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Well, I'd like to do a little bit of self-diagnosis this morning, but I I want to do it in light of the thought that you would evaluate your own life as I evaluate mine. Is that okay? Can you guys do that with me this morning? What I've sensed that there's a problem inside of me. And even as a young man, as a young Christian, I sensed that there was a problem inside of me in that I think it was something that I thought that over time, and maybe even with good behavior, that it would go away. And what I've come to discover is that that's pretty foolish thinking over the years. You see, the problem is this there exists oftentimes inside of me a gap between what I would confess that I believe, what I could say to you, what I could articulate that I believe, and then what I truly believe at a heart level, what the beliefs that I act on. Does that make sense? So there's this gap between what I confess and what I truly believe. And we're going to talk about this gap this morning and to kind of help us out, I want you to see that these gaps sometimes exist in our faith, but they also can just exist in other in other ways as well. I was on a motorcycle trip a number of years ago with my dad and one of my friends, a guy named Darren, and we were on this trip, and we went one day on this trip up this beautiful mountain pass, and we got up to the top of the ridge, and we pulled over on our motorcycles, and there was a lookout. And so we we got off our bikes and we walked across, and I went up, and there was this big kind of pad and this fence, and then this cliff, a very sheer cliff down to the valley below us. It was beautiful. And I I went up to the edge, you know, I'm leaning on the edge, taking off my gear and just hanging out there. I'm not scared of heights at all. So we're there just hanging out. And I noticed that my friend Darren is just like hanging way back, right? Like he doesn't want to even get close to this thing. And he's like talking to me like across the way. And I'm like, dude, what's going on? Are you scared of heights? And he's like, yeah. And I'm like, okay, so we have this conversation back and forth about it. Eventually, after some prodding, I was able to convince him to come and look because it was amazing, you know, to come and look over this edge. And he he kind of had a sheepish look and then backed back off. He was done. Now, Darren is a very smart man. He really is a smart guy. And he could articulate, I'm sure he could articulate to you, that that was a safe place to be. That there was, you know, in a big concrete slab and a nice safe fence, and there was nothing that he should have been afraid of. But what he believed in his heart was that that wasn't safe. He was up high, it was dangerous, it was scary. There was a gap between what he couldn't he could articulate and confess, what he knew and what he really believed. And much in the same way as Christians, I believe that oftentimes there's a gap between what we would confess to people and what we truly are believing and acting on in the inside. And so I want for us to have a conversation about that. Now, I need to make a quick note here. I'm gonna assume, I'm hopefully assuming, that some of you in the room are not Christians. And because of that, I just want to speak to you briefly for a moment because I don't want to just blunder on through this message without addressing you and saying, I believe that this conversation can be helpful for you today. Now, we are gonna address this gap for Christians that exist between what we confess and what we believe, but if you're not a Christian, there's three ways I feel like this this conversation can be helpful. Firstly, if you're not a Christian, it can be helpful because what you're gonna see today is that this faith that we believe in as Christians is not a magic wand. What I mean by that is some pastors, some churches out there talk about Christianity, talk about the faith that we have, kind of like this magic wand that if you wave it over your life, if you become a Christian, everything's perfect and okay, and you don't really have a lot of struggles. And that's not at all true. I want you to see that today, that as Christians, there's still things that we walk through, there's still this journey of life that is at times very difficult. I want you to have a realistic view of what it looks like to be a Christian. Secondly, I want for you to have the opportunity to, in the words of Jesus, he put it like this, to count the cost of being his follower, being his disciple. And what I think this morning will give you is a realistic look at what it means to be a Christian and to have that opportunity to be like, is that something that I want to be a part of? Is this a thought, a faith that I would be interested in? Thirdly, I believe you have an opportunity as we talk about the gospel and how it applies to our lives, to be educated in what the gospel is. You see, as a Christian, I believe the gospel is the most amazing thing that we can ever really learn about. And so, as a as somebody who's not a Christian, you can start to take some steps in learning what is the gospel. And so I want for us to ask that question what is the gospel? I'd give you a working, very, very oversimplified definition of this. The gospel is the good news that God has rescued and is restoring creation in and through the work of Jesus Christ. Now, this is a very oversimplified definition, but it's a helpful one. Another way to think of the gospel is with four things: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. Let me articulate those really quickly. As Christians, we believe that God created everything, absolutely everything, that we see. He was the intelligent designer behind the whole world when it came into being, okay? So as a Christian, we believe that, but God created humans, us as a special part of his creation, in that he created us in his image and he gave us the ability to choose to worship him or to worship ourselves. And the fall is the piece where we as Christians decided, well, not we as Christians, we as humans decided to reject God, to reject his way. And if you can read about that in the first few books of the Bible, where it tells us about the fall, how we chose to pursue our own interests and our own ways, and that's when sin, sickness, disease, hurt, all of those bad things came into the world. So that's the fall. The good news is that God at that point didn't say, okay, I'm done with you guys, I'm out of here. But he decided to pursue us. And we call that part of the gospel the redemption. So you got creation, full redemption. The redemption came by Jesus coming, and we celebrate that at Easter. Easter, uh, not at Easter. We celebrate that at Christmas, the coming of Jesus, and then we celebrate his death at Easter. Both of those are amazing things. It's amazing that God would come as a baby. That's that's a miracle in and of itself. And then the fact that he would die for our sins, wow, that's a miracle too. That's all a part of the redemption story of what God has done through Jesus. And we believe as Christians that if you believe in Jesus, if you confess that he is Lord, he will save you. That's what we believe. From your own sins and from your own self. Okay, then we also believe that there's a restoration coming. We believe this hope for the future. I love that the gospel isn't just a message of the past and present, it's a message of the past, present, and future. And the hope that we have that sin, death, sickness, all those diseases, all that stuff is going to be gone one day. That's what we look forward to. So, really quickly, I can articulate for you some of the themes of the gospel. We can give you a definition, like we did, of the gospel and tell you it's about this rescuing and this restoring and the work of Jesus. I could also tell you that it's the story of all of the scripture. It's the narrative that we read throughout the scriptures. What I want you to see here very quickly is that the gospel is very simple and yet at the same time incredibly deep. And so this morning, as we go into this message talking about the gospel, I hope that you continue to see that. That it's accessible and easy, it's simple, and yet at the same time, it's incredibly, incredibly deep. So we're going to talk a lot about the gospel, but I want to get back to the problem that we started with. I want to get back to that gap. You see, the gap that I mentioned earlier, I believe, is constantly being shaped by an internal conversation that you and I are having with ourselves. We all have very active inner dialogues going on, and some of the conversation that we have with ourselves is very simple. We have things that we say to ourselves, like, where on earth did I put my telephone? You know, my cell phone. Where'd I put that? That's something that you would say to yourself, or you would say something simple like, I need food. You don't say that out loud. Well, sometimes I say that out loud, but but typically that's on the inside, or I need a bathroom really badly. Like there's things that we say that are very simple that we say to ourselves. But there's also things very complex that we say to ourselves. There's often big ideas and concepts that we're telling ourselves all of the time. And what I want to put to you this morning is that we are all, Christian and non-Christian alike, perpetually preaching to ourselves. You and I are perpetually telling ourselves things. Sometimes those are good things, sometimes those are not good things. And what I want you to see is that this perpetual preaching is always going on. When you wake up in the morning, you tell yourself certain things. It may be about your day, it may be about your life, it may be about somebody else. When you look in the mirror, you start preaching to yourself. You may think, wow, I'm so good looking. But the likelihood is you probably think the opposite of that. You start to pick out the things in yourself that you don't like and you start to preach that to yourself. Somebody cuts you off in traffic as you're driving to work. You preach to yourself about that person. Oh, what an idiot. Why'd they cut me off? I had to break, you know, like there's this continual conversation going on inside of us. We start to say statements like this. This is one of the good ones. If only. When we make if only statements to ourselves, those aren't very positive usually. If only I had another car, if only I had a better job, if only I got paid this much, if only I had this house, if only I had this significant other. We are continually, perpetually preaching to ourselves. And it's very natural and it's often very subconscious. But what I want you to see here this morning is that that conversation that you and I are having is impacting that gap between what we confess as Christians and what we truly believe. So the question that I'd very much like for you to answer this morning is what are you saying to yourself? And what should you be saying to yourself? As you're most likely aware, this issue of a gap existing between what we confess and what we believe isn't a new problem for us as humans. And we can look to the Old Testament, we're gonna turn to Psalms 42. I'd ask you guys to join with me in reading this this morning. We can turn to Psalms 42 and see that this guy living back in the Old Testament times, thousands of years ago, was struggling with a gap between what he confessed and what he truly believed and what and was acting on. And as we look at this Psalms, I'm gonna invite you to read it along with me. It's only 11 verses long, but as we look at it, I want to invite you to really think about where is this gap existing? Because I think that's gonna be helpful for our conversation today. Look for this gap as we read this Psalms together. This Psalm together, Psalm 42. Here we go. As a deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, God. I thirst for God, the living God. When can I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while all day long people say to me, Where is your God? I remember this as I pour out my heart, how I walked with many, leading the festive procession to the house of God with joyful and thankful shouts. Why am I so depressed? Why this turmoil within me? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him, my Saviour and my God. I am deeply depressed. Therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mazar, deep coals to deep, in the roar of your waterfalls. All your breakers and your billows have swept over me. The Lord will send his faithful love by day, his night will be his song will be with me in the night. A prayer to the God of my life. I will say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about in sorrow because of the enemy's oppression? My adversaries taunt me as if crushing my bones, while all day long they say to me, Where is your God? Why am I so depressed? Why this turmoil within me? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him, my Savior and my God. Did you see the gap there as we read? It's it's it's there, right? The psalmist who this isn't one of the psalms written by David, this is by one of the sons of Korah. So we don't really know who this is, but what we see is that there's this gap between what they know and the reality that they're living in. The author is struggling to believe that God is present, and I would argue that he's he's struggling to ultimately believe that God is even good. There's a real battle going on here in Psalms 42. It's interesting as you read, you kind of see that escalating, right? It starts out and it's like as the deer pants for water, and you're like, oh, how beautiful is that. And then all of a sudden he comes in with my tears have been my food, and you're like, whoa, okay, well, this is a heavy psalm. And as you read through this, you see this heaviness, and then it's like he encourages himself a little bit, and then the heaviness comes back in, and then he encourages himself again. And so as we read through this psalm, what I want you to see is the reality of what he's really coming at. And I feel like what we're really looking at here in Psalms 42 is articulated in verse 9 in specific. Look at verse 9 with me again. He says, I will say to God my rock. So he's re identifying himself as a God follower. He's saying, God is my rock, but listen to what he says next. Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about in sorrow because of the enemy's oppression? That's the reality he's living in. That's the struggle right there. And so as we look at this, I see a whole bunch of things going on. It's kind of a little bit jumbled up because what we see is there's certain things that this psalmist is confessing. He's saying, Yeah, I know that this is true. I led the celebration into God's temple and all this stuff. And then we also have these things that he truly believes, like what we just read. God, why have you forgotten me? Why have you abandoned me? And then we also have him preaching to himself. We have him telling him truths about God. So to kind of help us with this, I'm a visual person. Is anybody else here a visual person? Okay, I got some friends, good. So I'm a visual person, and and one of the ways that I think is kind of to help me is to draw things out. And so I got to doing that a little bit this week. So I hope you don't mind. You've probably already realized that in your guide there's a little graph, okay? So we're gonna look through this together in light of the conversation and then in light of Psalms 42, okay? So as we look at this graph this morning, what I first want you to see is we're gonna put up this first one, is that as we were talking about, there's these things that we would say that we know, that we would confess that we know. And then below them is this idea of what we truly believe, the things that we're acting on. And when as Christians this exists, when there's a disparity between these two things, what we're gonna call this gap is the gospel gap. Another way that we could have put it is the gospel void. It's where we're not believing God. This isn't a good situation to be in, by the way, to have this existing in our lives. But I believe as Christians that there's a continual struggle with things like this in different areas of our lives. There's things that we would say that we know and things that we really are believing and acting on. And that gap is not healthy. And so what I would propose to us is, and we'll go to the next slide, is that in those moments we need gospel truth to interject so that there isn't any gap between what we confess and what we truly believe. So this is a fancy, cool looking graph, but let's put this in light of Psalms 42. Let's make this practical. So let's go again to Psalms 42, and we'll put this slide on the screen for you guys as we look at Psalms 42 in light. What we see in this psalm is that the psalmist says that God loves him and that God's with him. There's kind of this confessional thing, and you see that several times through the Psalms. But then it's like this like switcheroony, because you're like, what's going on here? All of a sudden, he's like talking about how God's forgotten and abandoned him and doesn't even care about him. I mean, again, let me read you that verse 9. I think it's really the key verse. I'll say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about in sorrow because of the enemy's oppression? And he's been really raw here. He's just saying to God, like, ultimately, I feel like I'm abandoned. I feel like you're not with me. I feel like you don't care. And what we see here is really cool. I don't know if you notice this, but verse 5 and verse 11 are exactly the same, like word for word, the same. And what we see here is that this author is preaching to himself, and what he's preaching to himself is the the truth about God. He's saying he can hope in God because God loves him and God is his savior. Let's read verse 5 or 11. They're exactly the same again. It says this Why am I so depressed? Why this turmoil within me? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him, my Savior and my God. And so what I want you to see here is that this guy is having this struggle, but he's attempting to resolve it by preaching truth to himself, preaching the truth of who God is and what God has done for him and he's going to do for him in this moment. Listen to this quote from Dr. Lloyd Jones, a pastor, a theologian from last century. He said this the main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul, Why art thou cast down? What business have you to be disquieted? You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself, Hope thou in God instead. Instead of muttering in this depressed and in unhappy way. And then you must go on to remind yourself of God, who God is, what God is, and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. That's essentially what we're talking about here is this thought that we would take ourselves by the hand and say, Hey, what's going on here? Why is this gap existing? God, what is the truth that we need to apply in this moment? And so I want to ask with you guys, I think an applicable question is how does this happen? How do we do this in a practical sense? How do we grow in preaching the grace of God to ourselves? How do we grow in that? The first thought I put to you is this we grow in this through the work of the Holy Spirit. This only happens through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. I know that may sound like kind of the Sunday school answer, you know, Jesus, God, he's the one who does it, but you guys really need to hear that. I don't believe that any of this happens without God really working and moving on our hearts and in our lives. The Holy Spirit's kind of an interesting part of God in that as Christians, we believe that God is three persons in one He's God the Father, God the Son, Jesus, and then the Holy Spirit. I was trying to explain this to my five-year-old this week. That was a fun conversation. I don't fully understand. I said, I said, ended up saying to him, it's a mystery. It really is a mystery. We don't fully understand it, but as Christians, I will tell you one thing that we do know and we can take to the bank, is that Jesus said, Jesus Himself said, It is better that I go so that the Holy Spirit can come and live inside of you. So as Christians, we believe the Holy Spirit lives inside of us. And I know to somebody who's not a Christian, that sounds a little bit crazy, but it's true. We believe the Holy Spirit lives inside of us and is working on us. If you read John's, John chapter 14 and John chapter 16, you hear Jesus talking about the Holy Spirit, and he calls the Holy Spirit the counselor. What that means is that he brings counsel, he brings wisdom, he brings truth into our lives. And so I want to encourage you guys today that this work begins and finishes with the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And so, as we're going to talk about here in the next few minutes, we need to be submitted to his work into our lives. The second thing that I point you towards that needs to happen for us to grow in preaching the grace of God to ourselves is that we need to become fluent in the gospel. We need to become fluent in the gospel. Listen to this. How are you ever going to preach truth to yourself if you don't know what that truth is? And so I would put to you that we need to really soak in the gospel. When somebody says that they're fluent in a language, it means that they really know and understand a language. I don't know if you've ever talked to somebody who knows more than one language. By the way, I've had people ask me what language we speak in Australia. We only speak one language, it's English, okay? Um, but but I have talked to people who are fluent in multiple languages, and they say one of the ways that you know that you're fluent is when you start dreaming in that other language, right? And so I would put to you today that we need to become fluent in the gospel. So we're so soaked in it that it's coming out in all of our lives. One of the things that's important to realize is that the gospel is something for us to meditate on, to marinate in, to study, to understand, and to apply its truth. Because then the Holy Spirit can use the gospel in our lives. He can use it to help us to preach to ourselves, and ultimately, like we're going to talk. About next week to preach to others. And so I believe that this process of us growing in our fluency of the gospel, which is the title of our series for these next two weeks, is the point of it, is so that we would mature as Christians, that we would come to look more and more like Jesus. You see, one of the things that I didn't understand again as a young Christian was that the gospel was applicable for all of life. In my mind, the gospel, the good news of who Jesus was, what he'd done for me, the message of the of uh, you know, all of that, the cross, the resurrection of Jesus, that was for my saving. That was to take me from not being a Jesus follower to being a Jesus follower. It was for churchy word, my justification. Okay? And as a as a Christian, as a young Christian, that's what I thought the gospel was all about. And that's true. It is for our justification, but it's for so much more than that. The gospel is for all of life, which means it's also for the day-to-day growth and maturing and becoming more and more like Jesus. We call that the churchy word again, is our sanctification. It's for our changing more and more. That word sanctification means setting apart. It's for our setting apart to look more and more like Jesus. And so I want to put to you today that the gospel has to be for both our our conversion but also for our growth. Another way to put it is like this the gospel is not a one-time shot, but it's a feast to be enjoyed and digested every single day. I feel like this whole conversation on gospel fluency, preaching the gospel to ourselves, is a conversation that I'm really taking just some baby steps in. This is definitely not something that I have all figured out. I'll be very clear about that. And as I've journeyed in that, I want to tell you just one small step in my journey in this that's just from even just a couple of weeks ago. A couple of weeks ago, Liz, my wife and I were at odds with each other. We were not in a good space with each other, and probably probably the biggest disagreement that we've had in quite a while. And I I got her permission to talk about this, by the way. As we were the funny thing is, as we were talking about it uh this week, we were trying to remember what it was about, and neither of us could remember what it was about, this disagreement that we had. Obviously, it was very significant, right? But it was enough that we were very upset with each other, we were frustrated with each other. I didn't really want to even be around Liz. I didn't want to talk with her, I didn't want to figure it out, you know. There was this disagreement between us. And the fun thing was we had a group from church that was meant to be coming over to our house in that moment, okay? So here we are in the heat of the moment, got this disagreement going on. And I remember in that moment, if I was to go back to that grid, which we won't go to, but if I went to that diagram, what I would tell you that I could confess in that moment, what I knew was that God had called me to love and to serve Liz. Ephesians 5. We had it read at our wedding, right? Ephesians 5 tells us that husbands, you are to love and to serve your wives like Christ served the church and gave his life for the church. I could have articulated even in my anger in that moment that that's what I knew. But what I was believing, and I'll be really raw with you, what I was believing in that moment was that Liz didn't deserve for me to serve her because she wasn't serving me. That was the reality. That was the gap. That was a big gospel gap right then. And I remember I was going around the house angry and trying to like clean up the house because we had this church group coming over, and all of this was going on, and I remember the moment because it was so clear. Again, this is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives as Christians. I remember the moment when the Holy Spirit brought conviction and brought the gospel to my life. I was walking out into the garage down the steps with a load of stuff when God all of a sudden reminded me of who I was in Christ. And what he brought to me in that moment was the memory of Romans 5, 8, where it tells us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And with that, he brought the thought into my mind, into my heart, that Jesus loved me and served me while I was absolutely disgusting to him, when I was a sinner, when I was so far from him, when I was rejecting him, and I couldn't even love and serve my wife. That was the conviction that was brought in the moment as I was taking the stairs down into the garage. And I wish I could tell you that I turned around in that moment and went and made things right with Liz. But as that thought came to my mind, I was like, no, I don't want to, I don't want to preach the gospel to myself right now. I don't want to make this right. And it wasn't until a couple of minutes later that Liz pulled me aside and we had a conversation. Now, thankfully, what God had done in that moment was starting to soften me. And he'd been doing the same thing in Liz's heart. Again, guys, without the gospel in our marriages, man, marriage is really, really extra tough. It's already tough. I'd say near impossible. Thankfully, in that moment, God was working in both of our hearts and we made things right. We talked through it. We both talked about what was it that we were really believing and what was the gospel truth in that moment. It was a great conversation, a healthy resolution. What I want you guys to see is the gospel can and should apply to all of life. From the moments that we're frustrated driving down the road through to our marriages. And because of that, I've given you obviously an illustration from our marriage, but some of you aren't even married in the room. So how does the gospel apply to us? And I got to thinking about that this week, and I felt like the best way for us to start to talk through this was to go through some hypothetical situations. Because my hope is, as we go through a couple of scenarios now, is that you can inject yourself into that moment and say, God, what would it look like for me to be submitted to your Holy Spirit in the moment? And so I'm going to talk through a couple of hypothetical situations. It was actually a really healthy activity for me to write these out this week because I got to some of these are pretty close to home for me. Areas that I've struggled with in the past and areas that I'd like for God in the future to continue to help me at growing in applying the gospel to my own life. And so we're going to look at a couple of hypothetical situations. Just stick with me and really think about how this might apply to your life. Hypothetical situation number one, frustration. Not that you guys ever struggle with that. Frustration. Let's imagine that you're angry because you're stuck in traffic and you're late for a meeting. That happens in Austin, right? You're stuck in that moment. What as a Christian do you know? What would you confess? Well, what you know is that God is great and He's in control of all things and it's all good, right? But at a heart level, what you're truly believing in that moment is that you're in control. And that you are more important. Most likely you're believing that you're more important than all the people who are around you. Sometimes we show that by weaving in and out of the traffic, right? Trying to get ahead, trying to make our way through. What does it sound like in the middle of the, I mean, this is a simple little thing that happens to us often. What does it sound like for the gospel to be applied in that moment in our lives? It may sound something like this the Holy Spirit in that moment bringing conviction and saying, Hey buddy, you're not carrying my peace at all right now. Maybe it's remembering a scripture like this one I jotted down, Colossians 3.15, that says, And let the peace of the Messiah to which you were also called in one body control your hearts and be thankful. And so in that moment, as you think on that scripture, you're like, God, I'm struggling right now. I don't have any peace. And you're telling me in your word that your peace is actually meant to control my heart. And I'm meant to be thankful and I'm struggling with that right now. God, in the scheme of things, this meeting isn't that important. And so would you help me to realize that you're still good and you're still great and you're in control of all things, and I don't need to be stressed out right now. I'm not gonna add anything by being worried, by being anxious, and by being stressed out. Hypothetical situation number two, possessions. Let's say that you're looking for a house, a place to live, but your thought with that is that you, that place would bring you fulfillment and joy. Now, what you confess and what you would say that you know is that God, as a Christian, you know that God has provided all things for us and our satisfaction is found in Him. But what you believe in that moment is that you cannot and will not be happy until you secure your place for this place for yourself. Maybe it's one of those if-only situations. If only I had a house, if only I had, you know, X amount of bedrooms or an extra garage or blah blah blah blah blah. What does it sound like as you're in the middle of that kind of thing going on in your heart, that disparity? What does it sound like to preach the gospel to ourselves? Well, maybe in that moment the Holy Spirit would remind you about Jesus, who Jesus was and how he lived. And in that moment, you're reminded, Jesus never was anxious about where he would like stay the night, what he would eat. He wasn't anxious about that stuff at all. He actually said in Matthew 6, and maybe you start thinking about Matthew 6, where Jesus said, Don't collect for yourself treasures on earth. And then as he went on in Matthew 6, he said, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then all these things will be added to you. And so you start to pray, and you're like, God, I'm sorry that I'm looking for my satisfaction and fulfillment in something other than you, because ultimately I know it will not satisfy. I've proved that over and over again. God, would you help me to apply the truth of your word that I am to seek first your kingdom? I'm seeking other stuff first. Help me, forgive me, walk with me through this situation. Hypothetical situation number three, parenting. Like I said, some of this is close to home. Parenting, your child has just had a massive meltdown. Your children, maybe, multiple, had a massive meltdown in front of a group of friends of yours, and you're extremely embarrassed. What do you do in that moment? Now, what you would confess that you believe is that God loves you and accepts you, and you don't need to prove anything to anyone. But what you're really believing is that your worth, your value, and your identity are built on how good of a parent you are. What do you say to yourself in that moment? What does it sound like to be fluent in the gospel in that moment, in that situation? As you're driving home from the party or the gathering where that just happened, what does it sound like for the Holy Spirit to bring conviction in that moment? Maybe it sounds something a little like this God reminding you that your His love for you is not based on your performance on any level, including being a parent. Maybe you to mind is brought by the Holy Spirit, Ephesians 2. You're reminded that you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is God's gift, not from works, so that no one can boast. Maybe that's what you're thinking of. It's not my works, but God, I'm finding my identity and worth in how my kids are behaving. And ultimately that's not good because my identity and worth, God, is in you. Would you forgive me, God? Remind me that you alone are good. God, I do want my kids to be well behaved, but more important than that, they need to know you and love you. Would you help me to seek you in this? God, would you help me to be submitted to you? God, would you help me to find my identity and my worth in you? Last hypothetical, number four, depression. Maybe you're depressed because of a series of hard things. Maybe just one hard thing. But as things have have piled up, maybe it's the loss of a job, maybe it's the loss of a friendship or a relationship, maybe it's the loss of a loved one, maybe it's the loss of a baby, or maybe just a pile of all of those things, several things lining up back to back, loss of health. As you sit in that space, what you would have professed maybe before that happened as a Christian is that God is good, that He's loved you, that He's accepted you, and because of that, that you can and should have joy in your life, but there is no joy in your life because of your situation. When you look to your situation, what you're struggling to believe is that God is good. You're starting to doubt him and question, is God good? By the way, that's not a new struggle, Adam and Eve. That was the question they had in the garden when they ate the fruit, very first struggle. They were questioning, is God good? Is he holding out on us? And so imagine with me that you're struggling with that. Much like the psalmist in Psalm 42, what does it sound like to preach the gospel to ourselves? Well, I would put to you that as these issues, like obviously, we started with traffic and now we're talking about depression. As we're talking about an issue like this, this is the sort of thing that I believe the gospel has to continually be proclaimed to. I don't know if you noticed, in uh, like I pointed out in Psalms 42, he repeatedly, just in the span of a few verses, repeatedly preaches to himself. And what you maybe need to cling to in a moment like this is the truth of God and who he is. In fact, that God has loved you. Maybe it sounds a little bit like this. You in that moment, just being honest with God, God, I am feeling rejected by you. I'm struggling to believe that you are even good, that you even love me. Because when I look to this, this, and this, I don't see your love. But God, when I think about it and as I'm reminded of it, when I look to the cross, when I look to the message of the gospel, what I see is that you love me. And I know that I can take that to the bank, but right now I'm struggling to do that. God, would you help me to know that you love me? And maybe you start to just memorize and claim a scripture like Romans 8, the back end of Romans 8, verse 35, 37 through 39, and says this. Who can separate us? Maybe you start to pray this to you to God, who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or anguish or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things, we are more than victorious through him who has loved us. For I am persuaded that not even death or life, angels or rulers, things present or to come, hostile powers, height or depth or any other created thing will have the power to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And maybe you just cling to that promise in that moment. And you say, God, I feel like these things are separating me from your love, but your word says that it cannot and will not. And today, God, would you help me to cling to your love? Would you help me to cling to the gospel? I want you guys to see that the gospel applies to all of life. Every gap that we have is a possibility, is a is a moment for God to do his work of love and restoration in our lives. A question I'd like to ask you is this what happens if you leave this room this week and you absolutely stink at applying the gospel? You leave here and you're like, yeah, we're gonna apply the gospel to life. You know, we're gonna have great conversations, and my marriage is gonna be better, my parenting, all of life's gonna be better. But as you leave here and as you go through your week, you just blow past the opportunities that the Holy Spirit brings in front of you as a Christian. What happens then? I'll tell you what happens then. What we see in God's word is that even when we struggle, God's grace is sufficient for the struggles that we have. Romans 8, we have a perfect example of this. The first part of Romans 8. I just read the last part. Listen to the first part. It says, Therefore, no condemnation now exists for those that are in Christ Jesus. If you stink at applying the gospel this week, you can apply this verse. You can apply this truth that there is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. You know the background for this verse is Romans 7. It's in your reading guide this week. If you look to the back of the listening guide, there's a reading guide. Read Romans 7, because what happens is Paul's there and he's talking and he's saying the very things. This is Saint Paul, by the way, the one who's been used by God to do all these incredible works, and he's he's there and he's being honest with us, and he's saying, Hey, the very things that I don't want to do, I do, and the things I do want to do, I don't do. I've got it all backwards, it's all mixed up. I'm struggling. And at the end of Romans 7, towards the end of that section, he says, What a wretched man I am, who will save me from myself? And that's where Romans 8:1 comes right in. He preaches the gospel to himself. He says, Therefore, no condemnation now exists for those that are in Christ Jesus. And what I want you to see today is that Jesus can help us in every struggle, and when we struggle to allow him to do that, he helps us with that. What I've got for you in your notes to jot down is this Jesus helps us in every way. All that you and I bring to the table in this whole conversation, in this whole topic, is an open heart, is open lives, is open submission to God. He brings all the work. He brings all the work to the table. Remember what he said on the cross as he died? He said, It is finished. And what I want you guys to see today as we kind of wrap this up is again, Jesus is the hero. Even in this good gospel application, it's not a matter of you and I being really good at pulling ourselves by our bootstraps to be better at applying the gospel this week. It's only by his grace that that will happen. All that we bring to the table is simple submission. So, how do we respond this week to what we've talked about? Well, firstly, I want to encourage you to submit yourselves to God. Now, I addressed those of you who are not Christians or not sure where you stand with God first in this message, and I want to address you again. If you're not sure where you stand with God, this point really applies to you. Submit yourself to God. Hopefully, after hearing what we've talked about today, you would see that there is a value to being in a relationship with God and that he will love you and accept you no matter what. That is the truth of God's word. That's the truth of the gospel. What you can see if you're not a Christian is that the gospel, the good news of who God is and what he's done for you, doesn't just help you understand your past, it doesn't just help you in your present moment, but it also gives you a hope for the future. Without Christ, we are all lost, terribly lost. And I want to encourage you to make a decision to submit to God. And that may sound a little bit airy fairy. Come and talk to me after the service about what that means. I'd love to have a conversation. Talk to the person who brought you along to church about that. Talk to somebody who loves God and loves you and have that conversation. For those of you who are Christians and have been tracking with what I've been talking about, this gap between what we confess and what we really believe, I would tell you submit to God as well. But more specifically, submit to the Holy Spirit's working in your life. Submit to the Holy Spirit this week. Maybe this sounds like this afternoon or even now as we respond, or maybe tomorrow morning, just saying a prayer like this. God, Holy Spirit, would you lead me through this week? Help me to be sensitive to your voice. See what happens. What if we all prayed that prayer every single day? What would happen in our lives? Holy Spirit, I want to be submitted to you. Would you lead me? Would you guide me? Would you help me to be sensitive to your voice? Would you help me to apply the gospel to my life? To the areas of unbelief. Help my unbelief. What would that sound like? What would our lives look like if we did that? Second thought of response, and again, this is all because of God even stirring in us a desire to follow Him. Immerse yourself in the gospel. I said this earlier, I'll say it again. It's hard to preach truth if you don't know what truth is. I don't know if you noticed as I went through those hypothetical situations and even the situation with Liz and I, there were scriptures that accompanied all of it. When we have scripture hidden in our hearts, when God inspires us to learn his word and to bathe in that, that gives the Holy Spirit tools to bring to the table when there's moments that conviction needs to be brought. It gives him an opportunity to be like, hey, here's a verse that applies right to that problem. And so I want to encourage you guys, let's immerse ourselves in who God is and what he's done for us. Let's bathe in the goodness of God and his word. Third thought, ask yourself a good question. Ask yourself, what am I believing? If there is an area of struggle, if you sense that there's something going on, don't mess around with just trying to modify your behaviors or do a better job. Cut to the chase and ask the question what am I really believing? That's a great question to ask because it gets past all the junk, all the peripheral stuff, and cuts straight to the heart of it. Ask yourself that, but the final thought is this. Ask other people that too. Join others in this dialogue. Find some people around you that love you and love God and have some of this conversation. Maybe this is your spouse. Maybe it's a close friend. Maybe it's a family member and have this conversation and say, hey, I really feel like I'm struggling in this area. There's a gap between what I confess and what I'm really believing. Would you help me just talk this out? What does the gospel have to say about that? That can be a really helpful dialogue. I know it may feel a little bit clunky at first, but I think this is something to grow in. Liz and I, my wife and I have been asking the question of ourselves, what does it mean to apply the gospel to our parenting? What does it mean to like do a better job of that? And it feels clunky at times, I'll be honest. We've had some laughs about like, we're like, I don't know, what do we do? What do we say, you know, in this moment, but it's been a good conversation. Join others in this dialogue as we work on bringing the gospel truths to our own hearts into our own lives. We say quite often here at Point Community Church that the gospel applies to all of life. You've heard us say that. The gospel applies to everything. But what I really want for us to see here today is that we can live like that's a reality. That with the Holy Spirit's help, we can bring gospel truth to those gaps that exist in our lives. Because God doesn't want us to live as Christians with these gaps between what we would confess and what we believe. He wants us to live whole lives. And so my prayer is that we would do that. Let me pray for us. God, thank you. Just that your word is so active and true. Uh, God, I'm so grateful that this gospel message transforms and molds into all different ways and shapes and sizes. So that the truth of who you are and what you've done for us can and should impact how I feel about my marriage or about my parenting or about even my frustration in traffic or about my depression. God, all of the things that are going on in our lives, God, the gospel can and should apply to them. And so, God, we want to just say together today that we want to be open to your Holy Spirit, bringing truth to bear in our own hearts and in our own lives. God, would you work in our hearts? God, would you work in our lives and show us how to apply the gospel in all the situations? God, I pray, especially even this week, that as we go out of here and as we get to process some of the things that we've talked about this morning, that people would have opportunities to apply the things that we've talked about. And as that happens, I pray that there be a submissiveness in our spirits towards you. God, help us not to be resistant to your working. Help us not to drown you out with the noise of life. But rather, God, would we be completely submitted to you and to your working in our lives? Even now, as we have some time to kind of reflect, I pray that your truth, the gospel, would be being preached in all of our hearts, right across this room, to the different situations, to the different gaps that exist in our hearts between the things that we confess and the things that we truly believe. God, would you do work on our hearts even in this moment? Thank you. Amen.