Transcription
Well, good morning, man. It is so good to be with you. North Campus, South Campus, our online family. If you have a Bible, we're going to be in the eighth chapter of Luke as we wrap up a journey we've been on. Any journey we take is never complete. We've got to live it out. We've been talking about how God wants to sanctify. Sanctify. This word means to make holy, to make like God. And we've been talking about a specific sliver of our being, our emotions. Our emotions are part of our soul. We're to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Soul is a portion of us. It's our mind. It's our will. It's our emotions. And we've been talking about, um, that fast. We're going to wrap up today with one of these emotions that I think the enemy uses more than probably any other to rob life from us.
And then next week, somebody say next week, we're going to begin a journey you're going to want to be a part of that we want to enter into a better life. And we're going to do that by diving into a specific book of the Bible that I want you, this is radical. I want you to read it this week. I want you to read six whole chapters. Whoa. I know. The book of Ephesians, right? I want you to get into the book of Ephesians. You can read one chapter a day starting Monday. You can go through Saturday. We're going to read it several times over the summer. And what we're going to do is we're going to dive in deep to some ways we need to think rightly and choices we need to be made based on the way we choose so that we can live a better life. There's not any one of us that doesn't want to live a better kind of life. And what you can add to your reading is there are people around you. God has purposely put you in the lives of people that are maybe your neighbors. They may be your co-workers. They may be family members. They may be on similar ball clubs, something like that that you can invite. Cuz I promise you they want hope. They want life that is found in Jesus Christ. Amen. We all want this reality.
Luke chapter 8, we're going to dive in and see something that you've never seen before. Uh, I promise you that. You know, we all have memories in our lives. Some of you are as old as I am. Many of you, most of you are not. Um, but I have things that I can remember very vividly at times from 40 and 50 years ago. It only takes a slight remembrance of some sort to go back into detail. One of those days happened a little over 40 years ago. I'm 17 years old. I've been a follower of Jesus for, um, about four years at the time. And I, I can remember exactly where I was, exactly what I was feeling, exactly what I was thinking. I had just finished reading almost all the New Testament in one sitting. And I know you're sitting there thinking, "Well, you're bragging about yourself now, dude." But it's really not to brag about. The feelings I had were not good feelings. You see, prior to me reading almost all the New Testament, it had happened. I had fallen. I had done something that I didn't want to do. I had failed in life. And this problem that had plagued me for almost half of my existence at that time had happened again. You got to realize when I made a commitment to follow Jesus, I, I really was, uh, I really didn't mean it. It wasn't like a societal thing being part of the Bible Belt, you make a decision to follow Jesus kind of thing. I, that wasn't me. I, I wanted to run after Jesus. I felt called to preach. In fact, I was preaching. I was 17 years old. I was preaching in little communities, uh, around my hometown. I was a leader in my youth group. All that kind of stuff. But it had a hold on my life and it was strangling me. For almost half of my life, I had been caught up in pornography and I wanted to quit. Man, man, did I want to quit. I cried. I prayed. I made deals with God. And I would read large sections of the Bible somehow trying to balance the scales in my immature mind about my failure. It was like I was doing penance. It's like I was trying to somehow make myself clean with my actions.
See, at that time I had no memory of sexual abuse that had happened in my life about the time all this stuff triggered. And you know, now I know that that was absolutely part of the issue. It wasn't the totality of the issue, by the way. There were other things as well. Um, I also had a church that I, I really love and appreciate. They introduced me to Jesus and the Bible, but I'm just telling you, it was a rigid, legalistic, rule-keeping church. And really what I was told was this: you make a decision to follow Jesus, and it's your job to do what Jesus tells you to do. And man, I wanted to do what Jesus told me to do. The only problem was, I couldn't. You know, the church didn't teach me about the power of the cross in my day-to-day life. It didn't teach me about freedom. It didn't teach me about the power of the Spirit and what he could do for me. What I was taught, or I felt like I at least what I heard, was it was up to me to defeat it. And I failed. And I remember this particular day not because it was the most outlandish. I just remember the thought that entered my brain thinking, "This must be who I am. I must be flawed and messed up and hopeless and worthless. I am what I am and I just, I can't change. This must be my destiny for the rest of my life. I am bad and I can do nothing about it. I am a failure." And I knew at that moment, now that I look back, this thing called shame had a grip on my heart. Shame is this thing the enemy uses far more often than we imagine to keep people from Jesus or to keep us from the destiny God has for our lives. It's amazing.
See, when I use the word shame, some of you think, well, shame is not that bad a thing because we think shame and guilt are almost the same thing. Like guilt is when I do something bad and shame is when I feel really bad about it. That's not what I mean by the words shame and guilt. I think guilt and shame are different. Guilt focuses on what I did. Shame focuses on who I am. Guilt says, "Hey, hey, I did something bad." Which that, let's be honest, can be a good thing. Like, there's some things I need to change in my life. The Spirit of God convicts us to change. But that's not what shame says. Shame says, "I am bad and I cannot change." And this is what the enemy often uses in people's lives to have us sitting in churches but never give our lives to Jesus. Or even if we give our lives to Jesus, he keeps us less than what God has for our lives because we think, well, because I did this, because of that, because of this thing, I can never do this. I can never be used of God. I can never, etc., etc. I want you to hear something from me. I want you to hear me well. Jesus came to eradicate your shame. I'm not saying that lightly. I'm not saying that casually. I need you to hear me. Jesus came to utterly eradicate the shame that often the enemy uses in our life. And I know this because of an encounter that Jesus had with a woman on the streets of Capernaum in the eighth chapter of Luke. You want to pay careful attention here because what really happened would be easy for us in 21st century America to miss.
In Luke 8:40 it says, "Jesus returned, and the crowds welcomed him, for they were all waiting for him." Well, where did he return to? He returned back to his hometown. Well, really not his hometown. It was his ministry, um, center called Capernaum. It's on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. If you read earlier in Luke chapter 8, you'll find that Jesus went on the other side of the lake. He would often go from Capernaum to different areas around the Sea of Galilee, the Lake of Galilee, and do ministry. He had gone to an area called of the Gerasenes, and he had freed a person that was demonized there. It's interesting. On his way there, there was a storm on the lake. Jesus is asleep at the front of the boat. All the disciples are with him. The 12, most of them had grown up on that lake. They were professional fishermen. They had seen all kinds of storms. This storm was so bad that they thought they were going to die. Jesus is asleep. They wake up Jesus. And when Jesus awoke, he rebuked the wind and the sea. And he said, "What? Peace." Somebody say, "Peace." "Be still." And the wind ceased, and there was great calm. When Jesus speaks peace, listen to me. There's calm. Remember that because it is pertinent to the journey we're on right now.
The scripture goes on, "And there came a man to Jesus named Jairus, who was a ruler of the synagogue. And falling at Jesus' feet, he implored him to come to his house, for he had an only daughter about 12 years of age, and she was dying." As Jesus went, people pressed against him. So Jairus is this religious leader. They are the ones that have been not just struggling with Jesus, they have been opposing Jesus. Jairus is at this juncture an enemy of Jesus. And yet he does the most unexpected thing. He comes and he falls at the feet of Jesus. Someone of his stature would never get down on the ground before someone else. But he is so desperate that he falls at the feet of Jesus. And Jesus models for us what he told us to do in the Sermon on the Mount, that we are to love our enemies because he takes this man who has been his enemy, who's been opposing him, and he loves on him and starts going to his house. And while he's going to their house, "there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone." Having a discharge of blood is a kind way of saying that, um, this woman's menstrual cycle had been on continual flow for 12 years. I mean, we know today what that means. We know she's probably in a lot of pain. We probably know she's anemic. She can't have kids. We don't know if she ever had kids, but she had all this stuff. She couldn't have kids. But the part that we don't understand that everybody in that day would have understood was this: Because of this condition, she was considered unclean. To go out in public, she would have to cry, "Unclean! Unclean!" Because if she touched anyone, they would become unclean themselves. That means for probably 12 years, she hadn't been out of the house much. She had not been to the synagogue, which was the center of all Jewish life. There's a likelihood she had touched no one. Even if she had a family, she probably did not touch her husband. She did not touch her kids because she did not want to rub off on them and make them unclean. She had exhausted all her resources trying to get whole. In fact, Mark tells us that she had suffered much under many physicians and had spent all she had and she was no better, but she had only grown worse. And I'm telling you, because of this, she felt shame.
And I know what you're thinking. You're going, "Well, she shouldn't feel ashamed. She didn't do anything." But come on, we all know how that's not the totality of how shame works, is it? It gets triggered by a lot of things. Absolutely. There's choices we make in our lives that can trigger and allow the enemy to have shame. But it's not just the choices that you and I make. Sometimes shame can be triggered by what other people do to you. If they abuse you verbally, say words like "worthless" over you all the time, "you were never wanted," "your mama says she loves you but she never did." To beat you physically. What does that communicate to your value? Sexually, you get what I'm saying? Can bring shame onto our life. And it can be things that we, uh, that choices other people make that just speak to us. If you've ever been divorced, in a divorce you never want to be a part of, cheated on, communicate, "you're unwanted, not worth this person." Could be a disease, and wonder why we still have this disease, this lack of things physically. There's all sorts of stuff. A Christian counselor said, "Shame is a deep sense that you are inherently flawed, unacceptable, and unworthy of love because of something you've done, something done to you, or something just associated with you." I'm telling you, this would have been true in this woman's life because not only would she have thought this, she would have been told something was wrong with her. In this day, actually, back throughout most of the times of the Bible, it was a commonly held belief. It's not true. It's not a biblical belief, but it was commonly held that if something was wrong with you, like seriously wrong with you physically, you did something to cause it. Jesus was one time walking with the disciples, and the scripture says that they saw a man blind from birth, and the disciples asked him, "Hey, Rabbi, who sinned?" The assumption: this man's blind. Somebody sinned. Somebody messed up. Was it the man or was it his parents? It was just a given that for them to have a serious issue in their life, somebody had to mess up. And Jesus said, "Hey, it was not that this man sinned. It wasn't that his parents sinned." Listen, this karma-like idea, karma is not a biblical concept at all. It actually counters the scripture. Karma is from Hinduism. It's been in some Middle Eastern thought all along the way. But this idea that somehow when bad things happen, it happens because we somehow deserve it in life. It's not just biblical. But again, if we're honest with ourselves, most of us feel it at times. When a bad thing happens, a difficult thing that we can't get over happens, there's something inside of us goes, "What did I do to deserve this? What did I do wrong? What did I not do right?" And even the Spirit doesn't show us anything in life. We begin to think, I did something to deserve this. Something about me must be flawed. And it's the enemy getting his claws of shame into our life.
This is not just what this woman would have thought. People would have told her this. I know this because I read other parts of the Bible. There's a book of the Bible called the book of Job. Most people know the book of Job. They struggle to read the book of Job. We read the first three chapters and the last three chapters, but everything in between is basically some guys that claim to be Job's friends looking at Job and saying, "Hey, because of the issues of your life, you must have really messed up. What did you do wrong? Confess it to God. He'll fix it." And Job's going, "I don't know what I did." That's the whole story of the book of Job. That's what this woman would have had in her life. There would have been people who said, "Hey, hey, hey, you did something. What did you do?" And I bet she confessed everything she knew to confess. I bet she tried to do as much as she would be allowed to do to try to somehow make up for this, but it didn't fix it. She spent everything she had and it not only didn't get better, it got worse. And at some point, she probably concluded, "I'm just flawed. There's something wrong with me. I must have done something. I don't know what it is. I'm just messed up. I'm worthless. I'm hopeless. I'm a failure." She felt shame.
I don't know if you noticed in the text, but we never learned this woman's name. I think that's on purpose because it's one of the symptoms of shame. See, we know that one of the signs of shame is there's a hiddenness. It's like we want to isolate ourselves from other people because the thought is, if people really knew who I was, they knew how worthless and hopeless I really am, then they would have nothing to do with me. But that's not all we know from shame. We know there's a hopeless perfectionism that rises up in a lot of people. What happens is we begin to think, "I have to do everything just right. And if I can do everything just right, I can prove to myself and everyone else, I'm not that bad." Here's the problem. Anybody ever been any good at perfectionism? That's what I thought. And so, it's a cycle that actually repeats itself because you go for this perfectionism. It doesn't work. And you say, "There, it proves that I'm just worthless." There's a harsh criticism of both myself and others. It's often a sign that I am so hard on myself because I can't get up to that perfectionism. But then I see flaws in others. Oh, and I'm telling you, I don't know if you've noticed it or not, it's easy to find flaws in other people. And we are judgmental in the biblical way about that habitually destructive behavior. Have you ever wondered why people just make bad choice after bad choice that seems to be hard on them? If you don't feel like you're worth anything, guess what you'll do? You'll treat yourself like you're not worth anything.
John chapter 8. Man, you ought to read the first 11 verses this week. I know I got you reading lots of Bible this week. It's really not that much. Like six chapters, seven, eight. You're into eight chapters right now. You're good. John chapter 8, a woman is brought who was caught in the act of adultery. You got to read the passage for yourself. It's phenomenal. But I've often wondered, why would this woman even risk adultery in that culture? She's a woman, so she's gonna be treated different than the man. It's not fair. It's not right. It's not biblical, but it's the way it was. And adultery is a capital offense in that culture. Meaning, you can be put to death for it. Why take that risk? And then I began to wonder what other things had happened to her in her life. What words have been spoken over her by parents and by spouses and by whoever? What choices might she have made that sunk in that she wasn't worth much? And she started acting in a way that was consistent with how she felt about herself. Shame. Shame also produced a helpless feeling. It's what I felt that day as a 17-year-old. "I am what I am. I can't change." Man, I can't tell you which of these feelings were true of this woman other than the hiddenness, but I'm sure she felt several of them. And I, I feel it's interesting that her story is connected to this guy named Jairus. Like we hear Jairus's story, then we hear her story, then we get the completion of Jairus's story. It's like he's the bookend on her story. It's like we're supposed to, it's like we're supposed to, um, consider them together. And they're really complete opposites, right? Jairus is a leader in the synagogue. This woman's not allowed in the synagogue. Jairus is well known in the community. Nobody knows this woman's name. Jairus is well respected and honored, a man of privilege in his community. This woman is an outcast. But they both needed Jesus. Maybe they show us the ways the enemy tries to keep us from Jesus. You know, Jairus, a man of pride, he was probably thinking, "I got my act together. I'm religious. I got this all figured out." But then something happens and we figure out, "I can't handle life all on my own." And that's how Jesus deals with pride. Often it's a tragedy. It's a divorce. It's a loss of a job. It's a failure of a business. It's giving in to something morally that I shouldn't give into, etc., etc. And we finally realize, "I cannot do life on my own." This woman, no, no, she would have known she needed help. She absolutely knew she needed from Jesus. She just didn't feel like he would have anything to do with her. Why? Because she was unclean.
So what did she do? She came up behind him and she touched the fringe of his garment. So Jewish men and women, I'm sorry, Jewish men of the day would often wear what we call a tallit, a prayer shawl like this. It was a whole undergarment. And so if you thought Jesus had an undergarment that was a prayer shawl, a tallit. And below down here would have been these fringes hanging out. They would have been called tzitzit. And so what happens is, I want you to get the image. This woman came up from where? Behind him. These are at his feet. So where does she have to be? She has to be low. She's down on her knees just trying to grab hold of this sign of prayer for the holy man, and maybe something can happen in her life. She came up behind him, touched the garment, the fringe of his garment, and immediately his discharge of blood ceased. And Jesus said, "Hey, who touched me?" Everyone denied it. And Peter said, "Hey, Jesus, you're in the midst of a crowd. Everybody's touching you." And Jesus said, "No, no, no. Somebody touched me differently. I perceive. I felt that power has gone out from me." I mean, so much for being hidden, right? So notice this. "And the woman saw that she was not what? Hidden. And she came trembling." Why? Because she was certain that the holy man was just going to turn and look at her and say, "How dare you touch me? How dare someone like you get anywhere close to me? You sinner. You reprobate. How dare you do this?" But she saw she couldn't be hidden. She comes before him trembling and she says, "This is what I did and this is why I did it. But I was immediately healed when it happened." And she's waiting for the reprimand. She's waiting for the curse. She's waiting for the reality of what's happened for her own life. And then Jesus, in this beautiful thing, turns and looks at her and says, "My daughter." This word is so incredible. It's the only place in scripture that Jesus calls somebody by this name. He doesn't call her sinner. He doesn't call her reprobate. He doesn't identify her by her shame. He doesn't even call her ma'am. He didn't call her by her first name. He presses beyond into a precious, like name that a grandpa would have for his granddaughter, a dad for his baby girl. It's like he says, "Baby girl. Precious one." It's an incredible image of what Jesus wants to do. This woman that was an outcast that no one had anything to do with is now being called by the creator of everything, "Precious sweetheart." She who hasn't been touched for probably 12 years, probably has the hands that shape the universe reach out and grab her. This woman who has no name, who nobody knows her name, has one look into her eyes and he not only knows her name, he's just not going to call her by her name. He's going to call her by something more intimate, more precious, because he wants to be closer to her. And this is what's incredible: he's not concerned about her lack of cleanliness. I want you to think about this. Typically, what happens is when the unclean touches the clean, the clean doesn't make the unclean clean. The unclean makes the clean unclean, right? That's the way things work. It's similar to what would happen is if there was a sickness, like if my wife has the flu, I'm completely healthy and I go like hug on her and mug on her and stuff like that. For you young ones, look up "mugging." Um, anyway, um, and I do all that, does my health transfer to her and make her well, or does her sickness transfer to me and make me sick? That's the reason, by the way, I don't hug on her. I don't mug on her. I go sleep in another room. You know what I'm saying, right? It's like, I'm loving, but you're kind of on your own through the flu 'cause I don't want it. That's the thought with uncleanliness. That's why she's hidden. That's why she's. But when it comes to Jesus, Jesus isn't impacted by our uncleanliness. His clean, his righteousness, his goodness is more powerful than our fail, and it eradicates our unrighteousness and our lack of cleanliness. And so she touches him. She reaches out. She explains what's going on. He says this, and he looks at her and goes, "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in what? Peace." What's that word? Peace. The same word he spoke to a storm. The winds and the waves, they calmed down in life. So Jesus, with the word peace, eradicated the chaos of the storm. And in the same way, in her life, his word peace eradicated the chaos of her soul that had come as a result of shame. And listen to me, he wants to speak the same word to you right now. He wants you to be able to say when you leave this place, "Go in peace." He wants shame to be removed and for us to live as he designed us to live from the beginning.
See, there is a truth in the text. It's shouted throughout scripture that shame is not something that God wants us to have in any form or fashion. Yes, there's conviction. Yes, we should change. But not, not shame. Shame heals as I change my focus. And that focus is no longer on what I am not. It's not on what I did not do. It's not how I felt. I change my focus from what I am not to what he says and who he is. So if our shame is because of stuff we did, I got plenty of stuff I did. I got plenty of stuff I still wrestle with. And the enemy wants to come in and bring shame. And what Jesus speaks to us is he speaks to us through the cross and he says, "You're not worthless." Listen to me. Because you did this, you still have worth. You still have value in my life. And the way I prove it is this: I paid the price of my life for you. And so what happens, listen, if we reach out and we dare touch him in faith, we grab hold of this. Our uncleanliness does not do something to Jesus. His clean comes into us. He takes our shame. He takes our sin upon himself. Just like he took this woman's sickness, he took it all upon himself. And by his stripes, we learn that she was healed. He takes it upon himself in the same way he will take your guilt. He will take your failures. He will take your sin upon himself. You know what he gives you? "Go in peace, son. Go in peace, daughter. Your faith has made you well." You see, what happens in our lives when we become a follower of Jesus is that we are forgiven. We're made into a new person. That's why baptism is such a big deal to us. Baptism is this, this way that we're shouting to the world, "Hey, I've given my life to Jesus and he's taken the old me and he's buried him in a grave and he raised me up a new person and now I'm going to be a person who grows." Somebody say grow. It's a big word here. Nobody has arrived. So if you're thinking right now, "Hey, hey, I got it all together, baby. I'm already like Jesus." This is the wrong church for you because there ain't nobody in here got it all together. But we are all on a journey and that journey is to become more and more like he is. We do that by the power of the cross, for the message of the cross. It's foolishness to those who are perishing. But to those of us who are, notice the phrase, "being saved." That means I'm being more saved today than I was yesterday, than I am the next day. And in the next day I'm more saved, and the next day I'm more saved. How? Because it is the message of the cross. It is the power of the cross that has me being saved day by day in life.
You know what that tells you right now? Listen to me. If you are in Jesus, you grabbed onto him. You are the very opposite of hopeless. You may feel like you're hopeless, but no, no. What Jesus did on the cross is more than enough to lead us to a place of change. And so therefore, at some point, I had to wake up from this struggle that I had that indicated to me I was worthless. And I had to say, "No, if I will grab hold of Jesus and walk with him, there is a power over the flesh. There's a power to walk differently. There's a power to live more and more like I'm supposed to live." Listen, I haven't arrived, but I'm a long way from that 17-year-old. And the reason I'm a long way from that 17-year-old is not because of me. I tried it and I proved you cannot do it on your own. But if you'll walk with him, if you'll grab hold of him and stay held onto him, he will change you day by day by day and make you more like him. And you want to know something else? It's really good. It's abundant and full of life. And if your shame is because somebody else did something to you, I get it. I understand if somebody, in the way they acted, said you were worthless, in the words they said, they said you were worthless. Maybe just the stuff of this world, the fallenness of this world, disease, and things like that have communicated that to you. I want you to hear something. Jesus speaks a word. "Daughter, son, go and live in peace." You are not what others have said about you. You are not what others have done to you. You are what Jesus says you are. What does he say? Listen to me, ladies. Look at me. "Daughter." Men, I don't think he's leaving us out because he says it elsewhere, but look at me, "Son." In Jesus. Say, "In Jesus." In Jesus, I am not what I have done. In Jesus, I am not what others have done for me. In Jesus, I am not, um, the realities of what others have said about me. In Jesus, I am who he says I am because he has enough power to bring it about. And as I focus on that, not on my lack, but on his abundance. How many times do you think that woman repeated that phrase? Do you think she struggled a week later and thinking, "I'm probably not worth all that"? But then she said, "No, no, no, no, no." He said, "Daughter, I heard it. I looked into his eyes. He said, 'Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go. He wants me to live in peace.'" I wonder when she told the story if she just looked at people and say, "I know you think this. I'm, you may think I'm the craziest person in the world, but I heard it. He said, 'Daughter,' he said it. He looked at me. I looked into his eyes." And I believe by the Spirit, the same thing can happen for you. I have never physically laid eyes on Jesus. I've not had a vision of him. But I've had him speak the word of sonship over my life. And I've heard him say, "Go and live in peace." And I've heard it because I don't have to hear it in the word. It's what he wants for your life right now. And it's what I want us to pray into our existence.
So here's what I want you to do. I want to bow your heads. North Campus, South Campus, if you're online right now, only people who can't bow their heads are those that are driving. Um, I want you to hear. I want to ask first and foremost, have you ever embraced you? Have you ever fallen at the feet of Jesus and embraced him as Lord and Savior? Here's the deal. That's the beginning of our help. See, I don't think anyone is hopeless, but I will tell you, outside of Jesus, I believe we are hopeless. I don't think we can fix ourselves. I think we are bad and beyond repair. That's why Jesus came. Jesus came to tell us, "Hey, if you could do it yourself, if you could obey enough rules, I would have just let you have the rules." But he gave us the rules. He did it through Israel to prove to us we couldn't be good enough. We couldn't be righteous enough. So, we needed a savior. So, outside of Jesus, we cannot change. But I can tell you this, in Jesus, we can. But it starts by falling at the feet of Jesus. We have to do what Jairus did, who was desperate enough to overcome his pride and say, "I need you, Jesus." This woman who out of desperation fell at his feet and grabbed hold of him, even though she expected to be reprimanded. She just needed something. And maybe you've never said yes to be a follower of Jesus. I don't want to take this lightly at all. If you're a believer right now, be praying for men and women right now. This is a serious moment the Lord has in our lives. You've never said yes to become a follower of Jesus, but this day there's something stirring and you know, "I need to become his. I want to say yes." Not in a casual way, not in a, "I'm not talking about a Bible Belt kind of religious thing." I'm talking about a life that has surrendered to Jesus, has fallen at his feet and grabbed hold of him and say, "I need newness. I need help. I need hope in my life." And I embrace that I am a messed-up person who's a sinner that cannot fix themselves. But what Jesus did is more than enough. And I start by saying yes to him. And I want to do it today, right now. If you've never done that, but you want to do it today, and you need to say yes to him, I'm going to count to three in just a second, and I want you to raise your hand up high. I want you to tell everyone around you. I want you to tell the devil that I no longer belong to you. I belong to Jesus. I am his and he's going to bring change to my life. Or maybe you would be what's called a prodigal. Like a long time ago, I made a decision to follow him. I haven't been living it, but I'm returning to him right now. I'm coming back to him. If that's either true, you need to make a first-time decision. You're a prodigal that needs to come to him right now. When I hit three, one, two, three, put your hands up right now. Come on. Come on. There's men and women all around this room that need to embrace Jesus. There's men and women at the North Campus. Come on, put them up. Put them up high. Tell the devil, "We are no longer going to back down from what God has done for us." Praise be to God. Come on right now. Anybody else? You can put your hands down. Stay in this place of prayer, but give them a shout. Give them a clap. Come on. Let's celebrate what God is doing in people. If you made that decision, inside your park news, there's a little QR code that says, "I have decided." Before you leave either of our campuses or you go online right now, fill that out. We can talk about taking next steps and going on a journey with you.
Now, everyone else, I'm assuming that if you've not made that decision, you're in Jesus. And I'd love to tell you that once you're in Jesus, you never have to battle shame. I know better than that. The enemy still gets in there. But I want him to eradicate it right now. We need to hear a fresh word of peace. Some of us are still trying to pay for something that's under the blood of Jesus. Listen, that is an act of dishonor to Jesus. It feels right. It's like, "I did it. I really messed up." I get that. I get wanting to undo what I did. But that's dishonoring Jesus. It's saying, "I have to do it. I don't put it to Jesus." No. No. No. And so, some of us embrace Jesus, but we still punish ourselves for the things we did. That's shame. And we say no more to that. He wants to eradicate that right now. Or there has been some shame put into our lives by what others have done to us. Words spoken over us, things done, things said. We just have this feeling. And I'm going to ask you here in a second. I want you to break a stronghold. I'm going to ask you to do what this lady did. Even though it's fearful, it's a hard thing to do to say, "I have shame in my life, but I want it gone." But I'm going to ask you to put your hand up in a second. And I'm doing that not because anybody's looking around. In fact, I want you to bow your head, close your eyes, that thing. But I want you to do it as a statement. It's just an act of reaching out like this woman who was deathly afraid. But we're going to reach out and say, "Jesus, I want to hear your word over me again for things that I have done in my past, maybe even recent things spoken over me, things done to me, vile things that have occurred, but no more." He's going to say, "Daughter," he's going to say, "Son, you are made well. Go and live out the peace that I place within you." If there's a wrestle of shame, I want to pray for you. Put your hand up right now and say, "I, I need that." Come on. I get it. I get it. Come on. Anybody else? Just, come on, Lord. Yeah. Praise be to God. Father, speak your word over every. I just, I do sense there's some people want to raise their hand. It's just so hard to do it. We don't deserve. We will say the truth. We don't deserve you, Jesus. But we also embrace the truth that you say we are worth it to you. I, I don't know why that is other than you are so great and we receive it. I speak your sonship over men who just raised their hand. They would hear the word "son," "precious one." For women, they would hear "daughter." "Your faith, the way you've responded to me, you are well. Now go and live it out. Go in peace. Live in the joy. Live in the righteousness. Live in the goodness. Live by my power. Live in victory over the things in our lives. But we say no more shame. No more shame." I ask Jesus, speak the word of peace and eradicate the shame in the life of men and women. I ask in Jesus name. Amen.