The Problem With Pineapples | Pastor Levi Lusko

here to talk about relationships talk about sex and love and dating and i want to add my voice to that and give a message that i'm calling the problem with pineapples problem with pineapples so jot that down we're going to talk about marriage love sex and dating and continue on in this amazing series you're not going to want to miss next week this is important this stuff is so good i would just say if you are if you're married don't tune out like well i already kind of married it is what it is you know don't tune out because like uh like you heard there's always room for improvement in our lives and we need we do need to date our mates uh but if you're not married don't tune this out if you're if you're here in your day if you're a teenager and you're like i'm not married yet i'll listen to it eventually let me tell you take twice as many notes as anybody else okay twice as many notes to anybody else because um well i mean the ideal time to learn how to fly a helicopter would be before you're in one right and so i think to listen to a marriage sermon when you're not yet there it would be an ideal time you got to always train for the trial you're not yet in and so this is so important and uh if you have a copy of the scriptures would you look with me proverbs chapter 4 and i want to read to you verse 23. this is to me a foundational uh text when it comes to understanding the importance of what we do romantically and how it has the capacity to influence the outcome of your life here's what solomon said verse 23 keep your heart someone say keep your heart with all diligence i'll take it from here for out of it spring the issues of life one more time keep your heart he says with all diligence does that sound active keep your heart with all diligence for out of it spring the issues of life and father we ask that you would speak to us we ask that we would hear from you a clear word we thank you for your blessing on this church through these six years thank you for what's happening immorial and katie and all the people all around houston who are coming into this church and all that you have in store with the silos and all the things and the way you this is reverberating around the world this story is too good to keep to ourselves thank you that it's reaching into air force bases and army bases it's reaching into prisons and hospital rooms thank you that the word of god can't be chained we do ask for you to continue to bless this church put a covering upon the leaders the entire team may you continue to help them see that this is important that this is real that this matters and i pray for every single person coming every single person sacrificially giving every single person who is here early loading in who's going to stay late to load out when we all have gone i pray that they would understand and see always that you see and delight in what they're doing for you and that you would draw people to yourself and continue to do so in jesus name we pray amen amen keep your heart he says with all diligence for out of it flow the issues of life what is he trying to say he's trying to say in my entire sermon in just a sentence that what you do in your love life will impact all of your life that it's not some peripheral thing like oh here's my life but i've also got that over here listen what you do when it comes to your love life will impact and alter the outcome of your life uh to really understand that we need to understand uh that god is the one who authored sex god is the one who authored relationships god is the one who had the bright idea to come up with this idea of of human sexuality i think the enemy would love for you to think it was his idea he's like i got an idea you should have sex don't tell god right like god's like what do you even what are you even talking about like i've got the patent for that hanging on the wall in my office like i got god authored sex he's the one who invented it and he gave it to us as a gift to be enjoyed a gift to be appreciated a gift to be embraced if you have it in your heart to one day have sex and and you're like i'm gonna have sex one day that's awesome god god invented it and he's like yay that right right you see that in the in the book of genesis when god gave it to us uh he uh saw adam walking alone in the garden one day and the bible says that god said it's not good for adam to be alone and so the first gift ever given he gave sex and human relationships and marriage to adam to all of us i guess technically if we're gonna i mean you want me to preach the the whole truth sex was technically the second gift because the bible says god caused a deep sleep to fall over adam so the nap was technically the first gift in jesus name amen you know what i'm saying like when you're a child it's like you take a nap it's like no right once we need a nap no one's asking us to take a nap anymore it's unfortunate but adam wakes up rejuvenated from this nap and he realizes he's not alone he's like hey girl hey you come here often she's like just got here actually from your rib cage adam's like that's interesting right but he didn't have time to puzzle over this newly missing rib because uh he realized that uh there was a little there was a little something to this connection here and and what had happened was god the father had brought eve as as to be given away at the world's first wedding and then as pastor god stepped into that the role of officiant and and performed the first uh wedding ceremony and adam and eve were married and and thus this gift of of sexuality and relationship and marriage was was now to be enjoyed and now to be appreciated and we know we know at least adam was excited about this because the bible records the first words to come out of his mouth after the wedding was done they were about to eat the cake and start dancing and doing the macarena and the whole thing and and adam opened his mouth and had a speech and he said bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh which is to say when is the limo leaving for the honeymoon right that's that's what i wanted bone of my opponent flesh that's like wow that is provocative to say the least but it's even crazier because if you unpack the original hebrew i'm told that phrase bone of my bone flesh of my flesh actually means apple bottom jeans and the boots with the fur that's what [Applause] he's like i got the reeboks with the straps and it's like you think you would think you would think that god in heaven would be like adam stop right like gabriel censored this this is not okay he's not going in the bible that is no listen listen he brought the guy a naked wife i think he knew what was gonna happen next just saying right what is what is that to to say to you and to me that's to say this god wants you to have amazing sex god is exciting you know what i'm going to clap for that like no he can't be we're way too holy to be pumped on that no listen he he you should embrace that that's a good thing that's a god thing because god knows what you need to know sex is pleasurable there's an entire book of the bible given over to the celebration of the ecstasy of the gift that is sexuality sex is pleasurable but listen to me very carefully it's also powerful powerful and therefore it would be irresponsible of god to give it to us without telling us how to use it all powerful things have the capacity to help and also to hurt you i think about a snowmobile listen i have been on two snowmobiles in my life one snowmobile was whisking me away to safety after i fractured my collarbone falling while snowboarding in new mexico and lying there on the run realizing i'm not going to be getting off this mountain tonight because the chair lifts closed it was one last run and i'm there alone and the sun's going to go down soon but fortunately ski patrol came by a snowmobile was deployed i was put into the little bed on the back and taken away to safety to an x-ray to medicine and to help that snowmobile helped me guess what i was also in a snowmobile right after moving to montana my wife and i we jenny is in the service come on let's hear for jenny i love you sweetheart you're the best 16 years of marriage and uh we just it just keeps getting better and better and better and it's it's so much fun to work on our relationship this this this covid season we did we did some extra marriage counseling we always get marriage counseling but we did some extra counseling like hey we're here for a while realizing there's more issues in our life than we all thought there were let's work on them and it's worth fighting for it's worth building you're gonna have in your marriage what you put in your marriage here's how you spell a good marriage w-o-r-k right preach it rihanna you gotta work work work work work that thing right if your marriage is not working it's probably because you're not you have to work at it and so anyhow uh the second snowmobile is right after jenny and i moved to montana and some people said to me hey man you want to go sledding i was like i thought you guys were tough in montana who wants you're like tobogganing what do you talk no they didn't mean sledding on a sled they meant snowmobiling these guys they get on these souped-up snowmobiles and they go roaring across frozen lakes and it is crazy they go 80 miles an hour and they're jumping off stuff and i didn't want to you know appear weak and so i said for sure i'd love to go sledding with you and uh it was either that or ice fishing and i'm not a i have standards you guys okay i'm not about to go ice fishing right nothing about that appeals to me oh no no we uh we dig a hole in the ice and we sit there drinking beer and catching tiny little fish that we don't eat it's like that sounds cold and they go no no we built a fire i was like that town stupid right on the ice anyhow that's why the population in montana is so small right natural selection is a beautiful thing so so i go i go i go snowmobiling with these guys and uh and with within 30 minutes of being on a snowmobile i had gone off a berm wrong i hit my thigh on the handlebar fractured my femur my legs pointing sideways in the snow and i look at it and i look at the snowmobile and i said to myself this is a problem unfortunately we were outside of county bound so there was only volunteer ambulance that came and cletus and his hillbilly brother earl um so i think about my life between these two snowmobiles one help me one hurt me that's how powerful things are god gave us something that is powerful called sex it has the capacity to rock your world and bring you great blessing but it also has the capacity to reduce your life this is the book of proverbs to a crust of bread it has the capacity to destroy you therefore god who gave us this gift of sexuality also told us how to use it and what were the instructions he gave us this is genesis chapter 2 verse 24 therefore a man shall leave his father and mother be joined to that's the place for the verse his wife and the two shall become one flesh the marriage bed the arena in which god wants us to utilize this gift of sexuality so that the snowmobile helps us and takes us to safety and where we want to go and not reduces our life to a crust of bread now ironically this is the part of the sermon where some of you begin to cop an attitude oh you're gonna tell me and and like the neck starts getting all flexible and how like we we start like getting all huffy and you know this is what this is this is what i don't like about religion it's so restrictive and how well who does god think he is tell us and hold on a second do you apply that logic to any other arena in life you go to home depot you buy a chainsaw you start opening up the rules do you start going how dare they right who do they think they are no you intuitively know the reason they give you rules is so you don't chop your freaking arm off right so why do we give more grace to home depot than we do to god who made us [Applause] and we assume negative intent when he tells us something no listen sex god knows is pleasurable but it's also powerful and lest it destroy you he gave it to you but told you how to get the best possible use out of it because he knows what you need to know when you take what he told you not to touch it can keep him from being able to give you what he wanted you to have all along see what happened in the entire garden of eden as proof when they took what he told them not to touch it prevented him from being able to give them what he wanted them to have all along and the same is true with sexuality that is to say that your sex drive is not too strong for god he doesn't have a problem with you having a strong sex drive he just knows it's an absolute train wreck when you let sex drive and that is the predominant mood when it comes to our culture's outlook on sexuality that we feel as though we should be allowed to do whatever we want at any point and who's anybody to say anything other than that and how this intersects in our day leaves us needing to swipe right more than ever why because in our day technology and sexuality well the lines are being blurred and it's really important to appreciate the historic place we are at in the the sweeping grand view of history because tectonic ship plates are shifting under our feet even as we sit here in this moment and that's why the book that i wrote on the the the life and death power of sex and romance is called swipe right because we need to learn how to swipe right and as we navigate the the turbulent waters that are our sex and love and dating in this current part of the world's history dora told us swiper no swiping but we didn't get that memo we did not get that memo no we did not in 2016 a study was done that found that the average american touches the screen of their phone 2 617 times per day 2000 that's 2617 touches on the screen of our phones in a day y'all there are only 1 440 minutes in a day so you will on an average day touch your phone more times than there are minutes in a day that was done in 2016. what do you think this last year has done to our screen time would you all like to have your screen time usage put up on the i wouldn't nielsen estimates our screen time has gone up by as much as 60 since the pandemic started you're like well yeah but i work on zoom no no they say only 13 of that is attributed to work or school zooms so our reaction to working all day on a laptop is to spend more time not less time on our phones want to know why it's reprogramming us on the inside we are being digitally rewired and that's why we're all so twitchy they say we're actually developing ticks called phantom vibration sensation it's where your nervous system invents text that didn't come and notifications that aren't there that's why you'd be like oh got a text no i didn't could have sworn i did just check in on instagram y'all this is not good and we know that but it's not just the technology thing but there's also like the sexuality thing that's combined with that why because of porn which amounts to 36 percent of data transmitted online one out of four times a google search is performed it's sexual in nature the amount of data being transmitted uh that's pornographic in nature uh amounts to more data than is utilized in amazon netflix and twitter combined and then of course there's the the dating app right the number one non-gaming app in america by dollars spent on it with in-app purchases is tinder and tinder is at the the forefront of a whole fleet of other dating apps right and they new ones are being made every day but hinge and happen and bumble and okay cupid and plenty of fish and there's there's so many of them right there's all these all these apps out there like can you say that last one one more time i i was not aware of that one for research purposes just want to have thorough notes from the sermon be a great time for you all to silence your cell phones by the way you get a tinder notification while i'm preaching this sermon you are going straight to hell i am telling you do not pass go left at the lake of fire and to your new home so there's that um but in case you weren't aware uh tinder and these other apps basically allow us to have sex with a complete stranger with the convenience of ordering an uber there's this uh verse in the book of proverbs that says the immoral woman has sex with someone then wipes her mouth and says what what i didn't do anything nothing's wrong nothing even that's basically what we've come to in this day now of course the pushback we no no it's how people meet and yeah there are like three people that use it to find that right one and the rest of the country uses these apps to facilitate having sex with a complete stranger i was listening to a podcast of the day i won't tell you it was joe rogan because then i'd probably have some religious people get angry but in the jordan pockets i was listening to um his guest was saying that he had a friend who met someone on on tinder that he was excited about meeting and they met and eventually one thing lets you know they finished having sex and she went to get dressed afterwards and heard a noise and turned and he was literally back on tinder swiping as she was dressing the immoral woman has sex but then wipes her mouth and and basically says on to the next thing what what what what what did i even do we're living in that day where lines are being blurred and you have to understand that seldom do people realize when they're living through the historic in human history there have been two major moves sociologists say two major movements when it comes to heterosexual mating one was the agricultural revolution when we settled down in farming communities and stopped living life in a nomadic fashion the second was the advent of the internet and so now here we have sexuality and technology and us becoming partially robotic in the inside because of what we're doing with with all these devices and yes we all saw the social dilemma we know those things are bad and yet we're still doing the same thing so so the question is of course what are we doing to ourselves on the inside for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction so what will be the outcome of us continuing to to head down this path now of course at this point we're all like holy crap this is heavy man this is deep this is meta right it's like but but like the application isn't let's all put our smartphones on the stage and let them on fire and go churn butter you know and you know like wear denim overalls and live in montana that's not that's not the application the application isn't stop swiping the application is how do we swipe right how do we how do we honor god in the midst of our culture for for abandoning the internet and abandoning the ability to communicate online abandoning facebook which allows us to preach this message in youtube which allows us to send the gospel into the whole world is not going to help anybody christians love to have that like intensity we'll let him forget at all let's just go live in a monastery listen you can't reach a world you've abandoned so the question isn't how do we stop swiping it's how do we learn how to swipe right and and for that we need to look to to moses moses the bible says exodus chapter 2 verse 12 looked this way and looked that way this exodus 2 12 and when he saw no one this way in that way he killed the egyptian and hid his body in the sand now what was moses doing moses was acting on a strong feeling and the strong feeling told him i feel like i'm supposed to deliver the israelites and and and be used to to to bring god's judgment on the egyptians he had that feeling that sensation that he was no normal child no usual child that god had a plan for him and god did he was right the feelings were all there the feelings were good he just acted in a way that only looked this way and looked that way but forgot to look this way if he would have looked up he could have swiped right if he would have looked up he could have known that god had a plan for him but it didn't involve him killing one egyptian and saving one israelite who didn't even want his help in that moment it was that he ultimately was going to stand at the edge of the red sea and raise the rod of god in the air a picture of the cross this deliverance that god had promised and it would be the entire egyptian army that would get buried in the sea god had something so much better involved in his mind for moses than moses ever could have believed in that moment and i just get this sensation that that maybe just maybe you're settling for something small and stolen and sneaky and deceitful that something over here that has it can't even hold a candle to what god ultimately wants for you when it comes to your love life we have to in this culture and what our friends are doing and what our feelings are we have to instead look up so we can swipe right the message that that ended up in the book was born out of jenny and i's honeymoon we had fought so hard to honor god during our dating honor god we had all the feeling that you wanted that you could ever have all the feeling you would ever have on a honeymoon we had all those feelings all throughout our dating but we were just we kept choosing to say to ourselves the feelings that we have are good so we're not saying no to those feelings we're just saying not now we're just saying not yet and we were just saying to each other this is the kind of husband i'm going to be to you one day because news flash girls he will be exactly as faithful to you as a spouse as he's being faithful with you as a girlfriend and we get to say to each other here's what's written on my soul here's what i think of god's authority here's what i think of of his plan here's how i'm going to be when you're in that postpartum stretch here's how it's going to be when i'm off on a business trip here's the kind of man i want to be for you the kind of grandfather that's what you should think about you should think about what when you is he good-looking what are his biceps like ask yourself what kind of a grandfather is he going to be what kind of a grandmother will she be i know i know guys but you know i shouldn't date her but she's hot so is hell okay so so there's the i want you to jot down three things and then we're done i can't shove two years of research and 224 pages into the next 10 minutes so this will be the costco size sample and if you like it the chimichangas are on aisle 17 i would say to get one at your location but we sold out so i guess it's amazon but but here's the go ahead let's feed feed bezos he's like he needs more money right but here's the here's the um the three things i want you to write down number one these are three lies continuing our theme from last week of the myths that are being told that's what we're focusing on in this in this love is blind series the lies about sex the first lie is that sex is just a physical activity sex is just a physical activity we're being basically told that at every turn so the big messaging is safe sex the big messaging is minimizing physical consequences as long as no one gets pregnant as long as no one gets an std that's the emphasis but what is that neglect and that's usually in the church our big like hey if you don't don't have sex you'll get pregnant don't have sex you'll get you get an std and so it's like let's get all the teenagers together and just scare them with words like gonorrhea right but here's i actually i don't think that's the most effective thing in the world just saying right but what i do think yeah there's there's valid reasons to to be aware and mindful of all of those things but but the reality is even if no one gets pregnant even if no one gets an std there's impact on who you are through the sexual experience it changes you on the inside sex is not just physical when i was in middle school there's a really popular song you've been singing every week i can't and won't do that but i will tell you the lyrics to a song that was really popular when i was in middle school and it was by a band called the bloodhound gang and it went like this you and me baby we ain't nothing but mammals so let's just do it like they do on the discovery channel you're welcome and it's a refreshingly honest articulation of a godless worldview when it comes to intimacy since we're just physical we're just smart monkeys wearing pants we can just have sex and it doesn't impact you but that's a lie here's what paul said on the subject first corinthians 6 verse 16. there's more to sex than mere skin on skin sex is my is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact and that's why and then he quotes back to genesis 2 the passage we began with it's written in scripture the two become one when you have sex with someone it impacts your soul it impacts who you are you are not just body you are soul you are spirit and it messes with you on the inside and not just sex is this way physically speaking even pornography is this way that's why the cdc tells us that regular porn users have lower rates of physical health have do do worse in school higher rates of anxiety look into the studies of those who are chronically on tinder there's a whole segment of the population that deletes it reinstalls it deletes it reinstalls it just one more time just one more time because it lights up the same centers of your brain as crack does it is literally a drug it messes with you those who are having the most casual sex have the lowest rates of enjoyment of it it reminds me of pineapples it's a great segue really when you think about a pineapple and i brought one here this is no no oohs no oz if i have to ask for it it doesn't count the story of the pineapple is an incredible one because the first pineapple reached europe in the 1500s after columbus in 1492 and the ocean being sailed blue and i realized it's controversial it's 20 20 everything's controversial but when the first pineapple was brought back to europe people freaked out because they'd never seen one before they're like what is this mystery fruit and it became this ultimate symbol of luxury and privilege and everyone wanted to have one so as many ships as could come from the new world we're bringing pineapples with them and and people were like i have to have one in my home and and so uh they would buy them and it got so crazy the inflation did that at its peak a pineapple would cost the equivalent of eight thousand dollars to purchase now most people weren't prepared to spend that kind of money so there were services that would allow you to rent them for the evening this is true right it's like the guy who lives in the apartment but drives a mercedes anyhow it's leased so you would rent the pineapple and it'd be like all shell but no go oh all hat but no cattle and and people come over like oh you see they got a pineapple it's laced you know what i'm saying and they would not eat them they would just view them they would just sit there and view the pineapple right and uh it was said that at the peak of the 1500 1600 that whole pier period that to have a taste of a pineapple in your mouth would be the ultimate experience of someone's life now some of you are like that's no way that's true uh-huh it's true and it informed the art and architecture of the day so if you go to london and go to st paul's cathedral if you visit the south tower you might notice on the top of the the cathedral there's a on the top of this on top of the dome a pineapple if you go to scotland and you visit the earl of dunmore's estate you will see that earl of dunmore chose to put on the top of his residence this is the next photo i think a pineapple and then previous image charles ii had to have his own farms and this is him being presented with the first pineapple grown oh it's a cute little baby pineapple he was being presented with the first pineapple ever grown in europe by his gardener john wait for it rose that's literally the guy's name he had to be a gardener he had no choice to this present day there are vestiges little remnants of the pineapple craze that we see we don't even notice for example uh when fed goes back to wimbledon and crushes nadal as he will one day he'll kiss the top of a notice the trophy a pineapple the pineapple right at the top of the trophy given out in wimbledon every single year now here's what's crazy about this and i first came across this this story the history of the pineapple and i was like how did it become what it is today because from the ultimate symbol of luxury and privilege what does it become in our culture when you eat pineapples in our culture today it is the least glamorous presentation ever you buy them as pineapple we describe them as a synonym for vomit how do we go from this to this access available to everybody nothing about the pineapple has changed only our attitude towards it because we wanted them so bad we made them available everywhere then thus it was despised there's a parable in the scripture about someone who lusted after someone his name was absalom but the moment he had her the text says he hated her more than he had ever wanted her before he had her from something worthy of being put on top of a cathedral and sung and painted about to chunks sex was originally intended to be this grand gift worthy of prose worthy of art worthy of song a club so exclusive it only had two members arise my beloved eat and drink your breasts like a deer i mean just all this this beauty this this this is absolutely i mean i mean i'm enraptured by your love and when we open it up to everybody and we don't protect the springs of love and they're allowed to run through the streets and we're seeing images and we're watching videos and it's a swipe here and it's a swipe there and it's i'm with this person and this person what happens is sex begins to work backwards and where it was given originally as a cure for loneliness it is not good for man to be alone i will create a helper suitable to him when we misuse it it works backwards and we end up more lonely than ever and studies have shown that there's an increasing numbness on the inside that you no longer feel what was supposed to be felt that you no longer are not only not experiencing it but incapable of experiencing what you were meant to experience and that's why we must arrive at this inescapable conclusion father knows best his rules are for a reason he wants you to have amazing sex and not to be left spearing chunks one click one swipe at a time the second lie is this i can do what i want and have what god wants and this is sort of where at times in the church world we hear these things we're like yeah that's good i want that but i can i can get around to that eventually i can do this here now and i can it's my twenties i gotta get this out of my system right and then eventually i'm gonna like say i'm sorry and i'm done with all that put that all behind me i'll have a bachelor party or a bachelorette party and i say goodbye to those wild days because i've gotten it all out of my system and now i'm gonna be a husband and now i'm gonna be a wife but you fail to understand you don't get anything out of your system by doing it get it into your system and you will be as a husband you will be as a wife exactly who you built yourself to be over time for the bible says what a man sows the same will he reap you can't sow apples and get watermelon you can't sow sin and reap reap light you will reap the same as you sow many of you may not realize this your parents marriage ended because of things they did before they even met each other and they were sowing the kind of season setting the kind of foundation that would eventually and inevitably lead to its great fall now you might be going hold on pastor guy if that is your real name god will forgive me i can sleep around a little here and there in college years and have some fun and do what i want to do and then eventually ask for god for guinness and he'll forgive me look you're not going to get any pushback from me on that of course he'll forgive you but whoever said god's highest good for your life was to forgive you of sins he didn't want you to commit in the first place he would much rather be blessing and using you than forgiving you and he knows that if he can get your eyes poked out like samson and cut your hair to get rid of your power and have you going around and around and around and around in a circle of addiction in a circle of in slavery then you will not be out on the battlefield doing the great and mighty things your heavenly father is prepared to do through you i did not put my kids on a plane and come here in your relationship series to tell you to quit sinning i told you to take your place and change your world that's what god sent me here to tell you but it's never gonna happen so long as you're still messing with the do this ask forgiveness do this ask forgiveness do this ask forgiveness it's time to rise up to maturity it's time to rise up to christ's likeness it's time to embrace your birthright but your desires can keep you from your destiny third and final lie is one that i know for sure is sneaking up in some of your hearts right now hearing about god's plan you're like man i want that's that makes so much sense you're just thinking i wish you would have told me this earlier i wish someone would have told me this earlier i'd have a dad telling me that i'd have a mom telling me these sorts of things earlier on and you might be thinking this all makes so much sense i just wish i had heard it sooner i had a woman come up to me one time i was preaching it was actually in dallas and and she came up to me after i preached this message and she was a little lady probably 70s and she grabbed my hands and she said young man tears streaking down her face she said young man i wish i i wish i could have heard this sermon 50 years ago and if i could have it would have saved me 50 years of regret i pulled her close and i said it was pre-covered i said ma'am your life's not over yet and i say the same to you no of course you can't go back in the time machine and undo the things you've done but what you can do is draw a line in the sand and you can say from this day forward i think in the church world when we haven't been ignoring these topics and i praise god that every year this church holds up god's plan for sex marriage and dating and communicates it without flinching but at times in the church well we forget to you know just articulate what it looks like to honor god after mistakes and we've fixated and focused on virginity as sort of this like grail this holy grail v card save your virginity save yourself and and of course there's reasons to say if you're here and you you haven't had sex say yes save yourself for marriage for sure but what does it look like to to wake up one day and have the holy spirit breathe on you and reveal to you a better way to live and what does it look like to honor god after you've made mistakes after you've given your heart away after you've done those things i want to show you one of my favorite verses on the bible in the bible for for those of us who who have not done things all right all god's way because i think about my own relationship my wife was in sixth grade and heard someone tell her save yourself for marriage and so she did saved herself for me and i who grew up in church and knew a lot of these things was kind of in that camp if i can do what i want and have it god's way but there came a point when god opened my eyes up to see what i was doing and tolerating and living in and i i chose to embrace the grace that god gives one of the verses that encouraged me the most in that process was judges 16 because i can't think of anybody who gave away more than samson and yet what does the bible say about samson at the end of his life it says in judges 16 22 but before long samson's hair began to grow back yes his power was taken yes his vision was was taken but in time the hair began to grow and i want to speak hope and life into your tomorrow i didn't come to shame you for your past i came to fight for your future and god is speaking to you your hair can begin to grow and so i hope and pray that for many of you this would be a chapter that that turns a page that turns a new chapter in your story of saying i may have done it this way i may have made these mistakes but from this day forward i want to honor god in my love life i want to honor god in my marriage and my dating and the way i approach sex the way i steward this gift called called human sexuality that is amazingly pleasurable but also tremendously powerful would you pray with me every head bad every eye closed i want to just ask in the quiet and the the privacy of this moment is there anybody who today would like to say i want to embrace god's plan you might be young and never have gone down any of these waters or maybe you've you've made some of the mistakes we've mentioned or maybe you're married and you just want to say i want to fight for my marriage in a new way i want to protect this this relationship if you would be honest enough to say the holy spirit is touching some area of your love life and you want to be honest to god about that that you're responding to him could you just raise up your hand every location thank you jesus thank you jesus hands are raised maybe grab your spouse's hand hold it together father i pray for the oil of your holy spirit to run down heads as you anoint them as you help them to see they are already forgiven and now they're going to begin to walk in blessing and walk in victory and walk in wholeness would you heal the hurts would you heal the scars would you touch our blind eyes and open them would the hair begin to grow thank you jesus for what you're doing and the way it will ripple out through generations that our great-grandchildren can can walk in the blessing of our faithfulness and obedience you can put your hands down i want to ask is anybody watching right now and you need to give your life to jesus you need to ask him to come into your heart and make you new the bible says that forgiveness is not based on you it gets placed on you because of what jesus did if you're here today and you've never opened your heart up to jesus to see him make all things new inside you could i ask you to pray with me to god asking him to come in your heart this is your moment this is your new beginning say this to god church say it with us dear god i know i'm a sinner i can't fix myself i pray you would come into my heart and make me new thank you for new life i give you mine in jesus name head's still bowed i still closed i believe in the power of a moment to nail down a decision like that so what i'm going to do is i'm going gonna count to three and if you're ready and you just prayed that prayer dedicating or rededicating your life to god i'm gonna ask when i get to three you shoot your hand up your way of saying this is real this just happened i'm a new creation in christ one two three shoot your hands up shoot your and katie shoot your hands up church online shoot your hands up come on let's celebrate hands are going up all across the church praise god praise god praise god come on church let's celebrate all god's done today

Channel: Hope City

Views: 23,888

Rating: 4.964222 out of 5

Keywords: Jeremy Foster, Hope City, pastor jeremy, jermy foster, jeramy foster, hope city church, Levi lusko, problem with pineapples, pineapple illustration, love sex marriage, sermon about sex, sex before marraige, tinder, is tinder ok to use, fresh life, fresh life church, love is blind, relationship series, relationship sermons, is it ok to have sex before marriage, soul ties, relationship goals, pastor levi, Christian dating, dating as a Christian, staying pure, waiting

Id: 9VBeFzHOwaU

Length: 43min 11sec (2591 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 25 2020