The Lord Who Sanctifies

Well, good morning, man. It is so good to be with you today. Beltway Park, whether you're at our South Campus, maybe you're at our North Campus right now. We are one church with two physical locations in Abilene, but we also have a, I guess you'd call it, virtual, digital, um, campus as well. That is our online campus. We have people in the greater Abilene area that are online right now. We actually have people all over the world that join in with us at various times. However you're joining us, man, we love having you.

And we know that there are people always who, like this, this is like the first time you've been with us. Maybe you're online checking things out. Maybe you're present at one of our campuses. I just want you to know this: if you look around, you're present, and you look around this room and you think, "Man, I bet everybody here's got their act together except me," you're in the wrong church. We are a people that have got plenty of issues, plenty of struggles, plenty of problems. But we are on a journey. Say, "Journey." And that journey is to get to know the reality of who our God is and to honor him by increasingly living in the abundant life that Jesus died for us to have. We believe that God does this gracious thing, and he will take all of us, and he will make us more like him. And as we're more like him, we find abundance. That's why we're taking the journey we're taking.

We are on a journey called "The Way of the Cross," where we want to learn more about the reality of God. We're leading up to our celebration of the Resurrection. Our society calls it Easter. And what we're doing is just looking at different phases, different steps along the way that Jesus took. We're going from the Upper Room all the way to the empty tomb so we can know better who God is.

I mean, come on. When you look at our world, it shouts of the reality of God. Science these days is covering more and more how complex, how delicate, how amazingly designed our world is. It shouts of the grandness of God. I know we, as a society, many talk about the fact that our, our world came about, creation, the universe came about because billions of years ago, some big bang happened, and from that came a single protein molecule, and from that came the complexity of our universe, all without any divine guidance. But think about it. What are the chances that that really happened? What, what are the odds?

I mean, what if I took you outside to the parking lot, and there I showed you my Ford pickup? Side note, by the way, if Jesus lived today, he would drive a Ford. I'm just telling you. It's, it's nuanced in the Greek language, okay? I'll show you later. If you're new with us, go by Ford. Anyway, I'm just, if I took you out there, showed you my truck, doesn't matter what kind of truck it was, and I told you, "Hey, here's what happened. Here's how my truck came into existence, that there was an explosion at a manufacturing plant, and boom, out of that explosion came this truck." You would call me many things, but intelligent would not be one of them, right?

Did you know that a single human cell is far more complex than a pickup truck with all the technology, all the electronics we have today? Far, far, far more complex. One scientist calculated that the chance occurrence of a single protein molecule just happening, he put it at 1 in 10 to the 243rd power number of years. Now, for those of you who have repressed all your math from school, that is not a one in 10 chance. That is a one in 10 with 243 zeros behind it number of years chance. It's billions, trillions of years of one single protein molecule coming into existence. What are the odds that our universe, a planet tilted just the right way, gravity just the right force, all these details just occurring? Come on, creation shouts of the reality of God. However you think it came about, creation shouts of that.

But creation doesn't tell us who God is. God himself, in his grace, actually showed us who he is. He actually tells us who he is. He did this in what's called the Bible. The foundational purpose of all of scripture is to tell us who God is. But if that seems too overwhelming to you, I got good news for you. You can narrow it down. Just look at Jesus. The scripture itself says, "For in Jesus, for in Christ, all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form." So if you want to know the reality of God and see him most clearly, just look at Jesus. Look at those 33 years that he was on planet Earth.

And I'm going to challenge you even more concisely. We can go to the journey to the cross, and it's going to tell us and show us who God is. So three weeks ago, man, we were in the Upper Room and we were on the Mount of Olives, and we see that he is Yahweh. He is the "I Am," the answer to every question. And then two weeks ago, we saw Peter deny him and how Jesus responded that he is Yahweh Shalom. He is the God of Peace. And last week, his stripes, the beating he took, he is Yahweh Rapha. The God who heals.

I mean, our pastor, Pastor Jeffrey, did an incredible job unpacking these scriptures. And it may be that you were like me. These last three weeks, I was actually out. I was in Israel and I was in Poland doing kind of a legacy pastor thing, meeting with our partners. By the way, we have incredible partners that are taking the gospel to hard places. Israel is not an easy place to be a follower of Jesus. I would estimate that our church alone, just Beltway Park, I'm not talking about Abilene, Beltway Park alone, probably numbers about half the total evangelical believers in Israel right now. We have far more evangelical believers in the greater Abilene area than they have in Israel right now. But those believers are contending for the sake of his name in that land. In that land, Poland is a little bit better, but not a lot. And we get to be a piece of that. I'm telling you, we are investing. We are part of some incredible things God is doing around the world for the sake of the gospel.

And so I was in these places, and maybe you were out and about as well and couldn't hear the messages, but I caught up on them. And I'm telling you, they are an investment well worth your time. You'll get a great ROI on that. The reason this is so important, the reason we need to stay up with it, because as one leader of old said, "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us." See, the journey of our faith is knowing the reality of God in deeper and deeper ways, us becoming more and more like him. And it is knowledge of his reality that we can discover on the Way of the Cross.

So last week, we know that there were, there was a scourging, a beating. And then immediately after that, the scripture says, "Pilot delivered Jesus over to them to be crucified." So they took him and went out. Notice, notice this, bearing his own cross to the place called the Place of the Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. Jesus picked up his cross. Jesus carried his cross. But another gospel writer adds a detail to this that John didn't give us. Matthew tells us that as they were going out from there, they met a man from Cyrene named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross.

So catch this: even Jesus didn't carry his cross alone. I want you to log that in your memory. Put a bookmark there right now. We're going to come back to it. It is imperative for our journeys of faith. What I want you to do right now is pause for a moment, kind of take a breath. I want you to think about something. When Jesus picked up his cross, when he could no longer carry it, and they forced a man from North Africa, who was there on pilgrimage, to carry it for him, they did it for one reason. They did it to take him to a place of death.

You see, in this day and age, when we see crosses, we, we see a sign of hope. We use a cross as jewelry. We use it as decor. All this is because of the work of Jesus. But in the first century, that was not the way they would have viewed a cross. A cross in that day was not a sign of hope. It was a sign of one thing and one thing only. It was a sign of death. A cross was an instrument of death. And that may seem so absurdly obvious to you that you wonder why I'm pointing it out. I'm pointing it out because Jesus himself said to us, "If anyone, any of us, would come after me, if we would be his follower, if we would be a Christian, if we would do anything, let that person deny himself and what? Take up his cross." How often? Daily. And follow me.

There is a reality shouted throughout the Bible to you and I: death is the way to life. And I know that seems like a strange phrase. I just need you to stick with me for a moment. Jesus, not long before he picked up his cross along with Simon and carried it to the hill called Golgotha, said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and what? Dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit." Death is the way to fruitfulness. Death is the way to abundance. Death is the way to living out our purpose in life. Death is the way to life.

Now, at risk of, at once again, stating the obvious, I want to be clear that the scripture isn't calling us to bring harm to our physical self in some suicidal kind of act. Another passage, Romans 12:1, says, "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God." Now, because of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, we today no longer offer animal sacrifices in worship to God as Israel of old did. But I think we all know this. Even though we've never offered an animal sacrifice, we know that "living sacrifice" is an oxymoron. It's like, like a paradox. Because when you sacrifice something, it is the opposite of living, right? For something to be sacrificed, it must die. It must be killed. Yet we are called to what? We are called to be living sacrifices. To die in some way while our physical person is yet breathing.

You may say, "Well, how do we do that?" It all goes back to the reality of God. If you go 1400 or so years prior to the time Jesus picked up his cross, God, through his servant named Moses, brought freedom to a people called Israel. You may have seen movies about the parting of the Red Sea and things like that. And when they were in the wilderness, God would reveal the reality of who he is to them. And he says in the Book of Leviticus, and I know some of us wrestle with Leviticus. Leviticus is like the killer of one-year Bible reading programs. It's like we wrestle to get through it. I get it. But in Leviticus, it says, "Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy." Somebody say, "Holy." Say, "Holy." That's a big word for "I am the Lord your God."

Now, if you happen to go in your English Bibles and look this up, you can't see it in the type we have on the screen here, but this word "Lord" is actually going to be in all caps throughout your Old Testament. You're going to see the word "Lord," not always, but sometimes, in all caps. That means it is a reference to what the Jewish people call, *ba-shem*, the name. It is the word Yahweh. Now, there's a reason that we don't, we do this in English Bibles. We don't have time to unpack it. Just know, going back to week one with Pastor Jeffrey, Yahweh is this foundational name of God. It means "I Am That I Am." Whatever question we have, whatever need we might have, He is the answer.

So the scripture reads, "Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am Yahweh your God." Next verse: "Keep my statutes and do them. I am the Lord." Same word again, Yahweh. "Who what? Sanctifies you." Right there, that is actually a name of God. It's a revelation of the reality of who God is in the Hebrew language of the Old Testament. It is Yahweh M'Kaddesh. "I am the God who sanctifies you."

Now, a little honesty time. None of us are very excited right now. I mean, when we say that He is Yahweh, the "I Am," whatever question, whatever need we might have, He is the answer to, we go, "Woo, yeah, love that." Then we go, "Yahweh Shalom." Peace. Everybody longs for peace in body, soul, and spirit. We're all excited. Last week, man, we were, "Yahweh Rapha." He is the God who heals. We're all in on the healing. But now he wants to sanctify us, and we go, "Not sure I want any of that." And the reason is, there's actually a negative connotation in the modern church world to a word we should not have. The church world, especially the conservative evangelical world, did some things with words like "holy" and "sanctify," and they really messed them up.

Because what happened is, in the name of holiness and sanctification, we created rules, man-made rules that aren't in the Bible, all in reaction to society. So instead of the revelation of scripture telling us what God would have us do and not do, think and not think, we just reacted to society and we just made up rules. And we said, "We did that to be holy." First time I encountered that, I was 13 years old. Had just become a follower of Jesus. And our church youth group said, "Man, we're going to Six Flags." Dude, I'd never done anything like that. I didn't travel a lot as a kid, didn't have a lot of experiences, and never done anything like Six Flags. I knew they had big roller coasters, and I was excited as all get out, man. So, man, I mowed yards, I saved my money, and I am going to Six Flags.

And in about a week before the trip, our youth minister said, "Hey, we want to let you guys know that when you go to Six Flags, you have to wear jeans. You can't wear shorts." And the reason we do this is because we're going to be a holy people. We're going to be sanctified. I had never heard that before in my life. I figured someday I'm going to be reading the Bible and find out there's some issue with shorts that God has. Uh, I didn't know. But I, I really wanted to go to Six Flags. Because normally I would mouth off. I mean, I still would normally mouth off, but really back then, I would mouth off. But I so much wanted to go to Six Flags, I said nothing. I just wanted to go. So I'm going to wear my jeans.

What I did not factor in, never, never even knew it at that time, was there's this thing called humidity in the Texas Panhandle in the summer. Humidity is like 5%. It's in single digits. It doesn't exist. It's a dry heat. We were going to Six Flags in the Metroplex in July in jeans, baby. It was hotter than a stolen tamale, as my granddad used to say. I had never been like that in my life, and I was having this mixture of feeling like, on the one hand, I love Six Flags, love the roller coaster, love, still love roller coasters to this day. But baby, it was hot. And then we did a foolish thing because we didn't know. We got hot, and we thought, "We need to go on the water ride." And so we went on the water ride, and we got soaked. Soaked jeans in humidity that never dried out. And so, baby, well, anyway, is we rubbed raw. That's all I'm saying, man. It was a miserable experience. Why? Because we needed to be holy.

So if you asked me what it meant to be holy, I would have told you to be unnecessarily miserable for who knows why. And that's many people's connotation, at some level, of the idea of holiness and sanctification. You see, over the past decade, the church has used a reaction to society, and we made rules. And those rules are to be holy. So, like, some people grew up in churches where you could not play any kind of game that used dice or cards. You couldn't play Yahtzee. You couldn't play spades. Why? Because that's used in gambling. Gambling's of the world. So we just had an overreaction, and we had a rule. You know, rules came out in the '60s when dudes started cutting, having longer hair. So you had to cut your hair a certain way, and it had to be a certain length, and they would measure it. Women never cut their hair, so it would be way, way long and stuff like that. Women had to wear dresses, couldn't wear pants at all. And the dresses had to be a certain length. And if they weren't a certain length, they actually measured it. Like, you'd come into church, they'd measure your dress. If you didn't meet it, you left and did stuff. And such, there were debates on whether women wear makeup or no makeup. Just, just in a side, I'm for makeup. I'd be for makeup for men if it weren't a societal thing. We need it worse than women. I'm just saying. I don't know how all that happened. I'm just saying. There's all these kind of rules that existed that you really, you really won't find in the scripture.

And I know some of you are saying, "David, I've never heard of anything like this in my life. I've only been to Beltway Park." If that's you, and you've never heard of it, you're welcome. And you might think I'm exaggerating a bit, or I'm, I'm bitter. I'm really not. Here's my concern: we have this tendency to move in extremes. And so, in the name of holiness and sanctification, where it was just about, about man-made rules about external dos and don'ts, we move to the extreme, and we abandon a word like "holy," and we abandon a word like "sanctification." And in this overreaction to non-biblical, man-made rules focused on externals in our lives, we abandon the idea of being sanctified in life. Listen to me. We do that to our detriment.

Sanctification is utterly necessary for abundant life. You cannot have abundant life without it. Yahweh M'Kaddesh is incredible news. The very essence of God is this. The very essence of God is that he wants to work in our lives to take us back to the way he originally designed us to be, so that we can have all the abundant life he longs for us to have. Sanctification is tied to the word most used about God. Sanctification is tied to the word "holy." So in, Jewish people wanted to really emphasize something, they had to say it twice. Remember earlier, John 12, when Jesus talked about a grain of wheat that falls into the ground? He starts by saying, "Truly, truly." That means, "Hey, listen to this. This is really important." A handful of times, baby, they go three. When they say it three times, it's the biggest of big. There's only one word used to describe God that's said three times, and it's being said all the time in heaven right now. The Revelation says, "Each of the four living creatures had six wings, and was covered with eyes all around, even under the wings. Day and night they never stop saying, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.'" Holy, holy, holy is the summary word of God's reality. His power is holy. His love is holy. His grandness, holy. His majesty, his purity, his justness, his fierceness, his tenderness, his affection. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And the heart of our holy heavenly Father is that each of us, believe it or not, would become sanctified.

Sanctified is the verb to become holy in essence. Listen to this. Sanctified is the journey of us becoming more and more like God in how we think, how we act. I'm going to challenge, maybe over time, even in the way we feel. And as we become increasingly sanctified day by day, we find abundant life. But for that to happen, listen to me, we must die. Death is the way to life.

See, if you go back to the beginning, Genesis, Adam and Eve are in the garden. Adam and Eve are utterly holy. They're created in the image of God. But then this thing called sin enters the equation. And sin messes things up royally. Sin, I'm not talking about sin in our behavior, but sin in our thoughts, sin in the essence of who we are, separated us from God. It meant we would be forever apart from God. But God, in his holiness, his love, and his justice, sent Jesus. Jesus went to a cross, and on that cross, he paid the penalty for our sins and said, "Hey, if you want forgiveness of your sins, you want to be reunited with me, all you got to do is say yes. I'm going to become like I was originally designed to become and live my life dependent upon God. I accept the gift of Jesus and what he did for me." The Bible says we are saved. Say, "Saved." But many of us think that I'm saved, and then someday I'm going to go to heaven, but the rest of my life, I just hang on. No, no, no, no, no. God wants us increasingly free. Say, "Free." Saved and free, in the original, are actually the same thing. We see them differently. He wants us increasingly free from the power of sin. Think about what that would be like. Think about if, in our thoughts, we have increasing control, and they're not dominated by sinful things. What would it be like to be free like that? What would it be like to have less pride, less selfishness, less immorality, less greed, less love of money? Less, Jesus came not so we could just be saved, but so that we could be free. He came that we might live freer and freer from the reality of the power of sin and live more and more what he has for our lives. But for that to happen, we must, must die. Because death is the way to life.

So Romans says, "Reckon yourselves to be what? Dead." Dead indeed to sin and alive with God through Christ Jesus. That word "reckon" is a word in the original language that means you do it again and again and again and again, daily. Reckon yourselves to be dead. Daily reckon yourselves to be alive. It's like Jesus said, "We take up our cross." How often? Daily. And follow him. Death is the way to life, specifically death to that which makes us unlike God. Dead to sin.

So I read the Bible, especially the New Testament, because it specifically tells us about Jesus, so I can know what he's like. And anything that is, that is not like him, I don't have anything to do with that. Anything he says is sin in thought or deed. There are some rules, by the way, that God, some things he prohibits, some things he commands. Those do exist. They are in the scripture. If he says it, if he says, "In thought, I want to think like him." And if there are thoughts in my head that are not like him, I don't want those. Why? Because they lead to death. I don't want something that will kill me. So I seek to die to that which will bring death to me. I reckon myself dead to sin. And anything that he says, listen to the word "holy," anything that is right and good and like him in the way we think and the way we're supposed to act, I want that because that brings life. And when I do that, when I reckon myself dead to sin and alive to God, it is what Leviticus says is that we consecrate ourselves. It's what Jesus says, we're taking up our cross daily. We're doing our part to partner with God. And when that happens, God meets us, and Yahweh M'Kaddesh does a work inside of us. And in the very essence of our being, he makes us more like him. Death, especially death to sin, is the way to life.

We take up our cross daily. But remember, even Jesus couldn't carry his cross alone. Even Jesus had to have help. That is why church, not just attending on Sunday, I'm talking about community. That is why it is a necessity for a life of faith. I mean, think about it. If Jesus couldn't carry his cross alone, who in the world are we to think that we can?

I guess probably around the time I was five or six, uh, my dad took a job with the federal marshal service, and he ended up moving us to Slidell, Louisiana. Uh, we stayed there for three or four years until we moved to Alpine, Texas, for his new, uh, station. During this time, unbeknownst to my parents, I, uh, to be sexually abused from the ages of six to 13. So after some deep questions, they, uh, realized what had happened, and they took me. Surprisingly, I thought, you know, counselor, something's going to happen. They took me to church, and it was just a private meeting with the pastors, and they just spoke a lot of truth over me. But they had prophesied over me at the time, they're like, you know, this, this is going to be used for good. God is going to use this to lead people to Christ. I would end up being baptized and accept Christ at about the age of 13, probably right before I turned 14. We actually moved back to Abilene. So we moved away from that church family, and my family started attending Beltway. I would begin to fall away from my relationship with the Lord. Um, and probably around 14 or so, I discovered pornography. As soon as I turned 18, I moved out. Um, told my parents, I was like, "Hey, it's time for me to do my own thing. I'm out." Moved in two doors down from probably the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. We get married. And, uh, pornography is still an issue at this point. And after some infertility issues, we end up actually getting pregnant and having our first child.

Now, during the course of this time, I discovered alcohol, and I was all for it. And eventually, it would get to a point that the pornography just wasn't cutting it. Got to a point that it just felt like a need for more. And so I would begin sexting affairs. Now, it would be all three of those as a daily habit until eventually, um, about a year and a half later, uh, we would go through a miscarriage. After the miscarriage, maybe two months later, we find out we're pregnant. And so we're nervous for the whole thing. Finally end up having our second daughter, Chapel. My daughter woke up around 1:00 AM, just inconsolable. We can't figure out what's wrong. She cries till 5:00 in the morning. And they tell us that she is septic, she has RSV, she has a parainfluenza, which, uh, has fluid on her lungs, and there's a bacteria in the fluid eating away at her lung tissue. And apparently, while at Hendrick, she suffered a fentanyl overdose. From what we're looking at, she probably has about a 20% chance to live. I walked into a chapel that they had up there and just broke down. Finally, they, uh, go to put her on ECMO, and, you know, she takes to it. It actually goes, you know, pretty seamlessly.

Well, they tell us when we get in there, "Hey, uh, we did a CT scan. We think there may be some brain damage." They're like, "All of her affected areas currently have to do with walking, thinking, speaking, hearing, and vision. She's probably going to be wheelchair-bound for the rest of her life." She went from what was probably supposed to be at least a four to five months ICU stay, and she turned it into about four weeks. We get sent back to Abilene, and she's just constantly improving. I mean, she had to relearn how to walk again. So I've got this little miracle running around in my house, and I've got all this shame and guilt inside, and I don't know what to do with it. So what I finally resulted on is, "Okay, I can't come clean about this. No one will understand it. No one will be able to fathom it." And it got to a point the sexting affairs were just not really doing it anymore, and it slowly turned into physical affairs. And, uh, due to some of the abuse from my younger years, uh, a lot of the sexting affairs and physical affairs actually ended up being same-sex experimenting and things of that nature. It would just start to eat me up, and I would just drink more, trying to, trying to drown it.

So I just resulted on, like, "Okay, like, I'm just going to take myself out of the equation." I grabbed my favorite handgun, grabbed my truck keys, and I'm walking to the truck. And something just hits my mind like a freight train. And it's like, "Just call one person." Like, I cannot come up with a name. And all of a sudden, I scroll across a name that was someone that I had made friends with while learning how to make knives, and his name is Dale White. I'm like, "Okay, if anybody is going to answer poorly, it's going to be this guy." So I call him up. Answers on, like, the second ring. And I just, I word vomit through this phone, this poor guy. And now I'm waiting for it. I'm like, "Okay, here comes the judgment. Here comes the shame. Like, here we go." And this dude just begins to just speak truth over me, starts telling me about the love of Christ, telling me that that's, that's my only hope out of this.

Now, what he's like, "Well, you did the hard part. You know, you admit you needed help. But now you got to do a really hard part. You got to tell your wife." So I take off into the house. I tell her, ex, or I tell her exactly as he told me to say it. And she's like, "Come on, it can't be that bad. Like, it can't be that bad." I'm like, "No, that's pretty bad." And she's like, "Come on, it's not like you cheated on me." And my face just drops. So she sits down, she's like, "All right, come on, just spit it out." So I just start rattling off everything. Finally get done with that, and she's outside cooling off. And I called Dale. I'm like, "Well, like, she pried it out of me." And so he's just again pouring into me about pursuing Christ. There's hope there.

So at one point, I finally text her, I'm like, "Look, do you want to leave? Like, I would understand if you want to leave." She's like, "No, I don't want to leave. She's like, "But this, we can't just leave it at this." We get through most of the day, and finally she texts me, she's like, "Look, I called your parents. They're here. When you get here, we're going to have a talk about this." And so I'm just sweating bullets. Walk inside. My parents are on the couch. Caitlyn's on the couch. And they sit me, me on the fireplace. Blow my expectations out of the water. They just begin loving on me. My dad stands up, and, uh, he's like, "You know, I thought I raised you better." I'm like, "Okay, there it is. There's, there's the condemnation I'm looking for." He's like, "I can't believe you thought there was ever something you could do that could make me stop loving you." We get done. He sits down. He's like, "All right, well, you know what we got to do now?" No, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do now. Like, I'm obviously lost. He's like, "Well, tomorrow is, uh, Tuesday. That's healing prayer night at Beltway. So we're going to that."

Finally get home. We all pile in one car. We go up there. And I walk in to Larry Bruner and Chris Carroll. These guys just start praying over me. They start loving over Caitlyn and I. And they're like, "Well, tomorrow's Re-Engage. Y'all should go to that." So we go to Re-Engage. First night we're there, they have a testimony. Bill and Tracy Frisky. Just to see another man be so vulnerable with his story just blew me away. Our very next Wednesday, um, this couple gets up to tell their testimony. And this guy just starts openly sharing about his struggle with pornography. Find out that their names are Clark and Aaron Chanel. Till we get done, and same thing, like, I was like, "That took guts." I'm going to go up there and say thank you. So I go up there, I just shake his hand. I'm like, "Hey man, I appreciate you sharing that. You know, I've struggled with pornography too. I just really appreciate y'all sharing that." I go to walk away, and this bear Paul just grabs my backpack. Almost come out of it. My feet leave the ground. I get pulled over back to the side of him. And he's like, "No, let me get your number."

I take off to Open Group. Before I can even sit down in Open Group, I've got a text on my phone like, "Hey, I'd like to, I'd like you to start meeting in my house on Fridays." I have no idea what I'm getting into. Let's do it. After meeting with Clark for a few months, he's like, "Hey, have you ever heard of boot camp?" Like, "No, never heard of boot camp." He's like, "Cool. You're going to go to boot camp." And again, just like nothing I've ever experienced. September of 2022, I accepted Christ and got baptized in the New Asis River. Caitlyn and I have started facilitating Re-Engage. Um, I work with men who, um, struggle with pornography addiction. Caitlyn works with women who have been hurt by pornography addiction. Walking throughout this journey, specifically within the last two years, I've started to redefine my definition of freedom. I'd stumble or have a slip-up or whatever the case may be, and I'm just like, "Why is this not gone?" And I felt like the enemy was just holding it over me like, "See, you ain't never going to leave." And I talked to Clark about it. And Clark finally hit me with it one day. He's like, "What if freedom is not the lack of temptation? But what if it's the ability to say no to the temptation, allowing the Holy Spirit to work through you and say no to that temptation?" That's probably more what freedom looks like.

Did you hear it? Death is the way to life. We reckon ourselves dead to sin. We reckon ourselves, we count ourselves, we consider, we know the work of the cross. We've said yes to follow him. So now I'm dead to sin, and it's going to be increasingly dead to me. I'm alive in Christ. I'm going to become more and more alive with him. I take up my cross daily with the help of others. We never go it alone. We follow him, and we find life.

So what if we do that? What if we just take a moment before we head off to lunch and head off in our days to forget? What if we bow our heads? And what if each one of us asks God what he would have us do? How would, how, how can I take up my cross this week? What would he have me do? Let's bow our heads and let's just ask the Lord. Each one of us. Maybe like you would say, "I don't know that I've ever become a follower of Jesus." See, what happens, I've been doing this a long time now, is people get this idea that I really need to get my act together, and then I'll become a follower of Jesus. But I'm just telling you, you can't get your act together. It's impossible. We're slaves to sin, the Bible says. And so really, what you have to do is you have to start just by saying, "God, I can't fix myself. I can't, I can't change. I'm a sinner, and I can't change that. But, but I say that what Jesus did on the cross is enough to pay the penalty for my sins. And you have said, if I'll say yes to you and go back to the way I was designed, which is to live dependent upon you, following you, I take up my cross for the first time and I say yes to you, you will save me, you will forgive me, you will make me new, and we can start on a journey of new life." But you have to start with that decision. And it may be that you have never, ever made a decision to follow him. Today is a day. And I'm going to encourage you here in a moment. I'm just going to give you a chance to like draw a line in the sand and say, "I'm His follower." Lord, now I'm saying yes to him. But do not do it lightly. Don't do it casually. Don't dare tell the God of the universe that you're going to become his follower when you don't mean it. Man, I would tell you, never even step into a marriage when you're not all in. And this is a much bigger deal than marriage. But it is the grandest thing ever he offers to his life. He has heaven praying for you right now if you don't know him and you want to become his follower.

So here in a minute, I'm going to count to three. And wherever you are, North Campus, South Campus, online, you need to say yes to be his follower. I want you, without hesitation, you make that commitment. When I hit three, I want you to raise your hand up high. Ready? One, two, three. Put it up right now. Come on. Yeah, there's men and women doing it right now. Praise be to God. Come on, anybody else? You do it. Leave them up high. You tell the devil right now, "I belong to Jesus. I am His." Yeah. I can't see the North Campus, but I know there are people there. Praise be to God. People online. Come on. You can put your hand down right now. I want everybody to stay in a prayerful posture, but I want you to give them a shout and a clap and tell them how proud we are of them. It's incredible. Come on. If you raised your hand, I have an instruction for you. Your next step is to be baptized. That is the very next thing you need to do. And the way you do that is simple. Inside the Park News or on the chair back at our campus, you can use the QR code, and it's going to take you to a "Steps I Need to Be Baptized." All you got to do is give us the basic information. Our team is going to reach out to you early this week, and we're going to go on that journey with you, and we'll just be there with you, talking about steps that you can take.

Now, for the rest of us, we say we are followers of Jesus. How is it that God is telling you to pick up your cross right now? Just ask God right now. God, how would I pick up my cross? Maybe you need to engage the scripture and learn who he is. Like, get in the New Testament. If scripture, if you're scared of scripture, just get in the New Testament. You don't have to understand it all. You've got the rest of your life to understand the Bible, and you'll never get it all. Every time you read it, it's just more. Start in Matthew, go all the way through to the end. Do it again. Do it again. And get to know, and just ask, "Who is God?" And just get to know him a little bit at a time, and say, "I want to become like that. I want to say no to this that he says is sin and destructive to me. I want to say yes to..." Maybe it's that. Maybe it's community. Maybe you heard that, like, "I need people." And you need to take steps. If you don't know where that is, right after our service at our physical locations, we have, um, "Start Here." That's all "Start Here" is. It's 10 to 12 minutes of saying, "This is where you can step into a place of community where you can help people carry their cross, and they can help you carry your cross, and we do it together." What is the Lord telling you?

So I've been praying a prayer, and maybe you want to pray it. And the prayer is simple: "Make me holy, oh God, as you are holy." Would you pray that prayer, like, right now? Head bowed, eyes closed. Would you just whisper it out loud? "Make me holy, oh God, as you are holy." Would you say it with me? "Make me holy, oh God, as you are holy." One more time. "Make me holy, oh God, as you are holy."

Father, I pray that you would miraculously right now change the way we think, and that "holy" would become this precious, beautiful word that it is, describes the essence of who you are. We reclaim it in Jesus' name. Forgive us where we have thought negatively towards something that is the ultimate positive, and we want to become like that. So we worship you, Yahweh M'Kaddesh. I am the one who sanctifies. And we say, "Oh God, keep taking us on a journey of sanctification." We say no to sin. We reckon ourselves dead to sin. And just bring that up to us, Lord, each and every day. Let us be alive in you, and let us live for the glory of your name. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.