Well, I am very excited to be here today. It was great to have a week off of teaching last week. Believe it or not, even I get tired of talking sometimes. And we had Elan Griffin with us for the first time. She did an amazing job, didn't she? She was great. I had a lot of ladies say it's about time a woman was on this stage telling everybody what to do. You know, and I think all of us men that have that in our lives know the value of that. So it was a great week. I was really excited for that. I can't wait till Elin speaks again. I am thrilled, though, with what we're gonna start talking about today. We're beginning a brand new series, and it's one that has actually made me pretty nervous over the last few weeks because God made it very clear to me what we needed to talk about. And I was kind of like, okay, God, that's not an area that I would consider a strength of mine. So are you sure? Are you sure this is what we're gonna focus on? And God made it very clear this is exactly what we need to be talking about right now, what we need to be growing in. And I guess I'm excited because that means I'm gonna get to be along for the ride. I'm gonna need to grow quickly, and more importantly, we're gonna need to help each other grow in this way. The name of this series is by faith. We are called by God to be people who live by faith. We're supposed to stand rooted in faith. Faith is our foundation. We're supposed to walk in faith, to live in faith. And that sounds really spiritual. That sounds really, really awesome, but how do we actually do that? 2 Corinthians 5 7 says this: for we live by faith, not by sight. We live by faith and not by sight. Faith has been something that I've actually had struggles with. I'm not talking about a faith like, is God really there? But but more like a faith in that is God really gonna help me? Is God really gonna come through for me? I've had situations in life where my faith was tested. My son Liam, when he was born, was in the NICU for the first two weeks of his life, and it was scary. It was really scary, and my wife's faith was was solid. She she had a confidence that God was gonna come through, that he was gonna be okay. I had a really hard time. I dealt with a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety. I just wasn't sure if it was gonna if it was gonna work out. It's not that I didn't believe God could do it, I just didn't have the kind of faith that I needed to have that he would do it. And so when God put it on my heart that we needed to talk about being people who live by faith, I guess I got excited because I realized that's a huge area in my life that needs to grow as well. So we're gonna spend several weeks, more than we usually allocate to a series, talking about how we grow in our faith. How we live by faith and not by sight. We're gonna be looking at the 11th chapter of Hebrews, which, if you're familiar with that chapter, it's all about faith. And it's it's a list of the who's who of people who lived by faith in the Old Testament. People that we can look at, we can look at their stories, and we can learn from how they responded to God in a way that grew their faith, and we can do the same thing. We can follow in their footsteps. But I hope that you are excited to know that you are called to be a person who lives by faith. That your faith can be strong. When we hear the word faith, we probably think of a lot of different things. There's a lot of synonyms for faith. Some people would say faith is this silly thing people make up. People who are naive, who are less intelligent have faith. Some people would talk about faith like it's this mystical, ethereal thing that we can't really grasp and understand. Sometimes we think of faith like hope, like something that we really hope happens. I'm really curious if you'll raise your hand when I ask you this and keep it up for a second. Who orders Chinese takeout? Anyone order Chinese takeout? Okay, look around at everyone with their hands raised. Those are our risk takers in the audience, right?

Right.

These are people who have probably gambled at some point in time. Because when it comes to Chinese takeout, there's only two categories that I've encountered, and I've lived all over the country. There is, oh my goodness, I didn't know food could taste this good, Chinese takeout, and then there's I'm probably gonna die, Chinese takeout. And that's it. There's nothing in between. It's those two extremes and nothing else. And so when I order Chinese takeout from a place I've never eaten before, I have this hope. I have a faith. I really, I really hope I don't die. I really hope that my intestines are still in functioning order in a few hours. Right? It's wishful thinking, it's having our fingers crossed, it's thinking positive thoughts. We have that kind of faith about a lot of things in life. But that is not the kind of faith that we're supposed to live with. That's not the kind of faith that we are meant for. Hebrews 11:1 says faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen. It gives us assurance about things we cannot see. Another translation says this: faith is being sure of what we hope for, being convinced of what we do not see. So, faith, our faith, is meant to be certain. It's meant to be sure. Words like confidence, conviction, right? It said we're to be convinced. That means we have conviction. Our faith is not this hope that we have or we say, hey, God might come through for me. God might help me. He might heal me. He might help my marriage. He might help me get through this addiction that I'm going through. He might bless my finances. Our faith is supposed to be so strong that we can say, I know God is gonna come through for me. I know he's gonna heal my marriage. I know he's gonna fix my problems. I know he's gonna break this addiction. I know he's gonna bless my finances. I know he's gonna heal me because I have a God who is real and I have a God who is faithful. We can be full of faith because we have a God that is faithful. And that faith is a confidence. You can clap for God, that's fine. That faith is meant to be confidence for us. Have you ever known someone that had such strong faith? It seemed like unshakable faith, and you looked at it and it was like a foreign concept to you, almost like something you could never have. You feel so far away from that. We see a lot of that faith in Scripture. In 1 Samuel, David is this young boy, and he's going to fight Goliath, who is a seasoned warrior who's much bigger than him. David is not trained in how to fight for the military, he's practically unarmed. And Goliath, unsurprisingly, is very confident about this encounter. So Goliath says to David in 1 Samuel 17, come over here and I'll give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals. Now keep in mind that David is a young boy, and this is at a time before violent television, right? So he's not just being influenced by things he's seen. Here is his response. You come to me with sword, spear, and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of heaven's armies, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. Today the Lord will conquer you, and I will kill you and cut off your head. And then I will give the dead bodies of all your men to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. And everyone assembled here will know that the Lord rescues his people, but not with sword and spear. This is the Lord's battle, and he will give you to us. That is confidence, right? I wish I could have a picture of what the faces of these grown soldiers looked like when they heard this young boy saying things like that. Right? This is not Chinese takeout hope. This is Hebrews 11:1, unshakable faith. And here's the thing: that is not a faith that is supposed to be rare. That is not a faith that is meant for some of us, a select few of us who just so happen to be close enough with God to have it. That faith is meant for you. That is the faith that all of us are called to live with. And imagine how amazing life would be if we spent our days confident that our God loves us and confident that our God is gonna come through for us no matter the circumstance. That's the faith that we are gonna grow in together over the next few months. That's a faith that I need in my life. That's a faith that we all need, and it's for us. It is real, and we're gonna have that faith. It's gonna be an amazing journey. I'm excited to be part of it. I said earlier that faith is a bit of a loaded word. We've all had different experiences with faith. Sometimes we have experiences where we have a lot of faith in something and then it lets us down. And oftentimes we place our faith or some measure of faith. I think everyone on earth has some measure of faith. We place our faith in something that is much less reliable than we really believe it is most of the time. So, for example, when you all came into the room, I didn't see anyone test your chair out before you sat down. I didn't see anyone put about 25% of weight down and go, okay, it's it's good, it feels good so far. And then you went ahead and sat. We all just sat in our chairs with faith that it was gonna hold us. But has anyone ever sat in a chair that failed? Does that happen? Anyone ever sat in a chair that failed as you were trying to impress a girl? That's happened to me. Sophomore year is a good time, right? And sometimes that's how our faith in God can go. We we grow up, we have we have faith in him, but something happens and it shakes our faith. That happens all the time in all sorts of situations in life. It happened for me a few years ago. I know I've shared this story before, but I know it's been at least a year, so forgive me if you're hearing this for the second time. It's just the first story that came to my mind. About two years ago, I was taking my mom and my son, Liam, who was two at the time, to Ikea. And if you know me very well, you know that I hate IKEA, but somehow I have to go there all the time. Growing up, I hated furniture stores. I hated going to a furniture store. My mom loves design, she loves furniture, so we went pretty often. We moved a ton. My family has lived in over 18 houses since I was born. I got here in 83, so that's that's a pretty good pace, if you think about that, right? And so we were always going to furniture stores, and I hated it because there would always be the talk. And the talk was in the car, and it was right before we walked in, and my mom would turn to me and she would whisper, if you touch anything. I swear, right? That was the talk. And so going to a furniture store was not only boring, it was tense. It was just me with like my arms glued by my side, just trying not to touch something, but it's hard. There is a law. I swear this law is real because it's it's way too it's way too convenient that it happens in every furniture store on earth, not to be a law, that every furniture store must put a table with a globe on it in some location. Go today, go to a furniture store when we're done. You won't have to look very hard, there will be a table with a globe. Now, is it possible to walk past a globe and not give it a spin? Yes, right? But yet, how many of us, when we walk past a globe, we just feel a compulsion? We go, I wonder if it spins, as if they make globes that don't spin, and we just kind of give it a touch, right? That happens. And as a child, it was almost irresistible for me. So I would see that globe, and it wasn't like a conscious choice of me saying, I'm gonna defy my mother, I'm gonna go touch that globe. It would just be me going, Oh, it spins. And that was the exact moment my mom would turn around and she would say, What did I say? Followed by the token, do you know how much that costs? And the answer was always, no, I do not know how much this costs. But I'm about to find out, right? That's how it goes. Now, my son, his understanding of furniture store is IKEA. That's the furniture store he's known, and it's a very different experience than what I grew up with. IKEA did something crazy and they introduced ice cream to the furniture store. So if you ever go to IKEA, there's ice cream there, right? And any experience on earth, no matter how boring or how torturous, is worthwhile to a child if there is ice cream involved. So Liam loves going to the furniture store because it means ice cream. I remember the first time we took him to a furniture store, not IKEA. And he was like, what is this place? Like, where are we need to leave, right? This is not the furniture store. That's that's his concept of it. So he's excited to go to IKEA, my mom's excited to go to IKEA, we're on 75 South, we're going like 10 miles over the speed limit because you have to on 75 South. It is more dangerous to go the speed limit on 75 South than it is to go over, right? And as we're driving, I I hear this noise and I feel this vibration, and it starts to progress. I look to the back seat, and my son's car seat is shaking violently, and right then there's an explosion, and it's loud. The back passenger tire had an air bubble and it blew, and it blew with such force that it knocked the rear bumper off our car. And so the back of our car going full speed on 75 just drops, and it's just the rim on the pavement. And I don't know how. I give God all the credit. We did not get in an accident, the car didn't spin out of control, no one hit us, we were able to safely pull off to the side of the road, and that was five seconds of life that I do not remember. I just remember sort of coming to, and my mom is on the phone with my father, who's in Missouri, as if somehow that's going to help anything, right? Her first inclination was not to call a tow truck, it was to call my dad in Missouri. And then I look back at my son, and he has these huge tears in his eyes. And I'm realizing that he's he's coming face to face with his own mortality for the first time, right? His little life is flashed before his eyes. Because that tire was right where he was, it was on his side. And so I'm trying to think about the words that I can say to console him and to help him, to help him deal with this intense emotional scarring that is happening. And I looked at him, I said, son, are you okay? And with these huge tears in his eyes, he looked at me, he said, Dad, how are we gonna get to Ikea now? Because to him it was just ice cream, that's all he cared about. Like, we're gonna miss the ice cream. So I was relieved at that. We got the we got the tires fixed, we got the car repaired, he got his ice cream, it was a good day. But I'll say this my faith in tires took a big hit that day. I mean, I knew you could get a flat tire, and I I guess I knew somehow, somewhere, that yes, a tire can explode, but I'd never experienced that before. And and I used to drive with absolute faith that my tires were gonna stay where they were, they were gonna stay a part of my car unless somehow I hit something that I shouldn't hit. But then I felt like I had some measure of control. But after that day, for about the next two weeks, I drove more cautiously than I've ever driven before, as if somehow my driving could affect an air bubble forming in a tire. My wife about went nuts the number of times I said, Does the car feel normal to you? Does this do you s do you feel a vibration? Every time I'd hit a bump, I'd freak out a little bit. There's this stretch of road by where my wife's parents live. And it has very uneven pavement, and when you go over it, it always shakes. And I knew that, I knew that. I've driven over that stretch of road hundreds and hundreds of times, but every single time for that two weeks, after that moment, we drive on that and I'd freak out a little bit. I'm like, I know it's the road, but oh, it was so tense, right? Because my faith was shaken. That's how life is sometimes. Our faith in God might have been shaken by a tragedy, by loss, by an experience where we felt like we needed God and he didn't come through, and so we're left with shaky faith. Sometimes it's the opposite, though. Sometimes we we can't seem to have faith until God proves himself to us. It's not that we used to have faith and it's gone, it's that we've never had faith and we won't have faith until God does something to give us faith. So we're told that we're supposed to live by faith, not by sight, but some of us might say, I need to see something in order to believe. God, give me a sign. I need to see you move, I need to experience you before I can believe. If that's your approach to God, by the way, don't feel bad. Many people in history have had that same approach, and God has an amazing way of proving himself to us. In Gideon, for example, in the book of Judges, Gideon's a man in the book of Judges who's going to become a leader in Israel, says the angel of the Lord came and sat beneath the great tree at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash of the clan of Abuser. Gideon, son of Joash, was threshing wheat at the bottom of a winepress to hide the grain from the Midianites. Now, the Midianites were a group of people who were oppressing Israel at this time. They were basically bullying the entire nation of Israel. They would come and steal everything from Israel. They would pillage, they would plunder. And Gideon is, he's hiding, he's threshing grain in a winepress. Now, you don't have to be a genius to know that you don't thresh grain in a wine press. A wine press is meant for wine. And the way a wine press was designed, you could only thresh a very small amount of wheat at a time. So he's hiding, he's afraid, he's just trying to make enough for himself. And it's at this moment that the angel of the Lord shows up, and while Gideon is hiding, the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, Mighty hero, O man that's hiding from the Midianites, mighty hero, the Lord is with you. Sir Gideon replied, If the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? And where are all the miracles our ancestors told us about? Didn't they say the Lord brought us up out of Egypt? But now the Lord has abandoned us and he's handed us over to the Midianites. I I love this story. I love how modern this story is. These questions that Gideon has, they seem like they belong in today's world. If if God is real, then why do bad things happen to us? And what about all these crazy miracles that the Bible talks about? What about the oceans parting and stuff like that? If I saw something like that, then I'd have faith, then I could believe you. We find that the obstacles that exist between us and a faith in God have not changed very much in 3,000 years. Gideon lived about 1100 BC. He has the same objections that many people to this day have. And so we continue. The Lord turned to him and said, Go with the strength you have and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I am sending you. This is kind of a whether you like it or not moment. But Lord Gideon replied, How can I rescue Israel? My clan is the weakest in the whole tribe of Manasseh, which was the weakest tribe, only a half tribe, and I am the least in my entire family. So Gideon says, I am the least of the least of the least. How can I rescue Israel? And the Lord said to him, I will be with you, and you will destroy the Midianites as if you were fighting against one man. And Gideon replied, If you are truly going to help me, show me a sign to prove that it is really the Lord speaking to me. Now, this is just me, but if the angel of the Lord is standing in front of me, talking to me, I'm gonna take that as a sign. Like I'm gonna go ahead and say, I get it, there's my sign. But Gideon needs more. He asks for another sign, and God gives him that. And if you read the rest of the story in Judges chapter 6, he's gonna ask for two more signs before he finally has faith. Sometimes we we feel like we need God to prove himself to us. God is he's God, right? We cannot make God do anything. But if you need God to show himself to you, he will. I can't think of a single time in Scripture where someone proves God's existence to someone else. God seems to do that very well by himself. So ask for that if that's what you need. But but whether or not the order of your faith has been believing and then seeing, or seeing and then believing, like Gideon and many others, we have to recognize that there is a tension that exists between these two things. That's the the focus of this morning. That's what we've got to start with if we're gonna grow in our faith. We have to recognize that there is a conflict, there is a tension, there is something working against our faith. Someone once said, What you don't know can't hurt you. And I don't know who that person was, and I have no idea how that gained any traction because that is a ridiculous statement, right? What you don't know can't hurt you. If you're not aware of a dynamic, if you're not aware of something going on behind the scenes, you can get hurt, right? You can be fooled. I used to work at Blockbuster Video, which no longer exists. And uh and I know why? Because I worked there and no one took their job seriously. I mean no one. I had been working there for a few months and I read on a sheet that I was supposed to clean the restroom. And I asked my manager, I said, I'm supposed to clean the restroom, and he said, nah, they don't pay you enough to clean the restroom. And so I said, Okay, so are are you gonna clean the restroom? And he said, they don't pay me enough to clean the restroom. Right? So it's not a surprise that that place didn't survive because I worked there and we just did not work very hard at all. Um but we had a lot of fun, and one of the things that we love to do was to kind of mess with the people that that were new hires, and that happened pretty often. It was a lot of turnover. So we had this one thing we would do, if it was someone's first day, they worked a shift, and at the end of your shift, when you worked at Blockbuster, which no longer exists, okay, I just want to emphasize that, that uh we had to straighten the shelves. We had to walk around and make sure that every case, every DVD, and when I was there, every VHS was uh was was spaced evenly, right? Was at a certain angle, and everything had to be in alphabetical. Medical order. All the cases had to match up with whatever was behind it. And so if we had someone new, we would say, Hey, it's your first day. Tell you what, I'll do. You just do the kids section. I'll do everything else. I'll do the new release wall, I'll do drama, I'll do comedy, I'll do everything else. You just handle the kids section. And they'd look out and they'd see the kids section, it'd be like three rows, and they'd say, Yeah, no brainer. That's just three rows. And this store's huge, you've got everything else. Thank you. And you're like, no problem. But what they did not know hurt them. Because adults will walk around a store and they'll pick up things they're interested in. And most of the time, not all the time, but most of the time, they'll they'll put it back in proximity to where it was to begin with. Children do not do that. Children touch everything. So kids would just sort of walk through and be like, touch, touch, touch, touch, touch. Kids would pick this up and put it over here, pick this up, put it over here. Parents just wouldn't watch their kids at all. They'd they go in this road, they'd go, okay, you guys go over there and we'll see you later. And the kids would just wreak havoc. That section was like, it was like a bomb went off every night. And this new person's like, sweet, I've only got to do kids. And three hours later, they're done, right? Which probably contributed to the overtime costs that helped the place not exist anymore. Again, not a well-run organization. So in that situation, what they didn't know hurt them. What we don't know hurts us. If we want to grow in our faith, and there's something working against our faith, there's something that is coming against us, there's a conflict going on. If we're unaware of that, it will be a major hindrance to our growth. We have to recognize that there is something working against us. Faith and sight, those are opposing forces, right? The Bible describes it in several different ways, one of which is to say, spirit and flesh. So we're supposed to live by by faith and not sight. We're supposed to live by our spirit and not our flesh. Faith and sight, spirit, flesh. There is a battle that exists between those things. And it's a battle that rages inside of us. Paul wrote about this in Romans 7. You can read it later on. It's a great section. You're going to identify with this. He said, I do not do what I want to do. I want to do what is right, but then I don't do it. I do not want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. And he said, It's like it's not me doing it, it's like something within me doing it instead. It's like there's two of me, and they're at war with one another. And if that seems familiar to you, it's because that is the human condition. It is spirit versus flesh. Our spirit is that part of us that comes to life when Jesus becomes part of our life. We wake up spiritually. He begins to recreate us, to make us into the person that we were destined to be. Our spirit desires to do what pleases God. Our spirit desires to serve other people, and then we have our flesh. And maybe some of us started a relationship with Jesus thinking that, hey, as soon as Jesus is in my life, all my problems, all my tendencies, all the unhealthy behavior in my life, it'll just vanish, and then we realize no, no, no, the flesh remains. That's what Paul was talking about. Our flesh is that part of us that wants what we want above what God wants. It is naturally selfish. Sometimes it's called our sin nature in the Bible. Some people don't like that term. They think it makes us seem like we're created, broken, and messed up. We are all created in God's image. We are all destined to have lives of greatness in God's eyes. It's that our nature holds us back from that. I love my son. I have never had to teach him how to lie. I've never had to teach him how to throw a good fit. I've never had to sit him down and explain to him how he should want what he wants more than what other people want. All of that came perfectly natural. It's the other stuff we have to work on, right? We do have this nature inside of us, what the Bible calls our flesh. And it's in conflict with our spirit. And if we're going to grow in our faith, if we're going to grow in our faith, because guys, our faith, it's like oxygen for our spirit. The more we grow in faith, the stronger our spirit becomes. If we're going to grow in this area of our lives, the most important area of our lives, we have to recognize this conflict and we have to come against it. In Galatians chapter 5, Paul wrote, So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want, but if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law. If you're led by the spirit, you're free. He says to live by the spirit, but they're at conflict with one another. He goes on in Romans chapter 8 to say, You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh, but are in the realm of the spirit, if indeed the spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, if you have put your faith in Jesus, if Christ is in you, even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his spirit who lives in you. Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation, but it is not to the flesh to live according to it, for if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again. Rather, the spirit you received brought you into adoption, into the sonship or the family of God. And by him we cry, Abba Father, Abba means daddy. The Spirit himself testifies with our Spirit that we are God's children. Now, if we are children, then we are heirs, because God is a ruler, he is king, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings, in order that we may also share in his glory. So this conflict, this conflict between spirit and flesh, it is real and the stakes are high. If I look at my life and I look at the seasons in my life where I experienced the most shame, the most guilt, the most anger, the most resentment. And I ask myself, in those seasons of my life, was I walking by faith? Was I walking in my spirit, motivated to satisfy the spirit that God has placed inside of me, or was I serving my flesh? And almost every time, it was my flesh. And sometimes that that means things that were obvious. Things that anyone would look at and say, no, you can't have that in your life. If you're relatively new to his hands, you've never heard me talk about this. If you've been here for a while, you have. I believe in being an open book. I had a 10-year-long addiction to pornography that started when I was a kid. I was exposed to it at a very young age, long before I knew how to battle that or even really knew what it was, and it became an addiction in my life. And I carried that into my marriage, and it almost destroyed my marriage. It almost destroyed me. I had no hope. I felt nothing but shame and guilt. I was lied, lied to by Satan, tempted into believing this was something that was good, but Satan only offers cheap thrills, pleasure that leads to regret shortly afterward. That is all he offers. So I sat in darkness in this addiction for ten years, trying everything I could to get out of it. That was over five years ago. God has been really good to give me freedom, and that freedom came by the way of getting grace and forgiveness from my wife. An act of grace that I had never experienced before, one that made God's grace real. Let me just say, as a side note, that anyone in here that struggles with that addiction, guys, there is hope, there is freedom. If you want to talk about it, I will stay after. We will talk as long as you want because you can and will be free of that. There have been other times where my flesh was something that was much less obvious. Insecurity, anger, fear, resentment, worry, stress. All that's flesh. And so when God says, put to death the things of the flesh, that is what he's talking about. It's the things in life you hate. Do not let Satan fool you into believing that the things of the flesh are the things you really enjoy in life. That is not true. They're the things that suck life out of you. He says, put those things to death. And the stakes, the stakes are so high. He says that if we live by the Spirit, we are co-heirs with Jesus. We get to be co-with Jesus. I'm gonna take a page out of Elon's book last week and define something. I look this up in the dictionary. I have not used a dictionary in a long time. So thank you, Elan, for that inspiration. So, co- is a prefix. I remember that from school. And the meaning of co- is mutual, together, it implies partnership and equality. So think about that. We get to be co-with Jesus. When we think about Jesus, do we think about equality with Jesus? Or do we think about Jesus being above us? Obviously, we think about him being above us because he's above everything. Elon said last week that if Jesus walked into this room, we would all fall on our faces and we would and we wouldn't have a choice. It would be the natural reaction of us in the presence of our God because he is that great. But yet, he says we can be co-with him. And we're co-with him not by our own efforts, but it's by the Spirit of God in us, and it lifts us up and it places us with Jesus. It places us into a place that we could never be on our own. I would be co-anything with Jesus. I don't know how to fly a plane, but I would be a co-pilot with Jesus. Right? I would be codependent on Jesus. I would cohabitate with Jesus. I would cosign on any loan Jesus asked me to co-sign on. Because I know he's good for it, right? We get to be co-with with Jesus. And we get to experience that by his spirit living within us. By walking by that spirit. It's by living by faith, not by sight. Now, I don't know what your flesh is today. I'm sure you know, and you don't need to be reminded. Maybe you're sitting here going, great, this is why I left churches. I come here and I get to be reminded about all the things I'm not good at, right? Um, that's not what today is about at all. I just want us to know and be aware of this conflict that exists and our tendency to fight against our spirit by by satisfying our flesh. And I want us to leave with a strategy, with something we can do today. To begin taking ground. Because I believe we're called to be people who say, I am sick and tired of being ruled by flesh. I am sick and tired of being stuck in my addictions, I am sick and tired of being stuck in this misery that I'm in. I don't want to live like this anymore. I want to be free, I want to live by the Spirit. So, how do we do that? One way would be to deny our flesh, right? Just deny it. Say no. Say no to the flesh. Anytime you're tempted to do something that you want to do that you know is not what God wants for you, just say no. And that is true, that would work if we were good at that. Maybe your flesh is control, maybe you're a control freak. You have to be in control. You have to be the one that makes the decisions, you have to be the one that sets the agenda. If someone in your life has called you a control freak many times, you might be one. I'm just saying. And so are you just supposed to deny that? Are you just supposed to say, hey, I'm not gonna be in control, I'll let you plan it, even though I know it will fail if you do, right? Is that just how we're supposed to live? Because we know better. We're not gonna focus on denying our flesh. Because if we all leave here today going, hey, great, I'm gonna be really committed to saying no to my flesh. People have walked that road before and it does not work. So don't worry, today is not about you leaving here, being mindful of all the mistakes you've made, all the failures you've had, and somehow with your own strength, just doing better. God does not call us to do better. That is religion, that is not God. This is our strategy, this is our homework, I guess. Feed your spirit today. Feed your spirit. Indulge your spirit. We all know what it's like to indulge ourselves from time to time. My wife and I like to go out to eat to this one restaurant, it's called Marlowe's Tavern. It's on Chastain. They're building one right over here in the in the shops in the in the outlet mall. Not that I've noticed, but I'm really excited. Um but it's it's where we go for our dates and we indulge when we're there. We always order the same appetizer, it's the shrimp and crab nachos. You guys are hungry, so this is probably torture, but stay with me. All right, shrimp and crab nacho plate. Eat that, it's good. Little jalapeno on every chip, it's perfect. Then she orders the special, because my wife always loves to do something new, but I am someone that does the same thing every time I get the fish tacos, and I get them with the white cheddar grit cakes. Now, if you've never been there, let me explain what a white cheddar grit cake is. Does anyone like grits? Does anyone like cheese? Picture this, okay? Grits and cheese made into a patty and then deep fried. They weigh like two pounds each, and I eat two of them. And then the waiter always asks us, have we saved room for dessert? And the answer is always no. We have not saved room, but we will make room for dessert. Right? Some days our maybe this is us getting over our flesh. Today I'm gonna tell my flesh what to do. You're gonna eat more, whether you want to or not, right? And so we'll order a dessert, we'll fool ourselves into thinking that if we split it, it somehow doesn't count. And we just indulge, we just eat and we eat and we love it and we enjoy it. And I think about my life, I think about how many times I've indulged my flesh in a way that's acceptable, in a way that's just fun, or in a way that isn't. Then I ask myself, do I indulge my spirit? What would it be like to indulge my spirit with God? What if today I went and I fed my spirit and I had an appetizer and I had a main dish and I had dessert? And I said, I want more. If we feed our spirits, if we just go out and indulge our relationship with God and spend as much time with Him as we can, we could stay up late tonight, we could get no sleep tomorrow. It's not like we've never done that before, but instead of being at work tomorrow and saying I'm exhausted, I stayed up late watching Netflix, we can say, I'm exhausted, I was with God until 3 a.m. in the morning. I indulged my spirit yesterday. I fed my spirit, and I'm gonna feed it again. Because if we feed our spirit, and we feed it more than our flesh, our spirit becomes stronger and our flesh does not stand a chance. And so this is not about trying harder. This is not about doing better, about saying no to your flesh more. This is about saying yes to your spirit, and your spirit, it is fed by faith. We're gonna worship, we're gonna worship just a little bit more, and this next song, it can be feeding your spirit. This next song, in the few moments we're in here, it can just be a few more minutes to indulge. You can go get your kids if you need to, that's fine. But they are taking care of someone else is watching your child. Why are you in a hurry to leave? Like people pay for that, right? Stay in here for a minute and indulge your spirit. And if you're if you're new to this whole faith thing and you're like, what do I do? How do I go home and indulge my spirit? Just try something. Get yourself in a room by yourself and talk to God and have faith that He's listening, and have faith that He'll respond. Turn on some worship music. If you don't know how to find worship music online, go to Spotify, search His Hands Church. Every song that we ever sing here is on a playlist on Spotify, so you can just listen to those if you like them. A bunch of people didn't know that. There you go, okay? This is practical stuff. But let's be people that leave here committed to feeding our spirit so that they grow and we grow and God's kingdom grows because that's what it's meant to do, that's what we're meant to do. Pray with me. Jesus, thank you so much for this church. Thank you so much for these people, God. I know, I know that we're gonna grow in our faith. We're gonna feed our spirits, we're gonna indulge our spirits with you, Jesus. And you will satisfy us. And as we grow in our faith over these next few months, Lord, addictions are going to be broken. Marriages are going to be healed and restored. Relationships are gonna be mended. People are gonna be healed physically, Lord. I believe that. Because when your spirit moves, things happen. We want to be a church and a people that sees some things happen. So we invite you, Holy Spirit, into this place. Let it rain, pour over us, and let us just take you in. And we ask all this in your name, Jesus. Amen. Amen.