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Repent and Be Free (October 5, 2025)

• Organic Church • Season 2 • Episode 48

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Some battles don’t announce themselves with fireworks—they show up in quiet promises we break by Friday. We set out to do good, to speak life, to show Jesus in the places we go, then find ourselves watering the very weeds that choke our joy. Today we get honest about the loop of self‑sabotage and how repentance—not guilt, not grit—actually breaks it.

We walk through Romans 7 and sit with Paul’s confession: “I do what I hate.” That honesty opens the door to hope. We unpack the difference between godly sorrow that leads to salvation and worldly sorrow that stalls without change. You’ll hear why confession to God comes first, how accountability with people who won’t lie to you fuels healing, and why cutting off the sources that feed your patterns matters more than making fresh promises. From James 1’s anatomy of temptation to Proverbs 28’s promise of mercy, we map a path that’s clear, practical, and doable: confess without excuses, cut off what trips you, replace it with Scripture etched on your heart, and let your habits and circles align with a renewed mind.

This isn’t a call to white‑knuckle religion. It’s an invitation to step into what the cross has already finished. God doesn’t just forgive; He cleanses. The enemy may rehearse your past, but Jesus has already covered it. If you’re tired of trying harder and ending up in the same place, you’ll find language, steps, and courage to lay it down and leave it down—before you come to the table, and as you walk back into your week. Subscribe, share this message with someone stuck in the loop, and leave a review with one step you’re taking today. Your story might be the nudge someone else needs.

SPEAKER_00:

Father, as I stand in your presence this morning, I thank you for the blessings that you've bestowed upon this house. For the blessings that you've bestowed upon the people in this house, Lord. Lord, my heart is heavy today because oftentimes we are focused on the bad things in life and not often enough focused on the good things. And Lord, today I stand here giving you praise, honor, and glory for all of the things. For the mountaintop and for the valley, Lord, because I know without the valley I can't see the mountaintop. And without the mountaintop, Father, I can't survive the valley. And today, I thank you for pulling me through these, for giving me strength and comfort in the name of Jesus. Father, I pray that as this word is delivered, that it speaks to the heart of your people. Father, that they are prepared to hear the word that you have prepared for them today. Father, that they will absorb the word and make change in their life. There is no better day for salvation than today. And I thank you for the cross. I thank you for the blood. And Father, I thank you for the grace and the mercy. Father, be with me this morning as I deliver this message. Father, soften my heart so that I can speak, that you can speak through me, Father, that it is not my words, that they are yours. Father, I know that you love me. But I stand here proclaiming that I love you. Guide me today, Lord. I thank you and I praise you. I give you all the honor and glory in the mighty name of Jesus. And the church says, So there's a couple of things that I just wanted to mention this morning that I forgot to mention during announcements. One was that uh we have the Director of Children's Ministry position open. I've had a couple of people who are interested who have reached out to me. If you're interested in uh directing our children's ministry, reach out to me. There's no obligation. All I'm gonna do is send you the information, and then you can um look over that. I will be starting to schedule some in-person conversations this week. I hate the word interview because it's not like an interview, but I want to sit down and talk to you about the vision and what we want children's ministry to look like and as it grows. Um so there's that. Also, um, I want you guys to be praying for Pastor Roger. He is not feeling well today. Um I maybe I've worked him too hard, I'm not sure just yet. But his back is really bothering him, and it has been for about a week, and so just continue to pray for him. And then Joe texted me this morning, he is scheduled for a surgery tomorrow. So we just want to continue to lift him up in prayer. He chose to stay home today. He didn't want to risk getting sick and then not being able to have the surgery, so just continue to pray for him. But I started writing this message earlier this week, and it's something that I think every one of us wrestle with at some point in our lives, and it's something that I know that I have wrestled with even in the past week, including, you know, my most of my life, this is something that I've struggled with. And the idea is it's a tension between what we want to do and what we actually end up doing, right? I think a lot of times my heart is good, my mind is even good. I am thinking the things that I want to do, but then I somehow manage to screw it up. Amen. I was I'm talking to myself this morning. Hey, that's okay. Maybe I need it. Maybe it's just me and you, Dale. I don't know, buddy, but I'll preach it. You receive it, and then you give it back to me, okay? All right. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. The Bible calls us to repentance, but oftentimes we sabotage ourselves long before we ever get there. Amen. We believe that we should repent, we know that we should repent, we look at our sin and we say it is no good, and we believe that Jesus Christ is the only one who can save us, and yet somehow we forget to do it. Now, some of us go to bed at night and Father, forgive me for the things that I've done today. I know that I have fallen short of the glory of God, yada, yada, yada, but where our hearts don't really mean it. Right? We say these things because it is lip service to the one we know will save us. Amen. I don't know if it's because the building is bigger or what's going on. I'm not sure if you're asleep, but I know that I'm not the only one that does this, right? You you guys know that as your pastor, I'm always honest with you, right? And you know that I fall short of the glory of God regularly, right? Amen, glory, hallelujah. I don't pretend to be perfect, and I don't pretend to be perfect because I know that if I do, you will see somebody that is not real. When we rebranded this church to organic church, we said fresh, real Jesus. And there was a reason for that. We wanted a fresh anointing, we wanted a real vision of what the church should be, right? We have to understand that the church is not a building, it is the body, right? Each and every one of us are the church, and we have to remember that we have to carry that everywhere that we go. The hard part for us is that oftentimes we do carry it where we should go. But then we don't show Jesus, we show the world. Hallelujah. And I struggle with that so often, and it's my heart is in the right place, it's the things that I want to do, but it's the things that I can't do. Let's be honest. How many of us have ever prayed? And you raise your hands with this one, I don't even care. How many of us have ever said, Lord, I will never do that again? Who? Lord, I promise you, I will never do that again. And by the end of the week, whoo! Listen, my flesh is weak. Hey, Shy, can you look up? Your glasses are freaking me out, man. She had her head down and I saw she looked like a furry animal with glasses on. I was like, I'm not sure what's happening. I'm just kidding. I it really did freak me out for a second. I was like, I don't know what that is. Thought cousin it snuck in. I wasn't real sure what was going on. Lord. What I mean is that we will often find a way to live inside of destructive patterns. Amen. Destructive patterns are a pattern of the flesh. That is not a pattern of the spirit. The spirit wants to do all good things, but the flesh wants to do all bad things. It wants to do all of the destructive things. And we find ourselves in that pattern. And what I mean to say when I talk about that is self-sabotage. Right? We say I'm never gonna do that again, and then we do it again, and then we get on our knees and we pray, God, I won't do that ever again. And by the end of the week, we're doing it again. Sometimes before we're up off the floor, we're doing it again. Listen, you don't often see me come to the altar on a Sunday morning. I usually get that out before you guys get here, right? I'll tell you what, I was in here on Saturday morning before uh the women's meeting, and I spent 30 minutes just weeping at the altar. And I was weeping this morning, and it's not because I feel like I I've done anything or that I need to come back. I'm weeping because I don't know what to do for my people today, right? I'm saying, Lord, I know their hearts are hurting, Lord, I know bad things are happening, but Lord, I don't want those bad things to happen for them. How do I fix it? And then by the time I stand up off the floor, I'm thinking, you know what? Forget them. Right? Because we become self-centered. We're worried about ourselves. We're not worried, we're not truly worried about the world around us. We're worried about whether or not we will enter into the kingdom of heaven. Amen. I know I want to go. Amen. I don't want to go to hell, I want to go to heaven. The problem is that I can't only be focused on my salvation. I have to be focused on the salvation of the people around me. Amen. You know, when we Beth's not here, I wish she were. She couldn't catch the vision, she couldn't see it. And every time we would talk about it, she would say, I don't know, Pastor Michael. And she'd just shake her head. I don't know, Pastor Michael. And I remember when the carpet went on the stage and the trim was up and she started to see it, and she's like, Oh my gosh. And then the carpet went down on the floor and she was like, Oh my gosh. And then finally she said, It's kind of like that movie, build it and they will come, right? The problem was we did it the other way. Everybody showed up, and then we had to build it in order to house them. Let me promise you something. This is not the end just because we've done this. God is gonna continue to do good things, He is gonna continue to grow the body, but He is going to grow us spiritually. That's the goal. The goal is not to build a bigger building, the goal is not to bring more people in. The goal is the people who are here enter into heaven. It's simple. This isn't rocket science. The problem is we oftentimes self-sabotage. You know, we say sorry, sorry goes a long way, does it not? If somebody calls you out on your stuff and you just say, you know what, that was me, I'm sorry, that goes a long way. Or you can deny it and you can argue. That doesn't get you anywhere, does it? Because what sets you free? The truth will set you free, right? And listen, the only thing that we can do is be truthful with one another, truthful with the world around us. Listen, Jesus loves you. There's no better day for salvation than today. Right? Listen, tomorrow might be okay if you live to then, but ultimately, there is no better day for salvation than today. And being able to walk confidently in that truth and share it with the world will make a difference. Romans 7 15. This is one of my favorite passages of scripture because this is Paul himself speaking this phrase. Now remember, Paul wrote much of the New Testament. Amen. Paul's like the apostle of apostles, right? Like he's kind of like he's got it together. And Paul says, I don't really understand myself. I wake up with this body every day, and I'm like, what did I do to myself? Like I get up and I go to a giant and I think, Lord, how did I end up here? Right? The things that I I think, Lord, but he says, I don't really understand myself. For I want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do what I hate. I do what what does hate mean? Like, what are the things that I do that I hate? I hate when I talk about somebody and I shouldn't. Right? I hate when I let people down and I shouldn't. You know, I I tell my kids this all the time. A man is only as good as his word. Right? And a man is only as good as his word if his word is grounded in the word. Right? So, like I can tell you that I'll do whatever you want me to do. Yeah, listen, I'll come help you move, I'll come help you do this, I'll come. And as long as I show up, I'm good to you, right? I've done what I said that I would do, I have fulfilled an obligation. But if you come to me and you ask me a question and I cannot give you biblical advice, all I can do is say, well, I don't really know. Or, well, if it were me, I would. What happens is that we lead people down a path of destruction. And when we lead people down that path of destruction, we don't always see what happens at the end of the day. And so I want to encourage you that as you grow in the word and you become more faithful to the people around you, that you understand what that truly means. This is not a verbal commitment that maybe we'll follow through on. This is a commitment that I assure you I will follow through on. Just short of a hospital stay, just short of a tragic accident, I will show up. I will be there for you. Paul admits to having that inner struggle. If that doesn't give you comfort, I don't know what does. Because it means that you're not alone in those struggles. Amen. That even Paul, the great apostle who gave us the majority of the New Testament, he also struggled with those inner thoughts. Self-sabotage is when we know the right path, but we keep undermining ourselves. This isn't about other people. This is about ourselves. See, we we make a commitment or or we say to God we're not gonna, or we we say we'll do better, and then we don't do better. All we're doing is hurting ourselves. Sometimes it's anger, it's addiction, self-negative talk. How many of us have ever been there? Talk bad about ourselves, self-deprecation, right? Because it's easy to say I'm not good enough. Nobody wants me. Nobody wants to be my friend because I did, because I said, because somebody heard this, they no longer care for me. It's easy to say those things, but it is not true. Most of the time you say it and you don't even know the half of the people who care for you. You don't you can't even begin to understand. And why can't you begin to understand? Because the world will convince you that you have to live in the negative. That's where the world wants you. Because if the world can keep you there, it can sabotage all hope for good things in your life. The first step is admitting that the struggle is real and that it's biblical. Amen. The first step is admitting that the struggle is real, that I will self-sabotage because that struggle is real, and that that struggle is biblical. But we don't just stop there, we don't admit it and just live with it. The second step, and this is the most important, are you ready? It's repentance. Do you know how hard that is? To truly come to the throne of God and say, Father, I'm laying this down and I'm never gonna pick it up again. Because oftentimes we pick it up before we walk away, right? But we just carry it in our back pocket for a little while, and then something happens and we pull it back out, and now it's our it's our guidebook to life again. The struggle is real. We do it to ourselves all the time. Listen, I have conversations with a lot of people and they do these things time and time again, and I can't understand. I'm I'm as guilty, but I can't understand how we don't see God's goodness in all of this. Because He is giving you the out, He is allowing you to lay it at the foot of the cross day in and day out. You wake up in the morning and you're carrying it again, lay it back down at the foot of the cross. Sometimes those bad habits are like a boomerang. You know, you can throw it real far, but it ends up coming back. That's if you know how to throw a boomerang. I don't. It just goes somewhere and I don't ever see it again. But sometimes when it comes back, we pick it up and we say, well, then God must have wanted me to learn a lesson from this. He wants you to learn how to lay it down. That's the lesson, folks. He wants you to learn how to lay it down and walk away. Lay it down and say, I don't need to carry this because the weight is too heavy for my heart to bear. The weight is too heavy. 2 Corinthians 7 10. It says, for the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in good, you guys can read. Turn to your neighbor and say, salvation. Do you guys know what salvation means? We're saved, we have everlasting life, we have eternity in the presence of our Heavenly Father. Amen. The kind of sorrow that God wants us to experience leads us away from the sin. Do you know what sin does? It leads you to the fiery furnace of hell. Amen. So God is telling us He wants us to experience the kind of sorrow that leads us away from hell and into heaven. Amen. There is no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, hear me out, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death. Spiritual death. Not physical death. You could live physically for a hundred years and still burn in hell. You can live a hundred years and you can do all the good things. You can give to all the charities, you can be nice to people, you can never say a bad word about somebody. But if you don't have a relationship with Jesus, you don't get to go to heaven. That's it, right? And I also want to urge you that everything that you're doing today, you will answer for at the judgment seat. Amen. Everything that you do today. So somebody asked me, and this is a I you guys know I have a weird group of people, right? Like you want to know, so I got a guy, right? I got a guy. And I had this fellow Elvis Tribute artist reach out to me and he said, Hey, you're a pastor, right? And I'm like, don't know where this is going, but yep. And he said, Can you answer a couple of questions for me? And I said, Absolutely. And we started to talk, and we started to talk about repentance and what repentance truly meant. Now, he is Methodist. And so life is different in the Methodist world than it is in the Pentecostal world, right? And we all believe the same thing. We believe that Jesus Christ are Lord and Savior, and that we don't get to heaven through any other way but Jesus. But they read the scripture differently than we do. And so I was telling him, you know, repentance to me is laying something down, turning away, and never picking it back up. That is true repentance. But true repentance does not come without trial. That when we're laying it down and picking it up, laying it down and picking it up, we're learning and giving, right? We're releasing control. I saw some grimaces when I said releasing control. That's hard to do. Amen. Because I want to control my finances, I want to control my friendship. I don't want, I don't want to trust anybody else to do those things for me. But if you don't truly trust in Jesus to cover all of those things, you will result in spiritual death. Amen. Self-sabotage will always block repentance. James 1, 14 and 15. It says, temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions, and when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. Can you go back one more for me? It says, temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. Leave it there for just a second. Temptation comes from our own desires. That means each and every one of us have a different desire, right? Some of us want a new car, some of us want a new house, some of us just want to be loved, right? The problem is, is in the famous words of meatloaf, I will do anything for love. But I won't do that. For those of you who got it, you're welcome. For those of you who didn't, I'm sorry. The point is, I would do anything to be loved by the people that are close to me, but I will not go to hell for them. Amen? Amen. Okay, temptation comes from our own desires. Your desire to have more money. You are tempted to take time away from your family and chase a career that is a dead end. Amen. We find the desires of our heart, and those desires tend to lead us away from the things of God. These desires will give birth to sinful actions because you know people who love money, they find interesting ways to get it. Right? I told you guys a story a couple of weeks ago about the guy that robbed the bank, built like this elaborate treehouse and then robbed banks, got away with it for months, and then finally got caught. It's mind-blowing to me that his love for money would lead him to such a crime that would ultimately result in his death, not both spiritually but physically. And now he has to answer for that at the judgment seat of God. The Bible tells us that the love of money is the root of all evil. Right? That's hard to deal with because we need it to survive, right? But we don't have to love it and put it as the center of our lives. It's the same with all of the other things that you can think of in your life. Sometimes it's addiction, sometimes it's uh it's relationships. It can be a myriad of things. The problem is, is we have to understand that we cannot put them at the center of our life. Self-sabotage is when these desires begin to dominate us, and when we listen to the lies that the enemy tells us, like I will never change. Have you ever said that to yourself? I am stuck in this cycle and I am never going to be able to change. This is my life. It's who I am. It's all that I am worth. I cannot have more. When you listen to that lie, know that you are self-sabotaging. We keep feeding what we should be starving. Amen. My wife loves flowerbeds, you guys know that, right? She waters her flowers anytime it doesn't rain. If it goes more than two days without raining, my wife goes out and waters all of her flowers. But you know when she's watering her flowers, what else she's watering? All of those weeds that are growing up in that flower bed, right? The other day I said to her, I said, sweetheart, the flower beds are getting a little out of control. They've got a lot of weeds. She hit me with a frying pan. No, I'm just kidding. She didn't really. She said, I know, she said, and it's because I keep watering. Metaphorically, many of us continue to water the weeds in our lives, right? We water the plants. We think when we show up at church and we do all of the things, we're watering the plants, and the plants may be luscious and beautiful. But do you remember that parable that Jesus talked about? When the seed is sown, the thorns grow up and they choke it out, the weeds grow up and they choke out. You have to weed the flower bed. You have to be examining your heart. What are the things that I should not be feeding? What are the things that I should be starving? All right. You ready? Blaming others instead of owning our own choices. Amen. When we begin to blame others for the wrong that's happening in our lives, rather than taking blame on ourselves, rather than saying this is me and I need to fix it, we can never find true repentance. Listen to me. I need you to hear me. Repentance will break that pattern of self-sabotage. It cuts off sin at the root. Amen. When you truly repent, and repentance comes with release of control. Amen. When you go to the altar and you say, Lord, I'm laying this down at your feet, you are able to release the control, and whatever that negative thing is dies at the root. And then God begins to water the good things in your life, and you begin to see this abundance of fruit grow. Can I tell you that the fruit does not grow on an unhealthy tree? You already know that, right? You ever picked an apple from a dead apple tree? Never. You know, we used to, as kids, we would we would go on bike rides as a family, and sometimes you'd see those uh Granny Smith apples, those little green apples laying on the sidewalk. My dad said, eat one. I don't care. No, I mean when they're on the ground. You know what I'm talking about? They're all brown and mushy. Well, I thought I was gonna be smart and I tried it. It was equally as mushy and it was sour, right? You cannot get good fruit from a bad tree. Amen. That means you are not producing good fruit if you are a bad tree. If you are unhealthy, you produce unhealthy fruit. There are some people whose fruit is very small, but it's still edible. That is better than the people who are producing large fruit that it's inedible. You can produce the largest of the fruits. You know, I think about um in the Bible, it tells us about the land of milk and honey, and it's talking about all of this fruit, and it's so big that they they didn't know what to do with it. And that was good fruit, right? But there are people who grow fruit like that that's bad fruit. And they carry it with them everywhere they go, and they go, but look at my fruit. And you don't know whether or not that fruit is good or bad until you take a bite. And once you've taken a bite, you're locked in. Amen. I'm in a relationship with this fruit now, and I don't know how to get out of it. It's easy to get out of it. It's throw the fruit away, right? It's find a healthy tree to eat from. Stop feeding yourself from unhealthy places. It cuts off the root of sin before it ever grows into the death that we know it will grow us into. God's promise is forgiveness. Amen. His promise is forgiveness. 1 John 1:9. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. But if we confess our sins to him, not to your neighbor, not to your friend. Right? Listen, I know a lot of you like to tell me your stuff. And listen, I love all of you, and I don't mind hearing your stuff. But if you're telling me but you're not telling the Lord, if you're telling me but you're not bringing it to the altar, you ain't doing yourself any good. What change are you making in your life? I've told you before, I can't get you to heaven. I can't pray you there, I can't lead you there. If I make it, you don't get to come along just because I made it. You have to do it too. There are days that I question whether or not that I'll make it because I say, Lord, I don't know how you can forgive this. Hot mess express coming through. Choo choo, right? Every day I know that there is this mess inside of me, but then I think his mercies are new every day. Every day. And I wake up and I say, Lord, I am gonna do better today. Lord, I am gonna live for you and not for the world. And uh I was watching this uh um, well, it's it's political, I'm gonna share it anyway. One of the one of the congressmen said, you know, I wake up first thing in the morning and I want to follow Jesus. And by 10 a.m., I want to choke somebody, but I still want to follow Jesus, right? I feel that way sometimes, but the problem is, is I'm trying to reduce the amount of times I want to choke people. Because if I do that, then I am living for Christ and not for the world, right? And even if I do want to, I want to be able to love that person and say, you know what? I've answered this question a hundred times and there's no reason I should answer it again. But I'm gonna just do it. Because if God is willing to give me grace and mercy, don't I have to show it to the rest of the world? Don't I have to give that same grace and mercy to the rest of the world? Was that did we do Romans 2.12? Yes, I'm sorry. No, is that Romans 2? What are we on? No, Romans 2.12, sorry. I don't know where I'm at now. What am I on? Um I I don't know where we're at. We're just gonna keep on trucking, okay? Roll with me. God doesn't just forgive you, this is where we were at. He cleanses you, he wipes the slate clean. The devil may remind you of your past, but God says, This has been covered in the blood. Amen. Listen, the enemy can remind you of your past. I've got a past. I have got a past, and the enemy likes to remind me of that. He's doing that right now. He likes to tell you you are not worthy, you do not have, you do not have position, you don't have the ability to, and then God says, but but when I called you, when I called You all of those things were covered in the blood. When I took you in, when you came to me, I covered those things in the blood, and the devil can remind you, but he can't take it away. He cannot take it away. Whew. Romans 12, 2. She's giving me the one minute. Don't copy my notes, may have been wrong. Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then, and only then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. Okay. Today, when we repent, we have to change the way that we think. We have to change our identity. It is no longer of the world, it is of Christ. Amen. That is a hard one to do. You guys ready? Your habits have to change. You can't spend time with the people you used to spend time with sometimes. You can't put yourself in the same situations you used to put yourself in. Because when God transforms you, He transforms everything about you. When you are changed from glory to glory, He changes everything, not just one thing. He is not trying to take away that one little thing that you think is holding you up from salvation. He is trying to change your heart, your disposition, your mind, your spirit. He's saying, allow your flesh to die and your spirit to live. And yet, we only want one little peace. I know that sometimes when God speaks to me, I always tell him, I say always, I don't always tell him, but oftentimes I will tell him, not yet, Lord. Not yet. And he'll say to me, Okay, that's fine, but when? And then I get into this, well, when so and so, or when such and such, right? And then that never happens. And then I go back to God and I'm like, God, why did you never do that? You told me, you showed me, we talked about, and you never did. And he says, but do you remember that you stifled my move? Do you remember that you told me to wait? See, God is a gentleman. He is not going to force his desires upon you. He is going to show you a straight path in a crooked way. He is going to take whatever situation you're dealing with and he's going to straighten it, and you're going to be able to see it, but you have a choice. And it's the path that is narrow and clear, or the wide path that ultimately ends up in turmoil. Amen. We have to find practical ways to break the cycle of self-sabotage. Amen. And the Bible gives us ways to do that. First of all, we have to confess our sins honestly, and we have to stop making excuses. That's Proverbs 28, 13. I don't know if we have all of these ones up there. And if not, it's fine. It is. People who conceal their sins will not prosper, but if they confess and turn from them, they will receive mercy. People who conceal their sins. So that means when you come to the altar, when you come to the foot of the cross, when you are giving God whatever it is, you can't conceal anything from Him. Now I want to remind you that God knows your heart. He knows your thoughts. He already knows, but He's waiting for you to confess it unto Him. If you hide it, you will not prosper. If you confess it, then you will receive mercy. Cut off what feeds the sin. That seems easy, right? Cut off whatever is feeding the sin. Jesus said, if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Right? Now that's wild thought. I don't see many of us out there with machetes whacking off limbs, right? It's not necessarily physical. This is spiritual. When you have something that is causing you to sin, if you are tripped up because you are doing things and being around people and acting a certain way, because you've put yourself in social situations, you have to cut yourself off from those social situations. Amen. You can't continue in them because if you continue in them, you will continue in a life of sin. He's showing the seriousness of removing stumbling blocks from our lives. Right? The stumbling blocks that stop us from entering into the promised paradise. Amen? Why would we want to miss out on that? Why would you want to miss out on a guaranteed paradise for worldly or fleshly desires? Replace those desires, replace those those sins or those thoughts with God's word. Psalms 119. It says, I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. And we often talk, I used to tell people, and I don't hate me for this, umbrella of grace. You don't have to memorize scripture as long as you're in the word. I'm gonna tell you, I've changed my tune on that. I'm gonna be a politician for a minute, okay? I'm gonna flip-flop on you. If you don't etch the word upon your heart, you don't get anything from it. You can read it and read words. There are people every day who say, I read my Bible every day. I read 12 chapters a day. But you learn nothing from that reading, right? And there are some people who read who it takes them three years to read the Bible from cover to cover, but when they get to the end, they're transformed, changed, made new. Amen. Listen, let me tell you, one passage a day will get you somewhere if your heart is in reading that passage. If you're checking off a box, I promise you, you are not going to experience transformation. You are not going to experience change. You are not going to experience the goodness of God. You are going to experience selfishness, self-loathing. All of the things that we've talked about, those are the things that you will experience, and you will blame God for them because you have not done what you have committed to doing. Stay accountable. This is a big one for me. I like accountability partners. Fortunately, I married one. My wife said to me the other day, she goes, You know, I'll never lie for you, right? She told my kids one time, if you do something wrong and the cops show up here for you, I'm turning you in. She won't lie for anybody. It's not who my wife is. She is, my wife is probably one of the most honest people I've she won't even lie to me about Christmas presents. Right? It's just not who she is, it's not how she's wired. She doesn't believe that it's fruitful in any way. And I'm thankful for that because that means when I say to her, hey, how was my message today? She has three answers. Right? None of them are bad. But if she says it was good, I'm like, okay, it was subpar. It was just, it was, it barely made the it barely made the mark, right? And I know that about my wife, but she would never tell me you didn't do a good job, or you didn't, you didn't preach with fire, you didn't bring the anointing. And the reason that she does that is because she knows that message spoke to someone. Right? The challenge is, was it grounded and rooted in the word of God the way that it should have been? See, my wife doesn't play games with me. So when I do something that she doesn't like, she's gonna let me know. I've told you guys this, and I'll tell you, this is it's still something that I carry with me regularly. One year early on in our marriage, I asked my wife for Christmas. She said, What do you want for Christmas? And I didn't want anything. That's not true. I always want something, but it wasn't anything we could afford. And I said to her, I said, You make me a list of everything that I do in our marriage that is not fruitful to our marriage. And on Christmas morning, I woke up to that list. It was the hardest thing I've ever read in my life. The absolute hardest. I mean, somebody said that was really brave of you to ask. No, it was stupid. Hear me out. It was stupid because I knew what should be in the letter, right? I knew all of the things that I knew what I was doing. But I wanted to know if she knew. She knew. She did. And she wrote them down. And I look at that, I keep that list in the top drawer of my dresser, and every once in a while I'll pull it out and I will look through it and make sure that I am not doing any of those things any longer. And do you know why I did it? Do you know why I was able to make the change? Because I laid it at the foot of the cross. I said, God, the things that I am doing are not fruitful to my marriage. That means they are not fruitful to a covenant that I made with you. Lord, I made this agreement in your name that I would do all of the best things that I could to care for this woman who is your daughter. Listen, I'll answer to a lot of fleshly fathers, but I will not answer to my heavenly father for treating somebody poorly. That's why I won't do it. Because if I do it, it is not going to end well for me. Amen. And my wife keeps me accountable in all of the things that I do. James 5, 16, it says, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. Now, I know that this might sound counterintuitive, one of the scriptures that we uh preached just a few minutes ago. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other. This is not just go talk about it. Right? This is when we're up here in prayer. And you're saying, I'm struggling with this. And Pastor Holly's saying, What can I pray for you for? This is a time to say that. It is not the time to say that on the phone, Bluetooth, with six other people in the car. Right? That's not the time. Because now we're we're running ourselves into the ground. And did you know that people will think about you what you think about yourself? Because you'll say it out loud so often. Well, I don't think that I'm a very good friend. And pretty soon you're not a very good friend. Right? That's not how we need to be. We need to speak the good and the positive things into our lives. Stay accountable. Find somebody in your life who simply will not take your stuff. I have been blessed with a lot of those people. Florence was wonderful at that. I tell a story real quick. Margie and Nick aren't here, that's unfortunate. Uh, when Margie and Nick got married, Florence was marrying them, and I was uh helping with their technology, and we had scheduled the rehearsal, and I had forgotten. Now I want to be clear, I was a baby Christian at the time. Okay. And Margie called me on the phone and she said, Hey, uh, are you on your way? She's like, We want to get started. And I said, on my way, and she said, Yeah, for the rehearsal. And I said, Oh, expletive, fill in the blank. And I'll tell you it wasn't the S one, it was a bigger one. Little did I know I was on speakerphone. And Florence was standing right there. The audible gasp that she made. Margie said the look on her face was terrifying. And I remember when I walked through the door for that service, she didn't say a word. And I remember at the end I was like, all right, prepare yourself because you're about to get it. And she never said a word. I she never mentioned it to me ever. But she didn't have to. Because I knew. And I knew that I let her down, and I knew that what I had done was not a godly thing. I didn't need her to punish me. I didn't need her to belittle me because God convicted me very quickly. The cross will break every cycle. Romans 7, 24, 25. It says, Oh, what a miserable person I am. Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Stop for a second. Oh, what a miserable person I am. Are any of us miserable today? Thank you, Dale. Buddy, this was just for me and you today, okay? It was just for me and you. And I am a miserable person, not necessarily to myself, but I can be miserable to other people. Some of you look at me and go, he is a miserable person. And some of you are like, I wouldn't say it to his face, but since he mentioned it, what a miserable person I am. Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? I ask myself all the time, how do I get free from this life dominated by sin and by death? And it says, Thank God. The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see, it is in my mind, I really want to obey God's law, but because of my sinful nature, I am a slave unto sin. Amen. Now listen, the answer is not your willpower. Hear me. Open your ears real quick. If you hear nothing else today, it is not about willpower. You don't save yourself from sin through sheer willpower. The answer is Jesus. At the cross, he broke all power of sin. When that veil was torn, all bets were off for sin. It is finished, included your sin. Your sins are covered by the blood of Jesus Christ. The problem is, you have to take it seriously. You have to understand what that actually means in your life. That means that I should not go on sinning. If Jesus was willing to go to the cross for my sins, I should be willing to give up something so silly as smoking cigarettes or talking bad about people. So that I can honor what God has done for me through his son, Jesus Christ. Today, if you're stuck in self-sabotage, the call is simple. I want you to repent and be free. Repent and be free. Don't be ashamed. Don't let shame hold you back from what it is that God wants to do in your life. Be willing and ready to run to Jesus. It is time for the church to stop self-sabotaging. It is time for the church to know what it means to truly be saved and to repent. Some of us will keep living in that cycle of sin, waiting for Jesus to break the chains, but Jesus won't break the chains until you surrender. Jesus will not break the chain until you surrender. Or if you are ready to walk in freedom, I want to invite you to repent today. We're going to place some music. We're going to open the altar for just a minute. Now I'm going to do this before we do communion, and here's the reason. Because we know that in this church there is no uh membership restriction on communion. I don't restrict communion in any way. If you are a member of the body of Christ, then you belong here with us. Amen? You are welcome here. However, if your heart is not in the right place to take communion, if you are living in sin, if you are doing things that are against the will of God and knowingly living outside of the will of God, the Bible tells us that it is worse for you to take communion than it is for you to just sit out. Nobody's gonna judge you if you don't get out of your seat today. Nobody in here cares. I don't know your life. All I know is that you have a right and the ability to be free from that sin today. So we're gonna start with an altar call. Immediately following the altar call, we're gonna go into communion, and what we'll do is we'll just have everybody go back to their seat after the altar call, and we'll do communion just like we always do. We'll start on this side, you'll make your way up, go back to your seat, hold your communion, we'll take it together at the end, okay? Everybody good? So I'm gonna pray real quick and then we're gonna start uh start that altar call. Heavenly Father, I just thank you, Lord, and I praise you for being in this house today, Lord, and for giving us a desire to repent of the sins that are overtaking our lives, Lord, that we might be able to walk away from the self-sabotage that we have created in our lives. Lord, that we may be able to look to you, that we may be able to focus our eyes on you and lift you up today, Father God, that we may be able to exalt you by laying down our flesh and living in the spirit. Father, I thank you for repentant hearts in this house. I believe that breakthrough is coming in the mighty name of Jesus. Lives are being changed today, Father God. People are being made new. Lord, I just thank you for that. Bless us as we move from our seats to the altar, Father. Move upon our hearts in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.