_01: There's so much fruit in letting your flesh die and letting your spirit live.
SPEAKER_01: You're a better leader, you're a better student, you're a better son, you're a better daughter, you're a better mom, husband.
SPEAKER_01: When you say, I'm gonna deny myself and I'm gonna pick up my cross daily and follow him.
SPEAKER_01: But it is a tug of war.
SPEAKER_01: You guys know this.
SPEAKER_01: If you're trying to, you know, I don't know, get fit or have a fitness season, you're gonna want to press snooze.
SPEAKER_01: You're not your body's not gonna be like, not unless you're, you know, unique.
SPEAKER_01: But your body is not all of a sudden gonna say, I want to wake up every day at 5 30.
SPEAKER_01: That you don't like or five and go run.
SPEAKER_01: But you have to train yourself and you have to deny yourself, yeah.
SPEAKER_01: You have to go to bed a little bit earlier so that you have the energy to get that morning run in.
SPEAKER_01: It's the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: It's letting your flesh say, I'm not gonna win, and it's let waking up something on the inside of you.
SPEAKER_00: When you're saying this, whenever if you have a friend that says, I'm gonna run a marathon, and they say, I'm gonna train for a marathon, because I'm training for this marathon, I am not going, I'm I'm gonna stop drinking.
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm training for this marathon, I'm going to bed early.
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm training for this marathon, I'm not doing this, I'm not doing this, I'm not doing this.
SPEAKER_00: Um you're gonna see my diet changing.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna see my behaviors changing.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna even see my body begin to change because I'm changing, I'm training for a marathon.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever you have a friend that does that, we go, you go.
SPEAKER_00: When it comes to I am training my body for a spiritual marathon to be the man or woman of God that he has called me to be, it will require you to say no to some things and to say yes to some other things.
SPEAKER_00: And don't let your family shame you into now eating the stuff you don't need to be eating, going the places you don't want to be going because they feel uncomfortable with the step that you are taking.
SPEAKER_00: You be the man or the woman that God has called you to be, regardless of the noise that is around you.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it takes faith, yeah, it takes courage, yeah, it takes strength.
SPEAKER_00: But that's what you have in the finished work of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Greater is he that's in you than he that is in the world.
SPEAKER_00: God hasn't given you a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline.
SPEAKER_00: You have, we're not the ones that shrink back and are destroyed.
SPEAKER_00: We're the ones that have faith and are saved.
SPEAKER_00: That's our DNA in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is our identity.
SPEAKER_00: So if it makes sense to do that for a marathon, doesn't it make sense to do that for a marriage?
unknown: Yep.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't it make sense to do that for your single life?
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't it make sense for you to do that in your spiritual life?
SPEAKER_00: And this is the steps that God is wanting us to take.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you go back to uh Galatians chapter 6, verse number 7, don't be deceived.
SPEAKER_00: God can't be mocked.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna rebut yourself.
SPEAKER_00: This is a tough verse.
SPEAKER_00: But what God has done is He has put principles into the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Natural laws and principles.
SPEAKER_00: This is one that we get.
SPEAKER_00: I plant this, I'm expecting this type of harvest.
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, unfortunately, I have personally sown some seeds in my own life that I wish I never got the harvest of.
SPEAKER_00: I wish I had never put those seeds in the ground.
SPEAKER_00: There's some moments in my life I look back on and I go, man, dang.
SPEAKER_00: If I had to do it over again, I wouldn't have put that in the ground.
SPEAKER_00: I would have held on to that.
SPEAKER_00: If I had the chance to not say that, do that, go there, I never would have put it in the ground.
SPEAKER_00: I like to try to blame the devil for a lot of stuff.
SPEAKER_00: The devil did it.
SPEAKER_00: Nope.
SPEAKER_00: That was me.
SPEAKER_00: Just throwing seeds out on the ground here.
SPEAKER_00: It was me.
SPEAKER_00: I like to, I want to blame culture.
SPEAKER_00: I want to blame the society, I want to blame the world.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if I'm gonna look back, that was on me.
SPEAKER_00: And many of us right now are reaping a harvest in our marriage, in our thought life, in our physical bodies, of some things we're like, I wish I I wish I knew, or I wish I believed God's word.
SPEAKER_00: I wish I followed his path.
SPEAKER_00: The good news is what you are currently living in, you don't have to live in forever.
SPEAKER_00: The good news is you can begin to sow some fresh seeds, some new seeds into the ground, and you can begin to reap a different harvest in your future.
SPEAKER_00: This is the opportunity that God is inviting us all into.
SPEAKER_00: But don't be deceived.
SPEAKER_00: God's not gonna be mocked, family.
unknown: Right, right.
SPEAKER_00: We can't keep on acting like we can do whatever we want to do whenever we want to do it without any repercussions.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we were talking uh earlier, Onique and I, about a kite.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if people still fly kites uh at all.
SPEAKER_00: Uh not really.
SPEAKER_00: You know, on a windy day, if you got little kids, you're like, oh, I'm gonna get I need a kite, and then there's not one to be found.
SPEAKER_01: Uh or you get the kite and then it stops being windy.
SPEAKER_00: Yep, that's happened too.
SPEAKER_00: But when you have a kite, it works well because it's tied to something.
SPEAKER_00: The kite flies higher because there's a string and it's connected to something.
SPEAKER_00: Once the kite gets disconnected or cut from the string, the kite can no longer soar.
SPEAKER_00: We live in a day where we all want to fly really high, but we don't want to be tied to anything.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be tied to a relationship, I don't want to be tied to anybody telling me what to do, I don't want to be tied to a church, I don't want to be tied to any accountability, I want to be able to do what I want to do whenever I want to do it.
SPEAKER_00: And the problem with that is you're not.
SPEAKER_00: Going to be able to fly as high as you want to fly and be all that God has called you to be.
SPEAKER_00: In order for you to soar, you got to be tied to something.
SPEAKER_00: And we're saying that something is more than a something, it's a someone.
SPEAKER_00: And his name is Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And it gives such strength when you're connected to something healthy, which is our Heavenly Father.
SPEAKER_01: But also it gives strength in life.
SPEAKER_01: I remember when we were getting ready and praying to start this church, we lived in Austin, Texas, and God started preparing our hearts, saying, You're about, you're called to ministry another level of ministry, a new layer, a new expression of ministry.
SPEAKER_01: I remember us dealing with that, just the two of us, talking about it, praying about it.
SPEAKER_01: What would it look like?
SPEAKER_01: What city would we go to?
SPEAKER_01: How would we do it?
SPEAKER_01: And just asking each other these questions.
SPEAKER_01: But then there came a time where it needed to just leave us asking questions to each other, to us to go to somebody who we trusted.
SPEAKER_01: And there's something called wise counsel.
SPEAKER_01: Write that down.
SPEAKER_01: Wise counsel.
SPEAKER_01: And wise counsel is wisdom from someone who's trusted, from someone who has a track record, from someone who's spiritually grounded, from someone who's a safe leader, for someone who also gets wise counsel.
SPEAKER_01: And what you do, what we did in that situation is we said, we feel this call to start a church.
SPEAKER_01: And so we invited in wise counsel, we invited in leaders, and we asked them, are we crazy?
SPEAKER_01: Should we do this?
SPEAKER_01: We're thinking about doing this in a year.
SPEAKER_01: And so we invited them in to pray with us, to seek God with us, because we didn't just want to do that decision.
SPEAKER_01: It's such a major life change by ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: And so we sought wise counsel and they said, You are called to start a church.
SPEAKER_01: But we, after praying, think it would be good to wait a couple more years.
SPEAKER_01: Our best friend said that, our wise counsel said that, and we took that advice, and it was one of the best advices we'd ever received because if we would have jumped out of the plane prematurely, I don't know that we would have the strength in our marriage that we have today, the strength in our family.
SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't know the reach that our church would have had we tried to have done church in our own strength.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, when we were getting ready to, when we wanted to get married, we were in love and we're like, let's get married right away.
SPEAKER_01: And so then we said, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: Onika dealt with a lot of lust.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so there was a lot of like pressure, and I was like, girl, listen, you've been, I don't know what you've been sewing, but I need you to show to the spirit, not to the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: So I shared this work verse with her.
SPEAKER_00: It helped her a lot, and she's she's stronger now.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead, honey.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay, whatever, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: But we were ready to get married.
SPEAKER_01: And you're making me lose my train of thought.
SPEAKER_01: And so we decided to get wise counsel instead of just going, just the two of us, we want to get married.
SPEAKER_01: Let's just get married right now, which we wanted to because we were so excited, we're so in love.
SPEAKER_01: So we went to leaders in our life who we trusted, and we said, We're ready to get married.
SPEAKER_01: Can you pray with us?
SPEAKER_01: Do you also think it's time for us to get married?
SPEAKER_01: Which I know that's like groundbreaking, but it was so right.
SPEAKER_01: And so they said, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: We think that you should pray on this and wait another year, actually.
SPEAKER_01: And again, it was the very best wisdom.
SPEAKER_01: And we've been married for 29 years, you guys.
SPEAKER_01: That's wild.
SPEAKER_00: 30 years next year.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's 30 years is crazy.
SPEAKER_01: It's crazy to us.
SPEAKER_01: It is, but I'm so thankful that we have not done marriage for almost 30 years by ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we we rely on the spirit, we deny our flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't always say to Earl what I want to say to Earl.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't always say to me what he wants to say to me.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm thankful because I would probably be, you know, busted up and super insecure if he said every thought he ever had to me.
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_00: No, but I have only good thoughts.
SPEAKER_01: No, no, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_01: But I'm so thankful that we have learned, even in our marriage, to say no to our flesh.
SPEAKER_01: I'm so thankful that when we reach a crossroads and we can't come into agreement, we still to this day seek godly counsel on major, major decisions.
SPEAKER_01: So everything that we're saying, we're also living this out together with y'all because there's wisdom in godly counsel around you.
SPEAKER_01: There's wisdom in going to healthy, godly counselors.
SPEAKER_01: There's wisdom in being planted in a healthy church.
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
SPEAKER_01: There's wisdom in having people in your life who have gone before you who can offer things that they learned to help strengthen you.
SPEAKER_01: We can learn from each other's mistakes, and there's such health being connected to something instead of trying to live a rogue life and just being in a cave all alone.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Well, as Onika is saying this again to go back to this verse, verse number seven and eight of chapter six in Galatians.
SPEAKER_00: A man reaps what he sows, or a woman reaps what she sows.
SPEAKER_00: Um not only is this true, it's also true that you sometimes reap what other people sow.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a very hard thing to digest for us because some of us are looking at our lives like I've only actually been putting good stuff in the ground.
SPEAKER_00: But if I look at my life right now, it's not good all around me.
SPEAKER_00: So yes, there's an enemy, without a doubt.
SPEAKER_00: You know, this culture is broken, and this darkness and sin and demons and all the lies.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's that's a part of it.
SPEAKER_00: So you got that being sewn in and put in the ground.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you can have a friendship, a relationship.
SPEAKER_00: It could be a spouse, it could be a son, daughter, it could be a best friend, it could be somebody in your world that you're connected to, that they put some stuff in the ground.
SPEAKER_00: And since you're so close to them, their field now becomes your field.
SPEAKER_00: And you're in something that you didn't want to be in.
SPEAKER_00: Now it works on the positive too.
SPEAKER_00: Don't get me wrong.
SPEAKER_00: It works on the positive if they have been sewing some things and doing some things that are for the positive and they've been making themselves better.
SPEAKER_00: I I don't know, maybe you're about to marry somebody and you find out, you know, they've been, you know, putting a bunch of money away for years and years and years, and then you're gonna marry this person, and they already got, you know, seven million dollars just sitting in an account somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, man, thank you for sowing when I was not here.
SPEAKER_00: I am happy to reap this.
SPEAKER_00: God bless you.
SPEAKER_00: That that that's that's a wonderful thing, but sometimes it's on the negative that people were sowing bad relationships and foolishness for years and years and years, and now you're the beneficiary of their poor choices, and you've already said I do, and now you're in it.
SPEAKER_00: Culture tells you bounce, leave.
SPEAKER_00: Don't stay in that, that's not your fault.
SPEAKER_00: That's what culture will say to you.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't have the time now in every location with every situation to give you counsel on your specific situation at all.
SPEAKER_00: But what I would say is this truth, it's it's it's real.
SPEAKER_00: We do sow, uh, we do reap what we do so.
SPEAKER_00: But there's also a bunch of hope in the midst of all of this.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse number uh six.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, verse number nine, rather.
SPEAKER_00: It says, let us not become weary in doing good.
SPEAKER_00: For at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
SPEAKER_00: I I appreciate that this is in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes doing good does cause weariness.
SPEAKER_00: And I think we gotta be honest with that.
SPEAKER_00: There's some of us I've been doing good for years and years.
SPEAKER_00: I'm tired of doing good.
SPEAKER_00: I don't feel like I'm getting the results of all the good that I've been giving.
SPEAKER_00: I feel like every time I even do good, more bad comes my way.
SPEAKER_00: I keep doing good towards my spouse or doing good towards my career, doing good towards my education or parents, yeah, and bad keeps coming my way over and over and over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: Whether you're a teenager that's working all summer to get to make the football team or the basketball team and it doesn't pay off, or you're an adult that has worked hard and incredibly hard for that interview to get that job and it doesn't turn out.
SPEAKER_00: All of us can be in some different seasons where we have gone, we have grinded, trusting God for the good, and it has not come.
SPEAKER_00: The apostle Paul here says, I gotta encourage you.
SPEAKER_00: This is also part of the process.
SPEAKER_00: You become weary and doing good.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're weary and doing good, I want you to know that God has a proper time.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody say proper time.
SPEAKER_00: God has a proper time.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, man, that proper time has been late.
SPEAKER_00: I know, I know.
SPEAKER_00: I want now to be the proper time.
SPEAKER_00: I'm 37.
SPEAKER_00: It's it was proper at 27.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's improper.
SPEAKER_00: I'm 37 now.
SPEAKER_00: I I need the answer to the prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Now, God, what is this timing?
SPEAKER_00: What is this timing?
SPEAKER_00: I just want you to keep on doing good because you'll reap a harvest if you do not give up, if you do not give up, if you do not give up, if you do not give up.
SPEAKER_00: And I I pray that even during these 21 days of prayer and fasting, that there would be such a deep work of the spirit inside of your life and my own life, inside of your family and my family, that we would not be a people that throw in the towel from doing good.
SPEAKER_00: But we we'd be a people that say, God, I'm gonna trust you, even though I don't see the harvest just yet.
SPEAKER_01: There's a practical um thing that I think we should just all do as a church family, and as I share this, you can like add to it contextually.
SPEAKER_01: But as you were talking, I just felt like I feel like even for our home, but also for your home, your apartment, your dorm, wherever you live, I feel like as we step into this season of prayer and fasting as a church, as we decide as a church we're not going to live by letting our flesh be the Lord of our lives, we're gonna trust in the finished work of the cross and be spirit-led in everything that we do.
SPEAKER_01: I just feel spirit-led to say that I feel like we should all anoint our houses.
SPEAKER_01: That when you get home today, when you get to your apartment, your house, your ranch, your dorm, wherever you live, practically speaking, when we anoint our home, what we do is we put on worship music.
SPEAKER_01: In different seasons, we just feel led to do this.
SPEAKER_01: And we put worship music on and we go in every single room and we just put a cross with oil or with our hands, and we just say, Father God, I thank you that your presence is here.
SPEAKER_00: Pray over each room.
SPEAKER_01: I invite your presence to be in each room of my house.
SPEAKER_01: And I feel like some of us, the nature of our home right now, it does not feel like the nature that we would want it to be.
SPEAKER_01: The atmosphere.
SPEAKER_01: It just feels like off, it doesn't feel peaceful, it feels chaotic.
SPEAKER_01: Um, it feels dark, some of us, for some of us, we just feel like we're getting into arguments all the time, or just we just need a fresh wind of the Spirit of God in our home.
SPEAKER_01: And so I just practically, for our next steps today, let's all go home and pray over our homes.
SPEAKER_01: And let's invite God's presence in and let's say, Father God, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: If I've allowed anything in this house that is not honoring to you, would you cleanse it?
SPEAKER_01: Would you purify it?
SPEAKER_01: And if you want to take it a step further, take out Psalm 91, read Psalm 91 over your home.
SPEAKER_01: But what if as a church, at all of our locations, we just double down and said, Father God, I want you to invade my home.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to invade every single room.
SPEAKER_01: I think that I'm gonna dream dreams here.
SPEAKER_01: I think that I'm gonna have visions here.
SPEAKER_01: I think that I'm gonna encounter you here.
SPEAKER_01: I think that areas that felt stressful, that you're gonna bring supernatural peace.
SPEAKER_01: I pray for an ease and a grace.
SPEAKER_01: I pray for a new spiritual authority when I walk into my home.
SPEAKER_01: I think that I'm gonna see Jesus when I walk in my home.
SPEAKER_01: I think that I'm gonna guard my tongue when I walk in my home.
SPEAKER_01: I think that if I'm a parent, I'm gonna speak life over my kids when I step into my home.
SPEAKER_01: I think that you're gonna give me all of a sudden supernatural patience and grace to parent my kids.
SPEAKER_01: If I'm a student, I'm in a home with parents that are tense.
SPEAKER_01: Father God, I pray that you would change the atmosphere of my home.
SPEAKER_01: Would you bring peace to my family?
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
SPEAKER_01: Let's do that, Shoreline City.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray over our homes and let's watch God do something so supernatural and invade our hearts with peace.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: This is sowing the right thing into the right place.
SPEAKER_00: And let's see this harvest come up and see transformation begin to happen in all of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: At every location, I want you to bow your heads for just a moment.
SPEAKER_00: So beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: He's the mighty chain breaker.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing that you're navigating that is too hard and too big for God.
SPEAKER_00: Come against the lie that you're gonna be stuck there forever.
SPEAKER_00: Come against the lie that says you will be in that spot with that thought, in that feeling, in that bondage, in that rut forever.
SPEAKER_00: You will not be.
SPEAKER_00: You'll not be in debt forever.
SPEAKER_00: You'll not be spiritually uh inept or broke, you will not be uh bound in anxiety and fear forever.
SPEAKER_00: You will not be a man or a woman that walks with insecurity and doubt forever.
SPEAKER_00: You will be exactly who God has called you to be.
SPEAKER_00: Fly how high He's called you to fly for His glory.
SPEAKER_00: As your heads above, if you're under the sound of my voice and you've never given your heart and your life to Christ, you've never made him first, you never made him number one.
SPEAKER_00: But you're saying you don't want to go your own way anymore, you want to go his way.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be first in your life, you want Jesus Christ to be first.
SPEAKER_00: You're saying you're not trying to work your way to salvation.
SPEAKER_00: You want by grace through faith in Jesus to be made new today.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there was a time you gave your heart to Christ, but you slipped away.
SPEAKER_00: You've gone another direction.
SPEAKER_00: And today you're saying, I don't want to go my own way anymore, I want to go his way.
SPEAKER_00: If that's you, you've never given your heart to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: At one point in time you didn't, you slipped away.
SPEAKER_00: Today, on the count of three, I just want you to throw your hand in the air and say, Yes, that's me.
SPEAKER_00: I want to give my heart and my life to Christ ready.
SPEAKER_00: One, two, three.
SPEAKER_00: Just lift your hand up.
SPEAKER_00: This is beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: We got friends all over the room, friends online.
SPEAKER_00: You're saying, yep, that's me.
SPEAKER_00: Friends in the balcony.
SPEAKER_00: You're saying, yep, that's me.
SPEAKER_00: I want to give my heart and my life to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, an additional seating.
SPEAKER_00: You're saying, yeah, that's me.
SPEAKER_00: I want to give my heart and my life to Christ today.
SPEAKER_00: I'm ask everyone to do me a favor, put your hand over your heart if you would not mind.
SPEAKER_00: And I want everyone to repeat this prayer out loud after me.
SPEAKER_00: Say, Dear Jesus, I ask you to forgive me of all my sins.
SPEAKER_00: I admit I've made mistakes.
SPEAKER_00: And today, I give you my heart.
SPEAKER_00: I give you my life.
SPEAKER_00: Give me the power to live for you in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Can we clap our hands, lift our hands up?
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: We're so proud of you.