Several years ago, I was at a store, I think it was Target or someplace, and I saw this puzzle. And uh the puzzle was this puzzle that went along with a video game character that my oldest son was really into at the time, really liked. And then I thought to myself, I should get this, and we can do like a puzzle together as a family. He never really did puzzles, he was never into those, and I thought, man, that would be kind of a fun thing for him. It'd probably be good for him to have something like that to do. You know, maybe it'll help a part of his brain. I don't know. I'm a new parent, you know, at the time. And so I buy this puzzle and I bring it home and I show him the box, and he's super excited. I'm like, dude, we're gonna put this puzzle together, me, you and your mom, it's gonna be amazing. And he was like, Yeah, this is awesome. He loved that video game character. It was like a Nintendo thing. And and so that night we get out, we open up the box, and uh, and I realized in like 10 minutes, I made a terrible mistake. Because this puzzle was like, it wasn't a beginner puzzle. You know, it was like a video game thing. So my brain was like, video game, you know, young kid, he'll love it. But it was like an extremely difficult puzzle. Way over a thousand pieces. About 50% of the puzzle was just black. It was just black. There was no shapes, there was no, and he's never done a puzzle like for real, you know, and so he sits down excited, and within five minutes, he hasn't even found two pieces that go together. And he's like, I'm just I'm done. I'm never gonna do a puzzle again, and he hasn't. But uh, but he did tell Megan and I, he said, Hey, uh, I would love to see it finished though. You know, I can't wait to see it done. I'm just I'm out. And Megan and I said, you know what, we can do this. This would be like a cool marriage thing for us. We're always watching stuff on TV. Let's do something different. And so for the next week and a half, two weeks, every night for multiple hours, Megan and I sat at a table, talked, and just put this puzzle together piece by piece. It was incredibly painstaking. It was incredibly tedious. We wanted to give up like multiple times. We're like, Do you think he'd really care? But every morning he'd come downstairs and be like, wow, you guys made great progress. I can't wait. And so we're like, we gotta finish it. And so I'll never forget the night where it happened. We we we have it all, and like there it is, and I reach in the box, and there's no puzzle pieces left in the box, and then we look at the puzzle and realize that there's one missing piece. Just one. And at first I was like, no big deal, it's clearly gonna turn up. You know, it's clearly gonna turn up, and so we're gonna sweep the floor, we're gonna find it. We we spent a few minutes looking for it, couldn't find it. A few days goes by, and I'm like, Have you found it yet? She's like, No, me neither. And like a week later, it just hits me. This this piece is it's gone. I don't know if one of our kids ate it, that's possible. Um, I don't know. But it's gone. And I was like just staring at this puzzle on our kitchen table that we had spent like so many hours, like 20 plus hours, and I'm staring at this empty piece, and I for a minute I was like a broken man. You know? I was like, it just it drove me insane. It was torturous. There was just one, just one missing piece. Drove me insane. And I've never done a puzzle since either. So there you go. I'm done with puzzles. Today we're gonna talk about what I believe is a huge missing piece in so many people who follow Jesus' understanding of who God really is. It's like a missing piece in our experience with God. And it holds us back, it keeps us from experiencing what we're actually meant to experience. We don't want to have any missing pieces. In fact, we're in a series right now that we're actually wrapping up today. If you haven't been here for it, if you're just tuning in, don't worry, you're smart, you'll catch up. But it's called the full gospel. Gospel means the good news of Jesus Christ, like the good news of who he is, what he's done for us. We need the full gospel, not a partial gospel. We don't want any missing pieces in our understanding of who God is and what he's done for us. But very often we have those. And when there's a missing piece, it means we're actually missing out on the full measure of the blessings that God gives us, of the joy and the peace, the power that he gives us in our lives. We don't want to miss out on anything, no missing pieces. And so we've been studying Romans chapter 3, verses 21 through 31, which is probably the most complete description of the gospel that we have in all of Scripture. It was written by a man named Paul. He wrote a good portion of the New Testament, and I'd like to read it right now. Understand, this is filled with a lot of language that's very technical. And so if you read Romans and you start to just gloss over, that's okay. Just stick with it. We're gonna break it down. And again, you guys are smart, you'll be fine, but here we go. Romans 3, 21 through 31, this is the full gospel, no missing pieces. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there is no distinction. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance or patience he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? In other words, he's saying, like, can we say, hey, look what I did. I have this great relationship with God? No, it's excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works. In other words, he's saying, how can we say that we're justified in God's presence by what we've done? No. But by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from the works of the law, or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not God of the Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means, on the contrary, we uphold the law. All right, again, that's a lot. That's a lot. But we got to break this down because I'm telling you guys, we cannot have a missing piece when it comes to our understanding of who God is and what he's done for us. The more full our our understanding, the more full our experience. And so what we've done is we've we've pulled out four major concepts in this section of scripture. We've just been going through it week by week. The first one was righteousness through faith. Righteousness through faith. Righteousness means right relationship. The reality is most of the time, the right relationships that we have in this life, it depends on our performance. Even some of the closest relationships we have as a spouse, if you know, if we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing, that relationship can be broken. As a parent, that can be broken. How many friends have we had in the past, but those friends are in the past because at some point there was something that broke that relationship? Usually we have right relationship with someone by how well we perform or how well they perform, but that's not how it is with God. We have righteousness with God, right standing with Him. He looks at us and says, You're good just by faith in Jesus. That's all he really requires. That was week one. Week two, we looked at this second concept, justification by grace. And that word justified, if you weren't here, that's a really cool word. We often think about what God has done for us, the gospel, that he's forgiven us, and he has. But justification is more than forgiveness. See, if you're forgiven, that means someone looks at you and says, you know what, yeah, you're wrong, you're guilty, I recognize your guilt, but I'm gonna let it go. That's forgiveness. Justification means that you're declared innocent. So through Jesus, through his grace, giving us what we don't deserve, that's what grace means. God doesn't just look at you and say, I forgive you. He looks at you and he says, I find no fault in you. Now you might find fault in yourself. You might say, Yeah, but I know the things that I've done, but no, God says, No. No, I've given you grace. Because of what Jesus did, his sacrifice, I look at you and I say, I find no fault in you whatsoever. That's justification. That's awesome. Last week we talked about this weird word propitiation. Propitiation by blood, by atonement. And that word is it's a word we don't really use anymore. It's it means sacrifice, but it's a very specific kind of sacrifice. It's one that has to be made in order to satisfy the demands of justice. God is just. And so when there's an injustice, he can't just turn, he just can't like ignore it. He can't look at it and go, yeah, whatever, I don't really care about that, because he's just. He cannot stand in justice. Scripture says he loves justice. And so there's actually this story in the Old Testament of these two brothers, Cain and Abel. And if you know the story, Cain kills Abel and God shows up, he's like, hey, where's your brother? And Cain tries to get out of it. And then God actually says to Cain, hey, your brother Abel's, his blood, it cries out. His blood cries out to me, and I can't ignore it. It's appealing to my sense of justice. I can't look the other way, and and there has to be a sacrifice made to make that right. That's propitiation. But here's what's cool for us guys if you put your faith in Jesus, the blood of Jesus is crying out on your behalf right now. The blood of Jesus cries out and says, You are innocent, you are free, you are loved, you are a child of God. And God the Father can't ignore that blood. That was last week. Today, we're gonna wrap this whole thing up with a really, really interesting concept. And it's right there at the very end of this section. I said, Hey, now that we've been forgiven, do we just say, Yeah, you know what? I don't have to worry about it. He says the law, we're really talking about the way that God would have us live. Do we just say, yeah, now that I'm forgiven, I have this relationship with God, that doesn't matter? He says, No, no, actually, now we have the ability to uphold. The ability to uphold. When you give your life to Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God's actual spirit, joins with your spirit. God's actual presence living in you. He makes your life his home. And he empowers you to live in a way that you could never live without him. The Holy Spirit is active in your life right now, this second, if you've given your life to Jesus, if you put your faith in him, the Holy Spirit is in you, working within you right now and empowering you to live in a way you never could otherwise. And I believe that is the missing piece in so many of our experiences with God. The missing piece is the recognition that you right now, at this moment, in every moment of every day, have the power of God at your disposal. That the Holy Spirit is active and alive in you and is giving you everything that you need to do whatever God is asking us to do. You have that power within you. But we often don't think in those terms. We often feel powerless. We often feel overwhelmed, or at the very least, what I often call sufficiently welmed. That's what I say when people ask me how I'm doing. I'm like, I'm welmed. I'm not overwhelmed, I'm not underwhelmed, I'm just like, right at that, I'm sufficiently welmed. But right, we often feel overwhelmed. We often feel in over our heads, we often don't know what to do, we don't, we don't know a path forward. And we often forget that that we have the Holy Spirit inside of us. That God has given us a power that allows us to conquer anything that stands in our way. If you've given your life to Jesus right now, in this moment, the Holy Spirit is active in your life. Scripture speaks about this in several different places. 2 Peter chapter 1, verses 3 through 4. It says, by his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We've received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. And because of his glory and his excellence, he's given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world's corruption caused by human desires. In other words, you're not powerless. There is nothing that you are powerless to. Because you have the Holy Spirit in you, active, working within you. Romans chapter 8, verse 37. No, in all things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. You've probably heard that verse before, maybe you haven't, more than conquerors. It's really cool because in the Greek language, that word conqueror, it's actually uh it has the prefix hyper in front of it. In Greek that's hoopo, and it actually says you're a hyper-conqueror. You are a hyper-conqueror. Do you believe that? Do you feel that way? By the way, can we all just admit that sometimes it doesn't feel like I'm a hyper-conqueror? Anyone ever have that experience, right? There's a disconnect that happens sometimes in our faith. And it can actually lead to discouragement and disillusionment when it's like, I see what God's promising, I'm this hyper-conqueror. I'm gonna just plow through life, and anything that stands in my way, I'm gonna be like, oh no, no, no. I have faith in Jesus. Move. Every situation, every struggle, every relationship, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna hyper-conquer. And I often feel like a hyper failure. So what gives? God promises a life filled with what scripture calls the fruit of the Spirit. It's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That's what my life is supposed to be filled with. But sometimes I have a life that's dominated by angst and frustration and impatience and a total lack of self-control. Sometimes even addiction and just unhealthy coping mechanisms, to say the least, right? Like that's how life sometimes feels. And so what gives? Is God, is he, is he lying to us? Is he overselling the whole thing? Like, we've all been oversold, right? I just need to know you guys are awake right now. Everyone, anyone here ever been oversold? When I was in high school, I bought this belt that I wrapped around my waist and it was supposed to shock me into having a six-pack. Um, I don't know if you guys have ever seen those. I'm not gonna lift up my shirt to prove it, but just take my word, it did not work. I was uh I was oversold. Sometimes, I'm being honest, sometimes it feels like the gospel's overselling it. Because we're told that we're gonna be hyper-conquerors and all this love and joy, and we're just gonna be filled with all this stuff, and then we're we're living life. We're going, why am I not experiencing that? Why am I stuck? Why am I still having the same issues over and over again? Why can't I seem to move forward? Why can't I get over this? It feels like I am stuck in neutral. Well, today is a day where you're gonna get out of neutral. It's time to move forward, it's time to get over those things because you're not meant to live stuck. That is not what God promises. But there is a disconnect, and we've got to understand that disconnect. And I believe that disconnect is the failure to recognize and believe that the power of God is at work within you right now. Now, this is actually a concept in Scripture called sanctification. This whole series, by the way, if you're new to his hands, we usually don't use a lot of big words. I'm a kind of a, I'm like a small word guy. Uh, but this series, the full gospel, we've gone through a lot of big words. So sanctification. Salvation, you're probably familiar with that word if you've been in church at all. I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in southern Missouri, and I got saved when I was like 10. I didn't really know what I was getting saved from. I didn't feel like I was in any imminent danger, but that was the language. So I got, I put my faith in Jesus. They're like, you're saved. And I was like, yeah, uh, from what? You know, I learned about that later on. But salvation, that that concept of salvation, giving your life to Jesus, having a relationship with God, it really has three parts. Spoiler alert, the second one's salvation or sanctification. We're gonna get to that, but it's the one we often focus on the least. That's kind of that missing piece I'm talking about today. The first part is justification. We talked about that a few weeks ago. God has justified you, you're forgiven, you're free. It's more than that. He's declared you innocent. That is a moment that happens, it's an act of God, it's done. And then the third part of salvation is glorification. One day you're gonna be in heaven. One day every tear is gonna be wiped away, no more suffering. Like, I don't know if we get six packs in heaven or not, but if we do, we don't even need that belt. Like, we don't have to do anything. It's just heaven is great, no more, no more suffering, no more fear, no more death, no more pain, no more struggle. We just get to share in God's glory. That's glorification. And very often when we talk about salvation, we really focus on the first part and the last part. It's like, hey, I've been saved, he forgave me, I've been justified, that's amazing, and one day I'm gonna be in heaven with him, and it's gonna be incredible. But what about in between those two moments? Are we just like in a lifelong holding pattern? Just hanging on, trying to make it and survive until you know finally we get that glorification? No, we're not supposed to be. And that's because of this process called sanctification. John chapter 17, verse 17, Jesus is praying right before he's arrested. He says, Father, make them holy by your truth. Teach them your word, which is truth. He says, make them holy. And in some translations, some older translations, it'll actually say sanctify them. Sanctify is a word that means to make holy. To make holy. That is what God is doing right now, whether you feel it or not. He's making you holy. His spirit at work within you, changing you, making you into the person that you're meant to be. It's kind of a crazy idea because actually what he's doing, and you kind of have to think about this in unique terms, he's making you into who you are. And I'm sorry about this. I know it's an odd, awkward analogy. You can just wash it from your memory when we're done if you need to. But um, it's kind of like spiritual puberty, if that makes sense. I know I said it was awkward. I did, and it's even more awkward with masks on. Everyone's just kind of like, no one knows what to do right now. Puberty's it's a normal thing. We've all been through it. Well, most of us in the room have been through it. I know we've got some younger people, but like I've got I've got a 10-year-old boy, and I know that that's like right around the corner, okay? And I'm I can't wait for some of the fun conversations I'm gonna get to have during that part of life. Uh, but like what that is, is like he's a man. Like my son, he's a he's a man. He's also not a man, right? Like if I stood him next to me right now, and and I said, you know, like which one of us is a man, you would be like, well, hopefully you would point to me. I really hope you point to me. It'd be weird if you're like, I don't really know, we need more time to decipher that. Oh, that'd be bad. Um, but he's he is a man. It's just that he hasn't really become a full man yet. And so pretty soon he's gonna go through this process where he's gonna become what he already is. Sanctification, I'm gonna regret the whole spiritual puberty thing. I like know that right now. If I ever preach this message again, you guys were the test crowd. I won't use that. Um so just be happy. You heard it. It's it's been used. But we're becoming what we are, and it's a it's a process. God is making us holy. Romans 8 16, I mentioned this earlier, for his spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we're God's children. Now, a few things that I want us to know about sanctification, real quick. Number one, it's a process. 2 Corinthians 5.17 says that anyone who belongs to Jesus has become a new creation. Behold, the old life is gone and a new life has begun. That has begun is key. It's a process, it's not instantaneous. It's amazing how often we want instantaneous change, but almost anything in this world that is instant is disgusting. Right? Like instant, instant mashed potatoes, not the same as something that takes time. But we want things instant. And I think we want that with God sometimes. Like I remember one time uh when I was early here in my time at his hands, my boss, the the lead pastor, he always used the word bandwidth. And he was kind of from the business world, and so he was always talking about how we want to be people who have high bandwidth. And I was like, man, I want to be a I want to be a high bandwidth guy. And so I prayed. I said, God, give me more bandwidth. And what God did was he gave me a lot more to do. And I was like, that's not what I meant. I meant like zap me, snap your fingers, and I'm just like able to do more and not be stressed out, but that's not the way it went. He actually started giving me way more, putting more on my plate, and I was like, why? He's like, You asked for bandwidth. You better find some. You know, real growth happens slowly. That's okay. Things that grow slow tend to grow strong. Things that grow really fast often don't last. So be encouraged. It's a process. Okay? Sanctification is a process. Number two, it is it is the work of the Holy Spirit. It's not us that does the heavy lifting. Now we we partner with the Holy Spirit, active inside of us. We can say yes to what God asks us to do. We can say no, we can resist, but ultimately, this whole sanctification thing, you being made new, made holy, this power that you have available, it's not from you. It's the work of the Holy Spirit. And actually, we get into trouble when we try to force it, when we try to make it happen on our own. It's so easy to do that as Jesus followers. God does something amazing in our lives. We're like, cool, now I'm gonna make it happen from here on out. It doesn't work that way. That's your flesh. When you run on flesh, you run on fumes. It's the work of the spirit. You have to kind of let the Holy Spirit work. Now, number three, it leads to inner conflict. There's a great scripture, Galatians 5.17 says the flesh, which is often in scripture, it just means that part of us apart from God, who we are if we didn't have a relationship with God, our just our natural self. The flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They're in conflict with each other, so you're not really able to do what you want to do. We all have that battle, right? Like, I want to be a better person. I want to be an incredibly patient father. I want to be a really empathetic and emotionally connected husband. I really struggle with emotions. Are there any other men in the room with me? That emotions are just like a foreign language to you that your wife is fluent in, and you're like, I picked up a few words, but just it's just me? Y'all are. Come on, thank you. Three men. Three men. It's because y'all are sitting next to your wives and you're like, I don't want to raise my hand, you know. I had a counselor explain it to me one time. He said, you know, most men really only experience three emotions. We're either mad, sad, or glad. That's it. Those are our choices. And so when we look at like our spouse or our girlfriend or a daughter, and we're like, well, they're not mad and they're not sad. They should be glad because those are the three options. And we're really confused because they have all these like nuanced emotions. And it's we're primary colors, and they've got like the whole spectrum. You know what I mean? Oh, where was I even going with that? I don't even know. All right. It creates inner conflict. I want to be a better person than I am. I want to be this awesome, empathetic, patient, loving, but strong, bold person, and father and husband and pastor, you name it, and often I'm not. In fact, often I find myself doing the very things that I don't want to do. I'm like, why did I do that? Why do I always do that? Well, it's that inner conflict. Your spirit is alive, it's growing, but your flesh, it's still there. That's okay. That's part of the process. So don't be too discouraged by it. But finally, this whole process of sanctification leads to the ability for us to uphold, the ability for us to actually do what God calls us to do. Ezekiel 36, 26 says, I will give you a new heart. I'll put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart. And then God says, I will put my spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations. God says, I'll put my spirit in you, and then you'll actually be able to do what I'm asking you to do. So it is possible for us to live the life that we're called to live. It is possible for us to be the people we're meant to be. We can't do it in our own strength, we can't force it, but if we let the Holy Spirit do what the Holy Spirit does and we recognize that that's at work within us, we will become new people. We live in a world obsessed with being yourself. We have a faith that tells us that if we follow God and we trust Him, we don't learn how to be ourselves, we learn how to become ourselves because we're not who we're meant to be quite yet. That's sanctification, it's this process, and it's happening. Guys, if you've given your life to Jesus, it is happening right now. You may not feel like it, you may have not had an experience in the last few years that was like this mountaintop. Wow, God just blew me away experience. But God is so much more than that. God's not just on the mountaintops, guys, He's in the valleys too. And right now you have the power of God working within you. And it is powerful, and it is real. But if you don't, if you don't think this way, if you don't recognize it, you don't believe that it's happening, you don't believe that you have that change happening inside of you, you'll never experience it. At least you'll never experience the full measure of it. Romans chapter 6, verse 11 says that we should consider ourselves dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Jesus Christ. He says we should consider ourselves. We should think like we're we're dead to sin. Because we are. That's the truth. That's the beautiful thing, is when you when you have Jesus in your life, because of what the Holy Spirit is doing, you don't have to do anything that God doesn't want you to do. You actually have the ability to say no. You have the ability every moment of every day to choose what God would have you to do. That's a power you have because Jesus broke the power of sin over you. It's broken. It's like a broken chain that used to be attached to you. Now, if you want to, you can pick up that chain and wrap it back around yourself and convince yourself that you're not free anymore, but you are. But you have to think this way. And we struggle, guys, we struggle to think this way. I'll give you a great example. Usually when someone says I, when even a follower of Jesus says I or me, they're almost always referring to their flesh. In other words, they're referring to that person they were born as before they ever came into a relationship with Jesus. So someone might say, Hey, this is just who I am. I'm wired this way, I've always been like this. And they're always referring to that first birth. But listen to what Jesus says in John chapter 3, verses 3 through 7. Jesus says, I tell you the truth. Unless you're born again, you cannot see the kingdom of God. Oh, what do you mean? exclaimed Nicodemus. How can an old man go back into his mother's womb and be born again? And I oh every time someone asks a question like this, I just imagine Jesus just looks at him like, What? Like, it is obviously a metaphor, but okay. Um Jesus replied, I assure you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and of the Spirit. Humans can reproduce human life. In other words, flesh gives birth to flesh. But the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life. So don't be surprised when I say you must be born again. Quick show of hands, who would say, I've been born again? Like I have given my life to Jesus at some point, I put my faith. Cool. You were you were born again. Your spirit came to life. It's like a cell phone, right? When it's not plugged into a power source, it dies. When we say it's dead, we don't mean it's physically dead, and we go and bury it in the backyard. It's dead, we we just charge it, and then all of a sudden it comes to life and it's able to do the things it's meant to do. That's you. You were born again. But how often, when you think about yourself, do you think about that birth as who you are? That is who you are. In fact, I would say that that is more who you are than the first birth. Because one day my body's gonna die, my spirit's not. See, we're we're we're spiritual. We are spiritual people. There's something inside of us that's so much more than just flesh and blood. And that's a spiritual birth. When you were born again, that that's who you are. So it should be like this. We should have conversations with people, and they say, Man, why do you have so much joy? Why it doesn't make sense? You have so much joy, you're always smiling. Why? And we should be able to, like, I don't know, I was born this way. Because I've been born again. You know, why do you have so much hope? Why are you freaking out about politics? I don't know, I was born this way. See, I was born again, and I just, I don't know, I was born with hope. Why do you have so much peace? Why aren't you anxious? Why aren't you worried? Why aren't you stressed? I was born this way. This is just who I am. So we we don't we don't think in terms like that. We always think about who we really are as that that first nature, that first birth, that nature, that person that we we learned how to be apart from knowing Jesus. That's not who you are. So, for example, I I struggled with an addiction for man, like 15 years. I don't know if anyone else has ever been through addiction, you don't have to raise your hands. Uh, but but I will say this if you're in the room and you're dealing with an addiction of some kind, I don't care if it's alcohol, drugs, pornography, you name it, uh, you are not alone. Like pretty much everyone's addicted to something. But I dealt with this addiction for 15 plus years, and it led me to so much shame, so much guilt. I felt like a fraud all the time. And I remember a big part of my my freedom was actually being able to admit that I had a problem, right? I'm I'm an addict, and anyone who's ever been through 12 steps knows that that's that first step, you gotta own it, right? And it's funny because my perspective's changed a little bit now. And if you're a 12-step person, I'm not dogging 12 steps, it's really good. The truth is, I was not addicted to that. My flesh was. The Holy Spirit inside of me was not addicted to that at all. The Holy Spirit isn't isn't addicted to anything. See, when the Holy Spirit joined with my spirit, my spirit came to life, and my spirit was not addicted to what I was using to cope with life. That was my flesh. But I thought that that was me. I spoke in those terms. I am addicted to this. No, my flesh is my spirit. That's who I really am. It's not addicted at all. It has the power to say no. See, sometimes I have uh a short temper. I'm Irish, it's just you know, it's who I am. I was born this way. No. No, my flesh has a short temper. My spirit, who I really am, because the Holy Spirit has joined with my spirit to make me new to sanctify me. My spirit's patient. My spirit is gentle and patient. It's my flesh that has the hot temper. I just have to see it that way. I have to learn to recognize that my flesh is the imposter. And actually think in those terms and look at myself and be like, hey, flesh Justin, what are you doing? You're supposed to die. Do you realize that? That our flesh is like, it dies. The old life is gone. But if we don't think in those terms, we'll never experience it. If we don't consider ourselves dead to the power of sin, we'll never experience it. Sometimes people deal with anxiety and worry. And I've even heard Jesus followers tell me, I was just, I was born this way. No, you were not. Not the second time. Because the Holy Spirit is never anxious, the Holy Spirit's never worried. The Holy Spirit's never like, I don't know what I'm gonna do. It's you're gonna have to figure it out. That never happens. The Holy Spirit knows exactly what to do, and so your flesh might be anxious, but your spirit is not, and you are spirit, so believe that, lean into that, trust that. Your flesh may have made a mess of things, but your spirit is pure. Because the Holy Spirit is purifying you, and and listen to this the Holy Spirit is gonna win that battle. It may not feel like it, sometimes it may feel like I don't know, flesh, spirit, which one's gonna win? Holy Spirit always wins. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 2 says that Jesus is the initiator and the perfecter of our faith. In other words, he finishes what he starts, and he's more powerful. You know how sometimes you have a relationship with someone and they kind of drag you down? You get around someone really negative and you start getting negative. That did not happen to the Holy Spirit when he joined with you. It's not like the Holy Spirit joined with you and you started to really like be a bad influence on the Holy Spirit. All of a sudden the Holy Spirit is acting more like you. No, no, no, that's not how it works. The Holy Spirit always wins. The Holy Spirit is making you like him. It may be a slower process than you'd like. That's okay. Things that grow slow tend to grow strong, but it's happening. And it's time for us as Jesus followers to actually think in these terms and claim the power that's been given to us. You are not an addict, you are not a failure, you are not a nervous wreck, you are not a bad father or a bad mother, or a bad husband, or a bad wife, or a bad son, or a bad daughter, you are not a screw up. Your flesh might be, not you, not you. You, your spirit, sanctified by the Holy Spirit, are filled with love and joy, peace, and patience, and kindness, and goodness, and gentleness, and faithfulness and self-control. You are more than a conqueror. You have everything you need for life and godliness. You have everything that you need to look at every situation and every obstacle that you face and say, through the power of the Holy Spirit, just stop, just move, go away, because I'm gonna win this. Because I've got the Spirit inside of me. The Spirit always, always wins. The Holy Spirit always wins. God is gonna finish what he started, he started a process in your life the moment you accepted him, and he's gonna finish it. But you gotta believe that. You gotta believe that. So I want to challenge you and encourage you this morning, this week. Remember who you are. You are spirit. In those moments that you start to think in those flesh terms, you start to say, Man, I'm this and I'm that, and I'm always that. No, no, that's your flesh. It's time for you to start thinking in terms of your second birth. And saying, I've been born again. And I was born right this time. I was born with hope and with joy and with faith, power. I have the power of God active in my life right now, with me all the time. So, whatever circumstance is going on, I'm gonna win. Because the Holy Spirit's with me and he doesn't lose. Do you believe that? You gotta think that way, talk that way this week. And catch yourself when you start defining yourself by anything other than that. You are being sanctified, you are being made pure. That's true, you can take it to the bank.