The Value of Letting Go | Real Springcreek Church | Pastor Jerrid Fletcher

THE VALUE OF LETTING GO
Pastor Jerrid Fletcher
April 12, 2026

In “The Value in Letting Go,” Pastor Jerrid walks us through one of the most honest questions we rarely stop to ask ourselves: Can I let it go? Using the story of the Rich Young Ruler in Luke 18, this message unpacks not just what we hold on to — our outcomes, our identities, our hurt, and even the versions of ourselves that existed before loss reshaped us — but more importantly, why we hold on: because it’s familiar, because we don’t fully trust God with the outcome, because letting go feels like losing, and because many of us were simply never taught how. The message introduces the theology of an open hand — the idea that a closed fist, no matter how tightly gripped, exhausts us, blocks us from receiving anything new, and ultimately reveals a trust issue dressed up as a survival instinct. Through the Identity Test — “God is not good because of what He does; God is good because of who He is” — and the concept of the broken wanter, we are challenged to examine the hidden accounts we’ve been making deposits into for years: unforgiveness,  control, idolatry, and pain. Like the rich young ruler who came running with the right question and walked away sad because he couldn’t open his hand, we are each standing at a crossroads. The invitation of this message is simple and costly at the same time: open your hands, release what you were never meant to carry, and trust that what God places in open hands will always be worth what you released.

Discussion Questions 

• What is the thing you walked in carrying today — the burden that was there before you even
pulled into the parking lot? Have you named it yet?

• Is your grip on it rooted in Spirit-led perseverance or fear-driven holding on? What’s the
difference in your own life, and how do you tell which one is which?

• What does your “broken wanter” look like? What account have you been making deposits into —
unforgiveness, control, pain, or something else?

• The rich young ruler called Jesus “good” but couldn’t act on it when it cost him something. Where
is the gap between what you confess on Sunday and what you actually trust God with on
Monday?

• If God is good not because of what He does but because of who He is — does that change?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Alright, let's pray. Father, we thank you. We love you. We honestly. We thank you for the rain, Lord. Because some of our grass need it. Lord, thank you that you are a God who showers down blessings on us. But also your rain reminds us that you're there. That every cloudy day, there's a sunny day to follow somewhere. And through every storm and rain, Father, we know that you're in the midst of the storm as well. We love you and we thank you. In Jesus' name, we pray. Somebody say, Amen. Joseph Campbell said this. He said, We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that's waiting for us. Jim Elliott said another quote, and he said this: He is no fool who gives what he cannot accept, what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose. Two different men, two different centuries, two different worlds. Both of them landed on the same truth that I want to talk about this morning. That there is something on the other side of releasing what you will never reach as long as your hands are full of what you're already holding. There is a moment that most of us have lived, and maybe you're living it right now, where the life you plan and the life you're actually living in don't match. The timeline didn't hold up, the relationship didn't last. Well, thank you, Jesus. The dream didn't land the way you drew it up. And somewhere in the middle of all that, you made a decision, we made a decision, I made a decision that even with things not working out the way I wanted them to work out, I decided to still hold on to my plans. And that's the tension I want to sit in this morning when we hold on to things that God has been trying to get us to let go of. Campbell is right. There is a life waiting on the other side of our open hands, and we're going to talk about open hands today versus closed ones. But here's what I want us to know about us that some of us will stand at the door of this thing called life. We will want it, we've prayed for it, we've cried about it, and we will walk right back to the thing that God is saying, let go. Elliot put his finger on it, on something that's often hard to admit. That we're holding on to things we never are going to keep in the end. We just haven't made peace with letting go. And until we do, we stay stuck right there at the threshold of everything that God is trying to do next. Has anybody this morning found yourself at a threshold, at a crossing point this morning where you're like, I see what you're trying to do, Lord, but I'm having a little trouble getting there. Anybody there this morning? So I have a question for you this morning. I actually have two questions. The first question that I have for you, to the thing you're holding on to, number one, is do you really need it? Do you really need what you're holding on to? Number two, is can you let it go? Can you let it go? Herman Hesse said this. Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it's the letting go that makes us strong. And for every parent in the room, maybe you can kind of get where I'm about to go with this. It almost is like realizing your kid is not a kid anymore. That baby junior is now Big Jr. I never forget when I left Waco. Waco stands for We Ain't Comin' Out. Some of y'all get that in a second. W A C O We Ain't Coming. You know what? Never mind. I came out. I don't know why anybody else. I never forget when my mom dropped me off at my apartment 13 years ago in Fort Worth, Texas. I never forget her face as she was getting in the car to drive off. And most parents who have kids in college, you know, you owe my baby, baby, boop, boop, boop. I was like, Mom, I'm 20 something, like, let me go. And she was pinching my cheeks. I was like, let it go before the neighbors see you and think I'm a little mama's baby. But my mom got in that car when she dropped me off at that apartment. And then when she got in her car, her face was full of tears. And those tears said two things to me. One, she's afraid to leave her baby. But two, she knew I was following God's will for my life. Those tears was her assurance that I was doing exactly what God had called me to do. And this morning, before any of us walk out of here, I want you to know, just like my mom had that reassurance, I want to assure you today that on the other side of letting go, there's God has something great for you. That on the other side of you finally deciding, Lord, I can't hold this anymore, I can't do this anymore, there is a great thing called blessings and wealth waiting on you on the other side of you saying, God, you can have it. My mother, when she got in that car and drove off, she said, Lord, he's yours. For a moment I thought she was going to turn around and come back and be like, Well, I'm moving in. And I was about to be like, baby, we can't stay in this one bedroom apartment together, uh-uh. I ain't sleeping on the couch. But this morning, you may have walked in here with a sense of heaviness on you. You may have walked in here with something on your mind. Something in your life that the Lord has been picking at to saying, let me have it. My question to you today is where did that come from? Where did this value of you holding on come from? And what are you holding on to? Is it something that God has been asking you to lay at his feet? Or is it something that you walk in church every Sunday and you put it at the altar, and before you walk out, you pick it right back up and put it in your pocket and walk right back the door with it. While studying for this sermon, I had to ask two questions. What and why? Everybody say, what, why? What and why. This is the part of the sermon I want to kind of lay a little bit of a foundation, okay? And then we're gonna get into the text. I had to ask, what do we hold on to? And then I had to ask, why do we hold on to it? The answer to what we hold on came to me very easy. We hold on to outcomes, we hold on to timelines, our expectations of life. We hold on to the way we thought things were supposed to go. We hold on to our identity, who we are, because the idea of losing who we are is shifting is terrifying. We even hold on to people even when people are no good for us. I'm guilty of that. Because starting over feels almost impossible. We hold on to the hurt of those people that we hold on to the hurt that those people even have caused. We hold on to the fear of what moving on really means. But then we hold on to things that are not so obvious, things that are a little harder to see. We hold on to the versions of ourselves before the loss ever happened, before the marriage ever ended, before the friendship ever dissolved, before the diagnosis ever came, because the thing that before the thing that changed everything, we hold on to the version of us before because it felt known. It felt recognizable, it felt like the version that was we call us. Then we hold on to conversations. And I don't want to stay on this too long. We hold on to the conversations that we never got. We hold on to the hurt that should have been accompanied by an apology. Anybody ever still waiting on that apology from somebody? So you hold on to that unforgiveness, and in between letting go of that conversation that you should have had and waiting on that apology, lives this crater of unforgiveness, and we hold on to that unforgiveness, and that unforgiveness is like weight bags in our pocket and sand, and before long we know we are stuck in a place that God has been trying to get us away from. In a few weeks, Pastor Keith is gonna start a new series on unforgiveness. And I'm gonna be on the front row for that sermon. But a lot of us we're holding on to things, and it's like weight in our pockets, and we cannot really move toward what God has for us because we won't empty our pockets either. Then I had to ask myself, well, why do we hold on to these things? Now I want to admit, I'm no expert in why we hold on to things. I'm an expert in one person, and that is Jared. I'm an expert in my own why. And every single last one of us are experts in our own why. And this morning I'm going to challenge you to tap into why you hold on to things. Can we talk about it for a second? The first reason why I hold on to things is because they're familiar. That's the obvious one, right? It's familiar. We hold on because what we're carrying is is heavy, but we know we know what it is. And there's a strange comfort in familiar pain. We know its shape, we know how it moves, we know how to function around it, but the unknown of letting go, even if the unknown is freedom, it's scary to us. So we stay with what we know because familiarity is comfortable. But have you ever heard that comfort can kill you? The second reason is we don't trust the outcomes of what happened when we let things go. We wrestle with ourselves with the thought of if I let this go, what happens next? If I release this person, this plan, this dream, this version of my life, what actually fills the empty spaces of now what I've let go? Then we say things like, we don't always say out loud, but if we ever got still enough, vulnerable enough, underneath all the holding on, underneath all the reasons we tell ourselves why we hold on, there's a quieter confession that I had to make that was in my heart, that I had never fully said out loud, that I don't fully yet trust God with what comes after letting go. Now, we all sing the song, I trust in God. Come on, you got it? My Savior, the one. See what just happened? Oh, yeah, I just busted out. Now I really did that so I could find some new choir members as well. I'm playing. But we sing the song, I trust in God, my savior, the one who would never fail. Then we get to the part of I sought the Lord and He heard and He answered, right? I sought the Lord and He heard and He answered. But the truth is, we really don't trust God. We want to know everything that God has planned for us. We want to know the route, we want to know the map, we want to know the GPS coordinates, we want to know exactly where God is taking us without trusting Him before He ever tells us where we're going. So we sing empty, empty things to God when we really, in the truth is, is Lord, I trust you, but tell me where you're going first. I trust you. It's almost sorry, this tickle me, sorry. It's almost like somebody invites you over to their house and you be like, yeah, I'm coming, but first, who coming? Anybody ever done that? Like, who gonna be there first? Because who gonna be there first determines whether I'm coming? Or better yet, I don't know about y'all. I don't know about y'all, but I'm gonna go there. Somebody say they cooking. And it's a pot luck. And I'm be like, but who I'm cooking though? You know, it's is sister, is sister uh, sister, sister Sarah bringing that peach cobbler. I ain't touching that this time because she can't cook no peach cobbler. I don't know about y'all, but I'm finna give about my food. But scripture tells us in Proverbs 3, 5, and 6 to trust in the Lord with what? All thine heart and lean not to your own understanding. And in all your ways, not just some of it, but in all your ways, acknowledge him, he will do what? He will direct your path. It's the leaning not to your own understanding where we get stuck. The part that we skip over. We'll trust God, but we want to understand it first. The third reason why we hold on is feeling letting go feels like losing. And nobody wants to lose anything. We have attached meaning to what we were carrying. We hate to lose people, we hate to lose jobs, we hate to lose all those things, and and we know what losing feels like. We hold on from losing just in case. And I want to go a little deeper on the just in case. I hold on just in case they come back. And as the young people say, spin the block. I hold on just in case God changes his mind. I hold on just in case the door opens up. I hold on just in case one more day it'll all make sense. And I want you to be careful that your hold on doesn't turn into this unhealthy perseverance. And I want you to know the Bible does talk about perseverance. Romans 5, 3 and 5 says, For we glory in the sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance and what? Perseverance produces hope. I mean, uh character, and character does what? Produces what? Hope. But there's a difference between spirit-led perseverance and fear-driven holding on. One is anchored in what God told you to do, the other is anchored in what you cannot bring yourself to accept. And then just in case you want to know the difference, one is rooted in fear, and the other one is rooted in faith. And then there's this one reason why we hold on that the Lord really just dug in with me. He said, Jared, one real reason why we hold on is because some people was never ever taught how to truly let go. I said, Okay, Jesus, you're gonna have to make that make sense to me. He said, Jared, you have to under think understand one thing is very true about your human life. He said, You are allowed to let go. You are allowed to outgrow people, to outgrow seasons, to outgrow versions of yourself and places without it being a bad thing. He said, Maybe nobody ever set you down and taught you what it is to let go and to grieve healthily. And I said, huh? He said, because you do understand when you lose something, there's a form of grief that comes with that. He said, but there is a healthy grief that you can tap into if you lean into me. And I said, Okay, Jesus. I said, You talking this morning. Because I want us to understand something. There's a difference between honoring your past and being imprisoned by your past. I want us to understand that holding on was never meant to be our default. It was never meant to be how we carry life. Because we're not storage units built for pain and for fear and for dead seasons, for expired relationships and old identities that God had moved past. We were absolutely built for freedom. And in Jesus Christ, there is freedom to be free, to be true, to be free indeed. God thank you that when I tap into you, I finally find my freedom. And there's somebody who's been looking for freedom. Freedom from your past, freedom from an addiction, freedom from a chain. And I'm gonna invite you to tap into my best friend in his name is Jesus Christ. The one who will never fail. The one that after I sought the Lord, he heard it, he answered. He answers every single time. Now I can get a little happy on that one. Let me calm down because I feel my old Waco church, the one I never left, coming back out. But there's something about trusting in God when all this fails. But one thing I know about God, and those of us who are afraid of losing something old, is that God is the God of new seasons. He is the God of new beginnings, He is the God of new outcomes, He is the new, He is the God of new doors, He is the God of new things. So if you've been waiting for God to do something for you, you got to let go of what's old in order to tap into what's new. And there's Bible for that. Ecclesiastics 3 and 1 says, He tells us for everything there's a season and everything under heaven. Isaiah 43 and 18 says, forget the former things and do not dwell on the past. See, I'm doing a new thing. And then Daniel 2 and 1 reminds us that he is the one who changed the times and the seasons. But the tension, the tension is God can be doing a brand new thing, and I'm guilty of this. And we can still be clinging to the old thing. There's this tug of war, and one thing you don't want to do is get in the tug of war with God. Because your hands will absolutely burn on that rope. Which brings me to what I want to call the theology of an open hand. Everybody say open hand. Now I want to do an exercise this morning, alright? Y'all gotta stay with me. For a moment, I want you to put your hands out. Put your hands out. Even if you didn't put no deodorant on, that's cool. Just do this. Just do this number here. If you see anybody do this number here, take them to the dollar store after church, okay? Just just now you got your hands out. I want you to ball your fist up. And I want you to clinch them. I want you to feel it until I tell you to let it go. I want you to feel the tension in your fingers, the strain in your forearms, the way that everything in you tightens up just to keep this grip. Do you feel it? Now, some of y'all have been balling your fist up for a long time. Let that anger go. This is what a closed hand looks like in the soul. When God is trying to rip out what we have clenched in our hands. We tighten up. And I want you to think about it. No, you can let them go. Let them go for you before you pass out. We ain't got no medics in here. I'm not coming down there. I would. This is what a closed hand looks like. And for some in this closed hand, we are clenching control. We're clenching fear. A closed hand will exhaust you. Because it takes energy to hold on. It takes energy to keep your hand this tight. It takes effort to maintain a grip. And the longer you hold on, the tighter you squeeze, one thing I've learned is the more it costs us. It costs us our peace and our joy and our ability to be present. It takes our capacity. And all of this slowly drains the energy it takes from us being whoever God called us to be. When you close your hand to God, you're telling God essentially, I got this, God. I got this. I can fight this. And my mama always told me, God's arms are longer than ours ever will be. A closed hand ultimately is a trust issue dressed up as a survival instinct. And the enemy knows this. He's not going to come at you with something obvious. Sometimes he just needs you to keep your fist closed because he knows that a closed hand cannot receive, it cannot be filled, and a closed hand keeps you in a constant state of maintenance, spending all your energy to protect what you have instead of walking in what God has prepared for you. Now, this next part of my sermon, to talk about the, you know, this visual of a ball of fist, I've thought to myself, how am I gonna visually explain this to everybody? Because to talk about it is the one thing, but to see it is not. I'm a seer. Anybody visual learners in the room? Like you show me something. That's why, like as a kid, my I probably broke more things than I should have, had I just read the instructions. But yeah, instructions are for, you know, just show me what it looked like and I plug it in there you go. So if you weren't wondering why the things in your house are broke, just read the instructions. But I got to a point in the sermon and I said, Lord, how do I break this sermon down? But I also want to ease the tension in the room. Because I know up until this point, some of the points we've been talking about are very self-reflective and it's very heavy. And I got to looking for different clenched hand memes. And then the internet does what the internet does, it distracts you. And I looked up open hands, and then I went into these memes, and I said, oh Lord, about to get myself in trouble. I came across the Arthur meme. Y'all know Arthur in the yellow hand, and he had his fist clinched up like this after he had hit DW. Okay, so I don't have any PBS kids in the room. That's cool. That's cool. I get it, I get it. If you watch PBS, that means you were over 40, so you don't have to admit that this morning. But then I came across this meme. This guy. I came across this guy. And everybody knows who this guy is, right? You know, they call him the success kid. And then I was like, I wonder what else is what this means. I just kept scrolling. So I'm gonna just share a few of them what you see. Go to the next one. A clinch fish can mean, oh, I ordered a 10-piece chicken nugget, and boom, I got a living. Yes, God is good. And that's exactly how I feel every time I go to Razor Case, get that box combo with that sweet tea, and there's an extra chicken ficking in my com in my in my box. Thank you, Lord. You don't know the favor of the Lord until you get the extra food in your box. If you have never got extra chicken tinntas in your box, then you're not favored. Take it up with God. I'm playing, I'm playing, I'm playing. But every time I go to Razor Case, y'all are gonna be sticking me in Razores. Razor Case is sponsored me at this moment. But every time I go, or I go to Chick-fil-A and there's extra waffle fries at the bottom of my bag, ooh, Jesus loves me. Yes, I know. Or, or the better one is, because y'all know I drive a fast car. And every time, not that one yet. Go back, go back. Okay. Every time we get passed by a streeting, a speeding driver, I'll be like, Lord, give him a ticket. I'll be like, Lord, bless him with a ticket. That's so evil of me. Lord, bless him with a ticket. How is getting a ticket a blessing? But that's what you get for speeding. And I'll be like, yes. I go to the next one, Mill. But for all the adults in the room, this is a grown-up moment. When we finally open the mailbox and there's no bills in there. Ain't God good? Go to the next one, Mill. Don't clap because you're back at this guy. Because you know why? They don't mail you your bills anymore, they just email them to you. You're welcome. So I thought about it. I thought, man, you know, this clinch fist can mean a whole bunch of things. It can mean yes or it can mean mmm. And too many of us, too many of us, we live not in the state of yes. We live in the state of. We live in a state of anguish with our fists balled up. Fighting fights that we should not be fighting. Swinging at things that we should not be swinging at. We think that we can do it. But have you ever put your hands down long enough and then watch God fight a fight for you? As a song said, This is how I fight my battles. It may look like I'm surrounded, but I'm surrounded by who? By you. And every time your past gets to talking, every time that fear gets to talking, I want you to tell your fear, this is how I fight my battles. You may have come in this room this morning with pain. You may have tears. You can have worries. And every single time I've had those and I've gave it to God, he said, Jared, I got you. It's not just a feeling for us to release our pain to God. There's scripture for it. 1 Peter 5 and 7 says, Cast all your cares on him. Why? Because he cares for you. Psalms 22, I mean Psalms 55 and 22 says, in double downs on it, he says, cast not just some of your cares, but cast all your cares on the Lord, and he will sustain you. For he has never let the righteous be forsaken. And Matthew 11 and 22 says, Come to me. Don't go to nobody else. Let me stop right there. That is the issue. Anytime we got problems, we go to everybody else. Versus running to our knees. Versus saying, God, help me. God, I need you. He says, God gives us specific instructions in that scripture. Come to me. Come to me. All, not just some of y'all, not just those who come to church every Sunday, not just those who got a great relationship with me. He says, Come to me, all who are weary and burdened. And if you are falling the category of weary and burdened, you got permission. This covers you. And then he says, the best part, I'll give you rest. And some of us ain't been sleeping. Some of us got our anxiety is high, and I'm one of them. Because too much I carry what the Lord has been trying to let go. Because letting go is just not an emotional decision. It's not a self-help principle dressed up in church clothes. It is a posture and it is a practice. And if you need proof of that, if you need to see what it looks like when someone stands at the intersection of holding on and letting go, I want to take you to a moment in scripture of a man, of a moment when Jesus looks this man dead in his eyes, a man who had everything. And he asked him to do one thing that he could not bring himself to do, and that was let it go. This story that we want to talk about for a second in the Bible is the rich young ruler. Anybody ever heard the story of the rich young ruler? I want to talk about this in the context of that, and I kind of want to, over the next 10 minutes, kind of slow walk. Yes, I only got 10 minutes left. You're welcome. I'm playing. I want to slow walk through this scripture. And I want to give it to you the way God gave it to me. Y'all cool with that? The story of the rich young ruler. And before we ever go through this, these verses, I want to lay a little foundation about this young man. You notice his name is the rich young ruler. They didn't give him a name. He didn't have, oh, the rich young ruler named John, or the rich young ruler named Jared. The Bible purposely leaves his, leaves a name off of it so that we can identify ourselves as this person. So anytime in the Bible you see anything like the woman with the issue of blood, or the woman this, or the man this, there's not a name associated with it, it's because the Lord wants you to see yourself as this person. This man wasn't a skeptic looking for an argument when he came to Jesus. Luke tells us that he was a ruler, a man of position, of influence, of upstanding in his community. He had wealth, he had status, and by every religious and social measure of today, this man was doing everything right. And yet, something was missing. Something that all of his wealth, all of his status could not feel. And he figured, I know what it is. So he came to Jesus with what I call the most sincere and important question that anybody could ever ask in this human life. He said, Jesus, what must I do to inherit internal life? Now Jesus had been asked many questions in his day. You've been asked a lot of stuff. Jesus, will you do this? Jesus, can you do this? Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Ooh, WWJ, I couldn't have been Jesus. Let's just start there. I couldn't have done it. And I want you to imagine for a moment that you're standing face to face with Jesus. That you're this rich young ruler, that you get this moment. You're not reading about Jesus, you're not hearing about Jesus, not someone telling you about Jesus, but you are personally standing face to face with Jesus. My question to you is what would you ask Jesus? I know what I'm asking. Where's my grandma? That's the first question I'm asking. Many of us would be looking for our loved ones. But if it wasn't about loved ones, and we needed something from the Lord, and you were standing face to face with him, what would you ask him? Then the second thing I want to know is would you be willing to do whatever he asks you to do in order to receive that in which you ask him for. Because our asking requires a response. Right? We just can't ask and not respond. It requires us to have an action. Anytime we're asking God for something, it requires us to have an action behind it. The rich young ruler had this moment that we all just dreamed about. He asked what I believe to be the most important question anyone could ever ask. What must I do to inherit eternal life? He didn't ask, what can I do to inherit more wealth and more stuff, more influence, more power. But what can I do to inherit eternal life? And I want to be careful here because it's easy to read this passage of scripture and immediately think it's about money. The point of this scripture is that Jesus tells him at the end of the conversation there's this one thing that you gotta do. There's one thing that you lack. And I had to ask myself, Jared, what is your one thing that Jesus has been asking you about? Because every time Jesus asks me about it, I get real quiet and say, No, Lord, I don't want to talk about that today. Ever been there with the Lord? He wants to have a conversation and immediately we get distracted. Well, let's look at Luke chapter 18, and then we're gonna get up out of here today. Verse 18 says, A certain ruler asked him, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Now, the first thing I want you to see is who is asking the question. Luke identifies this ruler as a man of position, of influence, a man by every standard had it already going on, which tells us right from the start that position alone cannot answer the deepest questions of the soul. But I want you to stop for a second and think about this conversation because it matters more than it seemed. He calls Jesus good teacher. Everybody say good teacher. Now it may sound like a simple greeting to say to us, but back in that rich young ruler's day, in that culture, in that culture, that wasn't a casual thing to say because you gotta understand the word good, the word good in its absolute sense was a word reserved for God and God alone. So when this man opens up with good teacher, whether he fully understands it or not, he was saying something that went far beyond a greeting. He was putting Jesus in a category that no ordinary man in that time belonged in. And I love the fact that Jesus doesn't just receive the compliment and move on, he stops the conversation. He addresses it directly. Because one thing I know about King Jesus is he never lets a moment pass by without moving someone closer to the truth of who he really was. Verse 19, y'all still with me? Says, Jesus, check Jesus' response. He says, Why do you call me good? I want to let that sit for a second. He asked the man, first off, in true Jesus fashion, the man asked a question, and then Jesus answered with a question. That irritates me. When people do that to me, it's like I ask you a question, and do you hit me with a question back? I'll be like, but I asked you a question first, but I asked you a question first. You know what? Don't worry about it. That's me. Anybody else like that? You know, you okay, never mind. Jesus said, Why do you call me good? And then Jesus kept going on. He said, No one is good except God alone. Now I want to slow down for a second. I need you to understand what Jesus is doing here. Because he's not being modest, he's not deflecting a compliment, and he's certainly not uh denying his own divinity, he is doing something far more intentional. He's essentially asking this man do you really know who you're actually talking to right now? Do you really know? Because if you believe what you just said, then I am good, if you genuinely believe that I am good in the way that only God is good, then you have to reckon with what that makes me Lord over your life. Because in order to say that God is good, because we say it all the time, God is what? Good all the time, and all the time what? Now let me flip that for a second. If you're saying God is good and you're recognizing God as good and God is Savior as God is king, that means you're actually acknowledging his Lordship. So when you replace God as good with the Lord is good and all the time God, the Lord is good, that means you're saying, Lord, that you are the Lord over my life at all times, whether in good seasons and bad seasons, whether in happy times and bad times, you're saying, Lord, you got this and I don't. You're acknowledging that the Lord is good and his mercy endureth forever. That's what the Lord wants to know. Did this man really understand who he was talking to? You're calling me good. But to say that I'm good means to say that I'm the Lord, and if I'm the Lord, that means I run your life. That means when I get to the back side of this scripture, that means if I run your life, that means you gotta let it go. And a lot of us having come to that conclusion, we haven't put that together. And before I read this scripture, I thought it was about money, but it was really about the Lord saying, Am I the Lord over your life? Am I really in control like you say I'm in control? Am I really the head of your life like you say I'm the head of your life? Because when I ask you to do something, it shouldn't be no hesitation. Let it go. The ruler came asking a question about eternal life. But before Jesus answered that, he surfaces a more foundational issue in this man. Who do you believe I am? Because to answer what I must do to inherit the kingdom depends entirely on who you think you're talking to. That's what that conversation was going with with the man, which brings it to what I call the identity test. Why do you call me good? That is the question Jesus asked. And on the surface, it sounds simple, but underneath there, there's a theological way I don't want us to miss this morning. Because Jesus is not asking about a greeting, he's not asking about a conviction. He's essentially saying, before we go any further, young man, before we go any further, I need to know what you actually believe about who I am. I want to know what you believe about who I am. Because what you believe about me will determine everything that happens next in this conversation. And I want to ask the same question this morning. Why do we call God good? In your own time, why do you call God good? Why do you? Is it because things are going well? Is it because your prayers got answered? Is it because the job came through or the relationship worked out or the diagnosis came back clear? Or is our theology of God's goodness built on our circumstance? Because if it is, the moment that God stopped doing what we asked him to do, is he now not good? Because God is good what? All the time. We just said that. And all the time, God is good. And there's scripture for that. And I want you to know, God is not good because of what he does, he's good because of who he is. If God doesn't do another thing else for me, and I and we always say that. If the Lord don't do anything else for me, he's done enough. And the truth is, he absolutely has done enough. He's done it. He's not good for what he does in my life. He's good for who he is in my life. And I can tell you a long story about what he's done. I can give you a list about what he's done, but I can give you a longer list about who he is to me. I can tell you that he's savior, that he's alpha and omega, that he's the deliverer, that he's a healer, that he's a way maker out of nowhere. I can tell you these things because I've lived these things. We've all lived these things. We are a testament to who God is, and we are just a benefactor to what he does. I can get happy about this one all day long. The scripture declares, you are good and you do good. The goodness comes first, the action flows from his nature. He doesn't do good things to become good, he does good things because his goodness is the very essence of who God is. Psalms 105 says this, for the Lord is good and his mercy endures forever and his faithfulness through every generation. That means not just my grandma's generation, not just my mama generation, not just your generation, it's gonna be your kids' generation. God don't change his goodness, it's to stay here forever because that's the type of God that he is. Let me keep running. So do we believe God is good enough for us to open our hands and let go? Do we trust his character to release the thing we've been holding on to? Because the ruler called Jesus good, and when it came time to act on their belief, his hands stayed closed. And that's the gap that Jesus is trying to expose right here in verse 19. The gap between what we confess and what we actually do trust. It's easy to call God good on a Sunday morning. It's easy to sing it, it's easy to say amen to. But the real identity test, the mirror test, is not what's happening in this building. It's what happens on Monday morning when the Lord says, Give me your worries, give me your burdens, give it to me and let me have it. That's where we find out really about who he is. Jesus isn't saying he's not good, but he's asking the ruler to think about the weight of his own words on why he calls him good. Was eternal life just another thing for this rich young ruler? Or was it the fact that he realized good teacher, God, I gotta be with you. Verse 20. Now watch what Jesus does here in verse 20. Because this is intentional, this is surgical. Jesus is the master teacher. Verse 20 says, Jesus says, You know all my commandments. You should not commit adultery, you should not commit murder, you should not steal, you should not give false witness, honor our mother and our father. He goes through all those commandments, but he leaves out a few. And I want you to know, he deliberately leaves them out. He doesn't quote, you shall have no other gospel for me. He doesn't quote, you should not covet. He does not quote the commandments that deal with the condition of the heart, the ones that nobody can see. Now, why does Jesus do this? Is he being forgetful? No. Is he being accidentally leaving those out? Nah, this is Jesus we're talking about. Jesus is being strategic because the commandments he leaves out, those aren't about what we do. It's about what we want. Jesus is testing this man's behavior. He's setting up a moment that will expose his heart. We all walk around with what Pastor Keith calls a broken, a broken wander. We were at lunch the other day and I was talking about my message because I want to I like to bounce my ideas off of them before I just come up here and just say anything. Because I get nervous. I just want y'all to know I get nervous coming up here at FYI. I don't get nervous to sing, I get nervous to preach. When you talk, I promise I'll be sweating bullets every time I preach, I'll be like, Lord, let me say something's gonna really stick home today. Lord, that's why, that's why I'm gonna be honest. That's why after church, y'all don't see me at that front door. Because I don't want to hear, oh, Pastor JJ did good. Did I? Did I? G I'll be, did I really, you know. That'd be me. Okay, okay. I'm being honest, you're welcome. I'm gonna go up there today because I just want to see y'all. Pastor Keith said we have a broken wanter. And we were sitting at lunch, and he said, I said, huh? He said, Jared, we want the things we want. We crave them. And he was right. I wanted that Mike's chicken that was in front of my face. Like, hurry up, get through this. He says, we have a I want what I want and I want it now. Y'all remember those JG Wentworth commercials? It's my money and I want it now. You remember this? What the graph again? It's my money and I want it now. Called JG Wentworth. It's never several. Hey, it's never never good. You're welcome. Now you're gonna go home thinking about that today. That's us. Before we decide this story isn't for us and our bank accounts isn't like this rich young ruler, I want you to understand that our wealth is tied up in other things. We might not have a big bank account, but we're rich in unforgiveness, rich in pain, rich in control, rich in rich in the things that the Lord has been like, let it go. And we constantly make deposits into these accounts that give us no substance. And when the Lord says, give me your bank account of that unforgiveness, of that pain, of that control, we struggle to let it go. We're rich in other areas. See, a broken wanter wants what it wants, and it turns into coveting. And nobody understood this better than Paul. Paul said in Romans 7 and 7, and I want to read the message translation of this because I think Eugene Patterson did a great job of it. He says, without its clear guidance for right and wrong, moral behavior would honestly be guesswork. I would have never known what selfishness was had I heard don't covet. So in other words, don't want what you really want. And then I and then when the law said don't covet, suddenly I was doing it all the time. Every kind of coveting imaginable. Don't miss what Paul is saying here. The most religious, disciplined man in the room, Pharisees of all Pharisees, blameless under the law. And when he says the commandment that broke him wasn't murder, wasn't adultery, wasn't coveting, it was coveting. It was his wonder. His wanter is what broke him the most. And he says that something that suddenly I was doing it all the time. It was a mirror for every single last one of us in this room, including myself. I want to close this message with this. We are Paul. We are the rich young ruler. We want what we want, even if it cost us. We hold on to what we hold on to, even if it cost us. Which brings me to the last three verses of this scripture. Verse 21, the rich young ruler says, Jesus, I've kept all your commands since I was a boy. I believe that he did. But that wasn't the moral of the story. Verse 22 lands this plane for us today. When Jesus heard this, he said unto him, You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. And then come follow me. Verse 23 is how this story ends. When he heard this, the rich young ruler, he became very sad because he was very wealthy. It went back to his wanter. I had to think today how I was gonna close this message. And I tussled with a few thoughts, and I had to look myself in the mirror and I said, Jared, what has God been asking you to open your hand and give him? Now, y'all know I'm a big music junkie, right? Of course I sing worshiper. I want to make a confession. You ever get in my car? You will always hear Way FM and Chris Tomlin and Maverick City music. You may hear a little jelly roll. You may hear a little Luther Vandros. Shooby dooby dooboo. Anyway, you may even hear a little Taylor Swift, don't judge me. But growing up, there was this one song that puts together the essence of this message for me, and I want to give it to you as we wrap up and walk out today. It's by this guy by the name of PJ Morton from New Orleans. PJ wrote a song that every time I hear it, it pulls me into tears. Because it's the story of my life. And I want to give you the verse in the chorus of this song, and then we're gonna go home. The verse said, I couldn't seem to fall asleep. I had so much on my mind. I want you to find yourself in this song. I was searching for the peace, the peace I could not find. So then I kneeled down to pray. And I was praying, Lord, help me, please. And then he said, You don't have to cry. I'll supply all your needs. Then the chorus said, as soon as I stop worrying, worrying how the story ends, when I let go and I let God have his way. That and only then, that's when things start happening. When I stopped looking at back then, and I let go and I let God have his way. The back part of that song repeats the same four words. Let go, let God. Let go, let God, let go, let God. I don't know who in this room this morning needs to let go and let God. Five years ago, last week, I walked into this church. It's my first Sunday here as a worship pastor. I had no idea I would end up at Spring Creek. Zero. This church wasn't even on my radar. I was working in the industry. I was in the music industry. I was working for one of the biggest names in gospel music. 20-time Grammy Award winner. His name is Kirk Franklin, so you wanted to go Google it. I love Kirk. He's one of our greatest mentors to this day. I can call him, he'll pick up the phone, we can go have lunch. I love him. He showed me how to be more of a man than my own father has. People can say what they want to say about him, but I know the man for who he is, not for what he does. But the Lord told me in 2019, he said, I gotta fix your wonder. And I said, Huh? He said, You're gonna have to leave this because I have a greater work for you. And I said, Okay, Lord. Because there was one thing about working in that gospel industry and not being full of the gospel. And that was me. There's one thing about working in the Christian industry and not being so much of a Christian. My wonder was on the recognition that came with being in the room. I wanted to win the Grammys, I wanted to do all those things, and I've done those things, and it did not fulfill anything close to Jesus fulfilling my life. See, I was called to preach at the age of 17. And I thought, Lord, I'm gonna just go run off to the music industry and I'm gonna go write worship songs, I'm gonna go do that. And the Lord was like, no, I didn't call you to do all that. I gifted you to do that. But I have a greater work for you inside the walls of the church. During the pandemic, I walked away and I walked through those doors at 2660 Beltline Road. And those have been the best doors I've ever walked through. I can't tell you how much it means to be in ministry. Do I miss the industry? Every once in a while. Do I miss coming in here and seeing your face every week? I get a feeling every Sunday. That was what the Lord told me to let go of. That was my broken wonder. So when I think about who God is in my life, I think about what he's done for me. I think about, you said, Jerry, you gotta let go of what you want and let me have my way in your life. And I'm so glad he did. Now, I've been here five years. Now you're about to get another five. 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50. Now hold on. Some of y'all clapping because if I would have said 60, that means I've been 100. I'm not gonna be here to 100. Today when you walk out of here, let it go. Let it go. Let it go. That's it. Cool? Let's pray. Father, thank you. Thank you that you remind me that you're still good. In sermons like today, Father, they remind me that, man, we shouldn't just praise you for the things you do, but praise you for who you are. And I pray if there's anything that anybody walks out of here today with, they realize that we should love you for who you are, not just for the things you do. That we realize that you are good. Lord, and for those of us who are struggling to let go and to let God help us identify the things that are in our hand that we're clenching on to hard, that have started to replace to replace you in our life. Lord, we need you. We thank you and we love you. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Somebody say amen. Hey, I love y'all. I'll see you later.