In Christ - Desensitized to Darkness

One small compromise rarely feels dangerous—and that’s exactly the danger. In Desensitized to Darkness, part of the In Christ series, Derrick Overholt opens Ephesians 5:11–14 and calls us to wake up: “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness… Awake, O sleeper… and Christ will shine on you.” He roots the whole message in identity before obedience. Ephesians has already told us who we are—sons and daughters made new in Jesus. Because we belong, we live differently. Holiness is not a ladder to climb, it’s a family resemblance we grow into. Repentance isn’t punishment; it’s a doorway back to joy.

Derrick names a spiritual pattern many of us feel but rarely articulate: desensitization. Using an “allergy shot” picture, he shows how small doses taken over time can train a body to stop reacting. Spiritually, repeated “sin shots” through what we watch, listen to, and scroll can dull conviction until darkness feels normal. Scripture is blunt here because darkness thrives in secrecy and quiet tolerance, while light makes things visible. Jesus said that out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks; what we let in shapes what comes out—our words, reactions, desires, and choices.

This isn’t about legalism; it’s about guarding a heart where the Holy Spirit speaks. Derrick talks candidly about spiritual warfare and how a dulled heart struggles to hear God. He goes practical fast: prune what bears no fruit, refuse the “sin shot” mindset, and set boundaries that actually work. He shares his own journey with accountability, locking down devices, restricting internet access, and treating the phone as a tool rather than a master—framing limits not as punishment but as freedom.

“Expose” doesn’t mean harshness or public shaming. It looks like living differently, speaking truth in love, and refusing to agree with sin while still loving people. Correction requires relationship and humility; if we won’t receive correction, we shouldn’t try to give it. Even our public life matters, as everyday decisions become part of visible discipleship.

If your conscience feels dull, this is a gracious wake-up call. Let the Spirit shine light on hidden compromises, remember who you are in Christ, and take concrete steps toward freedom. Watch and share with a friend who needs encouragement—and consider one boundary you’ll commit to this week so more of Christ’s light can fill your home and habits.

We are Trinity Community Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Subscribe to our Podcast & YouTube channel to find past sermons, classes, interviews, and more!
Find us on Facebook & Instagram

Transcript

Identity Before Purpose

Derrick Overholt 0:02

So excited to be here with you all. It is uh such a blessing to be able to stand up here and you guys allow me to speak. So we've been walking through uh book study of Ephesians. And in Christ is its name, with identity being chapters one through three, and purpose being four through six. And so if you haven't had a chance, you know, we we're we're right now in chapter five, and and chapter five talks about purpose, four talks about purpose as well. But if you have not heard any of the previous sermons, or if you have not had the chance to read Ephesians one through three, you really need to do that. It's really hard to step into the latter part of a letter written to the Ephesians and be like, all right, well, this is my purpose, if you first don't understand the identity of who we are in Christ Jesus. Because it's only through the identity in Christ Jesus that we can actually come to our purpose. That's it. We can't do this on our own. And so we need to jump back to that. And so I'm gonna do just a little bit of a recap of that for those of us who don't know, but really it is so important for you to go yourself and to listen to the sermons online. You if you didn't know that, you can always go back to anywhere you listen to podcasts, it's all a podcast on there. Just try to type in Trinity Community Church, or you can go on YouTube and find it, or you can find it on our website. Listen, there's a plethora of areas you can find it, right? So jump back on there, or just simply go read chapters one through three. And in chapters one through three, we figure out who we are in Christ Jesus. That we are sons and daughters of the Most High God through the blood of Jesus Christ, how he saved our soul and he made us new. We've been made right in Christ through Christ Jesus and we're no longer slaves. So, because of Jesus, he's made a way for us to put on new clothes, as I talked about a few weeks ago. And when we put on those new clothes, it's because he has given us his righteousness and his everything's about him. Everything. So we put on his clothes and become more like him because we want to be more like dad. Mark as well talked about how we put off and put on. And then it's been continued in that through chapters four and now to five, where we are able to do certain things because the Father in heaven has allowed that to happen. So I want you to see today that everything that I talk about is not something that we need to do to get closer to God, but we do these things because we're already children of the Most High God. We've been brought out of the darkness and into his glorious light. So now, with those things in mind, we can step forward and see what our purpose is through Christ Jesus and his saving love for us. We're able to live right because of what he has already done for us, right? All right. So we are looking at Ephesians chapter 5, verses 11 through 14. And so we're gonna read that. And it says, Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you, Lord, that you helped Paul to know these things years ago by just miraculous things, Lord. And God, that he wrote it down for the letter to the Ephesians, Lord, and now we still have that today, 2,000 years later. And God, it can easily be applied to us by looking at Scripture and seeing what you spoke to them. And we thank you, Lord, that you are never changing. You're the same yesterday, today, and forever. We thank you that this word is alive and it speaks to us through your Holy Spirit. And we pray this morning, Lord God, that you would speak through us in this word, Lord, as you spoke it to the Ephesians 2,000 years ago, it is still the same and true and alive and speaking to us as if it were written to us today. And we thank you for it, Lord, in Jesus' name. So we've been talking about different actions and things, right? All right, like you don't cuss, you don't uh steal, you you know, all these things, but it's not because of something that we need to do to become right with God. As I said a moment ago, we want to become more like our Father in heaven. How many people here have experienced that even on earth? You want to be like dad, right? And sometimes we don't even want to be like our parents, but we turn into them. There's a commercial about that right now, right? For all those who turn into their parents, and it's hilarious. But we do. We're going to end up like that at times. And so the more that we hang out with the Father God in heaven, the more we start looking like him. The more we start smelling like him, the more we start talking like him, thinking like him, we're going to, he's going to rub off on us and we're going to be more and more like him. But Paul is talking about this over the last couple of chapters, and now he's taking it, he keeps taking it a step further each time. Because now he's saying, All right, I want to remind you that this is all about the inner life. Every week we've been talking about all of these things, our heart issues, and what comes into our heart, right? And so he is now taking it back to that, saying, listen, it's back to the core of the heart. He says, Don't even let don't have anything at all to do with the unfruitful things that the world is doing, what they did. Who are they and them we see in the scripture here? He's talking about us before we knew Christ. He's talking about the sinner before they know Christ. So when you see that, don't be like them, right? Which is at one point, us. And so he's saying that what comes in also comes out of us. And I this week I was really praying about this over the last couple of weeks, and and it's been uh a little while since this has happened, and I've really been thanking God for it, but I had a word for today, a prophetic word that I felt like the Lord gave me the moment I read this scripture as I sat down to study, and I felt like the Lord gave me a word. And it lines up with the word that I felt that we felt as the eldership that the Lord gave us back in October was crisis, to prepare for the crisis that may happen and that will happen in our lives. Well, what's going on in our world around us is culture is just falling apart and it is getting more and more uh satanic, is the easiest way to say it. It's getting more and more in love with anything that's opposite of God. And there's a reason why the church is following suit in certain ways. And so today I felt like the Lord gave me a word, and it's funny when I show you this word because I saw the word, but then I looked, I was like, Well, God, I can't even say that word. You ever have that, right? It's like I you see it, you're like, I can't say it. I'm gonna try. But you can put the word up there. Desensitization. I said it. I did it. We were in prayer earlier today, and I couldn't say it. But it means that you lose sensitivity through repeated exposure. So you lose sensitivity over time. And I'm gonna give you a real easy illustration for this. We live in East Tennessee. We're all allergic to something. We wake up in the morning, the air that we breathe, we're allergic to. So many of us take allergy medicine. At times that take two, just so I can get up and live life. Some of us have taken it a step further, and we go to the doctor and get this thing called allergy shots. Okay? And these allergy shots, if you don't know what they are, they fill a needle with the things that you're allergic to. All right? And if they give you a bunch of it at once, they're just gonna kill you. But what they do is they give you just a little bit of what you're allergic to, and three times a week they stab it into your arm for a year. And they give you this shot to desensitize your body from that allergy. And then for the next year, they give you a little less for another year, and then now your body is desensitized to the allergy that your body's trying to get out. Because your body sees it as a foreign object and it wants it gone. It's doing exactly what it's supposed to do, so it wants it out. So that is what this desensitization, I did it again, is saying. We as Christians continue taking sin shots every day. It's not just three days a week at one shot for 10 minutes. It is every day on our phones, in our life, what we listen to, what we allow to happen around us. We take sin shots. And the church has become more and more desensitized to the word of God and the sins that he says are sins. We wonder today why churches right down the street accept homosexual marriage, while churches right down the street will allow man and a woman to live together for years. And that while they continue and continue to be all right with certain sins, it's because they're like, well, then that's just the culture of that time. No, you were desensitized to sin, as were I. And the Lord has been dealing with me in a number of areas that I thought I was alright with, and now he's revealing more to me. And you know why? Because we keep praying the prayer that David prayed. God, if there be any wicked way within me, reveal it. And that's what I want. And how do we prepare for crisis in today's time? We see what God calls right and what God calls wrong, and we flee from the wrong. And Paul reminds us here in this scripture to have nothing to do with the unfruitful works of the spirit or of the world and of spiritual things. So it's much like pruning trees. You we see Jesus use this one a number of times as well. But if you're a farmer, if you know any farmers, an apple tree or different uh fruit trees, if they go and they see that certain branches aren't producing fruit, they chop those branches off. Do you know why they do that? Because the branches that aren't doing so well are sucking the life from the good branches. And that is what these sin shots are doing in our life. They're sucking the life from the good things. That's why he says, no unfruitful things. So it doesn't mean just don't do it. This is where he's taking it a step further, and he's saying, don't have anything to do with it, don't entertain it, don't absorb it, don't start to normalize it. Because what we watch shapes us. What we listen to will start to form our thinking process. What we stay silent about when the things are going on around us, we condone it. Right now, it's time to vote. And one of the things that we have in America as one of our freedoms is to go and vote for righteousness. That is how we can do it. Not getting on Facebook and running our mouth about silly stuff. No, that does nothing. But we can go vote and we can vote for righteousness. But to sit still and say, I we didn't have time to vote when they've made three weeks worth of voting time and then complain about the things, all you're doing is condoning the things of unrighteousness. And right now it's local, and I know I'm talking political, and I it is what it is. Here's the thing: if we don't go and vote for righteousness, and for the people who stand for righteousness, then it's going to continue for all those out there that are voting for unrighteousness to keep filling our offices with unrighteousness, and we continue to see more and more unrighteousness. So we must not be silent. But what we see and allow us to come into ourselves affects our mind and comes into our heart, and out of the out of the mouth speaks the abundance of the heart. We saw that. Jesus said it, and it's recorded in Luke chapter 6 and in Matthew chapter 12. And he says, What we allow, what comes out of our heart is what we speak. And so when we're driving down the road and we cuss at the dude because he cut us off, that stuff's in you. And it's just waiting to come out. But where did we get that? When we are getting mad and we have a really loud uh outburst of anger, where did that come from? Well, it came from what's inside of us. We've allowed the sin shots to come in. Because we are spirit and flesh. Oftentimes we forget this is that 50%, yes, 50% of the time we're in the physical, that's what we're dealing with. But the Bible says we do not fight against flesh and blood, but of angels and principalities of dark places. That means that even right now in this room, there is spiritual warfare going on right now. There's a few things that's going to be said in just a second that your spirit inside is either going to go, yeah, I need to allow God to change that, or you're going to go, wait, he's gone too far. He's stepping on my toes because it's spiritual warfare. But we are made in the image of God in heaven. Okay? We are. In the Genesis, he says, and God made man in, uh, he says, let us make man in our image. Well, we know that God is spirit because we have the Holy Spirit in which that He gives to us. So we are 50% spirit and we are 50% flesh, but yet we forget that there's a whole spiritual world going on, and we don't even pay attention that the sin shots are affecting our spirit. They're affecting what's inside. And so, oh, it's not a big deal to have these uh shows on our television. Years ago, my wife and I, we've been together for 20 years. We'll be selling 20, celebrating 20 years in December. But we made a rule 20 years ago that PG-13 was the most we would watch. And to this day, PG-13 and lower is all we watch. But certain PG-13 movies today, I can't even watch because now that's become different. Did you know that over the last 50 to 60 years the television and what they call good and bad has changed so much. Little by little, by little. Because remember, I told you that if they give you an allergy shot with completely full of what you're allergic to, they will kill you. They will put you into anaphylactic shock. It's the same thing that the devil knows that'll happen when he gives you a sin shot with too much, because you'll recognize it and go, that's not right. But when we allow the devil to get a foothold inside of our house and he pops us with just a little bit of that sin, and he pops us with just a little bit more of that sin, and all of a sudden, over a few years' span, that one little sin is not so big. So, yeah, we watched uh Will and Grace in the 90s, and everybody thought that was the worst thing in the world that they would even allow a homosexual man on TV and talk about it. But did you know that they didn't even say anything about it then other than every once in a while you would figure out that he was homosexual? But they never said anything about it. That was 25 years ago. And now today I'm trying to watch a show at the house and I can't even watch it because a 30-minute show has a 10-minute section of this person's lifestyle and what they do in their bedroom. I don't care what a sinner does at their home in their private time, that is their deal. But why do I need to hear about it and why do I need to allow it to come inside of my home? And I'm I'm not just I'm just pulling this one out because this is how the culture has changed. We could go into pornography, even for that matter, and we could see that what's on TV years, 50 years ago, man, they were fully clothed. They were not allowed to have anything showing. To the 60s, that all of a sudden a little bikini came out, right? The teeny weenie yellow polka dot bikini came out, right? It came out. And all of a sudden, that was allowed. To the point today that women are wearing less at the beach than they wear in the bedroom. Okay, and so it's become okay because of little sin shots. Little here, little there, little there, to where over 50 years' span, the devil has gotten a hold of our culture and shifted it completely. And we're okay with it because we've just been sitting back and we've been watching it with them. Well, Derek, you've gone too far. It's okay for me to watch that show. Well, I'm sure the pastor down the street thought the same thing until he got so many sin shots that he married two men. We can do that too. I'm sure that pastor down the street had good intentions at one time and listened to the Holy Spirit until he went too far and allowed the sin shots to say that all of this stuff was okay. And then all of a sudden, we start allowing the devil to change our thoughts and change our convictions. How is he able to do that? Because we allowed him to give us a sin shot, a little here and a little there, to where it stopped pricking our convictions. Now, I've been a contractor for many years. Y'all know I've heard some dirty language. I'm gonna tell you today, I don't speak any dirty language, I'm not going to. And I will sit with any of you, and you can talk how you please. But I will tell you, it does still hit me in the chest when I hear them. Because I know it's sinful. When I'm sitting with somebody and they've said, Yeah, I've been living with my wife for seven years, or with my girlfriend for seven years, I'm not gonna call them out right there because I want to build a relationship with them. But my spirit's pricked immediately. When I'm watching TV and something comes up and I see what's happened on that TV, it still pricks my heart. Because I know that it's wrong. And I stand on that. You know, music does the same thing. Years ago, we wouldn't allow to have things in music like that, and then all of a sudden we started having the 60s and the drug scene, and now, you know, we got words today that we say, and when he, you know, I didn't even notice this to the other day. I said, Oh, that's just a pipe dream, and then I realized, wait, where does a pipe dream come from? And I realized that it came from the 60s with being stoned. You have dreams and you're stoned, and now you have a pipe dream that'll never happen. And yet I've said this a million times and never even noticed what it was until now, and I'm like, well, I can't say that anymore. That's not right. And then it turned to music. And I'm gonna tell you right now, I love country music, and I've listened to it from now on or now and then, but I have to stop on certain songs. I've heard people say one of their favorite songs is strawberry wine from the 90s, right? Oh, I've stepped on somebody's toe here. It's a 15, 16-year-old girl who loses her virginity while being drunk in the back of a car. And that's what the whole song's about. And we're okay with it because the way it plays the music out, and we've made this stuff okay in our mind. And we continue to allow it to where we then change the convictions that God placed inside of our heart. We don't watch rated R movies because one. The violence. What in the world should we ever even be watching this stuff? Okay? Do you know that the violent things that happen today are much because of the video games and stuff that started coming out in the 90s? We see violence ramped up like crazy. And we're allowing ourselves. But Derek, this is just entertainment. Why do we feel like we have the same right to be entertained the same way the world's entertained? We have a fully different life like Christ, the Holy Spirit who dwells inside of us, by the way, who's sitting on the couch next to you watching that with you, by the way, in your car, listening to the same stuff that you're listening to? Would you really sit there if you had a conscious mindset to think that the God of the universe is sitting on the couch beside you watching that? Would we watch it? Would we listen to it? When you pull out your phone and you're looking at stuff, would you do that if you really took note that the God of heaven is right there? Because guess what? If you know Jesus, he is, he's right there. And he's watching it. And he's like, son, why are you doing this? Why are you allowing this to happen? Daughter, why are you reading that book that has all that exotic stuff in it? Why are you doing that? That's that's ungodliness. That's sin shots that's gonna wreck you and pull you away from what I'm trying to do. And that's what Paul said. Have nothing to do with the unfruitful works of the Spirit. Then he says, don't even speak of the shameful things they do. Don't even speak of it. So you think it's okay to watch a little bit of that clip when it's shameful to even speak of the clip? Oh, it's okay to watch that show. It's okay to watch. No, it's not. And so for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And I don't need to be entertained the way that the world is entertained. Because I have the Holy Spirit that dwells inside of me, and through him, my mindset and my thoughts have changed to his way. Now, Derek, what about grace? Well, there is grace and mercy for the times that we mess up. But that doesn't mean we continue doing it on and on and on and on. We see that. Paul said it in another letter. Should we just keep sinning so that grace may abound more? He said, No, that's foolishness. What are you thinking? No, we don't take advantage of grace. But when grace is needed, we we're there. It's much like having an unlimited roll of bandages. Do we just keep slitting our arm just so we can keep using the bandages? No, we use the grace of the bandages when we make a mistake and cut our arm and we let it heal. So we don't do that to our spirit. Why would we do that? So then he says, expose the darkness. Now that doesn't mean we go out here in the street and just start yelling at everybody. People should, in our life, should know where we stand. I've got family members who live lifestyles that are totally against the word of God. I'm not going to go to a family get together and call them out. I'm going to welcome them to my home, and we're going to spend time together as a family. And I'm going to love on them and host them as well as everyone else. But they know where I stand just by my life lived out in front of them. And if I get the opportunity to minister and their heart is softened and they're ready to hear the gospel, I will share it with them. But it takes recognizing when that time is. But that's why we have to listen to the Lord. We share the gospel at all times through our life, sometimes through at the Walmart or whatever, but we have to listen to the Lord and what he's saying. But when he says expose the darkness, it does not mean be harsh, shame people, act prideful, I'm better than you. No. It means living differently, speaking truth in love, and not agreeing with sin. You know, I just told you one of the ways, like, and it's not me being all high and mighty or anything like that, but if someone that you're talking to talks about some movie and you know that that movie is ungodly, and you're not going to take a sin shot with that movie, and somebody says, come watch this movie with me, you can say, No, no, thanks. Well, you don't you don't like that movie? No, I've seen some things that's in that movie, and that just doesn't agree with my spirit. And they can make fun of you if you're want, if they want, and and all of these things, and all these areas in your life that you step out of and you let someone know the reason when you step out of it. You know, blessed are those who revile, or blessed are those who, what is the scripture, who are reviled for Christ's name's sake. And so just because you're made fun of for standing up for the righteousness of God and what he calls right doesn't mean anything super terrible. That's all a flesh thing. So we live differently, but correction requires relationship. You can't correct everybody, but you can correct those close to you, but only if you are open to correction yourself. We must be willing to be corrected. If you're not willing to receive correction today, you should never give correction. If you're not willing to receive correction, keep your mouth shut. That brings back to the scripture that says you're worried about the speck in your brother's eye where you have a plank in your own. So we must have relationship with someone. And so then what it would look like is I have a close relationship with some of you in the room. And if I see one of my brothers or sisters stepping into something wrong, I'm gonna lovingly meet with them, give them a call. Hey, I see this in the scripture, and I see you stepping into that, and I'm really concerned for your soul. And if you have a close relationship with that person, they're going to look at you and say, Well, thanks for bringing that out. Now, what does it look like on the flip side to receive correction? When I receive correction, we get some, uh, as the elders do, and I get some uh from some of my close friends and some of my mentors, and it hurts every day and time. I don't like it. But you must always ask, Lord, is this true? Now, some parts of it may be. Sometimes somebody's bringing you correction in a totally ungodly way, and none of it's true. But most of the time there is truth found in the correction, whether it's completely wrong or half wrong, but sometimes there's some truth that brings to that point. Maybe it was just the way you said something that was seemed super un not humble. And it's something that we need to work on in our spirit, right? So we allow the Lord to work in and through us in every way to receive that correction because we want to be more like dad. And sometimes we're not listening. And our brother and sister knows it. I see this at home when my little girl corrects my little boy. And it's because she knows and she's received the bad side of that. And she was like, Zeke, you shouldn't do that, you know, because she's seen, right? And he doesn't want to receive it because you're not my boss, you know, and that's what we do. You're not my boss. And then he goes and he does it, and then he gets hurt and comes back to me screaming and crying that he just hurt himself. And then Allie goes, Well, I told him not to do it. I tried to stop him. Sounds familiar, don't it? We do that ourselves in this world. Dad's telling us something, our brother or sister comes and says something because we're not listening and we don't want to hear it. And then we step into something, and now there's consequences from stepping into that. And sometimes those consequences have to be lived out for quite some time. And that's that's hard. But I felt like this morning that the Lord really wanted us to see that we are letting sin shots into our life. I have let sin shots into my life. The way the world gets entertained, y'all, we have no right to be entertained that way. We should not want to be entertained that way. We should not want to be where ungodliness is being lived out regularly. We should not want to see the things that this world sees. The TV can be a wonderful servant, but a lousy master. My brother Neil Silverberg told me that one a long time ago. Our phone can be a great servant, but it is a lousy master. And the things that are coming through your Instagram and your Facebook and your Snapchat and your TikTok, and those are sin shots that's gonna keep dulling our senses. When we keep watching the same shows that we know are ungodly, we've watched that movie that has 48 F-bombs and 38 B words, and that stuff comes into you, and you wonder why you're screaming cuss words at the red light when somebody doesn't cut you off. Because you've allowed that into your heart. What we allow into us, it's much like the thing when we were a kid where my parents would tell me, you hang out with them, you're gonna become like them. Well, I got two brothers in prison, and I saw it become real. You hang out with the wrong people, you become the wrong people. You watch the stuff, you become the stuff. You hear the words over and over again come into your mind, you're no longer convicted that speaking that way is wrong, and you start speaking that way. You watch it long enough, it's just a bikini show, and it goes way too far, and now you're searching on the internet and your phone for things that are way ungodly. By the way, on that point, you know that like 70% of the people in all of those movies are uh sex slaves, are being forced to do those things, and we allow ourselves to watch them with the Father God right there next to us. Just think about that a second. We're reading those books, and they have these things in them, and we're allowing it to come in and shape who we are. We're listening to that music, but it's just about the beat. Yeah, right? You know the words, you know them, and they're in you, and they start shaping our hearts. Somebody want to come up and play some keys. I really feel like this morning that the Lord gave us the word desensitization where we have allowed these little things from the devil to reach into our home little by little when we let that horror movie play because oh, but we just love it. Did you guys know the author of Fear is who? Satan. What is a horror movie all about? Fear. So who did you just let into your home? Like, I'm not trying to be like pointing it in your, I'm just trying to bring common sense to the situation. This is what scripture says. We allow these things into our home, and we wonder why we have horrible nightmares and we're not able to sleep, and why when somebody does pull out in front of us that we think about pulling our car into them and taking them out. That didn't come from the Lord, it came from all those little sin shots that you've been allowing to get popped in you every single week. We wonder why we're not hearing the word of the Lord anymore. Well, your ears have been closed off from a hardened heart from these sin shots that continue to block us from what the Lord is trying to say. Because those sin shots have become much louder now than the Spirit. And today, I really felt like the Lord wants to bring us back into right thinking of what God calls right and wrong. Because Paul said, have nothing to do with the unfruitful works, says take no part, no part of it. Means watching it, listening to it, having it around you. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, for it is shameful to even speak of them. But expose them. When anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible. Everything is now brought into life. Your life should look different. You shouldn't be wanting the things that the world wants. We shouldn't be sad in our heart that we don't get to be entertained the way the world does. Well, they get to watch that. Well, they get to go there, they get to party, they get to, why do we want to? They don't get to go to heaven unless they get to know Jesus and turn from this stuff. Oh, I get to enjoy this stuff on this little bitty time in earth. Okay, that's unfortunate for them because I get to enjoy the Father in heaven for all of eternity. And we want to bring them there. But us having part in the things that they call fun makes them think it's okay. Makes them think it's alright to keep living that way. And so we're never bringing them. So in our homes, we should not have the things that bring no fruit to us. If what we're watching and the shows that we're watching aren't bringing fruit in our life, then it'd be chopped off because those areas are removing nutrients from the things that can bring fruit. If your phone and the things on your phone are causing us to sin, we need to cut it off. Well, Derek, you're saying I can't have a phone? Sure, just the phone part of it. Listen, you can pull my phone up right now. It's completely locked out. Why? Because I want used to let sin shots come into my life every day until I got addicted to pornography for so many years that I didn't know how to get out of it. It was very easy to get, and it shaped everything I thought about. It shaped my life, it shaped so many things. My computer, my iPad, and my phone are 100% locked out as much as my daughter's phone. I can't even get on Google at times because it's an unrated section of information that I've looked up. But that's okay because I'm not going to allow the devil to have a foothold in my life any longer. There are certain times of day that phone will only make and receive phone calls. It will not even allow me to have internet. Because I refuse to allow the devil to have any more foothold into my life. I refuse to have any more of his stupid sin shots that keep dulling my senses of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said that if your right arm causes you to sin, chop it off. The phone can be a really good arm, but it needed to be chopped off. I once knew a guy who took his computer and he threw it out in the driveway and busted it to a million pieces. Because he says, I will no longer allow the devil to have a foothold into my life. For some of us, we need to go to our DVD collection and go burn every single one of them. No, don't take them down to McKay's, which is closed. Don't take them down to anywhere and try to give them away or try to sell them so that someone else may be caught up in the schemes of the devil. They need to be gone. Some of us need to go home and pour out every bottle of alcohol that we've got because we've allowed it to become a thing that we worship. I've gotta have it because I can't be calm without it. We've allowed the sin-shod to come inside us and dull our convictions. Some of us need to go home and burn some books that are exotic books that should not be read, whether it be magazines or books. And some of us men, and I hear nowadays, even some women, need to push down our pride and go to our spouse or go to a really close friend and say, I need you to put your code on this phone so it'll lock it out forever. And that's what I did. I went to my wife and I repented. And I went to the elders and I repented. And I sat down with my wife and I learned how to lock out my phone. I learned how to lock out the computer. And it's been the most freeing thing in the world to come under accountability. How is that freeing? Oh, it is. It is so freeing. Because now I don't have the devil sticking his foot in my way. And so I just want us tonight, to this morning, I want us to pray that the Lord will reveal to us those sin-shot areas in our life. And then we take a moment to just let him speak. And he's going to bring certain things to our mind. Don't shove them out and go, oh Lord, that's not you. I did that way too long. If he's brought something up to your mind right now, it's probably because he wants it gone. And you're like, no, surely not that. Yep, yep, that's exactly it right there. So let's just take a moment between you and Jesus. I'm gonna lead us in prayer and we're gonna be quiet for a few minutes while she plays. And you just spend time with Jesus. Lord, we pray right now that your Holy Spirit would move inside this room. God, we have taken too many sin shots to dull our senses from what you call right and wrong. And I pray right now across this room, Holy Spirit, move right now through this entire room and come in and reveal to us sin and what is right again. Reveal to Us right now where we've opened doors to allow you to the devil to come in. Reveal to us right now where we keep taking sin shots every day that are dulling our convictions, that are pulling us away from you. Because, Dad, we want to be more like you. And we got things that keep jumping in the way and taking our time away from you, where we can become more like you, because it's all your work. It's not something we can do. All we got to do is close the door. All we have to do is close the door, and your righteousness can come in. So have your way right now in each one of our hearts in Jesus' name. It is about moving the things out of our way so that the grace of Jesus could come in. As I mentioned earlier, you cut your arm and you wrap a bandage around it, but you know, before you wrap the bandage around it, you gotta wash the trash out of it so the infection doesn't get deeper. And that's what you're doing is just allowing Him to come wash the trash out of it and bandage us back up. So, Father, I pray as we go out this week, pray that your Holy Spirit would move through our home. God, that the things that you call wrong would once again convict us. The areas in our life that we've gotten okay with because of all the little sin shots that we've taken from this culture, from the devil. I pray right now, Lord, that when we get home, conviction would come in again for the things that you call unfruitful and unrighteous. Let us become more like you, Dad, because of the new life that you gave us, because of the new clothes that you gave us, because of the new heart that you gave us, because of the stone that you broke down, and allow us to be like you, Dad. We want to be like you, Dad. And we open our hearts up to examine us, let the light shine and reveal any wicked way within us so that we can become more like you. In Jesus' name. There's a prayer team that's going to come up right now. If you need prayer this morning, please come on up and pray. Father, I pray that you'd bless each and every person here. That you let your face shine up on us and give us grace in the name of Jesus. Amen.