Blessed Assurance | Real Springcreek Church | Pastor Jerrid Fletcher

BLESSED ASSURANCE
Pastor Jerrid Fletcher 
May 17, 2026

"Blessed Assurance" turns the mirror of forgiveness inward, reminding us that while we've spent weeks learning to forgive others and set healthy boundaries, the one name we cannot leave off the forgiveness list is our own. Drawing from Fanny Crosby's 1873 hymn and the bedrock truth of Romans 8:1 — "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" — this message confronts the lie that grace must be earned through suffering. Many of us have built a prison from the inside and lost the key on purpose, holding ourselves to a standard we'd never apply to anyone else, mistaking guilt for godliness and chains for conviction.

But the gospel declares a different verdict. God's mercy doesn't wait for us to finish punishing ourselves — it meets us, like David in Psalm 51, broken and empty-handed at the mercy seat. Whether the weight you carry is one you placed on yourself (unmet expectations, regret, comparison) or one others placed on you (wounding words, betrayal, abuse, spiritual harm), Jesus has already absorbed the sentence. The "now" of Romans 8:1 is not tomorrow, not when you feel worthy — it's now. Blessed Assurance isn't a hope-so salvation; it's a know-so salvation. And God isn't done writing your story yet.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 

1. The message reminded us, "We hold ourselves to a standard we would never apply to another human being." Where in your life do you find yourself extending grace to others but withholding it from yourself? What do you think is underneath that?

2. Romans 8:1 says there is now no condemnation. Why do you think the word "now" is so hard for many of us to actually receive? What would change in your daily life if you truly believed the verdict has already been declared in your favor?

3. The sermon described two categories of weight — the weight we put on ourselves and the weight others have put on us. Which one do you carry more of, and can you name a specific voice, memory, or moment that still echoes in your head today?

4. The story of being called "a mere drummer" showed how one word can shape years of decisions and self-perception. What words have been spoken over you that you've allowed to become your identity? What would it look like to give those words back?

5. "Enough is enough comes when you stop negotiating with what's killing you." What is the one thing — a regret, a shame, a chain — that you sense God is inviting you to lay down today? What's keeping you from walking through the door He's already opened?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, so today I want to kind of continue a little bit in the conversation that Pastor Keith has started over the last three weeks about this thing about baggage. I did ask him when he asked me to preach where he was gonna land, because I didn't want to step into that. But I figured out in the midst of studying, listening to him, that there's this conversation about forgiveness, but there's one part that we often forget when it comes about forgiveness. We can forgive others, but we struggle in forgiving ourselves. Amen to that? So today, I I didn't want to, you know, I didn't want to shift the audience too far to the left or to the right, and when he comes back next week to close this, close the series, because it has been an amazing series, y'all. Like when I say amazing, it has been wonderful. But what I did not want to do was get up and yank the audience so far to the left, uh, with something totally, you know, random, and then him having to come back and kind of center us. So today I kind of want to live in that same vein of forgiveness, but I want us to look at the the thought of being able to forgive ourselves and the things that keep us from doing it. Y'all cool with that? All right, let's strap strap your seatbelt on because you know when I get to going, I just get to go in. I'm gonna try to slow down today. But let's pray. Father, thank you so much for today. Thank you so much for this word, thank you for the opportunity to just talk about you and your goodness and how much you love us. Lord, we love you and we thank you. In Jesus' name, we pray. Somebody shout, Amen. All right, let's let's let's have a good time, relax, let's let's just walk it, rock and roll. In 1900, no, I was not born in 1900, so don't even look at me that way. In 1900, in South Africa, there was the Boer War was going on, and two companies of Christian soldiers were passing each other along the way. And these company of soldiers began to yell out one to another, one on the left side and one on the right side, and the one on the left said, Hey boys, 494, 494. And the other group on the right side responded, Six further on, six further on. See what was happening as these boys are heading into war, they were reciting their hymn book, they were reciting the numbers in their hymn books. 494 is number is the is the song, God be with you until we meet again. And six pages from 494 gets us to page 500, which is the song, Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine. These are men marching towards gunfire, finding courage not in their weapons, but in the reminder that they belonged to someone and that someone was Jesus, and Jesus was theirs and they were his. See, just a few years earlier, in 1873, nor was I born in, a woman sat in her friend's parlor in New York. She was blind since she was the age of six. And she listened as this melody floated through the room. Her friend Phoebe Knapp had just composed a brand new tune, and she leaned over and asked her friend, hey Fanny, what does this melody I'm playing say to you? And without hesitation, Fanny Crosby whispered the words, Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine. And within that same afternoon, one of the most beloved Christian hymns was born. Now, what's remarkable about this story isn't just the song. It is the woman behind it. See, Fanny never wasted a day mourning about what she did not have. She never let her blindness, her condition, her current state become a prison of stagnation, regret, or self-condemnation. Nor did it give her a case of the I wishes. Do y'all know what the I wishes are? I wish I could see. I wish my life would look a little different. I wish I had gone another way. And for me, I wish I would have never worn these scrubs this morning. Don't laugh too hard. I really thought I was doing something. I promise you you would never see this outfit again. It would be on my Facebook and I am on the beach. Anyway, Fanny once said that if she could have her sight restored tomorrow, she would refuse it. Because she believed that her blindness kept her focus on the Lord rather than being distracted by the world. Fanny picked up on what she did have. She had her faith, she had her gift of words, and I would say over from over eight to nine thousand hymns later, written by her, I would call that a life fully lived, wouldn't you? Instead of being consumed by what was missing, she chose to live focused on what was possible through God's grace. And today I want to carefully walk through this conversation about the holiness of the song called Blessed Assurance that Fanny wrote about. When we think about the words blessed assurance, it means to feel sure, to be at peace, to be spiritually secure because of our faith in God. It's one thing about a subtle knowing, a knowing that God is for us and not against us. When we look at the word blessed, anybody blessed in the room this morning? Don't fool with me. Anybody blessed this morning? I like to say I'm blessed and highly favored. I thought I was blessed when I put this on. Anyway, when we look at the word blessed, it means something holy. It means to be set apart by God. An assurance means certainty without no room for doubt. And when we put together the two, we get a sacred, God-giving confidence that Jesus is yours and we are his. Anybody believe that this morning? But here is the tension this morning. We sing Blessed Assurance on Sunday morning. But then Monday morning, we wake up rehearsing every reason why we do not believe and belong in that blessed assurance. We will wake up tomorrow and talk ourselves out of that blessed assurance. Even with a promise that is so sacred, there is still a cloud that hovers over every single last one of our lives. And that cloud does not come from God, but it follows us like a shadow. It's a shadow, it shows up in the quiet moments when the music stops and the lights go down, and it's just you and your thoughts. And it whispers the same question over and over. Can God really love somebody like me? Can God really forgive somebody like me? That cloud has a name. And the name of that cloud today is the cloud of self unforgiveness. It is the very thing that keeps so many of us from walking in the blessed assurance of grace that already belongs to us. So today, I want to talk about the one conversation many of us have been avoiding. The one that keeps many of us, the one that many of us have refused to talk about. The one person that we have refused to forgive, and that person is you and me. Because let's be real, we live in a world that consistently tries to tell you something differently about the blessed assurance. It's a world that whispers confusion, fear, and uncertainty. And yet, if we're honest, this is where the tension starts to creep in. Because we say blessed assurance, we sing it really loud, we declare it, but sometimes we do not believe in it and we sure don't live in it. We know the truth in our heads, but our hearts' doubt still shows up. Not always loud, sometimes quiet, subtle, and persistent. That doubt begins to sound like this. Did God really forgive me? Am I really changed? And why do I struggle like this? And before we know it, that no-soul salvation that we know about God begins to reverse course. Not because God has ever changed his mind about us, but because we began to question what he has already settled. And here's where I want to live today in that gap between what God says about us and what we feel about our own self. Have you ever lived in that tension? Well, what you say about yourself versus what God says about you. There's a difference between what God says and what we believe and we begin to talk to ourselves. And we're going to talk about the voices in just a second. And there's in the middle of all the noise, all the tension that we live and put ourselves in, there is a steady hope. There is a still firm foundation that is found in the blessed assurance in Jesus Christ. And that assurance is, and that is the same assurance that has kept you when life got rocky. It is the assurance that when the storms of life began to raise, that Jesus was the anchor at the bottom of the raging sea. It is that assurance that my grandmother used to sing about that said, Oh, blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. And no matter what the Lord, the devil tries to tell you, you gotta remember that Jesus is yours. Y'all with me so far? Over the last few weeks, Pastor Keith has masterfully, when I say masterfully, walked us through this conversation surrounding forgiveness. Anybody enjoyed that series so far? Week one, he showed us how unresolved hurt shapes our lives. Week two, he exposed the lies that make unforgiveness feel impossible. Week three, he helped us navigate the boundaries and relationships without giving into bitterness. But today, I want to turn that mirror around just for a second. Because in the midst of forgiving others and setting those healthy boundaries, sometimes the hardest person to forgive in the process is the one looking back at you in the mirror or whatever Michael Jackson said. That went over all y'all's head. Have y'all seen that Michael Jackson movie? Was it good to you? Good, because first, first, man, y'all tell y'all about something about first first service. I was like, have y'all seen Michael Jackson? David was like, nah, it stinks. I was like, whoa, didn't mean to start a ride in church. But I'm glad all of us agree. You all are getting into heaven. You're welcome. You all were making it to the Purley Gates because I thought the Michael Jackson movie was wonderful. Hee hee. Anyway, come back. I'm trying to focus. What I've learned in this process while studying for this sermon, it is one thing to release the person who hurts you. But rarely do we talk about being able to release ourselves from the hurt that we've even caused or that others have caused. We can write the letter that we'll never see in. We can pray the prayer of release. We can even sit across from the person and say, I forgive you. But when we go back home, look in the mirror, we meet the person we still haven't made peace with. And somewhere along the way, we've become the hardest case in our own docket. We extended grace to the people who wronged us and then turn around and hand ourselves a life sentence for our own mistakes. We can forgive the friend who betrayed us, but we will not forget the version of us who trusted that friend. We can forgive the ex, we can forgive the boss, we can forgive the family member, we forgive the coworker, but we won't forgive the person we were when we made that decision, when we said that word, walk through that season, or we wasted that year. And here is what I have learned. You cannot live free on the outside while you're still your own warden on the inside. Can I say it one more time? You cannot live free on the outside while still beating yourself up, telling yourself that you are no good, and being your own warden on the inside. While preparing for this sermon, I had to ask myself three questions. And I want to try my best to answer these questions today in hopes that it helps someone in the room today that struggles with this idea of being able to forgive yourself. Here's the three questions we're gonna walk through today. You know, I, you know, I got a little baptism, so I got my three points in the sermon, I'm not body here. Amen? Amen. The first question is when do we say enough is enough? Right? The second question I want to answer is why don't we really forgive ourselves? And then I want to close with, why is it so hard to actually live in the blessed assurance of God's grace? Now, if you're taking notes, let's let's let's walk, let's walk through this today. You ready? Let's start here. When do we say enough is enough? Any parents in the room, your child ain't got on your nerves, then look here, enough is enough. You ever said that to somebody? You ever said that to your kid? You probably said it this morning. Be quiet, enough is enough. Now, in my house, my mama was just backhand and I just knew then to be quiet. But when I say enough is enough in this type of setting, it means that we must stop negotiating with what's killing us. Enough is enough when we stop saying one more time to the thing that keeps stealing our peace. Enough is enough when we finally realize that the very thing we've been carrying, holding, squeezing tight to isn't protecting us, it's actually burying us. Let me tell you the things that we've been holding on to. We've been holding on to resentment, to perfection, to insecurity, to hurt, to failure, to doubt, expectations for what someone said, did, or failed to do, and the pressure to keep proving ourselves worthy, valuable, and enough. We have to get to a point to where we let go of the things that we think are protecting us and let God have it. Let me get you, let me get you there just for a second. Too many times we've been holding on to hurt, we've been holding on to resentment, we've been holding on to guilt, and we've been protecting it, and all the while that hurt, resentment, and guilt is killing you silently. We've become comfortable with the things that God is saying, let me have it. And you do know comfort can what? Can kill you. And my question to you this morning: what are the things that God has been trying to pry out of your hands, but you're holding on to it because you are afraid to confront it? What is it? Some of us have been dragging these things on for so long, we've started calling them normal. We've started calling them irres. But just because we've carried something for a long time doesn't mean it belongs to us. Just because you've carried it doesn't mean it belongs to you. God actually speaks right to that in Isaiah 43 and 18 when he says, forget the former things, do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing. And here's the hardest part about the new thing is letting go of the old thing. This thing requires us to do something that most of us are uncomfortable with. Forgiving ourselves forever picking it up in the first place. And I don't know who this morning needs to understand that there's an old thing that God is saying, I'm trying to do a new thing, but before I do the new thing, you gotta let go of the old you. The old you, the old you who made the mistake, the old you who've been beating yourself up, the old you who tells yourself that you're not worthy every single day, the old you who says, the Lord really don't love me the way I think he loves me. Has anybody ever been there this morning? Where this old you keeps creeping up over and over and over. See, most of us have no problem with forgiveness in theory. We believe in it, we've experienced it from others, we understand it theologically that God is the God of another chance. But when it comes to forgiving the man in the mirror, that is different. Forgiving ourselves requires us to look at the full truth of our lives, it requires us to receive grace instead of just dispensing it. And for some of us, myself included, this is where we get stuck. Because receiving grace has always been harder than giving it. And here is why. Until I learned how to open my hands and take what God has already been trying to give me, I kept handing out a gift that I truly never never unwrapped for myself. When we give grace, we're given patience, kindness, and forgiveness. But when do we become patient, kind, and forgiving with ourselves? When do you learn to be kind to you? Let that sit for a second. When do you learn to be kind to yourself? I've always had this mindset that in order to get grace, you gotta give grace. But boy, was I wrong. I had to learn something hard. That grace was never designed to be earned, it has always been designed to be received. So when I say enough is enough this morning, I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand between what God has already declared over you and what you keep declaring over yourself. See, I'm guilty of what I like to call replaying the tape. Anyone guilty of replaying the tape of your life? Can we, can we, y'all, y'all, all right? We'll be here to Luba's. Regina, we'll be here, we'll be here to Golden Corral. Open back up. And if y'all with the Golden Corale, you mm-mm don't invite me. See, I'm guilty, Michelle, of replaying the tape of my life. The tape of who I used to be, the tape of the mistake, the conversation I wish I could redo, the season I'm not proud of, the people I hurt, or the ways I hurt myself. See, I'm guilty of not giving myself enough grace and space. I, and maybe you're just like me, you are your own worst critic. I don't need nobody else to beat me up and tell me I should have never worn this blue suit this morning. I can tell myself that, but I am my own worst critic. I don't need for somebody to tell me I'm not doing a good job because I can tell myself I'm not doing a good job. I am the one who beats Jared up. I can tell myself that I'm not worthy, I can tell myself that I am not a failure, I could tell myself I'm not good enough, and I could tell myself the Lord is through with me, and I don't know if you've ever been there where you begin to tell yourself things that God has never told you. Okay. This is me. I'm good at cheering for somebody else's comeback. I'd believe in somebody else's restoration. I'd even pray for somebody else's breakthrough with everything I have and mean every word of it. But when it comes to Jared Anthony Fletcher, do not repeat my middle name, at times I've struggled to believe that the same God who graced them could really, truly and want to do the same for me. See, I'ma just be very honest with you. About two, about two and a half weeks ago, I struggled with this with this small battle depression. I'd be riding in my car and I'll be thinking to myself, the Lord really don't love me. The Lord really don't love Jared the way I think the Lord really loves me. I began to speak things over my life that was never true. I began to let the devil whisper things to me that was never true. Have you ever been there? Where you where you begin to have this self-doubt about yourself? And I'll be sorry, I started to become hard on myself, and there's nothing wrong with my life right now. Life is actually pretty good, but somewhere in between the goodness, the devil had to make me say, You don't deserve all the goodness that's happening right now. And I had to wonder, Lord, where did this come from? How did I get here? And the other question was, Lord, what am I missing? And I began to listen to what the devil had to say versus what God had to say. But then I had to get down to what my mama called the nitty-gritty. And it comes from years of carrying what I like to call unnecessary weight. One thing I've learned about unnecessary weight and guilt, it will keep you stuck between what God said versus what you feel. See, the writer of Hebrews must have known we would carry things we were never meant to carry. Hebrews 12 and 1 says this lay aside every weight and sin that so easily beset us. Notice the Hebrew writer didn't just say lay aside just sin. He said, lay aside every weight, because the writer understood some that some of what we carry isn't just sin that we need to repent of, it is the weight of things that we need to release. Y'all with me so far, still? Which leads me to, I want to talk about this thing called the anatomy of weight. Somebody say the anatomy of weight. When we think about weight, I'm not talking about going to the gym and doing this, which I probably need to do later on. God bless you. When we think about weight, some of the first words that come to my mind is heavy, burden, pressure, pounds, crushing, suffocating. These are all physical and tangible things that weight does. Amen? But I want to talk about a different kind of weight. The weight that sits on your mind and sits on your conscience and your soul, that makes you exhausted, the weight that makes you tired, the weight that makes you feel overwhelmed, worn out, a heavy heart, caring too much. Have you ever been heavy in your spirit? Have you ever been heavy? Some of you walked in church this morning, heavy. The type of heaviness I'm talking about is the one that makes it hard to get out of bed some days. The type of heaviness that makes it hard to put one foot in front of the other. The one that makes it hard to smile when the truth is you really just want to cry. It's the heaviness that you cannot shake. But there are two types of uh categories of this weight and two types of heaviness I want to talk about. Because what I've come to understand is blessed assurance doesn't just mean Jesus is mine, it means whatever weight is on me belongs to him. The same grace that saved us is the same grace that can carry us and carry what we've been carrying on our own. First Peter 5 and 7 says this cast all your anxiety on him because what he cares for who? For you. That's the Bible. But before we can cast anything, we have to know. What we're casting. Because once we can name what we're carrying, we can finally hand it to the one whose grace is strong enough to carry it for us. If you're taking notes, let's take them real quick. First category I want to talk about is the weight you put on yourself. The weight you put on yourself. These this weight in heaviness talks to you, and it comes in many voices. And I want to talk about the voices of weight. The first voice is the voice of unmet expectations. By whispering to you, I should be further along by now. Everybody else has figured it out. What's wrong with me? I'm running out of time. That's what that voice says to you. The other voice is the voice of comparison. Every scroll on social media feels like you're being left behind, and everybody highlight real feels like a measuring stick for your life. Then there is the voice of inadequacy. The voice that whispered to you that you're not enough. You don't have what it takes. And the cruelest thing about inadequacy is it doesn't always come from failure. Sometimes it comes from never being told that we were enough in the first place, which we will get to in a moment. And finally, it is the voice of regret. The one that shows up wearing the case of the ifs. Anybody have a case of the ifs? If I could just go back, if I just had more time, if I hadn't wasted those years, if I had started sooner, if I hadn't waited so long. It's the voice that hijacks our acquired moments. Here's what you need to know. Regret is the only voice that lives entirely in the past, but somehow it is the loudest about our future. Regret. That's what regret does. It tells us what we should have done, so often we start believing that we no longer have time to do what God is still asking us to do. Here's what regret is regret is a thief that steals from the only day we actually have, which is today. That's what regret does. So what do we do with all these voices? Anybody ever can anybody hit all those voices I was just talking about? That you may have, can can can can kind of roll with me on that? So what do we do with these voices? Because if we are honest, most of us have been carrying these voices for so long, we've stopped recognizing them as voices and start calling them the truth. We've quoted them like scriptures. We've left them write the rules on how we walk into rooms, how we receive love, how we answer opportunities, and even how we look in the mirror. But here is what I want you to know. Just because a voice has been so loud doesn't mean it's been so right. Just because a voice has been with you so long doesn't mean it gets to keep on speaking. And here's what we do with those voices. One, we name voices. Because you cannot evict what you don't totally identify. Pastor Keith said it the best, that you can't heal what you will not reveal. You can't heal what you won't reveal. Some of us have been hosting voices in our head for years without ever telling them to leave because we've never sat down long enough to figure out who was actually doing the talking. Naming the voice is the first step in silencing the voice. Number two is we test them against what God has said. This is a big one because every single one of those voices makes a claim about who we are. Not enough, behind, wasted, failed, done. But God has already made his own claims about us that we are chosen, that we are redeemed, that we are forgiven, that we are his, and that we are always, always his, that we are enough. And I wish that we start listening to the voice of God versus listening to the voice of the devil. That we can live in the truth that we are set free, that we are chosen, that we are his, that the who the Son sets free is truly free indeed, that we are a child of God, and we gotta stop listening to the little small voice that tells us that we ain't worthy, that we ain't nothing. But the devil is alive. God is worthy, God is good, God is great, and I believe that about my life. You gotta believe that about your own life. You gotta stop listening to the voice that tells you that you are not enough because you are enough. In first service, I broke down in first service because I begin to remember my little brother. My brother died from a fentanyl overdose, and I wish I had time to tell him, D, you are enough. D, you don't have to have that fentanyl. D, you don't need those drugs to feel like you are somebody because you are somebody. And I wish I had time to tell my little brother that, versus crying over his casket, and I wish somebody in the room would understand that you are enough, that you matter, that God is not done with you, that you still got a lot of life left in you, and no matter what the devil tells you, don't believe it, let it go, because God is still working on somebody in this room. Those voices get to talking, they get to talking. But it's one voice that's always been louder than the voice in my mind, and that is the voice of Jesus Christ. Because he got on the cross and he said something that was so good. He said, God, I got they back. I got this. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believed in him should not perish but have everlasting life. And I believe that the Lord died on that cross for me, and that cross tells me that I am enough. That cross tells me that I'm not done. That's what I wish I had time to tell my little brother before he put those pills in his system. I wish I had that time. In first service, y'all, I lost it. Because I was just in my man. The other day, I was I was at home, and my neighborhood is full of busy ambulance going up and down the street, up and down the street, up and down the street. And I say, Lord, like what didn't happen now? And you know me, I'm nosy, so I got on Facebook. You know, I got up, geez, I got on Facebook and I'm just like, what's going on in the neighborhood? Because you know the neighborhood app tell you everything you need to know. I'm like, you know, who'd have stole another kid? Put them back. And I read that there was this lady two miles from my house that killed herself. And I said, God. And this is the midst of me studying for my sermon about self-forgiveness. And I said, Lord, like what was she going through that I wish somebody would have got to her in time to tell her that she is enough? To tell her that she still got a lot of life to live, to tell her that she is worthy. I wish somebody would have had another voice in her mind, voice of the voice that she was believing about herself. And there's some people in here, just like that woman, just like I was, because I was riding down the street thinking the same thoughts about myself. Like, Jerry, you're not enough. Like what you've done, the Lord hasn't forgiven you for it, and the devil is a lie. I had to remember that. Because those voices get to talking. They get to talking. But the way we silence those voices is by opening up the word of God. And we start reading the Bible. We start reading this manual and manuscript for life that we are enough. We don't need nobody else to tell us and validate us. The Bible does all the validation and all the affirmation in the world. If your mama never told you was enough, God can tell you that you weren't enough. If your daddy never told you that was enough, God can tell you you are enough. I get it. I get it. That's my little brother. We gotta test the words the world tells us about what God tells us. We gotta stop arguing with those voices and start answering them. Because you cannot reason with a lie, you can only replace it with the truth. When an adequate says you are not enough, you don't debate it, you answer it. You say, My sufficiency is of God. When regret says you've wasted too many years, you don't negotiate with regret. You answer and you say he is he will restore the years that the locusts have eaten. And number four, we hand the weight and those voices back. Because none of those voices are ever ours to carry. We pick them up somewhere along the way. And the moment we name them, test them, and answer them, we get to set them back down, not negotiate with them, not manage them, but we set them back down. And here's where blessed assurance walks into the room. Because Philippians 1 and 6 says, He who has begun a good work in you will carry it into the day of completion until Jesus Christ. Notice Paul doesn't say when he will carry it until you get it right, he will carry it when you start messing up, he will carry it when you start making more mistakes. He said he will carry it into completion. And the same God who started to work in us is the same God who will finish. And one thing I know about God that he does not abandon unfinished projects. He finishes what he starts every single time. Number two, the second category is the weight others put on us. And it starts in our childhoods, from our families, from our parents, growing up in a home where love was conditional on performance, carrying the emotional weight of parents' addiction and anger or absence of their standard, having to be the fixture in the house. The words spoken over to you in your house growing up, and you still hear today, such as you won't be nothing. You're just like your mama, you're just like your daddy. It's the environment we've grown up that taught us to shrink, to settle, to survive, and to thrive. Or it comes from relationships that we formed with other people. It comes from the betrayal from someone you fully trusted. Or it comes from, for me, my weight, my voice, came from church and religion. It was the spiritual benevolation of a leader who exploited my talents and my faith. My weight came from the words of a pastor who I thought was a mentor, someone I could look up to, lean on, and trust in and glean from until one day it all came crashing down. See, I grew up watching my mom's pastor be a man of valor, a man of good statue, a man of standard. I grew up in that church, and y'all hear me talk about my home church a lot. Y'all hear me talk about it all the time, but when I turned 16, what some of you don't know, I switched churches. I went to a truck or a church across town and I served at that church. I accepted my calling to preach at that church. I thought it was a safe place. I thought it was good grounds. I was serving as a youth minister, as one of the leaders. I was playing the drums, I was playing the keyboard. I wasn't great, I was good. I was alright. I could carry a service. And I never forget we were interviewing for organists at the church. And you know, in any black church, you gotta have a good B3 and an organ. If some of y'all don't know what a B3 is, let me explain it to you. It's when the preacher gets up and starts spitting at the end of his sermon and doing all that in the Lord, ha! Do it, Jesus! Ha ha! In the Lord, dunno, yeah. Won't he, won't he, won't he? It's the blue, uh, it's the blue nurse's outfit, I guess. See, the guy we were interviewing, he there's a few things about I want you to know about the story. The guy we were interviewing was late to the interview number one. He was 45 minutes late. And then he walked in smelling like MD 2020. Now, hold on. If you don't know what MD 2020 is, you ain't lived long enough. And I ain't talking, yeah, I'm talking about that mad dog 2020. I ain't talking about a little puppet, I'm talking about mad dog. I ain't talking about no coat 45, I'm talking about that MD 2020. Some of y'all like, yeah, Pastor Jared, I know what their MD 2020 is. And he walked in smacking like a pack of cigarettes. And on top of that, he didn't know any of the music. That we had sent them to rehearse. Here's the conversation that broke me, and why I've lived with this word my pastor spoke over me. At the end of the interview, I looked, I told my, well, before the interview over, I said, Pastor, I can play the song so he can kind of get familiar with it. And my pastor ignored me. And at the end of the interview, we were walking in, I said, Pastor, I said, hey man, I could have showed him how to play it. My pastor looked at me with the straightest face he's ever said. He said, first of all, he could never get my name right. Brother Jarrett. I'm like, there's no A in my name. Brother Jarrett. You're right. I'll get to that in a minute. He said, Brother Jarrett, I don't need you. You're nothing but a mirror drummer to me. You want to talk about hurt. You want to talk about weight. Especially growing up in a house where you where you crave a man's presence. See, I carried those words and they stuck with me. What that man did not know is a boy my age of 16, 17, who grew up starving for a man's attention, someone into believing him. We hold on to whatever a man says about us, whether it be good or bad. And maybe you're just like me. Maybe you didn't hear them exact words from somebody, but you heard them from a coach, a parent, a teacher, somebody. You heard those words because somewhere along the way we've picked up the weight of other people's thoughts about us, and we've turned their damaging words into our identity. And that was me. I'll be the first. See, Proverbs 18 and 21 says this the tongue has power of life and death, and those who love it will eat of its fruit. And I'll be the first to admit I was guilty of worrying my pastor's words, and they had an eternal effect on my life. Because for years I wore the opinion of just being near, which allowed judgments, the words spoken over me, to me, to live inside of me. So when it came down to forgiving myself, I'm like, uh, you're just a mere guy. You're just you're just mirror in the kingdom of heaven. You're just a mere Christian, you're just mere, you're just you're insignificant. Because the word mere means if insignificant. It means only, it means more, nothing more. It means you're not strong enough. You but and you begin to believe it. You don't just carry those words, you start making decisions over it. And over time, those damaging words didn't just hurt me, they became me. They became my default. I would walk into rooms and start shrinking because I didn't belong. I would mute my voice, and y'all know I got a loud voice. Somebody in this church, I'm not gonna call no name, said, Pastor Jerry, I know when you're at church, I can hear you before I ever see you. I was like, you right. And after that, simple words like no didn't feel like rejection, it felt like confirmation. And some, and maybe your words, this hurt, this weight, you've been carrying as well. And somewhere along the way, every one of us has to make a decision. That we can't keep walking through life wearing clothes that were never tailored for us, keep wearing names that God never said about us, and we can't keep building our identity on words of people who were never qualified to define us in the first place. So, what do you do with those words? One, I had to recognize that what was said was never about me. Two, I had to forgive him. I finally forgave him, even though he never apologized. Three, I had to refuse to wear what God never had tailored for me. Zacchaeus, there's a story in Zechariah 3 where the story of Joshua, where the high priest is standing before the Lord in filthy clothes, and God says, take off those filthy clothes. Take off, take away your sin, and I will take away your sin and I will put on fine garments. We've been wearing what was never, what God never wanted us to have. He's been waiting for some of us to take it off. And maybe he's been waiting for you to take it off. The one person that must be on your forgiveness list is you. You must be on that list, which leads me to the point two, why we don't forgive ourselves, which is a conversation worth having. Paul writes something in Romans where I want to lay my hat today, Romans 8 and 1 that says, Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who were in Christ Jesus. When Paul says no condemnation, he is saying God looked at your case, reviewed all the evidence, and the verdict came back not guilty. Notice Paul doesn't ease into this scripture. He doesn't warm you up slowly. He opens with chapter 8 with a declaration There is now no condemnation. And here's what I want you to catch. Paul doesn't start here by accident. In the seven chapters prior to chapter 8, verses 1, and chapter 1 through 3, he proved that we were all guilty. None is righteous, no, not one. All have sinned and fell short of the glory of God. And then in chapter 3, verse 5, he showed us that we are all justified by the works. And in chapter 6 through 7, he walks us through what it means to be united with Christ. So when Paul says, Therefore, now in chapter 8, verse 1, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, both of those words matter. Therefore means because of everything I said, and now means the final verdict is effective. Not tomorrow, not next week, but today. Now is a declaration that you must tell yourself daily. Now it is a declaration that says, I am free now. I am no longer suffer guilty now. Shame does not get the final word now. I am not disqualified now. That guilt may visit my mind, but it does not get the role to stay in my life forever now. Now Romans 8 carries weight. But the question still remains: why do some of us still feel condemned even after the shift in Romans 8? And here's what I learned. We often feel safer punishing ourselves than fully accepting his grace. Because accepting grace forces us to confront something very difficult: that we cannot earn forgiveness through suffering. Grace isn't on a payment plan. Too many of us, myself included, have lived like we've had to earn grace through suffering. Like we had to stay ashamed long enough, kept ourselves stuck long enough, and maybe finally we deserve the grace that we finally talk about. What Christ did on the cross was enough. David understood it in Psalms 51. After covering up what he did not allow, yes, David wept. But David didn't say, I'll punish myself until I deserve mercy. My question to you is, will you let God have your chains? The chains of shame, fear, pride, addiction, bitterness, and guilt. And will you let God have your brokenness today? The words, your wounds, your grief, the rejection, the betrayal, and the trauma. David understood this. I want to close with this conversation and this story. Lately I've been uh listening to a podcast by this guy by the name of Ryan Leek. And Ryan came up the other day with this word that really just stuck with me, and the word is sonder. Everybody says sonder. S-O-N-D-E-R. It is the realization that each person we pass by is living a life as complex and vivid as our own. So why is it so hard for some of us to actually live in this blessed of grace, blessed assurance of grace? Sonder answered this and Ryan answered it for me. Me and my sister were out at a barbecue joint a few weeks ago. Y'all know I love me some barbecue. And we were sitting down, we were eating, and this guy sat at the table with us. And he, you know, he had had his book and he just sat there, and I was like, hey, how you doing? You know, I ain't nothing but a stranger. I'll talk to anybody. I'll talk, I would talk to an Eskimo trying to eat ice. I don't care who you are. And he said, I'm good. I said, What's your name? He said, My name is Tom. I said, Tom, good to meet you, man. And he began to tell me his life story. I come to find out he was a 30 to 40 year retired pilot for American Airlines. So naturally, I have a lot of questions about turbulence. I think anytime you see a pilot, you start asking questions about questions about turbulence. So when we hit that pothole, what does that really mean? Is the plane gonna fall out the air? No, Jared. I just had to ask. But in the middle of that conversation, Tom began to tell us that his wife had died of cancer. Um, and that he had struggled for years with being able to go fly go fly and leave his wife at home while she was struggling. Because he was the only breadwinner. And he had never forgave himself for being at work and being too busy. But it was something that Tom said in that conversation that really stuck with me today, and I want you to hear Tom said, Jared, I'm no good and I'm all washed up. He just kept saying, I'm no good and I'm all washed up. I'm no good and I'm all washed up. And before I knew it, my sister had taken her hand and placed it on his arm and looked at him and said, Tom, but God is good and his mercy can do it forever. And before I knew it, Tom's face had begun to turn red. And that Sonder kicked in, that this man was living a life as complex as my own, that he was living in this unforgiveness, that he was living in this heaviness of being able to go support his wife by being there for his wife. And I don't know who needs their hand. Placed on their shoulder today to say God still loves you. That no matter what you've been going through, no matter what you, the guilt and the shame and the heaviness that you've put on yourself, that God can take it off. God got it. There's people in here that's living in sonder, that's living in this complex reality that life is hard. Or life took a turn for the worst a long time ago and you've never forgiven yourself of it. And if my sister had a thousand hands today, I would ask her to come in here and just do this to you. Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. Heir of salvation purchased by God, born of a spirit and washed in his blood. Last part of that song says, For this is my story. This is my song. Praising my Savior, what? All the day long. I don't know what your story is, but God ain't done writing it. I don't know what your song is, but I want you to sing it out loud. Not just sing it on the good days, but sing it on the bad ones. Sing it with tears in your eyes, sing it while you're smiling. But praise your Savior all the day long. Let's pray. Father, thank you for being so amazing. God, thank you that you are a redeemer of time, that you are a redeemer of emotions, that you are a redeemer of our faith, that you are a redeemer of what we think we can't get past. And as we're talking about forgiveness, help us to go home and look at that man in the mirror and say, You are worthy. You are forgiven. God loves you. And don't you ever forget it. Even if we got to put posting notes on mirrors to remind ourselves daily that you love us. Whatever it takes, Father, help us to do it. For God, this is our story and this is our songs. And God, we thank you for that blessed assurance that you love us day in and day out, no matter what. God, I love you, and I thank you for being who you are. Thank you for this church, thank you for our pastor, and thank you for this moment. In Jesus' name we pray. Somebody shout. Amen. Hey, I love you. Have a great, great week.