The Fight is Fixed (Romans Week 17) by Ryan Snow

Why do we still struggle, even when we know the gospel is true? In this message from Romans 8:12–17, we explore Paul’s powerful reminder that followers of Jesus are no longer slaves to fear, performance, or shame, but beloved children of God, adopted into His family and empowered by His Spirit. The gospel doesn’t call us to strive for acceptance; it invites us to live from acceptance, embracing a new identity that fuels radical love, freedom, and transformation in community.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Awesome, awesome. What a title, right? I I tell people it really means chief ex offender. Um, you know, because in many ways I I channel the Apostle Paul when he says I am the chief of sinners. So joining this work was was quite uh something that I didn't plan doing. Um and yet the uh just the interesting creativity of God uh to um see an incredible founding um executive director uh come upon retirement, and uh they were looking for somebody who had led a ministry, uh, led a business, which I'd done, uh had a heart for the marginalized, and then number four was would not be terrified to walk inside of a prison. Um and I have become quite comfortable inside of a prison over the last four months, um, and you know, having been in and out in the institutions probably 30 times now, um, getting to see God do a work in people who um not to minimize the crimes that were committed, uh, but have experienced God's grace and and are experiencing transformation. So uh that's a little bit about me. I want to begin uh this morning by uh sharing a story, uh a true story. Really, it's an unbelievable story. It you know predates uh things like DraftKings or Pete Rose. Uh you may know where I'm going with this, but back in 1919, um uh the Chicago White Sox were an incredible baseball team. Um the problem is, is there were a few players, I think eight of the players who actually uh were paid by gamblers to intentionally lose the World Series. Some of you historian buffs, remember this? I don't think by the look of things anybody was living in 1919. I see three people that raise their hand, but I don't believe you. Uh that would put you at 107. Um and if you are here, praise God, you've lived a faithful life. Maybe it's time to retire. I don't know, but that's how I would feel at least at 107. But I feel that way at almost 50 now. Um but it part of the story is one of the players known as uh Shoeless Joe Jackson, there's this historical phrase where I never knew where it came from, but on the courthouse, um, as this was kind of being uh litigated, uh, a little boy walked up to Shoeless Joe Jackson and in this heartbreaking voice said, Say it, say it ain't so, Joe. Say it ain't say it ain't so. And they had fixed the game. They had fixed the game. And and maybe if you're uh in today's world, you feel like uh when you watch the stock market, it's not that different. You're like, wait a minute, how did this person know to do this? And and there's all these things where, in many ways, it feels like the game is fixed. That, you know, in the same way that the the white socks fit you know fix the game, in many ways, I want to borrow that phrase because uh the series that we've been in as we've been working through the book of Romans is that the Apostle Paul in Romans 8 tells us that in many ways the fix is already in. The fix is already in. Romans 1 through 7 is really a, in many ways, a devastating uh blow to the ego of the religious types that many of us are. It's this uh, you know, Paul from Romans 1 through 7 says that basically it's impossible whether you see yourselves as a religious or irreligious person. There's just no way that in our own strengths or through our own efforts or through our own willpower, we could ever be made right in a relationship with God. And Romans 8 tells us that in many ways that there's a fix that happened that changed everything. That if you and I enter into a relationship with Jesus, that that all of the good news and all of the things that God says of his son Jesus, he says is true of us. And so this morning, I'm gonna pick up from where we left off last week in Romans chapter 8. I think Sarah preached through verse 11, at least that's what I'm told. If she didn't, just nod your head and be like, yeah, that's what she did. But in many ways, this this passage really leans to this idea that there's just something that amazing happened in Jesus. And that we can actually be in a relationship with the living God, and because of the death and the resurrection of Jesus, and God sending the same Spirit that rose Christ from the grave, which is what Paul says in Romans 8 in the beginning of verse 1 through 11, we actually can live this new life. There's this great book by a Boston College philosopher, a guy named Peter Krieft. Peter Krieft wrote a book on heaven. And in there he writes this: He says, Suppose that both death and hell were utterly defeated. Suppose that the fight was fixed. Suppose God took you on a crystal ball trip into your future and you saw with indebutable certainty, that's actually a word, you can Google it, indibutable certainty that despite everything, your sin, your smallness, your stupidity. No, he wrote this, I'm not saying this of you, you could have for free for the asking your whole crazy heart's deepest desire, heaven, eternal joy. Would you not return fearless and singing? What can earth do to you if you are guaranteed heaven? To fear the worst, earthly loss would be like a millionaire fearing the loss of a penny less a scratch on a penny. You see, what Paul is saying in Romans 8 is that the fight is fixed. And so the question we're gonna ask this morning is why do so many of us, even knowing the things that we're gonna read about today, even having experienced them to some degree in our lives, why do we still struggle so often? Why is it so hard to live with a sense of fearlessness and radical love and radical sacrificial love for others? Why is that so hard? Why do we still struggle, as Sarah talked about, between our flesh and its desires and God's Spirit living in us and through us, the life that He wants to live through us? Why do we keep struggling if we know that the fight has been fixed? Romans chapter 7, Paul ended this and he says, What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? And Romans 8 provides the answer. I think verse 1, and we won't have it up there, but Paul says, Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus. Like we've been given new life. We've been given a free runway to live a life, live the life that Jesus would live if he were in us, working through us. And yet, for most of us, we still struggle. Most of us still just think, like, well, I'm gonna just try to eke out an existence and you know be able to pay my taxes and hopefully my mortgage or my rent. And I'm just gonna try to get through life. And the book of Romans is not really just about getting through life with kind of a nice person attitude. The book of Romans is really, I would say, one of the best missional documents on planet Earth. The book of Romans is actually this book that will launch us to live lives sacrificially, to do what Roman Paul says in Romans 12, beginning in verse 5, I think, through 12, and say, to live this life of honoring others, outdoing one another, and now we show hospitality. That means, like Paul says in Philippians 2, 3, in humility, considering others as more important than ourselves. Paul in Romans is not just giving a letter to those of us that like to think theologically. I think a lot of people think, oh, I study Romans. I'm a seven-point Calvinist or whatever, you know, like that, I'm really smart. Romans is not just for people who like to think theologically. Romans is a book, I think, that will unleash the church, the body of Christ, to live sacrificially, missionally, generously. Like this is, if we really understand Paul's heartbeat in this, we will never do life the same. We will be radically changed as a people. And that's what Romans 8, verses 12 through 17, which is what we're going to focus on, is about. So in verse 12, he says, This, therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation. Now, cue the miserable music. How many of you like the word obligation? Does anybody in this room like the word obligation? You're like, oh, I love to be, you know, I love all the obligations of my life. I love that tomorrow is Monday. How many of you are just like, I love the obligation of work? And I love the obligation of paying taxes. I just, I just really do. Now, here's what's interesting. Something actually I found out and discovered in my time spending with folks on the inside of a correctional institution is uh we actually they're actually looking forward to the day where they can pay taxes. Like I they're actually like, I can't wait to not just be a recipient of tax money. I'm excited to become a contributor again. And and so, nevertheless, when we hear obligation, what in the world is Paul talking about? And that's what we're gonna discover this morning because Paul is saying the obligation that you have, if you're in union with Jesus, if the Holy Spirit lives within you, the obligation you and I have is to live a new, radical life. It's not just to live a nice life, it's not just to be a good moral person, it's to live a life that when people look at your life, they start to scratch their head and go, How in the world do you love people like that? How do you turn the other cheek? How do you walk the second mile? And you don't go, I'm a really good person. I had great parents and they raised me well. You're like, no, God the Spirit is living in me. And I live from that. I don't live for it. I don't live this way, so that at one point God will say, Now you're my child. This text is gonna say, you are my child. And because you're my child, I'm gonna live like the one to whom you're being conformed into his image. I'm not gonna steal from next week, which is Romans 8.29, but that's the goal that we all from all backgrounds, from all parts of the planet, would be conformed into the image of the Son, Romans 8.29. You can't preach Roman without stealing from like the next message. So I apologize to whoever's preaching next week. Uh please accept my kind forgiveness or kind repentance. Romans 8 is this announcement that something radical has been decided. And so let's jump into the text. I'm gonna read it. The words will be on the screen if you have your Bible. This is from the NIV, Romans 8, 12 through 17. Paul writes this, therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation. But it is not to the flesh. We'll unpack that a little bit if you're like, what's he talking about there? I'm guessing Sarah touched on that, but it's not to the flesh to live according to it. Verse 13, for if you live according to the flesh, you will die. Right? We know this. Because we've experienced that, right? But if you but if by the spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The spirit that you receive does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again. Rather, the spirit that you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, Abba Father. The Spirit himself testifies with our Spirit that we are God's children. Now, if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. If indeed we share in his sufferings, in order that we may also share in his glory. Paul addresses the problem that we already know about our lives. If you've attempted to walk in a relationship with Jesus at all, you know that there is a battle waging within. Right? He addresses this in the book of Galatians, in his letter to the Galatians. He addressed it in the beginning portion of Romans 8, that there's this flesh and the spirit, and really the flesh is not just our physical being, it's it's an operating system that resides in all of us. In fact, in Romans 13, I think it's in verse 14, Paul says, So make no provision for the flesh. That was the verse that actually dislodged unbelief in a guy named St. Augustine back in the fourth century. So the flesh is this operating system that resides in all of us. It's this pull that we have to be self-sufficient, to be self-protective, to be self-defined. It's this pull that resides in all of us. And the more we can get honest about our struggles, and one of the things about church is we love to admit that we're not struggling with anything, right? We love to show up and be like, I'm doing great. How many of you do that? Like, you show up and you're like, things are good, things are good, and inside you're like, they're terrible. We fought the entire way to church. We will probably fight the entire way home. In fact, we probably won't even talk on the way home. But we're doing well, things are good. We're blessed. We're blessed, right? We just play church. We do this all the time, right? Paul's like, no, no, no, there's something in you, in me, there's still this part in us where we just like defy God's rule and reign in our lives. There's this flesh, and Paul's saying, like, no, no, no, no. So we have an obligation to also tap into what the Spirit has done in us to fuel and to fan the flame and to feed the spirit. There are a thousand and one ways in which the flesh, this self-operating mode, shows up in our lives. For some people, it shows up in control. I won't ask you to raise your hand because your spouse is probably already nudging you, but some of us are like the phrase is control freaks, right? Like, like we're like, I will perfect my life, my whole life will live in a Microsoft Excel thing, and I will make sure nothing ever goes wrong ever. And then the doctor says, something's gone wrong. And you're like, that wasn't on the spreadsheet. You start to panic, you're like, where's the goodness of God? That didn't fit. My Excel spreadsheet was that I would make it to at least 107 until that pastor told me it was time to retire, and I was gonna live this perfect life, and all my kids are gonna be perfect, and they're gonna have all these degrees and everything. And and we do control. Some of us, it's just like, I'm gonna just, my flesh is like, I'm going to just indulge in pleasure. I'm gonna indulge in comfort. It shows up in a thousand and one ways. Paul in Romans 8 is not moralizing towards us, he's diagnosing us. He's saying there's something within us, this flesh and this spirit. And if we continue to feed and make provision for the flesh, we will die. There's a great book that was written a few years ago called Live No Lies, and in there John Mark Comer writes this. He says the devil's primary strategy to drive the soul and society into ruin. Check this out, is deceptive ideas that play to disordered desires, that's your flesh, which are then normalized in a sinful society. It's profound. He says the devil's primary strategy to drive the soul and society into ruin, which is kind of where we live, is deceptive ideas that play to our disordered desires, which are normalized in sinful society. Friends, what are the disordered desires that still reside in you? One of the reasons we say, you know, church is uh is a it's a team score is we need to bring those into the light. What is Paul saying, or not Paul James saying in James 5, verse 16? He says, confess your sin to one another so that you may be healed. Like there's just something where we just gotta at times get honest. Paul's honest here. Like we have these disordered desires. Yes, we've tasted and sing the goodness of God. Yes, we sing about how worthy of it all. But in the reality, throughout the 168 hours of the week that we're all given, there's just this, these two kind of operating systems residing within us. The flesh, which wants to be governing all of our lives, and the spirit that God has given us. And what Romans 8 is about this transfer of power. One of my favorite devotional writers, a guy named Paul Tripp, writes this my problem is not just the guilt of sin, it's the inability of sin as well. I don't just need forgiveness for what I've done, I need a new power for what I keep on doing. Right? Romans 8 is about a power transfer. We don't just need information. We don't just need theology, we don't just need sermons. Isn't that devastating when you're giving one? We don't just need that, like we need God's power in us. We need him to dislodge those areas where we get stuck, those disordered desires, and so that's what Romans 8 is ultimately about is this new power. And so that's where Paul's driving us. He wants us to see what God has actually done for us on our behalf. Right? The gospel is not just good advice, it's good news. So we need to know what God has done for us. So this is where the text drives at. In verse 14, Paul says the game changer is this, for those who are led by the Spirit are children of God. Not servants, not just followers, not just admirers, but children. Eric just talked about how he and Michael, they well, separately, but they they had children, right? Don't confuse that. Eric and Erica had a child, and Michael and Hannah had a child. But the point is, it's like they go and they just look at their child and they just look at that little nine-pound baby wrapped in that cool blanket that they've been giving out to kids for the last 45 years, and you're like, oh, and you just look at a parent. I've got four kids. And I just think back, even now, of each of their lives, they're 21 to 13 now, but the moment they came into the world, I was like, this is amazing. And you say, like, you are my admirer. Bow to me, I'm your father. No, you're my child. Every time I preach Romans 8, I think about the great scene from uh The Lion King. Any Lion King fans out there? I just think of the relationship between Simba and Mufasa. And I just think like, that to me is like is like Games' child. Like, do you just relish in the fact that you really are God's child? You're like, no, man, I'm a 50-year-old, I'm a six-year-old, like, I should have my act together. And he's like, yo, you are just my child. Chill out with how great you are, chill out with all your degrees, and how many zeros follow your income statement or you know, your investment portfolio. Like you, at the end of the day. We are but a vapor, James tells us. You are a child. You just at times take a deep breath. It's so good to be your son. Your daughter. I never graduated from being amazed that I am your child. Like if you don't absorb that at a deep level, you will always try to achieve a status. God says I've already begun this video. Like no degree, no letters behind your name, no LinkedIn profile, no amount of followers or likes will ever get you what God freely gives to you. I want to make this personal. Paul says in here, he says that not only are you my child, but he uses the word of adoption. You've been brought in, you are adopted. And the word that he's using there in Roman time would have literally meant like you're not just an add-on to the family. Like you are fully my child. Now, Libby and I back in 2015, um, our fourth child, we adopted from Ethiopia. And I'll never forget uh going before a court in Addis Ababa and having to answer nine questions before a judge who might have been 23 years old at the time, um, which was an amazing thing. And going through all this experience and all this paperwork and getting fingerprints with the immigration services and having the FBI fingerprint us and all these things. If you've ever adopted a child, you know, you've got to go through a lot of things. So we went through all these things, and we traveled 8,000 miles to Addis Ababa, we had to go there twice. It was crazy. But when we adopted Grady Yasu into our lives, we just looked at this little bundle of joy, this 15-month-old, and we just said, You are ours. And he just cried like crazy and screamed. We're like, nevertheless, you are ours. All that we have is yours. Everything. You are my son. You are my child. So Paul is talking this heart language right there. And this cost the father something, right? He's gonna go to that in verses 32. Again, I'm stealing from next week. But Paul says this he who did not spare his own son, how will he not also along with him graciously give us all things? See, what Paul is trying to do in your life, in my life, and the audience into which he's writing is that he wants you to know that you know, that you know, that you know who you are and to whom you belong. Verse 15, he says, This the spirit that you receive does not make you a slave, so that you live in fear again. Rather, the spirit that you received brought about your adoption to sonship, and by him we cry, Abba Father, the word there literally means daddy. It's this intimate relationship. There's one Hebrew scholar that studied the scriptures and said over and over again, we've never seen anybody use this phrase other than Jesus, calling God our intimate father. The great writer Dallas Willard says this one of the greatest transformations in the Christian life is a slow shift from relating to God as your judge, whose verdict is always pending, to relating to God as your father, whose love is already secure. If you're a child Of God. If you are in Christ, you're not a slave. You're not, you know, somebody who just has to achieve your identity in Him. You're His Son, you are His daughter. And no failure, no sin, no dry season changes the category that you are in. Paul kind of dials up the notch a little bit in verse 17. He says, Now, if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, meaning that everything that belonged to the Son now belongs to you. Your inheritance is guaranteed. Your inheritance is guaranteed. See, that's the point. The fight is really fixed. All the things that we run after and chase after and say, Man, if I just had that. How many of you have a list that said, if I just had that? Does anybody here have a list like if I just had this, then I would be happy. Then I would be content. If we could just scale the company this big, then we could take a deep breath. If I could just get my portfolio to this, then I would feel a sense of security. If our, you know, whatever. This if-then thing that resides, I think, in all of us. Paul is saying, like, no, no, no, you have this. You have this new, radical, unbelievable identity. And so the invitation is to realize I'm inviting you to live from this. See, the truth of the matter is being a child of God doesn't mean problems in life go away. It just means that you can look at life and you no longer have to live in ultimate fear. See, one of the things I've loved and experiencing over the last four months of walking alongside folks whose life got defined by a really horrific decision or a set of decisions that were made by them is that we get to go in and tell them you are still created in the image of God. And in spite of everything you've done, and we don't minimize it. In fact, step four of Celebrate Recovery means we dig up the motivations beneath the deepest problems and decisions that were ever made. We say you gotta tell the brutal truth of your story. Because when you tell the brutal truth and you're met with the full grace of God at the moment of your deepest brokenness, you will experience a liberty that no, you know, being released from a prison could ever set you free. You can be free on the inside because you will know that you can be fully known and fully loved. That's the gospel. That is the gospel. And and one of the things is when we experience that, and when we continue to experience that, and we we continue to preach the gospel to ourselves, when we continue to do that day in and day out, it doesn't take away the problems of our lives, but it means that we can live our lives from this new sense of identity. And that's where Paul is driving at, that we would live from this kind of new inside out. And the truth is this you and I, we still operate from this idea that if we live a certain way, then we will prove or we will become children of God. And the gospel is the exact opposite. It says, because you are already God's child, I want you to live this way. Because of who you are. Tim Keller, a great pastor, puts it this way. He says, the gospel is not obey and then you will be accepted. It is you are accepted. Now you can truly obey. Now you can truly obey. And obeying is not just living out the moral law. It's Romans 1 5. It's the obedience of faith. It's that you can now live a life of risk-taking love. You can live this life of just radical love for others. You no longer have to look out for yourself. What does Paul say in Galatians 5, verse 6? He says, the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. See, Romans and Galatians have a lot of parallels. We won't go into those. Martin Luther used to study them all the time. There's a relationship there. Because this religious spirit that lives within all of us thinks that if I do those things, then I will be accepted. The gospel inverts it. It says, you are radically accepted. Now, in light of that acceptance, in light of the fact that the fight has been absolutely fixed by the work of Jesus, how are you going to live? How are you going to live? What would it look like for your life and my life to live like that? The truth, though, is it's a battle. And that's why Paul says in verse 13, if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. See, there's an active part that we get to play in it. It's not just show up to church for an hour and then we're good for the rest of the week. It's this ongoing participation. It's this ongoing, as Dallas Willard says, arranging your life so that you regularly put yourself in the path of the Spirit's work. He calls those spiritual practices, some people call them spiritual habits, some people call them spiritual disciplines. It means regularly times where we come together and we worship. It's why we encourage people to develop a devotional life of studying God's Word. We're arranging our lives to engage with God, the Holy Spirit. This passage, probably more than other, any other passage I can think of in the scriptures, forces all of us to really ask two fundamental questions. Who do I really think I am, and who do I really think God is? And I think there's a few tests we could ask ourselves to answer that. I've got a few questions. I think they'll be on the screens. The first question is this when you sin, not if, by the way, I know some of you have perfected holiness for the rest of us. Um when you sin, do you run toward God or away? Like run toward him. Like, is that is that what you do? Like when you read Luke 15 in the story of the prodigal son and the story of the prodigal father, are you that son running down and realizing, oh wait, somebody's running at me? Like, that's the whole point of that song. We sing the reckless love of God. It chases me down, finds me right where I'm at. He loves you. You are his child. But when you sin, do you run towards him or do you run away? Or do you what do what some of us do, and you just try to manage your sin? Like, I've got it. This is good. I can handle some of this on my own. See, see, when we find those moments where we just lean into what Paul talked about in Romans 1 through 17, the flesh. When we find that we just are continually struggling and being pulled by this operating system, do we just go to God in full transparency? Second question is this What does your prayer actually sound like? I think for many of us, we we don't read the book of Psalms. We don't realize like we can duke it out with the Lord. Like we can cry out and just be like, let Him have it and say, God, this is how I really am in this moment. I am raw, I am angry, I am upset, I am disappointed, I am all the things that you already know about me. I'm gonna just get it out there. I'm gonna be fully honest. You are my Abba, you are my daddy, you are my father, you can handle this. You have big shoulders. I heard that you created the whole world. And so, like, I'm not going to hide. I'm gonna be brutally honest. I want a real relationship with the living God, not this artificial one that I've been trying to manage. The third question is this when crisis hits, what is your first move? Again, if you don't really know who you are and you don't really know who God is, you will rely on yourself when the crisis hits, right? For many of us, we just like, I just gotta work harder. I just gotta grit my teeth, I just gotta be more disciplined, I just need to start some New Year's resolutions, even though it's May. Like, I just need to, I need to do more, I need to do more, I need to activate. And sometimes it's like, no, when crisis hits, we just need to cry out to God. Like crying out to God is the proof that you're like, He's really, really there. Now that doesn't mean he's not gonna nudge you in a direction he is. And some of that nudge may be through the counsel of somebody else, some of that nudge may be through a coach, some of that nudge may be through a counselor, but if you have these brutally honest sessions with God and you cry out about the things you're still being pulled to and struggle with, he will show up and he will speak. In the crisis, do you go to him? Or is the first move you just go to rely on what you know works? And it does work for a while until it doesn't any longer, right? And some of us are at that point in our journey, right? Or like, I did those things, and they just no longer work. And in the crisis, where do you go to? Look at the things, the one of the things that I think Paul wants to make sure we see in this text, and I want to highlight, is the pronouns that he used. He doesn't say that he says, we have an obligation. We cryba, we are children, we are heirs. I think one of the important things we have to understand in this passage is that this relationship with the living God is not a solo sport. How many of you like love team sports, and how many of you like love just individual sports? I'm probably more on the individual sport because I'm like, then nobody else can like limit what I can do. Like I've run 49 marathons. That is for the most part psychotic. Uh, but it's also um uh a sense of like I'm gonna be able to push myself. Now I love running them with people. I I wouldn't probably want to do that many alone. I'd probably do half of them that alone. I can I can kind of just like tune out. I played college golf, that's an individual sport where at the end five people add up their score, and you either win or lose as a team. But the point is this the Christian faith is not a solo sport. Like we desperately need others. God, the Holy Spirit almost always will work through other people. Like, the church is not an accident. Needing other people is not God's plan B for your life. And I think some of us are like, uh, why am I still struggling? And generally, as a pastor, when I've heard people struggling with things, it could be with lust, it could be with greed, it could be with infidelity. I'm like, does anybody know about your real life? And almost always they're like, nope, I would not share it with them. I'd be terrified if they knew it. And I'm like, but like that's God's whole plan. You need to have a few people who know the real you. And I need to have a few people that know the real me. Because God the Holy Spirit created it that we desperately need one another. There's a great book that has, you know, probably impacted some of you and you don't even know about it, called How People Grow by Henry Cloud. And in this book, he talks about the theme of addiction. And he talks about that most people never get free from addiction until they're in a community where they can be brutally honest. In there, he writes, hardly anyone completely recovers from an addiction without connection to a support system. Now maybe you don't put yourself in the addictive category. As the writer Gerald May would say, you're lying to yourself. All of us are addicts in every sense of the word. It's just usually to something else. Maybe it's not a substance, but maybe it's to your phone as you're scrolling it right now. Um, hardly anyone completes recovery from an addiction without connection to a support system, he says. Some may stop their addictive or compulsive behaviors, but their their relational patterns do not change, and most times they relapse if they do not do group work. As people are cut off from others and their souls are starved for connectedness, the need for love turns into an insatiable hunger for something. It can be a substance, sex, food, shopping, or gambling, but these never satisfy because the real need is for connection to God and others. And to God, check this out, through others. When people receive that, the power of addiction is broken. You see, the Holy Spirit does this in our lives almost always through community. It's through somebody coming up and telling you the truth that you need to hear in love. There's just times where it's like the truth of God's word doesn't hit until somebody who has the Spirit of God in them speaks it to you. In his great book, Life Together, Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer talks about confession, and he says, so often we we confess our sins to God and we're so fearful of confessing them to others. But when we confess to others and they look you in the eye and say, You are forgiven. Yes, what you did is wrong. Yes, you need to repent from that. But you are loved, you are his child. There's just something powerful when another brother or sister looks you in the eye and the Spirit of God's in them, and they say, I know your worst parts. And you're loved by God. You can sing a thousand Maverick City worship songs so you're blue in the face, and not get what that power moment can happen when you dislodge the truth to another brother or sister, and they say, The mercy of God is not exhausted by your sin. You're loved, you're accepted, you're secure in Christ. Now let me pray for you. Like we need that as a people, right? That's why at the end of our services we do prayer ministry. Because the truth of the matter is we show up here and we leak and we're empty, and we need to be reminded of his mercy in our own lives. The other ways that the Spirit works through community is there's times where as followers of Jesus, we just have a list of reasons why maybe this is a week I'm gonna just take a pause from following Jesus. And we need to be reminded to stay in the game. All hell is breaking loose on people's lives, and we're just like, man, God, where are you? And we need the people of God to speak into our disappointment, our pain. That's the design. Like, this is why it's not a solo sport. We need the community around us to hold our story when we forget it. Like, what is my story? What is my salvation story? We need people to speak truth into us again and again and again and again. We need that in the church. The men and women who our organization works with, they need that on a daily basis. And we try to show up and see that happen in the in what you and I would consider one of the darkest places on the planet. And and people's lives are being changed, believe it or not. Because the Spirit of God can walk into rooms like correctional institutions and set men and women free, and his work can be done right there. And so here's how I want to close this morning. Um we close by having a time of of prayer where we'll have a here in a minute, some of our prayer ministry team come up and just create space for you to receive prayer. But there's two groups in particular I'm gonna invite to come forward for prayer. The first is if you're here and you're just like, man, I am just spiritually exhausted. Not just tired, like we're all probably tired, right? Like life is often tiring. So I'm not asking just for people that are tired. There was a book uh written years ago by Jerry Bridges called The Discipline of Grace, and in there he talks about how many of us spiritually get on what he calls the performance treadmill. And on the performance treadmill, it's just this kind of like if if I do all the right things, then I will be um loved by God. And and the problem with the treadmill is it's quite addicting. You just you live in that place, but it exhausts you and it drains you. Romans 8 is this whole different story because of Jesus and because of the Holy Spirit invading our lives. We're already declared his children. But we forget that. And if this morning you're just like, man, I've just forgotten that. I just don't relish in the good news. I don't enjoy the fact that I'm a child of God. Like, I just I don't spend my time, hardly any time of my week, goes to just enjoying that. I've got so many things to do. I've got to scale a business, I've got to, we gotta build new countertops. I mean, like the granite is out, I've gotta get concrete and then that's out, and I gotta be a quartz countertop, like whatever like thing has your attention. What would it look like in your life on a daily cadence? You and I just had a few moments where we just sat down, and I am just a child of God. Even if today's project utterly bombs, even if this vision that I have for our organization or company just utterly is a complete failure. I'm his child, and he is pleased with me. Do you know that? Are you living from that? If not, come up and whatever's blocks you from that. We would love to pray that you would again just enjoy who you are as his. And then there's a second group of people who maybe you're here, and this whole relationship with God thing seems new to you. Jesus gives this image. Oh, it's actually John writing in in John chapter 1, verse 12, where he says, Yet to all who've received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. One of the things we get to do as humans is God is not coercive. He will nudge us to the point of decision, but we have to say, I receive you. I welcome you into my life. And maybe you're here, maybe somebody brought you out this morning to hang out with us for a morning, and you've never welcomed Jesus into your life. I think when you came in, you got a card or maybe five or six of them. I don't know how many pamphlets we pass out here. But but on one of them, you can indicate, hey, I want to begin a relationship with Jesus. And we would love to follow up with you. Um and so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pray. Why don't we all stand? Um and if you're on our prayer team, I'm gonna invite you to come forward and and um we're just gonna allow some space for for God to meet with us. Holy Spirit, we invite you um into this space. And God, I I know what it's like to live in that space of just trying to muscle it out, trying to will pow it out, trying to just grit my teeth and um run the run the course you have me on, and and God, I know what that's like often, and just doing that in my own energy. And usually how it shows up in my life, God, as you know, is is I become short with people. The people nearest me whom I should love the most, I tend to just see right past them. And God, it's just impossible. I found it to be utterly impossible to manufacture Christ-likeness in my own strength. I don't have what it takes. I know all the things that it takes, but I don't have what it takes. So, Holy Spirit, I'm desperate for more of you. God, I just think of folks who are here today who may just taste again a little bit of that sense of desperation, of needing more of your presence in their lives, God. That as they just think through their weak, maybe the past one or the one that's coming, that they just know that at the end of the day they don't have what it takes to be the man or the woman that you've called them to be, and they just want to experience more of you, God. So, Lord, help us this morning to sense your desk our desperation, but also help us sense that you are there to meet us. You're not looking for us to be impressive, you're looking for us to be poor and broken. What is the prophet Isaiah said? Here's the one who I esteem, he who is broken and contrite in heart and trembles at my word. God, just the areas where we're not broken. Would you disrupt us again? Help us feel our need for you, Lord, so that you could shower us with your love and that we would allow that love to live through us. So, yeah, I just want to invite you if you're here this morning and you just feel that sense of just desperation again for more of God in your life. There's nothing better than just sharing that with somebody and just receiving what God has for you. So don't be shy, come forward. We'd love to just pray with you.