My name is Elon, and I have had the privilege to be here before you a few times. I'm just gonna give a couple quick announcements and a very exciting update on our high school road trip, and then Justin will be out to give you the message. We have Adventure Week coming up in a couple of weeks, July 12th through the 16th. If you have a two-year-old through fifth grader, we would love to have them be here with us that week to have a lot of fun and learn about God. If you are interested in learning more or registering your child, please go to the Connect Desk out into the in the maid lobby after the message today. The next announcement is about the 4th of July, which is right around the corner. We invite, yes, woohoo! We invite you and your family to have a front row seat to uh see the Woodstock City fireworks display, which pretty much shoot off right behind our church building. So the parking lot will be open all day. You can bring your tent, you can bring your chairs and your kids. There's gonna be food and games for the kids. Our building is gonna open up at five o'clock for you to use the restroom because we do not believe in porta potties. No? Yes. So bring your family and um and enjoy the celebration of our country together. The last announcement is about giving. Um, for those of you who give financially to his hands, we thank you so much. Your contribution makes a difference not only here but in our community. Uh, for those of you who are new to His Hands Church, our philosophy on giving is very simple. And it comes from 2 Corinthians 9, verse 7, which says, You must each decide in your heart how much to give. And don't give reluctantly or in response to pressure, for God loves a person who gives cheerfully. Um, if you would like to give, please uh find one of the four columns at the back of the room after the service, and we appreciate your your support very much. Um, uh for those of you who don't know, I've been a part of the teaching team here for a couple of months now, and most recently I have had the privilege of leading the junior high and high school students as their teacher on uh Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights, and it has been a huge blessing. So if you have a junior high student or high school student, thank you. Um they are wonderful. I love walking alongside them and getting to know them. Um, I am very happy to report uh that we just got back from our senior or high school road trip. It was incredible. We promised that God would show up, and He did in amazing, amazing, life-changing ways. We had 103 um high school students, very energetic high school students, and 20 very brave volunteers, and we all made it back. Um, yeah. The most ever. It was really, really incredible. Um, lives were changed. We had a theme. It was the theme of awake, and we talked a lot about what it means for Christ to awaken our hearts, our minds, and our soul. And I truly do believe that souls were awakened on this trip and that lives were changed forever. And I'm just so thankful and overjoyed to report that 58 of our students dedicated their lives to Jesus and were baptized. It is a celebration, and and we want to thank you for those of you who prayed, um, for our students and for our volunteers, uh, for our safety and for God to move. He heard your prayers and thank you. For those of you who have high school students and um and you sent them on the trip, thank you for entrusting us um in their their care in our lives. Um it was an honor to serve them. And for those of you who donated uh financially, you give you gave the opportunity for students who otherwise would not be able to attend to experience community and God in hopefully a way they never have before. And I just would like to challenge all of us to really be intentional about walking alongside our young people. Being a teenager is difficult in the best circumstances, and the way that the world is today makes it even more challenging than it's ever been before. And so we need to give it give our best to our kids and support them and encourage them and walk alongside them so that they can grow in their relationship with God. And we um are thankful to do that and partner um in that effort with you.

Man, how awesome is that! 58 high school students went on with Jesus. I remember the very first time we ever took a road trip, it was uh I think six years ago, maybe seven years ago, and we took 30 high school students total. And so to think that this year we had almost double the number of students get baptized than we even took the very first time we did that trip, that's that's unbelievable. That's God moving in a big way, which is so cool. Well, if it is your very first time here at His Hands, we want to start by saying welcome. We are so glad you're here. We're gonna jump into the message and pick up where we left off last week talking about prayer. But uh, I want to take just a second. I think it's really important when we take a moment and just address what happened this past week in South Carolina. Um many of us know, I'm sure all of us uh have probably heard, if you've seen any news, you've definitely seen it about the church shooting that took place on Wednesday night. And there's really no way to even address how tragic that is on so many different levels. So many different levels. It hits close to home for many of us. It hits close to home because it's a church, because it's people that uh that are like-minded, because it's people that have given their lives to Jesus. I spent a lot of time just thinking about that and praying about that this week, and what kept coming to my mind was our our mission as a church. And if you're new here, you haven't heard this, our mission is really simple. We want to love people to Jesus. We want to love people to Jesus. We want people to get and grow and give God's love away. And sometimes when we when we talk about love, we get this idea in our heads that love is this very, uh, this very nice thing, it's this touchy-feely thing, it's this uh very sweet, tender thing. And obviously, love is that. And we have moments where we realize and get a very gruesome reminder that there's a lot of hate in this world. It's also a reminder of what God's love really is, because God's love is so much more than this soft, cuddly love that we might picture. It's so much more than the kind of love that gets celebrated on Valentine's Day. God's love is intense, God's love is all-encompassing, God's love is more powerful than any hate in this world. And our mission as a church is to make sure that we take it upon ourselves, it's our responsibility to share God's love with people. Because his love is the only thing, and I believe this to my core, his love is the only thing that can overcome the hate that is in this world. And it will overcome it. I believe it has overcome it. And as we continue to live out that mission, to make sure that we are dedicated to sharing the love of God with people. There's no hate this world can bring that can stop that. And this week was a reminder for us. Obviously, pray for the church, pray for that community in South Carolina, pray for everyone in this nation that's affected by that. Pray for unity in this nation. There's crazy some of the things that have happened in the last year in terms of race relations. We are all God's kids. We love people. We are people. We want to make sure that we stay focused on that mission to love people in such a way that hate doesn't even stand a chance. Pray with me. We can have that. Jesus, thank you so much for your love. Thank you that you have given it to us. We didn't even ask for it, we weren't even alive yet, but you gave it to us. We want to take hold of it, Lord. We want to live in it, we want to grow in it, we want to give it away. Holy Spirit, we just ask that you would move in this place, that you would uh that you would do your thing, that you would open our hearts and our minds to what you have for us, that we would be ready to receive something from you so that our lives can be what they're meant to be. And we ask all this in your name, Jesus. Amen. Amen. Well, last Sunday we started a conversation about prayer. It's part of our summer series that we're calling how-to. We're looking at some of the how-to teachings of Jesus. Specifically Matthew chapter 6, where Jesus tells us how to give, tells us how to have generous hearts, he tells us how to pray, how to communicate with God on a regular basis, and he tells us how to fast, how to have self-control, how to have discipline. And so we're looking at those how-to teachings, and last Sunday we we got on prayer, and we're going to be with prayer for a while because prayer is literally the most powerful tool that we have at our disposal. Prayer is so powerful. It is something that we are meant for. Some of us may have believed that we're not spiritual enough to pray. Or we're not spiritual enough to pray for someone, we're not spiritual enough to pray in a meaningful way, but that's not the truth. There is no such thing as a spiritually superior person. Prayer is meant for all of us, and all of us are meant. And when I say meant, I mean we're destined. We are created to have a life in prayer that is full of passion, that is full of results. We're gonna see God do things. We we're destined to have a life in prayer that is fresh, that's exciting, that's real. Prayer is supposed to be as natural for us as breathing. We are created to communicate with God. But oftentimes, because of the influence of religion, prayer becomes confusing, it becomes intimidating, it can become monotonous and routine. We want to change that. By the time we're done with this, we want all of us to be able to say, prayer's my thing. I'm good at prayer, I'm meant for prayer. We all want to be able to approach prayer in a way that is comfortable and powerful. And so I'm so excited to spend time on this. I love prayer. I love it for several reasons. One of my favorite reasons is really simple. Prayer works. James chapter 5, verse 16 says this the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. If you look at that verse and go, oh, that excludes me because I'm not righteous. All righteous means is made right with God. That's what righteous means, right with God. And Jesus has made us right with God. So if we have our trust in Jesus, we are righteous by default. And the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. I have had reminders in my life of how effective prayer can be. A few weeks ago, I got a reminder, and my mother-in-law got a bigger reminder of just how powerful and effective prayer can be. See, my son Liam, who's five, was swimming in their pool. He loves being at their house. It's Papa and Layla, that's what he calls Megan's parents. And he's swimming in their pool, he's having a blast, but it came this time where Layla said to him, Liam, it's time to get out of the pool. And Liam asked, like any child would, can I please swim just a little while longer? Can I please swim just a few more minutes? And Layla said no. Now, I need to hit the pause button on this story. We're gonna come back to this moment, but you need to understand something. No is not a word that Liam is used to hearing from Layla. It's just not. All grandparents have the right to spoil their grandchildren. All of all of you do, those of you who are grandparents, that is your God-given right, and it's a right that you can choose to exercise or not. Layla loves to exercise her right to spoil our children. She does. So no is not a word that Liam is used to hearing because Liam isn't just spoiled sometimes. I'll just be honest. Liam is treated like royalty by Layla. He is little King Liam, he really is. She loves him so much, but he is little King Liam, and he knows it. He knows it. I'll give you an example. Uh, about a year ago, we were staying with them for a few weeks. We had sold a house and we were getting ready to move into a new house, but those dates didn't line up. So we had about two weeks in limbo, and they were gracious enough to let us come and live with them during that time. Well, one Saturday morning I woke up and I saw something that I did not expect to see. I saw something a little unusual, I thought. My son was up early, he was playing video games on the couch. That's not unusual. That's pretty normal for children ages four through 30 in this day and age, I think.

Right?

I'm 31, so I'm way past that stage of life. But but that wasn't the unusual thing. The unusual thing was that Layla was right next to Liam, and she had a plate in her hand, and she was cutting up pieces of a waffle, dipping it in syrup, and then feeding it to Liam while he played. While he played. So that he didn't have to stop playing. He didn't even have to take his eyes off the TV, he's just holding a controller, and then he opens his mouth and she puts it in. So the concept of taking 20 entire minutes of your day to sit at a table and eat, it's like the biggest waste he can imagine. And it's a fight, and I never knew why it was such a great fight. I never understood what I am coming against. Why is it that he has such a hard time with this? And when I saw that, I was like, aha! Now I know. Now I know. How long has this been going on? Right? I asked her, Layla, what are you doing? And she said, What? He's hungry. I was like, Yeah, but he's he's not a Turkish prince. I mean, this is one step removed from like palm leaves, fanning him while he sunbates or something crazy like that. I'm like, come on, you gotta help me out. You have to help me out. But that's not what grandparents are for. And the only hope that those of us who are parents, but we don't have grandchildren yet, we just can't even fight it. What we need to look forward to are the moments where we'll get to undermine our children, just like we've been undermined. That's what we do as parents. That's all we've got. He loves being there, and they're so good to him. And so you gotta understand that little King Liam is in the pool, and he has been told no by Layla of all people. So there must have been a really good reason why, and in fact, there was, it's because it was about to storm. It was about to rain. The weather had predicted 60% chance of heavy rain. The sky was black, there were clouds everywhere, there was thunder in the distance, and so Layla said, I need you to get out of the pool. It's about to rain. And once Liam learned the reason, he asked her a question that she could not say no to. He said, Well, can I pray and ask God to make it not rain? And she said, Well, yes, yes, you can do that. And so he bows his head and she's thinking as he's praying of how she's going to deal with the disappointment that's about to happen. Because it's it's going to rain. It's not a matter of if it's when. You know how the sky looks about two seconds before it just comes down. That's what's happening. And so she's going through in her mind, how am I gonna tell them that sometimes God says no to prayers and you know, sometimes there's more important things, and we just have to learn to accept his will. She's going through all these words in her head, but Liam opens his eyes and he said, Layla, I can stay in the pool. The rain's gonna go south. It's gonna go south. And here's the crazy thing it did. It did, it did, it did not rain a drop at their house and it went south. She's going, What is going on? And you know, he's like, I told you it was gonna go south. I mean, I I prayed. And to make it even better, that was two weeks ago. It still has not rained at her house. And I'm not lying, she sent me a text last night. Not a drop of rain. It's been two weeks, it's rained everywhere else. We've had rain five times at our house in the last two weeks. We live 20 minutes from them, but it has not rained, and she's got plants that are dying, she's trying to water her grass. A few nights ago, she asked Liam. We were over for dinner, she said, Liam, please pray that it rains at my house. Please. And Liam said, No. Amen. He said, No, I want to swim. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. There should just be an asterisk there and a disclaimer at the bottom of the page that says, in some cases, too effective. That's what it should say in that verse. It really is. Now, you might say, hey, that wasn't an answered prayer. That was just coincidence that God has caused a mini drought in Marietta, Georgia on behalf of this little boy who wanted to swim for another 15 minutes. Maybe. But uh, man, try convincing my son of that. You will not. You will not. When I really think about it, his prayer was pretty profound. It was pretty profound because this is all Liam was thinking. He's like, Well, I want to swim. That's what I want. He would tell you he needed to swim, but you know, we we all know it's what he wanted. And rain was about to stop him from having what he wants. And in Liam's mind, I am God's son. I am little King Liam. My father in heaven is the king. I'm little King Liam, so I would like to swim. And if rain is gonna stop me, I'll just ask my dad, I'll just ask God to make it not rain. He's he's learned the Bible stories of Jesus telling the storms to stop. He knows his context, and he just said, God, make the rain go south. Make it go south, and it did. I look at my life and I think about how rarely I approach God in the same in the same line of thinking. You know, God, I'm your son. This is something that I value, this is something that I need. God, I need it. He might say, No, you want it. Well, I need it, God. Please make this happen. I don't approach prayer that that way very often. As we grow up, we we complicate things. We start to worry about the right way to pray and the proper approach to prayer. And I've learned so much through my kids that I I have a lot to unlearn. In fact, I think I have more to unlearn than I actually have to learn most days. Liam's prayer was was just honest. It was honest. We talked last week about the difference between religion and relationship when it comes to prayer, and we're gonna talk about that a lot as we as we have this conversation. We're gonna personify religion a little bit because religion is something that fights our ability to approach God the correct way in prayer. We're supposed to have a prayer life that is passionate and free and real. We're supposed to look forward to time in prayer, religion will ruin that. My son prayed an honest prayer, but religion does not value honesty. Religion values propriety. Praying in the right way at the right time. Religion values restraint. When you pray, just hold back. Remember that you're praying to God. Don't just don't just rush in with all what you all the things you want. You need to start by praising him first. You need to start by saying 10 or 15 things that you're thankful for before you even get to your request, even though he knows that the whole reason you're praying is because you kind of need something. Just pretend. Hey God, oh, oh, by the way, before I go, there was this one little thing I was gonna ask you for. Religion does not value honesty, but relationship is all about honesty. If we're gonna have a relationship with God, we have to have honest communication with God. We have to have very honest communication because honest communication, it's the cornerstone of a healthy relationship. And when we pray, we can be completely honest with God. In fact, the only way to have a prayer life that is what it's meant to be is to pray honest prayers. So the question just becomes, how honest can we really be? Right? Because we have lots of different relationships, and in some of those relationships, we are we're honest. We're not lying to anyone, we're just not divulging deep dark things in our soul for obvious reasons. Some of us have friends that do divulge things that we'd rather they not. And we say, whoa, hold on there. I don't think we're as close as you think we are. Um I wasn't ready for that. We also have relationships, usually very few, where we can really share anything. We can open up completely, we can share very, very deep, very personal things. And then we have a hundred relationships in between. What kind of relationship do we have with God? How honest can we be? How much does He care? The truth is we can be more honest in our relationship with God than we can be with any relationship on this earth because we have a love from God that is unconditional. And there is not one relationship we have on this earth that is truly unconditional. There are relationships that get close, and if we live in a relationship with God where his love kind of becomes our love, we can get close to loving people unconditionally, but I don't know if we have it in us to love in the same unconditional way that God does. And that's okay. I just don't know if we have that capacity, but we try. We try, but God, he doesn't even have to try. His love for you is completely unconditional. There will never be a TMI moment in your prayer life with God. There'll never be a moment where you pray and he's like, whoa. I didn't even know that. He already knows. See, he wants us to pray in a passionate, honest way. Honestly, in a way that religion would be uncomfortable with. Religion would stop us and we'd have thoughts in our minds where we'd say, I don't know if this is okay. I don't know if it's okay to pray like this. This doesn't feel okay. But to prove to all of us that it is, I want to take a look at the prayer life of one person in Scripture, a man named David. David was a king, he was the greatest king that Israel ever had. He's a man that the Bible describes as a man after God's own heart. In other words, he was so close with God, he walked so closely and intimately with God that it was like their hearts beat at the same rhythm. He's a man that God looked at, and of all the people on the earth, he said, That's the one that I want to be my king, and I want Jesus to come through his bloodline. This man was as close to God as anyone, and we have this amazing privilege through scripture to see into his prayer life with more clarity than we can see into anyone else's. Because he wrote most of the Psalms. You open your Bible to the halfway point, you'll probably be in Psalms, and the Psalms are this collection of Psalms, that's what Psalms. Means. And these songs were prayers that David wrote down. These are prayers to God that he wrote down, he recorded, and we can look at his life, and it's like a personal journal. It's like his prayer journal. We can read what he prayed. We can see how he talked to God. And David was honest with God. Even honest in a way that many of us might feel uncomfortable with. David was honest with God. I'll give you an example, Psalm chapter 3. This is one of my favorite chapters of the Bible. He says, O Lord, I have so many enemies. So many are against me. So many are saying, God will never rescue him. But you, O Lord, are a shield around me. You are my glory, the one who holds my head high. I cried out to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy mountain. I lay down and slept, yet I woke up in safety, for the Lord was watching over me. I'm not afraid of ten thousand enemies who surround me on every side. Arise, O Lord, rescue me, my God, slap all my enemies in the face. Shatter the teeth of the wicked. Victory comes from you, O Lord. May you bless your people. I love that prayer. That is my absolute favorite prayer in all of Scripture. I said that last week. Slap my enemies in the face. Bust some teeth. That's what he just prayed. I love it because that sounds like the prayer of a child, doesn't it? Like, God, there's some people being mean to me, and if you could send your angels to earth tonight and slap them in the face as they sleep, I think it would teach them a lesson. Please do that. That sounds like the prayer of a young child, but no, no, that's the prayer of a grown man. And a grown man that God had identified as the person that he saw as most capable of being his king. Slap my enemies in the face. That is honesty. That's not holding back. See, that's how David approached God in prayer. He held nothing back. When we have complete honesty with God, it means that we hold nothing back. We bring it all to God. We bring every emotion, we bring every feeling, we bring every circumstance to God, and we hold nothing back. We don't keep anything from Him. And that's so important for us because when we bring what we have to God, there's an exchange. Anytime we bring what we have to God, there is an exchange that happens. Isaiah 61 describes it beautifully. To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the Lord has planted for his own glory. That first part, beauty for ashes, it was really significant to the people of Israel at that time. Because in their culture, if they experienced a tragedy, if something happened in their life, something befell them that was very, very difficult, they lost a loved one or they lost all that they had, they would tear their clothing, they would put on sackcloth, they were very demonstrative people, and they would put ashes on their heads. They would cover their head in ash so that then when they walked around, because there were no Facebook status updates in those times, people would know what was going on in their life. If you saw someone with ash on their heads, you wouldn't go up to them and say, Hey, how's your day going? How are you? You would know this is a person that is dealing with something very intense. And so God says, I will take the ashes and I will place a crown of beauty on your head instead. I will exchange your brokenness for joy. I will exchange despair for hope. I will exchange mourning for dancing. There's an exchange that happens. But God cannot transform our ashes into beauty if we never bring him our ashes. We have to bring what we have to him. We have to pray with honesty and hold nothing back. That means that we cannot hold back our complaints from God. You ever complained to God? I mean really complained. I don't mean complained in a nice way. Have you ever whined to God? Thrown a fit with God, stomped your feet and complained? David did it all the time. David was a big whiner. Psalm 142, 1. David said, I cry out to the Lord, I plead for the Lord's mercy, I pour out my complaints before him, and I tell him all my troubles. What he's saying is, I lay it on thick with God, I pour out all my complaints. Every single one of them. And he was not joking, by the way, just a few verses later, in 142, verse 4, he says, I look for someone to come and help me, but no one gives me a passing thought. No one will help me, no one cares a bit what happens to me. It's a little melodramatic. David says, Nobody cares about me. Nobody cares. No one will help me. There's not one person on the earth that will even lift a finger to help me, God. No one cares. Again, David was a big whiner sometimes. But if you keep reading Psalm 142, the very last verse says this the godly will crowd around me, for you are good to me. The godly will crowd around me, for you are good to me. So he's gone from no one in the earth will help me. There's not one person that's here for me, God. And then a few moments later he's saying, There will be a crowd of godly people around me. There will be a multitude of good people surrounding me to support me, God, because you're so good to me. What has happened? David is not crazy. I mean, sometimes he acted crazy, but David's not clinically crazy, I don't think. But what's happened is an exchange has taken place. He has brought his complaints to God. He has brought his despair to God. He whined to God, and what did God do? God traded his complaints for hope. He goes from saying, There's not one person here for me, to believing there will be a crowd of people that will support him. When we bring what we have to God and hold nothing back, there's an exchange. That means that when we're angry, when we're really angry at a person, at a situation in life, we don't have to hold that back from God either. We don't have to hold back our anger from God. We can pray angry. You ever prayed angry before? I mean really angry. Have you ever yelled at God? Or if you're in a place where people could hear, have you ever whisper yelled at God? You know how you do that sometimes? Where you're like, what is wrong with you, God? Why is this happening to me? See, religion would say, Whoa, I don't know if that's okay. I don't know if it's okay to question God like that, to bring anger to God. I don't know if that's fitting for the God of this universe. David prayed angry all the time, and he was a man the Bible describes as a man after God's own heart. He prayed angry. Check out Psalm chapter 13. We're gonna look at this a couple times. Psalm 13, 1. O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand? Turn and answer me, O Lord my God. Restore the sparkle to my eyes, or I will die. Very melodramatic, David was. I'm gonna die. Don't let my enemies gloat, saying, We have defeated him. Don't let them rejoice at my downfall. This is pretty intense. I mean, David is, he's angry. And it seems like he's even angry at God. He's questioning God. He's saying things to God like, How long are you gonna forget me? How long will you abandon me? How long will you look the other way? You're not even paying attention to me, God. And then he demands that God turn and face him. The Bible tells us David wasn't even that tall. I mean, to be a small guy and say, hey, God, turn and face me. That's intense. See, this is not David disobeying God. This is not David dishonoring God. This is an honest man bringing what he has to God. It's just that all he has right now is anger. All he has in this moment is desperation. He's bringing what he has to God, but there is an exchange. There is an exchange. We'll read this again. I want to start back at the beginning. It's a very short chapter. Oh Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my heart every day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand? Turn and answer me, O Lord my God. Restore the sparkle to my eyes, or I will die. Don't let my enemies gloat, saying, We have defeated him. Don't let them rejoice at my downfall, but I trust in your unfailing love. I will rejoice because you have rescued me. I will sing to the Lord because he is good to me. The exchange is so clear. There's such a clear beauty for Ash's moment. He's saying, God, you've abandoned me. God, you've left me. You're not here for me. You're not even paying attention to me. And then a few moments later, a few moments later, he's saying, I trust in your unfailing love. You are good to me. When we bring all we have to God, he exchanges beauty for ashes. And when it comes to our anger, we either take our anger to God or we take it with us. We either take our anger to God, who can deal with it, who can handle it, or we take it along with us, and often that means we take it out on ourselves, or we take it out on the people we love. Even if we get the chance to take it out on the person that has wronged us, rarely does our anger subside. In fact, often it intensifies. But when we take it to God, he will replace our anger with peace. He will replace our frustration with joy and with hope. That is what happened with David. We can be people who pray honest. If we want to have passion in our prayer life, we have to pray honest. We have to pray exactly where we are in whatever state we're in. We don't have to get it together with God. We don't have to put our best foot forward. We're not on a first date with God. We're not trying to show him the good stuff and act like the rest isn't there. We can be honest with God. That means praying when we're upset. That means praying when we're afraid, when we're anxious. That means praying when we're full of joy. It means praying in our best of days. It means praying in our worst of days. It means praying wherever we are with whatever we've got and having a commitment to holding nothing back from God. Because when we hold back from God, we're simply holding back from ourselves. God wants to take what we've got and transform it. So we can bring it all to Him. I want to look at one more Psalm. Psalm 32. There's another exchange that we're going to see happen here. When I refused to confess my sin, verse 3, my body wasted away. And I groaned all day long. Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat. Finally, I confessed all my sins to you, and I stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, I will confess my rebellion to the Lord, and you forgave me. All my guilt is gone. We don't have to hold back our complaints. We don't have to hold back our anger. We don't have to hold back our guilt and our shame either. Because if we're going to be honest with God, we can be honest about everything happening to us, but we also have to be honest about everything happening within us. Doesn't the word confession have a lovely ring to it? Isn't that a word that just makes you excited? You know? Anyone ready for a confession this morning? Nah, I'm good. I had a heavy meal for breakfast, I'm going to wait for a while. What's the wait time before confession? 30 minutes after eating? I'm going to wait.

Right?

See, we hear the word confession and we think, right, oh great, a box I have to stand in and tell somebody all the things I've done wrong, and we're not going to build any boxes today, trust me. But religion ruins everything. And confession is not meant to be this laborious, shame-filled exercise. Confession is a form of prayer that is all about honesty with God. It's about going to God and saying, hey, I messed up. There's some stuff that's not right with me. There's some broken things, God, and I don't like the way I'm thinking right now. I don't like the way I'm treating people in my life. I don't think I made the right decision here, and I'm sorry. See, the great thing about confession is that it's not for God's benefit. It's just not, because God knows. I'm still at the stage with my children. I know it's not going to last forever where I know when they've done something wrong. I just know because there's really no way. They're not they're not at an age yet where they can convince a lie that is that is good enough to trick me. I know that day is gonna come. I've seen it happen. I saw my little brother get really close one time to convincing my mom that a scratch he had put in her car as he drove it was a scratch that she had actually put in her car. It was pretty awesome. My brother was washing the car. He had driven it, he had scratched it, he had rubbed it up against something, and so he got home and he said, Hey mom, I'm gonna wash the car, and that was red flag number one, right? Hey, mom, I just thought it'd be a good idea to you know do that thing that I never do. And so he goes outside to wash the car, and then a few minutes later he comes in and he says, Mom, hey, come here. Come here, take a look at this. Have you ever seen this scratch before? And my mom's like, Well, no, well, no. He's like, Wow. Huh, man, I don't know. I don't know if someone hit you or whenever you went to the grocery store, did you bump up against something? Maybe you just didn't know? And my mom's sitting there, she's trying to figure it all out, and she's thinking in her mind, like, you know, what happened? Have I done something? And then all of a sudden, in the corner of her eye, she sees our garage door, and she can see where paint has rubbed off on the side of the garage door, and it's the same side where that car would be, and she starts to put two and two together, and that was not a good day or month for my brother. But he got close, right? He got close, man. He almost got away with it. Even as his brother, I was like, man, that was pretty good. That was pretty good. You you did something that I never was able to do. You got really close to tricking mom and dad. My kids are still young enough that if my son does something, I know. I know what happened. I don't have to be a great detective. And so when I when I look at him and I can tell he's done something he shouldn't have done, I still ask him. And it's weird, I don't know why I do this. It's not a conscious choice, it's intuitive, I guess. I go, son, tell me what you did. And I already know what he did. I don't need to know, I know. But there's something about him looking me in the eye and saying, I messed up, and then seeing me forgive him and remind him that I love him no matter what. He needs that. He needs that. When we hold back our guilt and our shame from God, when we keep that to ourselves, when we're afraid to go to him and just say, God, I confess I've messed up. We're missing out on that forgiveness because the only thing that frees us from guilt and shame it's forgiveness. That's it. We can try to make up for it. We can try to do our best to overcome our mistakes, but there is nothing that will ever beat having someone look us in the eye and say, It's forgiven. And that happens every single time we pray with God. He's forgiven everything. He's forgiven everything, he's forgiven every sin that we have ever done, ever will do, are ever in the process of doing. God has forgiven it all. And you don't have to pray a confession every time you mess up to receive forgiveness. We just pray that to be reminded that we are forgiven. There's a fear sometimes with confession. Jesus talked to it. John chapter 3. Jesus said, All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. It's a fear that we have: the fear of exposure. I know that fear very well. We live in a world that loves to celebrate people's mistakes. I had a 10-year-long plus addiction to pornography. I've shared that before. It's fun to share that from a stage. It's great. And the whole time I dealt with that addiction, I was afraid of being exposed. I was terrified of it. I was trying to fight Satan one-on-one, which isn't really a fair fight when I think about it, but I was I was terrified of my sin coming into the light and me being exposed in front of my wife, in front of my family. See, that fear. That fear is a lie. Fear almost always is. Ephesians chapter 5 says this. Verse 13 everything exposed by the light becomes visible. And everything that is illuminated becomes a light. We have a fear of exposure. We have a fear of sharing our darkness. But light does not expose darkness. Light extinguishes darkness. That's what light does. When something that is dark is covered in light, it stops being darkness and it becomes light. If we're going to be honest with God, we need to be honest about everything happening around us, but we've got to be honest about everything happening within us. And it's not to please God. He is pleased with you. He is pleased with you because if you put your trust in Jesus, the Bible tells us explicitly that He has the same opinion of you that he has of Jesus. You cannot ruin that. But we need the forgiveness. We need the reminders of forgiveness that God has already given us. And that's what happens when we're honest with God about what's going on inside of us. We want to have passion. Passion in our lives with God. I think there's one word I could I could just use to describe what I want in my relationship with God. It's passion. I want to feel God. I want to enjoy God. I get passionate about things. I had a friend that came up to me a few weeks ago. I'll talk about this in a few weeks when we talk about fasting. And he said, Hey Justin, I want to try this kind of alternate version of a fast. It's called a Daniel fast, if you're familiar with it, where you just have no fun for two weeks. And so what it was was we ate no meat, no grains, no processed sugar, no dairy, which is all of my diet practically for two weeks, and I was really excited the first day. I was not excited days two through whatever when it ended. I was doing it for my friend. And I never realized how passionate I am about food until after that fast was done and I ate real food again. I had a buffalo chicken pizza. And I cried. And then other things happened to me. And we won't go there. We won't go there. See, that's what I want with God. That's a stupid analogy, and I didn't plan this, so just go with it. Like, do you ever just want to taste God? You want to you want to feel Him so completely that it's like you're alive for the very first time. You are filled with passion. That is what God desires. He wants a relationship with us. He doesn't want us to be stoic, he doesn't want us just to be people that follow him. Look, Jesus came to change everything. God already had followers. He didn't need more followers. Jesus came to change us from people who are bound by religion to people who can embrace him, to people who can go to him and have a life with him that's full of passion and joy. That's for all of us, but we cannot have it if we're not honest with God. Because dishonesty kills passion. Dishonesty kills intimacy. And he is honest with us about how he feels about us. We can be honest with him. So I want to encourage you this week as we pray, as we wrap up, I want to encourage you to be honest with God. And if that means yelling at God, so be it. David did that. I imagine when David was like that, there were people close to him that were like backing away because something might happen right now and they don't want to be near it, but it didn't happen. That means that means bringing your tears, your heartache, your hurt right to God. Don't filter it through religion. Don't filter it through what's appropriate. Because the Bible does not tell us anywhere that it's inappropriate to be honest with God. That's nowhere to be found. But we get example after example of honesty. Jesus prayed with honesty. Jesus wept when he prayed. We can pray like that. So be honest with God this week. When you're frustrated, pray frustrated. When you're happy, pray happy. When you're sad, pray sad. When you're confused, pray confused. I don't know what that would look like. Don't know what words to use. Fine. Just pray however you are, wherever you are, and be honest with God. Because if you pray honest prayers, you will take a huge step toward a relationship with God. That maybe you never knew you could have. And an acceptance with God that has been yours all along. So pray with me. God, thank you so much for this incredible group of people. Thank you for this church. I've spent most of my life, God, worried that I'm not doing it right when it comes to my relationship with you, worried that I'm not approaching you in the right way, in the right manner. That God, you have shown us that what you desire is a real relationship with us, that we can come to you, that we can be honest. And God, I pray that you free every single person in this room up to approach you with unhindered honesty this week and forever after this week. Remind us who we are. We are like my son, we are little kings, little queens, because we are royalty and we belong to you. Help us pray like that. Help us pray with that kind of honesty, God. Help us take steps closer and closer to the relationship with you that we are meant to have. Help us be people that settle for nothing less than what you have for us. We love you, Jesus. We ask all this in your name. Amen.