Refuse to Fail

the topic to me is is really essential to this season we want to talk about the refusal to fail you know we are we're in an unprecedented season this is an uncharted time we've never done this before not in our lifetimes we've never had a global pandemic and quarantining of healthy people and complete disruptions of the the stabilizing institutions in our societies we've never faced the economic challenges that are building on our horizon we've never seen our rights and privileges that are guaranteed to us by our constitution set aside with such brazenness we've just never walked through a season like this we've also never seen a season where the spirit of god was moving like he is right now stirring hearts and moving people and the one thing i'm conscious of is the pace of change and the magnitude of the change and so we're making decisions based on things that we haven't seen and experienced before and you're not going to get everything right and i can tell you that one of the biggest mistakes i think that we're tempted to do is try to pretend like nothing has happened to just go back to the decision processes we had two years ago and go back to how we thought and behave like we behaved and act as if nothing has happened i don't think that will help i don't think that will bring us to a better place but we can't yield to our mistakes and we can't afford to give discouragement a heightened place because we fail because you're just not going to get every choice right i'm not and you're not you know who thomas edison is he's not a current fellow well i don't take much for granted anymore but one of the most prolific inventors in american history but credited with the invention of the light bulb and i read whether it's accurate or not i'm not sure but i read that after he had successfully presented the light bulb to a gathering of the press he told them that he had failed and somebody inquired he said he'd failed over 990 times before he got the thing to work and the question was posed to him well were you discouraged after almost a thousand failures and his response was what intrigued me he said i wasn't discouraged there's 999 steps in the development of the light bulb and i love the attitude we've never walked this way before and we're not going to get every choice right we're not going to respond in the perfect way to every bit of news that comes your direction we're in a season of new responses to life and when i reflect on some of the old responses and the ways we have behaved we're going to see needs to be different that the way we were behaving 18 months ago or two years ago aren't adequate for the season before us and those kind of changes frequently bring with them some lingering questions and it's easy to second guess how we were or who we were or what we were doing but it isn't helpful we need to understand how to keep the accounts short and our heart clean and be prepared to hear what the lord has for us today so that's the point of this particular session and with god's help maybe we'll all leave here with a bit more freedom than that with which we came we're just going to refuse to fail we're not going to refuse failure because to do that you'd have to stop moving and we don't intend to do that i thought it'd be helpful to start by identifying the kind of lives that god can use because i think most of us think that god uses perfect people or at least god uses for significant things god uses people that are more perfect than we are but i don't know about you but i'm pretty conscious of what i'm not doesn't take me a long time to find out some you know when you have to list those weaknesses thing that you can go to town with that and we have an adversary who is an accuser and he does a beautiful job of helping you stay in touch with either the points of failure or your points of frustration if he can't get you to buy into the fact that you've made mistakes he'll get you to buy into the fact that the people around you are making mistakes and he'll make you miserable with them he's good he's an accuser of the brethren and if you won't listen to his accusations about you maybe he can get you to listen to the accusations about other people and both of those tracks are equally destructive so i thought it would be helpful to start with just a quick review and i chose some very familiar characters because they're all big time biblical heroes i mean they are a-list biblical characters abraham is the father of our faith god was willing to identify himself this is amazing to me he's willing to identify himself to humanity as the god of abraham isaac and jacob i mean you may have noticed he's not the god of alan george and bubba god was willing to be identified as i'm the god of that character right there so you know of all the people in the bible abraham is held up to us as the epitome the pinnacle of a man of faith now most of you know his story god promised him that he would make from abraham descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore a mighty nation and then he gets to the point where you would expect him to to be having children and he and his wife are child less you know the story but in genesis 16 verse 1 it says sarah abram's wife had borne him no children but she had an egyptian maidservant so she said to abram the lord has kept me from having children so go sleep with my maidservant even if you're reading this for the first time you're thinking no this is not a good idea this is not going to work well so what you know from just a casual read is there's a lot of pain there's a lot of frustration there's a lot of disappointment you see if we don't know what to do with those things they contribute to some really destructive choices perhaps i can build a family through her abram agreed so after abram had been living in canaan 10 years he left home 10 years ago god said you leave your home i'll make from you a mighty nation he's 10 years into it and it doesn't look like god's paying any attention i paid the movers i did my part no kids after 10 years sarah took sarah his wife took her egyptian maidservant hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife and she conceived and the outcome of that was ishmael not the fulfillment of the covenant god had made with abram and a challenge that persists in the earth until today you know abraham's the most striking characteristic of abraham's contribution to the story is that he waited patiently if you're going to figure out you know what's abraham celebrated for a man of great faith but what was the demonstration of that he waited patiently until he was beyond the age when he and his wife could conceive and she conceived except he didn't i haven't made anything up yet so abraham the pillar of faith joseph you know i think abraham got in that problem because of a lack of trust is that safe to say he decided maybe god wasn't trustworthy so god needs a little help you ever tried to help god have we ever so we get to joseph and joseph's a totally different character joseph god intervenes in joseph's life when he's a young man he's his father's favorite that's a problem he comes from a dysfunctional family so joseph is going to be a powerful character for the purposes of god but he comes from a very fractured family did you know that god can overcome your fractured family systems it's good to know it's important to know because the adversary the one who accuses you and accuses the ones around you will make you miserable and convince you you can't or you won't or you shouldn't or you'll never become or amount because your family system was so fractured you didn't get the opportunities you were entitled to or you should have and it's an incubator for dissatisfaction and anger and resentment well joseph comes if you look up dysfunctional family joseph's picture will be right there and when he's a young man adolescent he has dreams and he's not particularly clever he's a bit arrogant and he goes and tells his dreams to his brothers in genesis 37 and verse five he had a dream and he told it to his brothers and they hated him all the more if he'd just been quiet he'd have been better off and he said to them listen to this dream i had we were binding sheaves of grain out of the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it and his brother said to him do you intend to reign over us will you actually rule us and they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he'd said they're going to hate him enough to sell him as a slave that's a bad day but before joseph is done he's going to be the prime minister of egypt he'll be selling his brother's grain they'll be bowing down to him they won't recognize him it's an improbable story moses he's held down to us in the scripture as the epitome of a leader there isn't anybody in the scripture to compare with moses until we get to jesus in fact the author of hebrews in the new testament has to make the argument to his audience that jesus is superior to moses because it's not apparent to them moses is a hebrew and he knows it but he grows up in pharaoh's palace because his parents refused to murder him as an infant as the who they were supposed to there's a long precedent of the courage to protect your children we need a bit of that courage today it says one day after moses had grown up he went out to where his own people were and they watched them at their labor and he saw an egyptian beating a hebrew and one of his own people and he glanced this way and that and seeing no one he killed the egyptian he hit him in the sand the next day he went out and saw two hebrews fighting and he asked the one in the wrong why are you hitting your fellow hebrew and the man said who made you ruler and judge over us are you thinking of killing me as you killed the egyptian then moses was afraid he understood that what he thought he had hidden was known moses tried to be a deliverer in his own strength and it didn't work out so well he had to flee he forfeited everything all of the unique qualifications that seem to empower him to be in a unique position to be a difference maker were forfeited in a moment of rage now if i take those lives and they're all familiar stories to you they don't need much explanation or amplification for me i think we could all agree that abraham joseph and moses all had tremendous failures in their lives none of them got a perfect track record they've all been in trouble but each of them had a success that eclipsed or was greater than the magnitude of their failure is that fair you know their stories i won't belabor them and i think we could extrapolate from that that their area of failure became the arena of their greatest success that the things that were problematic to them it proved to be the the incubator or the soil from which their great successes came from the great triumph of joseph's life i don't think was in his ability to manage egypt's economy i think it was in the the way he interacted with his family when they presented themselves some years later and if there's one more observation and it's the most awkward in my little list it all had to do with god's time and every one of them had some timing problems god's time is not our time being patient waiting i just think god needs me to help him right he seems to get distracted he tends to look away he must i don't know what he does but clearly if he just listened to us we could help him right we got some calendar ideas if he just focused we can help him and it takes some life lived and some experience gathered to even begin to think about the patience it takes to follow the lord so simple announcement simple premise is the on-ramp to the outcome in this particular presentation is that failures don't disqualify you impatient failures great detours failures they're going to do introduce tremendous pain that puts you on a path that may take years to reconcile because some of these problems were not short-term they weren't reconciled in a day or a moment or a step into a furnace and in a walkout without even smelling smoking some of these problems persisted for years and had multiple chapters so if if there's one idea to invite you into the arena it's a life that god can use is not the perfect life it's not the life with the perfect family with the perfect circumstances with the perfect set of choices that all of those things that seem to be arrayed against us god is more than capable of overcoming if we will seek him so let's take the next step in the equation and see what we can do to start to address some of these failures acts chapter 9 it's saul of tarsus we're going to know him as the apostle paul in our new testament the greatest advocate for jesus his life is still impacting our world that's amazing if 2000 years after they have buried you you're still impacting the world for jesus i'm thinking you're doing okay when saul came to jerusalem he tried to join the disciples but they were all afraid of him they didn't believe that he really was a disciple but barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and he told them how saul on his journey had seen the lord and that the lord had spoken to him i love the language in that it's as if he had a personal encounter with jesus you know why he did now oh by the way in acts chapter 1 jesus went back to heaven but he stepped back into time on the damascus road to grab saul of tarsus by the back of the neck and shake him he's still stepping into time for the purposes of his church that is such good news barnabas said this man saw jesus and spoke with him and in damascus he preached fearlessly in the name of jesus but i want you to note that peter and james and john were afraid of him he was such an angry murderous violent belligerent fellow that the boldest jesus advocates we know they stood before the sanhedrin and said you do what you have to do we will not stop talking about our friend but they wanted nothing to do with saul of tarsus now that's a reputation that's something to be overcome i don't know what your detractors say about you but i bet it wasn't as bitter as what they said about saul so how do we address those life failures well let's just see if we can deconstruct the things that that wall us out from god's best and one is shame my bible says that jesus had to just despise the shame in order to triumph through the cross you see you're going to make mistakes i will i do you will you have but that doesn't make you a mistake and you've got to make the distinction the spirit of god will bring conviction to you he'll convict you of a behavior of an attitude of a thought he'll convict you of something you're an emotion you're holding that's not helpful when the holy spirit convicts you he will show you a pathway out of that it's repentance you acknowledge you're wrong you choose a new path you choose a new behavior repentance requires both of that a change of thinking and a change of behavior but the holy spirit when he brings conviction there is a way to be free the adversary when he comes he doesn't come with conviction he comes with condemnation you're wrong you've always been wrong your family's been wrong for generations you use words that reinforce it that's just the way my people are my bible says you're a new creation in christ that's just the way we've always done it if the way you've always done it isn't godly change well what would they say if the lord is pleased do you care don't stay trapped by a generational curse you see shame is a cruel taskmaster it diminishes you it will steal your heart it'll rob you of your future and through the power of the blood of jesus we can be set free and cleansed and transformed i think it's helpful to make a distinction between regret you can regret choices you've made you can regret seasons of your life you can regret circumstances in which you have been engaged some of your own choosing some simply because of the place and time of your life there's a difference between regret and imagining that you're refuse trash abraham joseph moses made some pretty world-class mistakes and suffered some pretty significant consequences for them it would seem that they had thrown away any opportunity of significance in the kingdom of god because of choices they made now there were other pressures there were extra external influences there were many components to that but the choices you and i make have many components to them and if you blame the components and you don't own your role in it you're going to wall yourself off from the freedom that comes from repentance moses could have said well you know i grew up in a very emotionally difficult household i was conflicted the woman who took care of me was my mother but she was treated like a servant and all the opportunities in my life came from the powerful household of pharaoh and i was forced to learn a language i mean he had a myriad he could have been in counseling all of his life joseph needed the same counseling suite abraham but they were able to to understand that regret doesn't have the power to define you unless you give it first john 1 7 says if we walk in the light as he is himself is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of jesus his son cleanses us from all sin in english it's not quite as apparent our grammar skills are pretty thin if they were better they couldn't manipulate us with language as easily as they do but the verbs in that verse are all in the continuing present tense if we walk and continue to walk in the light if we continue in fellowship with one another one of the things with covet and the isolation that came with it we saw how diminished we are apart from one another i hear people you know saying i don't need to be with other christians it's just ignorance in the wind we need the strength we gain from one another if we continually walk in fellowship then the blood of jesus his son continually cleanses us from all sin i don't need to be cleansed once i need to be continually cleansed ephesians 2 10 we're god's workmanship created in christ jesus to do good works which god prepared in advance for us to do he prepared us before we ever drew our first breath god created us to do good works for him he's not surprised by our weaknesses folks i'm not championing your weaknesses if you're living sloppily stop it if you're willingly practicing sin it will destroy you every time you won't outsmart it you won't outrun it you won't out think it hiding it does not remove the consequences from your life and if you think you can practice sin and then come to some point and just casually wave the i'm sorry forgive me banner you're presuming upon the grace of god in a way that terrifies me please don't do that now we can struggle with sin we can face the temptation of sin but you don't want to practice it second corinthians 5 20 we're therefore christ's ambassadors as though god were making his appeal through us we implore you on christ's behalf be reconciled to god if we don't have the move of the spirit that we need in this generation it's the delivery system that's flawed the darkness doesn't have the power to withhold the light don't be angry at the wickedness and the immorality and the darkness begin to cry out to the lord and say lord what do i need to do how do we let righteousness rain down upon us in a more powerful way than we've seen the wickedness rain down how fun would it be to see the spirit of god fall upon people on the street and then begin to lift their hands and worship the lord or to pray in the spirit or to begin to weep with the spirit of conviction we're not surprised by expressions of immorality in the public square or increased drug use in the public square or increased violence in the public square i'm looking for outpourings of righteousness in the public square that's why we're here what would that look like i'm watching see there's a tremendous difference between guilt and shame there's a guilt that's good if you're misbehaving and you feel bad about it good if you persist in it to the point that you don't feel bad about it anymore warning warning you don't want your conscience becoming so calloused you want to feel awkward when you're engaged in things that you hope nobody knows about when you're hiding things from your christian friends when you've compartmentalized your life and you have a group of people with whom you have christian dialogue and a group of people with whom you don't those are all warning don't don't practice that don't stay in that place that's the spirit of god inviting you out of the darkness into the fullness of the light cooperate with him in fact give him permission if there's anything in me that would limit what you could do with my life help me to see it sometimes we're doing bone-headed things and we're not even doing them consciously you know there's a casual a whole generation of americans participated in with cigarettes in a way that destroyed their health and most of them didn't do it willfully trying to destroy their health they didn't know but ignorance didn't protect us you can be involved in things that open your life to unclean destructive spiritual influences and you can do it in ignorance but your ignorance doesn't protect you from the consequence but in our arrogance and our pride we point at our affluence or our nice homes or our nice cars and we'll say but i'm born again well i'm happy for that but healthy people can make choices that are destructive to their physical health and spiritual people can make destructive spiritual choices you want to practice the prayer holy spirit if there's anything in me that is diminishing what you created me for help me to see it that's not always about willful sin sometimes it's about circumstances you're involved in or aspects in your past that have opened your life to destructive spiritual influences and we're we lack the awareness we haven't been taught we haven't cared enough to look we've pointed at the other things we've compared ourselves to the secular cultural around us and we said well compared to them i'm doing really well that's not the scorecard we're children of the kingdom there's a different power at work within us there should be different outcomes in our lives we have different boundaries if you don't know how to pray that prayer take psalm 51 and just pray it out loud just say it as a prayer over your life it's not in your notes but it is in your bible it's the book of palms right in the middle if you can't find that look for the book of job it's right behind job we share a universal need if we're going to talk about addressing life's failures and that's the need to both forgive and to be forgiven jesus taught us this when he taught us to pray to forgive me my trespasses as i forgive those who trespass against me and both sides of those that coin are equally significant you can't leave one out and find the freedom you need conscious that other people need to be forgiven is good but you need to live with the humility that you needed as well and conscious of your need and your sins and your failures without the ability to forgive others is equally damaging ernest hemingway wrote a short story it's called the capital of the world he wrote about a father in spain who had a son named paco rebellious young man in the story and it led to the estrangement between the father and the son he left home actually the father put him out but after many years of bitterness and separation as the father was approaching he imagined the end of his life he realized the mistakes that he had made in the relationship and he had a desire to find his son he didn't know how to do that so in the story he places an ad in the madrid newspaper this was the ad that was placed paco all is forgiven meet me at the newspaper office at 9 am tomorrow love your father in hemingway's story paco is a rather common name in spain he wrote that when the father arrived the next morning there were 600 young men all named paco waiting hoping to receive the forgiveness of their fathers i don't think it's any different today there's some simple ideas that you don't want to lose sight of no one is free of sin not me not you and if you think you are you're deceived you know so often it's easier to see the failures in others the weaknesses and others the shortcomings and others but god's standard is absolute holiness and righteousness and purity and none of us can meet that standard on our own so recognizing the fact that no one is sin free again is not a license for sloppiness please don't misunderstand but in 1 john chapter 1 and verse 8 says if we say that we have no sin we're deceiving ourselves and the truth isn't in us if we confess our sins he's faithful and just he's faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness if we say that we haven't sinned we just make him out to be a liar you start with that and then understand that forgiveness in your life begins with a decision that you make forgiveness begins with your will not with your emotions if you wait until you feel like it you'll never get there you know forgiveness is triggered by the same thing that so many of our god choices are triggered by it takes a bit of self-discipline you have to choose to forgive you have to choose to repent oftentimes you don't even feel like repenting sometimes when you're repentant you're just mad you get caught or you're just mad you think you might get caught but forgiveness begins with the decision in your will your emotions will catch up if you wait for your feelings you'll never get there we started with joseph in genesis 45 and verse 3 joseph is meeting with his brothers now this is we've scrolled forward years joseph has suffered much he's been a slave in a foreign country he's been imprisoned he's been falsely accused many things have happened but he's found his way to a place of power and influence and his brothers come because they need help they just don't know it's joseph so he said to his brothers i'm joseph is my father still living brothers couldn't answer him because they were terrified as his presence i'm thinking if you sold him as a slave and now he's the power broker in town that's awkward they're so frightened they can't speak think of what they've lived with joseph said to them come close to me and when they'd done so he said i'm your brother joseph the one you sold into egypt he doesn't look like joseph anymore he's dressed like an egyptian he smells like an egyptian he speaks like an egyptian they don't recognize him don't be distressed and don't be angry with yourselves for selling me here it was to save lives that god sent me ahead of you joseph has had to forgive those young men long before he saw them he couldn't have accomplished and become the man he became if his life was choked with anger and resentment and bitterness and hatred i have little tolerance for the voices that we see today and they're all over the earth they're not limited to one place in time they're all over the earth trying to sow hatred and anger and bitterness we live in a broken fallen world and i'm not trying to excuse that but fomenting anger and hatred will not bring us to a better place it was to save lives that god sent me ahead of you for two years now there's been famine in the land and for the next five years there will not be plowing or reaping but god sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance he sounds free doesn't he he doesn't sound embittered he doesn't sound angry they haven't changed they haven't said they're sorry they haven't repented they haven't said we're so sorry for the scars on your back or for the holidays you didn't celebrate with your family or that your youth was taken away from you none of that's on the table it all started within joseph it could start within you don't give your power away waiting for somebody else to be the right person choose to cooperate with the lord it's not easy it's not simple no one is sin free forgiveness begins with your decision and then understand that forgiveness is personal acts chapter 26 it says paul now he said i was convinced that i ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of jesus of nazareth and that's just what i did in jerusalem on the authority of the chief priest i put many of the saints in prison and when they were put to death i cast my vote against them many a time i went from one synagogue to another to have them punished and i tried to force them to blaspheme in my obsession against them i even went to foreign cities to persecute them paul understands the necessity of forgiveness we have to forgive ourselves if we don't forgiveness doesn't impact us it's important we've got to recognize you see there's a self-righteousness that comes with thinking well because of where i've been to suggest that the blood of jesus is not adequate to cleanse me suggests that the blood of jesus shed on my behalf is insufficient that there's something else that should be done that i should bear penance or i should work it out or i should bear up under it or it's to take the redemptive work of jesus and set it aside and to diminish it so that self-righteousness that that comes and say well i'm just i'm not worthy it doesn't come from the spirit of god you're right we are not worthy but through the blood of jesus we have been made righteous don't remain hostage to hatred even if it's your own don't allow it but it wasn't just okay duly noted i'm not suggesting it's easy i'm not suggesting it's comfortable we're not living in an easy time [Music] we're not living in a comfortable time we need outcomes that are different than the outcomes we have ever had in our lives church we know to have church we know how to have religious services we know how to worship and sit and stand and come and go and be polite and we know how to do all of those things but the outcomes of our lives the trajectory of faith in our lifetime has been declining year over year over year this is our watch now who are we going to become are we going to blame the darkness are we going to acknowledge our failure to be the light this isn't about somebody else this is about you and me cooperating with the spirit of god and it starts in a very personal way it isn't about somebody else if you've already made a note of somebody that needs this lesson just block out their name this is us this is me and finally i think we have to recognize the difference between forgiveness and restoration sometimes i think we mistakenly imagine that if we forgive forgive ourselves forgive someone else if we come back with the blood of jesus and we allow that place to be cleansed that it means everything will be restored joseph's family is restored in a sense the years that are lost aren't given back to him abraham the god's promise to abram is fulfilled in isaac but the division that came with ishmael persists until today you see forgiveness does not always ensure that complete restoration takes place restoration is beyond the choice of an individual there are often many individuals involved second timothy chapter four and verse nine paul's writing from a roman prison he said make every effort to come to me soon demas having loved this present world has deserted me and he's gone to thessalonica crescents has gone to galatia and titus is someplace else luke is with me pick up mark and bring him with you he's useful tychicus i have sent to ephesus say that three times really quickly we sent t to ephesus that's easier when you come bring the cloak i left it troas and the books especially the parchments alexander the coppersmith did me much harm the lord will repay him according to his deeds be on guard against him yourself for he vigorously opposed our teaching i believe paul understands forgiveness i believe he practiced forgiveness but with that little quick snapshot of the relationships in his life and the the last stop or two on his journey it's very abundantly clear that there's not harmony in all the relationships around him demas left alexander is a problem in the midst of his faith and his faithfulness and his confidence in the lord in the in the verses immediately surrounding this he said that i've fought the good fight i've kept the faith i've finished my course and yet he's not living in absolute and total harmony in all the places and in all the relationships you see restoration involves all the parties being engaged in repentance forgiveness and cleansing and we don't have that power to orchestrate it what forgiveness does do it opens a new season in your relationship with god and with others when you forgive it changes the filters on how you see people in the world around you forgiveness is ultimately about well-being well-being spiritually well-being emotionally well-being mentally well-being physically unforgiveness will break your health it's important it's important and i really think our ability to practice forgiveness and to implement it in our lives extends from the degree of trust that we're willing to hold in the lord do we trust him to keep his word do we trust him to be faithful or do you think you have to be the arbiter of everything that if if you turn loose of your anger if you turn loose of your resentment somebody's going to get away with something no they're not i'm turning them loose to the lord you're not holding them back you're putting yourself in bondage now but if i release that if you release that you get the freedom but it wasn't right i agree it wasn't right they should have done they should have i agree but i suffered and i'll weep with you for that but what we're looking for is a pathway to a better place than where we find ourselves right now and on that we're not powerless through the blood of jesus we have been delivered out of the hand of the enemy what i'm asking you do is to trust god in a new way and i'm asking you to embrace the idea so that you can help somebody else you know people there are people in your sphere of influence that are bound by resentment and hatred and anger you know you're reluctant to bring up the topics because you know how it boils you can find it in yourself if there's a name that when the name comes up you get the emotions that come with it if there's a circumstance you're reminded of it the resentment just boils right back up in you again you know others you need to be ready to help them you know i used to have those same emotions i used to be just as angry about this or about that i realized that i needed to be forgiven so i forgave that i found freedom you can find freedom too my life changed the trajectory the entire trajectory of my life changed with accession and forgiveness i was on my way to professional school and a big portion of the reason i was going to professional school is i wouldn't let the professors win i was in a program with a high attrition rate my friends were dropping out and i thought you'll just never make me quit even if i don't want to do this anymore i won't quit i will not give you the satisfaction i hated them it wasn't fair it wasn't just they didn't it wasn't right but i didn't have access to the power and i was caught in the system and i spent a day with a friend of our family circumstances put us in close proximity we had to make a car trip together and she listened to me complain and she kept asking me questions i just wish i thought she'd never hush we got to the end of the day it'd been a long 12 hours in the car and then she said you know i'd like to pray with you and i thought you just had 12 hours in the car with me could we not have prayed in hour 1-12 i'm tired she was older than i was and i thought i was supposed to be respectful so i said i'd be delighted and she said i've listened to you she said you hate those men i said i just ma'am i do i needed the edge it brought me late nights long weekends whatever she said well you'll have to forgive them you know it's even worse when you know they're right some of you are mad at me right now because you know you're right i've got a right to be angry oh see the problem with that is god could always look at us and well i've got a right to be angry with you and so i forgave she said she uh i got done with the prayer she looked at me and she said have you ever thought about the ministry [Music] to which i said absolutely not never that's for another time but she said i want you to know how to help somebody [Music] she said when you come to the cross and you forgive she says if you're covered in mud and filth and you are dipped in the blood of jesus and when you stand up your clothing is sparkling white i'll never forget it at the time i never thought i would use it i thought she was a crazy old lady she said you'll help people to forgive and to be free and it's the invitation i want to give you tonight folks we live in a broken world there are more lies swirling around us than any time that i remember and they've impacted us and impacted who we are and they're going to impact us more in the future because the conflict in our world has broken into the open it's not subtle anymore and things will happen to us that aren't fair you'll have to know how to keep your your heart in a place where you can continue to hear from the lord because resentment and anger and bitterness will keep you from hearing the from the lord just as certainly as participating in immorality would you're not entitled to those things any more than you're entitled to greed or covetousness or lust or you don't have a right it'll destroy you so i want to invite you to the cross tonight we're going to forgive and we're going to be forgiven we're going to make the choice to forgive and then we're going to accept by god's grace and mercy the cleansing of his forgiveness that's the essence of communion did you get the elements of communion when you came in if you did why don't you retrieve those if you didn't or if you just walked past them there are ushers in the aisles they'll give you one if you're at home this is when you need to grab your oreos and your milk or your saltines in a cup of water or a pretzel it's okay you see i think too often we think of communion as like a religious tradition or a ritual in the church or you know it's just something we do but it has enormous impact upon the trajectory of your spiritual life it's more powerful than any medicine you can take it brings more transformation to your life than any other single thing i know the cross is the expression of god's power for you and me on that cross jesus took all the punishment that i was doing you were due by divine justice all of our failures shortcoming sins mistake so that in turn we might receive all the blessings that are due his perfect obedience it's a divine exchange god placed that stuff on him now you'll believe that the other part's a little harder to believe that we can receive all that was due his perfect obedience so god isn't counting your sins against you why would you why would you and why would you hold somebody else's against them i don't think it's an accident that jesus introduced the disciples to the elements of communion and before the sun was to come up the next day they had all failed him he knew they were going to need a path back and those were the best of the best he wasn't talking to the ones that were disinterested he was talking to the ones who were all in and it's a mistake to think that because you've made a profession of faith and you've been baptized that you no longer need the power of the blood of jesus to continue to bring freedom to your lives we need the power of god in ways that we have never known it before and that pathway is not going to come because of our intellect or our goodness it will come to us through the spirit of god because we cooperate with god's provision for us so let's come as disciples tonight our lord himself put this in place the end of the passover meal he took bread and he said this bread is my body broken for you as often as you eat this do it in remembrance of me if you peel back that cellophane layer you can reach the bread let's receive together then he took a cup there was a place set at the passover table for messiah and he reached over and took messiah's cup and he said this cup is a new covenant literally a new contract and it'll be sealed with my own blood as often as you drink this you proclaim my death until you see me again let's drink together don't you stand with me for this prayer if you're at home you can stand with us right there don't just watch come on now we're going to turn looseness to things we've received those tangible reminders of what jesus has done for us now we're going to make a choice we're not leaving here with that anger or bitterness or resentment or hatred we're not leaving here as victims we're not leaving here mistreated we're going to release those people what is this the 21st july the 21st 2021 7 15 p.m 1921 highway 99 murfreesboro tennessee we bundled all of that stuff and we laid it at the foot of the cross we're going to dip ourselves in that pool with all the dirt and the mud and the filth all those angry emotions all that resentment and we're going to stand up clean through the blood of jesus are you ready we're going to leave differently with a new mission with a new mindset father thank you i thank you that you love us that you care for us that you knew us when we were knit together in our mother's womb but there's no circumstance in our lives that is a surprise to you or has caught you off guard you have made provision that we might be free and clean and delivered redeemed and made whole we thank you for it tonight as we have received the bread and the cup we receive your life into our lives we ask you to forgive us father forgive us for our stubbornness for our rebellion for our ungodliness for any attitude or emotion we have held that is displeasing to you lord we come tonight no excuses no justification lord we we repent we lay it down we ask you to wash us and cleanse us lord we forgive who we forgive whomever of whatever we set them free tonight we release them lord we turn them loose we ask for your grace and your mercy in their lives treat them kindly with gentleness lord we entrust them to your well-being and we thank you now that we are your children made whole i thank you for a new life that begins in our lives this night for a new beginning for a new future i thank you for your faithfulness and i thank you that through the blood of jesus we have been delivered out of the hand of the enemy that his power over us is broken his power over our minds his power over our bodies his power over our emotions that we've been set free in jesus name i thank you that you are writing our future but not those that we have trusted not those who had authority over us that you hold our future in your hands we praise you for it we thank you for it let righteousness reign upon us we thank you now for all that you've done in jesus name amen hallelujah you better give the lord a hand huh hey this is pastor allen thank you for watching this video if you enjoyed it like it and most importantly share it with your friends if you want to be notified when there's new content when we post new material if you'll just subscribe to my channel and hit the bell you'll get the notification most of all i pray god blesses you as you continue on your spiritual journey and open your heart to the lord god bless you

Channel: Allen Jackson Ministries

Views: 6,520

Rating: 4.9292035 out of 5

Keywords: Pastor Allen Jackson, allen jackson ministries, world outreach church, alan jackson, sermons, preachers, how to be saved, Finding Jesus, pastor allen jackson sermons

Id: OKuize-P0aU

Length: 51min 50sec (3110 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 02 2021