Gateway Church Live | “The Tackle of Temptation” by Pastor James Morris | April 11

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hello gateway church we're so excited that you joined us today it is baptism weekend at all our dfw campuses so after every service today you have an opportunity to get baptized if you didn't register if you didn't come prepared that's okay we have everything you need we've got clothes we've got towels so don't miss this opportunity to get baptized today today as we start the service we're going to celebrate with tim and tammy they've been married for 20 years and they wanted to get baptized together today to continue to profess their love for the lord and their love for each other so let's join and celebrate with them as they get baptized [Music] [Applause] amazing let's continue to celebrate as we worship the come lord let's celebrate together god's on the move amen lord you're welcome at this place we worship you god come on let's see you are the one [Music] you are the one you're different from the rest there's resurrection in your brain so we call out to the wind [Music] [Music] [Applause] is [Music] would you breathe [Music] [Music] [Music] spirit of the living god spirit of the living god let these troubles bring of the us gods breathe on us come and breathe on earth [Music] [Music] breathe [Applause] [Music] comes to life [Music] okay [Music] [Music] okay [Music] [Music] you're good [Music] oh yes you are good you're good you are good you're [Music] be good wind and sun myself [Music] is [Applause] you're good [Music] you're never gonna let you're never gonna let me down come on we see you're never gonna let you're never gonna let me down we know it's true you're [Music] [Music] [Applause] you're [Music] sure you are [Music] you're good [Music] [Music] [Music] you're you're never gonna [Music] [Applause] i will be [Music] [Music] who you are you are good you're good and you're never changing you are good so good [Applause] [Music] yes god of creation there at the start before the beginning of time [Music] with no point of reference we spoke to the dark fleshed out the wonder of life and as you speak 100 billion galaxies [Music] [Music] every burning star a signal fire of grace if creation sings your praise is so alive [Music] god if you're promising for once you have spoken on nature and science follow the sound of your voice evolving in pursuit i can see your heart if creation still obeys [Music] so [Music] [Music] is [Applause] [Music] for if everything exists [Music] time chase down my heart through all of my failures on a heal you created light of the world abandoned in darkness to die and as you see [Music] [Applause] so i could find it [Music] i can see [Music] [Music] every precious [Music] [Applause] [Music] is a hundred billion times [Music] but one measure could amount to your desire you're the one who never believes the one behind as though we thank you god lord in this place today we just say that you are a big god but lord we thank you that you're so close that you love us so much we praise you in this place the greatness of who you are your faithfulness it's your faith you are faith [Music] holy praise the one who set me free [Music] jesus christ [Music] is [Music] in desperation [Music] then through the darkness your [Music] the end is written jesus christ [Music] who could imagine [Music] [Applause] the cross has [Music] thank you jesus beautiful savior jesus christ [Music] [Applause] is salvation in your day jesus christ [Applause] [Music] this salvation in your name jesus christ [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] declared the grace [Applause] begin to breathe jesus [Music] [Music] jesus christ [Music] set me free [Music] salvation in your name jesus christ jesus christ come on let's lift our shadow praise to the lord today lord you are worthy in this place we thank you jesus and today we have a beautiful savior and a good father amen there is victory in his name today you know i kept hearing this phrase the newness of life newness of life and i know it's baptism weekend and this is a baptism kind of scripture but i believe it applies to all of us and i want to read it out of romans chapter 6 verse 4 says therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death that just as christ raised from the dead by the glory of the father even so we should listen to this walk in newness of life it doesn't say there's this one moment of newness of life no it says we get to walk in newness of life and so i want to declare that over our lives of our situations today i don't know what you walked in the door with i don't know what difficulty may be facing you today but in the name of jesus there is new hope for you today there is new healing for you today there's new deliverance for you today there's new peace for you today what are you needing today there's newness of life for you if we could just take a moment if you feel comfortable just open up your hands as an act of surrenders because i believe the power of god wants to release this newness of life upon us today so father i thank you for every heart here today i thank you for every heart watching online lord i'm asking that this truth be poured out upon our lives today lord newness of life but i'm asking for the power of the holy spirit to be released upon our hearts upon our situations upon our circumstances god would you fill us with hope and faith today that you are a good father and you do good things for your children in the mighty name of jesus and everybody said amen can we give another hand clap to the lord today [Music] so glad you've joined us today we've got an amazing message from pastor james morris coming up before that take a moment turn around greet those around you welcome to gateway church [Music] hey everyone we're so glad you're joining us whether you're with us online or in person here are a few things you need to know a lot of great things are happening at gateway here are a few ways you can get involved right now to check out all that's going on visit gatewaypeople.com also you can follow us on social media and join your campus facebook group if you'd like to give today you can visit gatewaypeople.com and click on the give tab use our mobile app or give it one of the offering boxes at any of our campuses we have so many amazing opportunities for you to grow connect and be encouraged for more information visit us at connectcentral or text connect to 710.10. we're so glad you're joining us thanks for being here today do you feel like god has put a call on your life for ministry what if a church and its leaders were willing to come alongside you and give you access to themselves and the ministry they do what if you had the opportunity to be a part of a team where you received hands-on experience in the areas you feel called to serve could something like this even exist it does now let us develop what god has destined you to do [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] god already started something new in you no matter where you find your life right now no matter where you find your faith right now if you feel like you're closer to god than you ever been guess what he has something for you to get closer he is a generational god he says i don't just desire for you to go through the normal routine of life i don't desire for you to go through the normal routine of church i want to break the cycle and introduce you to something new hello welcome gateway church welcome at all campuses all of you if you're watching online welcome pastor robert and the elders at a elders meeting they do this twice a year and so they're at an elders meeting so if you could all be all be praying for them that would be great also my dad who's pastor robert he'll be back next week to continue his series so you can come back next week and you know i feel like i can uh already see that some eyes are looking past me at just kind of the background there's a boat there's a mannequin so let me just go ahead and say there is a fishing theme to this message and the title of the message is the tackle of temptation and when i say the tackle of temptation i'm talking about like the tackle like the tackled box of temptation the tackle that the that temptation uses but first let me introduce my family my most amazing family it looks like my four-year-old daughter is asleep and my wife is holding her this is bridget and then my son the peace of god just put a right to sleep then my son parker who will be nine next week and actually my wife has a birthday next week mitchell who is six so that's my family and we are excited to be here so i recognize that not everyone just has this love for fishing but either way i believe that it's going to be fun and there's a lot of scripture and a lot to that the lord will fill us up with so with this i see that there's this boat here and this mannequin i want to go ahead and explain that so this mannequin is here to represent fisherman james and i'd like the opportunity to talk to you a little bit as fisherman james and then pastor james and i'm going to share the methods of temptation and through that share how the uh the principle of fishing as well as the principle spiritually that happens and so this guy of course he's wearing all gateway attire and that's what i do when i go fishing of course in fact i have a picture here and so if you look at this picture this was about two weeks ago it's my wife and i but if you notice we actually are wearing a gateway shirt i'm wearing a gateway shirt bridget's wearing a women's gateway shirt so i guess it just it brings a blessing i don't know uh there's another picture here okay uh that's no gateway attire i just wanted to show my big fish that i caught so that's it but what i love to do is bass fishing and so uh i was actually going to put a vest on this guy and then every time i talk to you as fisherman james put on the vest but honestly bass fishermen don't really wear the fishing vest if i'm going to give you a little education the way bass fisherman dress i'm telling you about the dress code is typically just casual unless you're like a professional bass fisherman and then it looks like a nascar car ran into a shirt and it's just peppered with advertisements all over it so that's what a professional bass fisherman looks like if you're a trout fisherman you would typically wear waders with a fishing vest and then if your dude going catfishing you basically don't wear a shirt so i'm not picking on him i love catfishing but it makes sense why i'm not talking to you as catfisherman james today because that would get a little awkward so this boat here is meant a lot to me so when i was about 10 years old somebody knew that i just had a passion for fishing and gave me this boat and it meant so much for me it was like the first thing that was like this is mine and now it's been so many years and i've caught probably thousands of fish out of this boat and spent tons of hours in this boat so as we talk about the tackle of temptation something i want to share with you is you see my tackle box here and when i go fishing i have lots of bait there's all kinds of baits in there that's actually my tackle box but when i go fishing there's a lot of different baits i use but there's four primary methods that i use when fishing and i'm going to show how those four methods are the same methods that the enemy uses with us and so the enemy has lots of bait greed selfishness fame popularity all of these different things that the enemy uses but yet there's four primary methods that the enemy uses against us so we will be looking at that i want to say i'm not the first one to parallel fishing in the attack of the enemy in habakkuk 1 verse at 14 it says it talks about how men and women are like fish of the sea they take up all of them with the hook they catch them in their net and gather them in their dragnet and it goes on to talk about how they are treated like fish being pulled out and the enemy will often try to reach out and grab us with the hook and catch us in such a way and i'm not wanting to share about the enemy to highlight anything about the enemy i want us to be able to look at the enemy and be able to know it's simply a scheme so that we can avoid the enemy in second corinthians 2 11 it says lest satan should take advantage of us for we are not ignorant of his devices and that's exactly right we do not want to be ignorant of his advice of his devices so that he doesn't take advantage of us so ephesians 6 10 11 says finally my brethren be strong in the lord in the power of his might put on the whole armor of god that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil and the word wilds there the greek word is methodia it's where we get the english word method and so you can see how the enemy has different methods that he uses to come against us and that word method here means the cunning arts the deceit the craft the trickery so in explaining the methods that the enemy uses against us i want us to look at how jesus was actually tempted by satan so jesus was called up and it's in both matthew 4 and in luke 4. so in luke matthew 4 verse 1 it says then jesus led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil and so we're going to be staying in matthew and looking at the book of matthew and talking through that but first i want to come to you and talk as fisherman james and once again i said there's four primary methods that the enemy uses it's an acronym it's going to spell fish so there's a hint it's easy to remember so the first one will be start with an f so in doing so let's just all first go underwater for a second in three two one isn't that cool technology there's a fish in there that's amazing oh that got me so excited and so uh with that i just want to say though we are all underwater it's not that you're underwater and some of us are not underwater we're all underwater meaning that we all get tempted so about two weeks ago we were driving in the car and my son mitchell said you guys must have a lot of boogers in your nose [Laughter] thanks buddy i mean you think that's a pretty strange comment unless you've hung out with him and then you're like okay tell me more buddy so he says well i pick my nose all the time so i don't have boogers in my nose but i never see y'all pick your nose so you must have a lot of boogers in your nose guess what we're all humans everybody gets boogers in their nose we're all humans everybody gets tempted everybody gets tempted you're never too mature of a believer to not be tempted you're never too much of a christian to not be tempted it's how you deal with the temptation jesus himself was tempted and okay so now we're going to look at this first method that i use for fishing so i have these four methods and no matter what bait i'm using i'm using one of these four methods while i fish and so in doing so i have a bait to actually show you oh yeah look at that fine looking bait fisherman would just love it i mean that is a swim bait now the first method i use is i use a bait that looks as real as possible it's not real but it looks as real as possible so what i do is i find out what the fish want and i try to mimic it as close as i possibly can when we first moved to keller we moved into a subdivision they had a community pool in it and so i used to get up early in the morning and go fishing in the community pool now much to your surprise i never caught anything but i would do it often and i'm sure there was like the neighbors looking through the window like hey honey that weirdo's fishing in the pool again don't let the kids out that was probably me and so i would go out and i would just sit there and i would just cast into the water over and over and over and i would reel it really fast and i'd reel it really slow i'd watch how it falls i would hold my rod tip up i'd hold it down i'd move it in different ways watching the bait so that i could learn how to make this look as real as it possibly can all right so now that's the first principle the first method i use when fishing but now let's look at how the enemy uses that same method to tempt us once again i told you that we are looking in uh matthew how jesus himself was tempted and we're gonna pick up in verse five it says then the devil took him up into the holy city set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him if you are the son of god throw yourself down for it is written he shall give his angels charge over you and in their hands they shall bear you up lest ye dash your foot against a stone so here satan is saying listen it is written where is it written it's in psalms 91 this is scripture and so what he's doing is he is actually taking scripture and tweaking it manipulating it in such a way to make it look like truth but it's not truth he's perverting it in such a way and i mean just think about it this is satan and he's talking to the word of god jesus in john 1 it says that jesus is the word clothed in flesh so he's talking to the word of god and trying to manipulate him with scripture how crafty is that if the enemy will use scripture and try to manipulate the word of god how much more will he try to take a truth and try to tweak it and manipulate it so that we will bite so that we will jump out and make it an action that we don't tend to make how much more will he do that with us satan is a counterfeit who promises to offer what only god can offer he us promises freedom he promised us love joy except all these different things that only jesus only god can give us these things but yet they're just looking as real as possible it's fake it's to mimic it it's one of the enemies devices presenting something that is fake as real 2 corinthians 11 14 says but i am not surprised satan disguises himself as an angel of light this is satan he's disguising himself tweaking something to look like something but it's not real so a counterfeit is an imitation passed off as something that's real and have you guys ever paid with a hundred dollar bill i know that was a pretty cashless society nowadays but if you pay with a hundred dollar bill it seems like you get the same response it seems like they assume you just printed it in your basement or something to go buy groceries and so they take it and then they check it to see if it's real or not so they take the 100 bill and they look at it and now what one thing that they'll do at times is they'll hold it up to the light and they'll look at it listen whenever the enemy offers us something we can hold it up to the light and scripture says that the word is a lamp unto my feet and a light into my path jesus says that he is the light of the world so as you're tempted you hold it up to the light and say is this of you god nope it doesn't look right that's not it that's the enemy that's coming after me so we can hold up to the light and see if it is truth or not fisherman james is coming back out you all ready we gotta go in the water though three two one okay now we're almost underwater but we're not i think i was supposed to be coming up out of the water and now going back underwater my bad everyone but now we're going underwater pastor james is supposed to be above water [Applause] we're having fun right i told you we're gonna have fun today so now we're back on the water where we were supposed to be and my bad and i want to show you a bait here now there's another good-looking bait that is a spinner bait and so you can see it even has some bling bling on it it's great so the second method that the enemy uses is instinct that i use when fishing is instinct it's i tried to go and learn what the fish want and go and get for the instinct so that there would be what's called an instinct bite and so the way i would do this if there was a fish here i would take my rod and i would throw it past the fish and then just reel it as fast as i can in order to go zip right by it and what i'm doing is i'm not allowing the fish time to think about it i'm not allowing it to make a good thought out decision it's just a very quick bite it's going just seeing something that just goes and goes after it and it's called an instinct bite and so that's what i'm doing whenever i'm fishing in such a way to go after it so you saw on it it had all these like sparkles on it and stuff like that you know what quick pop quiz what does a bass fisherman a bass and my four-year-old daughter all have in common they all love glitter and sparkles have you guys seen a bass boat it looks like it was just dipped in fairy land it's got sparkles all over it we just love sparkles we do well the bass are the same weight all these baits have like all these sparkles so what it's doing is it's just made to catch its eye so that it would be flickering through the light if you watch a minnow swimming in the water oftentimes you'll see it lift up and its belly will flash in the light so that's what it's mimicking so that it will just flash and so there would be a quick instinct bite okay so now we're coming up out of the water and we're going to talk as pastor james and look at how the enemy uses our instinct against us matthew 4 verses 3 says now when the tempter came to him he said if you are the son of god command that these stones become bread the enemy is preying on his humanness it is prey on his humanity now in scripture it says that he had been fasting for 40 days and 40 nights he's hungry and he's saying listen just your jesus just make some food just whip up some food and everything will be okay you're starving just eat and he's trying to go after his human flesh to get him to bite on it that's what the enemy's doing here he's trying to attack him in such a way it's you know how you see people and they say they just made a quick impulse decision it's the same thing it was out of their flesh that they just made that decision in such a way and so you know we've seen this in scripture with jacob and esau so esau was the firstborn son jacob was the second born son and esau sold his firstborn birthright to jacob over a bowl of soup i think i've been that hungry before i mean he but he it's because he his flesh he was just so desiring to eat and so he made a quick decision and so it was probably three years ago i did a 21 day fast now every year at gateway we do we start off the beginning of the year with a 21 day fast and i've watched my dad do this multiple times where he does like a 40 day fast of only water and i've just respected it he's done 21 day fast of only water and i'm just like that's the most amazing thing so i decided i was going to do a 21 day fast of vegetables only but i was gonna do the first three days with just water so i was on now on the third day and it was night and i was laying in bed staring into the distance thinking i was about to die or whatever so i'm just laying there and so also my wife comes in and it's like are you okay i said uh uh she's like do you want me to get you some water huh and so she goes get me some water and i drink it i start feeling a little bit better but this is as truthful as can be this was the thought going through my head i think there's a 60 chance i'm going to close my eyes tonight and never open them again i am a dead man for sure all my organs are shutting down i'm a goner this is only three days in of no food and i think i'm convinced i'm dead so the next morning i wake up i'm like oh another day i mean i'm literally shocked because i didn't expect it and so then i started telling my wife bridget about this and how i had i was convinced i was going to die that night and she then responds with wait you think it's your last day on earth and you didn't even tell me how much you love me it's a free tip guys if you think you're dying tell your loved ones just start calling everyone i'm hey i just want to tell you i love you and just start telling everybody that you love them so much and so you can just reach out to them and tell them that you love them first corinthians 9 27 says but i discipline my body and bring it into subjection lest when i have preached to others i myself should become disqualified we can discipline our body we can train up our flesh in such a way and one way that i have been able to do this is i pray over my decisions and it helps me from making a quick impulse decision or just responding out of the flesh because then whenever you stop you take time and you pray about it then it helps line your flesh up with the spirit and so i would encourage you to just pray and ask god lord what is it that you want me to do in this so that the enemy doesn't tempt us to make a quick impulse decision okay so now we cannot go back underwater fisherman james is coming so we did fake remember we're spelling the word fish we did fake and then instinct now we need the s word so it's dress and this is a method i use when fishing is oftentimes fish will have a certain log or a rock that they really enjoy and so there's like this large mouth bass he's sitting up underneath the log and or a bed that they're on or something and so what you can do is you can put enough pressure on them eventually they bite so you know you just have it and you know right where they are you just cast it right out there and you just watch it and you let it sit and you just keep twitching it and twitching you know guys if the great another great thing about fishing is whenever you're out fishing if you get a phone call and you're fishing you don't actually have to answer it you call them back when you're done and say i'm sorry when you called i was on the other line right i've tried it it works so this is what you do you it the fish has its spot that it really enjoys and then you just sit there just like this and just keep dangling it in front of it over and over and like do you want it now do you want it now what about now do you like it you want it now and it's kind of like the little kid that is like at the store and you're like you hear mom mom mom mom mommy it's about to go down it's it's going to happen so what you do is you just keep it right there and the fish might have said no 100 times but eventually it gives in it may even be biting out of anger and it will eventually give in and so that is the way that you would put enough stress stress on it to get it to respond and to bite is you just you wear it out you know i'm i can be annoying in real life and in fishing so i annoyed the fish and everyone else it just works out for me that's my method okay so now we're going to come up out of the water and i'm going to talk to you as pastor james so in this we're going to look at how there's stress and how the enemy attacks when they're stressed it's in verse 2 it says in when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights afterward he was hungry and we just talked about fasting but this is when he was weak when his body was stressed and pastor robert talked about the stress not long ago and how it's an outside force put on us well there's this outside force put on his body where he is physically hungry and there are times that we are sleep deprived that we're spiritually worn out that we are emotionally worn out that we are physically worn out and in no way does the enemy think oh they've had a hard time let's just let them rest for a little bit that is when the enemy comes in most saying i can get them now because they are so worn out that's when the enemy comes that's when the enemy attacks in such a way with temptation and comes after us and so we can resist the temptation first thessalonians 3 verses 4 and five it's talking about how we are in we experience tribulation and then it says i sent to you i sent to know your faith lest by some means the tempter has tempted you in our labor might be in vain and so often times when we are in tribulation when we are in trials that is when the enemy comes to tempt us to bring temptation to cause us to fall and one of the best things that we can do is pastor robert shared about this in his series about stress is we can just refresh we can soak in the presence of god and focus on the word and spirit and so when we feel so much stress that the temptation will increase we can just focus on trying to focus on the word and spirit and get refreshed from god so now we have talked about fake instinct stressed we're moving on to the fourth method i use when fishing and now we can go underwater for this here we go so this is and i have a bait for this one as well oh yeah look at that it even has like some blood on it it's looking real good like for fisherman this is just a fantastic it is a jerk bait it's called a jerkbait not because the fish named it it's called a jerkbait because you end up jerking it through the water and so what you would do is you would cast it out there and you would pop it pop it pop it and let it sit pop it pop it pop it let it sit and then it's every time it's twitching through the water like this and it looks like something is dying it looks like a little fish is moving through the water and dying and so the fish would think oh there's no competition this is easy it's not going to fight back this is a simple meal it's one small move i have to make all right so now let's come back back out of the water and look at this from a spiritual sense and uh how often times the method that the enemy will use is this hidden it's in matthew 4 verse 8 it says again the devil took him up on an exceedingly high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory and he said to him all these things i give you if you will fall down and worship me so what he's doing is lifts him up he shows him all these great things he says listen it's all yours we're up on this mountain it's just you and me that's it we're just just you and i right here let's just come up with a negotiation all of this could be yours every bit of it just one small compromise one small it's so easy it's the this like so simple one thing in all of this will be yours and it's the lie of the enemy to say there's just one small compromise and we have to ask ourselves yes but at what cost at what cost what cost is it going to cost my character and what cost is it going to affect me my family and others around me at what cost will it cost so one thing about fish is they oftentimes don't see very well far away they're more like near side or it's where they see things up close and so oftentimes fish don't see the things far out but so often we can be just like the fish and only see instant gratification only see the immediate gain out of something you may be at work and there's just one small compromise one small thing if i just do this then all of these things are all of that it's just one thing that's it and it's the way that we are tempted but instead we need to have an eternal perspective to be able to look back and say yes but i am redeemed by god i am set apart by god and i'm to be used by god and i need to have an eternal perspective okay so now we've looked at the four methods that i use fishing but also the same four methods that the enemy uses when he attacks us with temptation and so i want you to imagine this let's say there's two fish right in the water and i cast out a bait right in front of them and they are both convinced 100 convinced it's simply a bait there is no life it will give them there's no nutrition value there's nothing of benefit in that and who knows maybe the two fish are like yeah that's a bait oh yeah obviously it's a bait look at that that's definitely bait do you see a debate it's a bait and so maybe they'll talking like that okay here's my question what are the ar what are the odds of them biting that bait very very small but now we can now recognize the enemy's attacks and say listen there's not going to be any life that comes from that there's going to be no gain from that in no way is that going to help us in no way is it going to give us all of these empty promises that the enemy offers us in no way is it going to so it's fake i'm not going to bite out of instinct i'm not going to let the enemy stress me out in such a way i'm not going to see it as just a secret hidden opportunity that i have to make a move and i'm not going to do it and so we can look at these and recognize that so with this i want to share something that's very important for us to understand and that is that jesus understands what it's like to be tempted he knows what it's like to be tempted hebrews 4 15 says for we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses but was in all points tempted as we are yet without sin let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help us in time of need he can help us in a time of need our lord and savior has experienced temptation to every level everything that we've experienced he has already experienced in temptation and he was able to resist it now we can go to him to the throne of grace for help so you gotta see that jesus overcame death so that we can overcome death through him jesus overcame sin so that we can overcome sin through him and jesus overcame temptation so that we can overcome temptation through him that's the good news we don't have to fall into temptation because he has already resisted temptation and we have him with us to on along our side to come along us and help in such a time so we can call upon him we can go to the throne of grace and say lord help me in this he is the good shepherd he is the vi the true vine so we can go to him for his help in a time of need i want to share a story as we close and when before i was ever working at the church at one point i was a home builder and so i was building houses at the time and i had lots of construction projects all over the metroplex and there was this one particular city that was known for being like the hard city to build in inspectors like found it like their calling in life to bring challenges and so we were building the city and it was always a challenge but one day i had made a mistake i poured a foundation before i had a green tag well that's a big deal and i thought that i had the green tag but it was a complete misunderstanding and i'm thinking out of all the cities this is the worst one for this to happen why and as soon as i found out my heart sank and i'm like oh no i was at home that night and i was down on my knees just praying saying lord please help me god get give me favor give me a way lord please god i don't know what i'm gonna do this could have i mean if they wanted to they could have said nope rip up the whole foundation start all over i mean it could have potentially cost me a good thirty thousand dollars personally i'm sure the company would have just kept withholding it from my check or something i mean there was a huge cost it could have cost me this mistake and i remember being very tempted thinking you know if i lie if i if i just say this one thing i could maybe even pass it off on them i could do this and the enemy was telling me all the different ways i could get out of it and i was very tempted but i kept just praying but the question again was at what cost is it going to cost me so i remember waking up early that morning going straight to the inspector's office and scripture says if you humble yourself and i humbled myself i repented i told him i am so sorry i don't know why i did this i i'm crazy you know that and so who knows i'm so sorry i can't believe i did this i'm as outraged as you are and i just expected the guy to just let me have it that that would have lined up with other stories i had been hearing but i also think that he had expected me to respond the other way and that's probably what he had seen in the past and he said listen don't worry about it we all make mistakes no problem really are you sure i mean i was blown away thinking how so i continued to have many friends in that same s in that same subdivision and in that same city building and they continued to tell me just how horrible it was to build there but for me that ended up being the easiest city i could have possibly built in why because they trusted me i was going to do the right thing when it was time to do the right thing they knew what they could have done within their powers here's the thing when we resist the temptation and we do it god's way what the enemy meant for evil god turns for good i want to take a moment and pray with you if you could just everyone close your eyes bow your head holy spirit what are you saying to us lord teach us how to continue to resist temptation because you have already overcome temptation show us what it is that you want us to gain from this message lord i pray for every person that is feeling tempted or feeling guilty for even being tempted that they can run to the throne of grace and come to you and receive help from the helper they can run to you the holy spirit who will help us in a time of need lord i just pray that you would be with every person in this room and at every campus and online in jesus name amen amen amen can we just give a handclap for that amazing message you can stand up as we close today i'm going to ask our prayer team and our pastors to come forward here in a moment as i close the service if you need prayer for anything at all whether you want to respond to the message or maybe there's a financial issue going on in your life a physical a sickness going on your life we want to pray for you if you're joining us online and you've got a prayer request you can text your prayer requests to 7 10 10 we've got a team online that will respond to you and pray with you and so before i pray and you come down i've got a few quick announcements for all you men in the house men's summit is april 29th and 30th it's going to be in person here at south lake you can also watch online you can register at menssummit.com we also have our spanish night of worship coming up it's going to be at our grand prairie campus on april 18th you can get more information at gatewaypeople.com events and again pastor robert's going to be back next week and continuing his series from passover to pentecost so come back next week it's going to be an awesome service and then also if it's your first time here at gateway church or if you have any questions about how to connect how to get into a small group how to get into a cr an equipped class we have growth path that has already started up we also have some other in-person equip classes during our 9 a.m service so if you want to register for any of those we've got an area across from the cafe it's called connect central and we've got pastors and leaders that would love to connect to you and answer any questions that you have and then lastly it is baptism weekend so out in the back lawn we got the baptismal set up and so if you want to get baptized even if you didn't bring anything didn't register we have everything that you need you can go sign in and it's going to be a great time also for those of you that aren't getting baptized we've got food and snacks and water so if you've got a few minutes come out there let's celebrate with those that are getting baptized together it's going to be a great time out there so let me pray for you and if you want further prayer you can come down front and then you can be dismissed lord thank you so much for this amazing service thank you for the time together in your presence but for receiving your word and your truth lord i speak your blessing your favor over every person in this place over everyone watching online we thank you for it in jesus name amen have a blessed week [Music] [Music] you

Channel: gatewaychurchtv

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Id: 7MhGR7UIULU

Length: 67min 40sec (4060 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 11 2021