What's up church. How we doing? It's good to see all of you here. It Frederick. Good to see all of you at Nyah. Good to have all of you online. Just say this. I did one of those baptisms. That's the...
What's up church. How we doing? It's good to see all of you here. It Frederick. Good to see all of you at Nyah. Good to have all of you online. Just say this. I did one of those baptisms. That's the fastest changing I've ever done in my entire life. I it was, it was fun cuz I knew a couple of those kiddos and so I just wanted to be out there and see both of them get baptized and I cut it a little short on time, so. Alright. We're good. Everybody settle down or Sean settle down and we're ready to go. So I want you to get to Matthew chapter five. We've been there for six weeks. If you're just kind of showing up today, we've been there for six weeks and going through this series called Jesus manifesto where we've been kind of tracking through the beginning of the sermon on the Mount.
And so the beginning of the sermon on the Mount, it's called to be attitudes and there are eight of them and we're in number six and number six says this, Jesus just makes a statement. He says blessed or blessed. You could say, I've got my king James going on. Blessed are the pure in spirit are pure in heart for, they will see God blessed are the pure in heart for, they will see God. It's interesting. I think no matter if you're sitting at NIWA, you're sitting right here in the room at Fred or you're online. There's nobody that kind of says, what does it mean? Like pure, pure in heart or purity. When we talk about relationships, like we talk about relational purity. I think every single person gets it now guys, interesting thing this year is my 25th anniversary with my wife, Jen. Pretty cool.
Right? And it's all, all 25 years have been marital bliss. I mean, that's what, I don't know what she would say, but no marriages can be difficult. Can it, but, but I tell you this man, the commitment and being together for 25 years and the things that we've gone through and seen, and then just how sweet, you know, as you grow and you mature things just get better when you're working on things, man. It's good. But when we talk about relational purity in the context of those 25 years, I don't think anybody's confused what that looks like. Like when we sit here right now, we would say, okay, that means that Sean only has eyes for Jen. Right? We talk about the context of relational purity. It means she's the one I pursued. There's not other interests. Like my eyes, aren't wandering to other things.
We just moved in this new community or a new neighborhood north side of Firestone and it's got a pool and our kids go down the pool. We don't normally go down the pool hardly at all, but I'll go down and play with the kids a little bit, whatever, but let's say we did. Let's say Jen and I went down to the pool and we just kind of hung out on a couple lawn chairs. Kids are playing in the pool. We're having a good time. We're taking in some rays and let's say an attractive young female walks by. And let's say that I did this, took the sunglasses man. What would happen in that moment? Like my wife would probably, after she slapped the snot outta me, right? She would look at me and say, what are you looking at? Because when we talk about relational purity, ma'am relational purity starts with us having eyes for one person.
Right? And when, when we have wandering eyes, nothing good happens from that. Like you just know in the context of relationships, when somebody has wandering eyes just constantly and consistently, and there's always an issue of that, man, we alone relationally that can lead to all kinds of stuff. Even biblically. It talks about in relationships that wandering eyes lead to lust, wandering eyes lead to this one big word that we can talk about. We all know adultery, right? Purity and relationships means I have eyes for one. Now. It's interesting. When we talk about relational purity, we get it. But let's step back for a second. When we go into what Jesus is talking about, he says blessed of the pure and heart he's talking about spiritually there. So what does it mean to have spiritual purity? It's interesting to note that when you go to scripture and you just look throughout scripture, it's very similar.
Like the language that is used for spiritual purity and spiritual impurity is the same. Basically. If you go through the new Testament, the new Testament writers say, here's what Jesus said. They repeat that. Then they add their own color to that and say relational purity is having eyes for one, having eyes for God. Relational impurity is having wandering eyes or a wandering heart. And it talks about it in the context uses the same exact words. When it gets to impurity, it says wandering hearts lead to things and it use the same exact language leads to lust for the desires of this world, leads to cheating, uses that word and it uses the big one adultery now alt tree, Matthew chapter five, verse eight, Jesus nails it out. And he says blessed to the pure heart for, they will see God blessed to the pure heart because they have eyes for God and for God only. So my question to you would be who do you have eyes for?
Who do you have eyes for spiritually speaking? Where are your eyes trained to look? Because here's what you know. And it's exactly why my wife would. I only have eyes for her, but if that happened, my wife would look at me and say, what are you looking at? Because what she knows is our, our hearts have a tendency to follow what our eyes are focused on. And it's the same spiritually. You know, this, your heart has a tendency to follow what your eyes are focused on. So who do you have eyes for? Again? Jesus says blessed to the pure hearts for, they will see God when you read the Bible is seriously clear. It is abundantly clear. You cannot miss this. Jesus cares deeply about your heart. Like when we think about the thing that Jesus cares about most it is your heart. Why? Because your heart reflects your true character.
Everything you say, everything, you do, everything. You think everything about you comes out of the overflow of your heart. And because of that, the Bible says you gotta guard. It proves 4 23 says, guard your hearts, bubble, all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it. And what is in your hearts will come out through every part of your life. And the interesting thing is Jesus cares about your heart. Here's what he says is Jesus came to change your heart, not just your conduct. You see what most of us feel like is is that the Christian life or the spiritual life is a list of a code of conduct. That if we do these things, God will bless us and God will take care of us.
Here's what you need to understand is the spiritual life like purity of heart, keeping our eyes on God. It's not just a code of conduct. God cares less about your conduct. He cares more about the condition of your heart. We could say it this way. God cares less about your sin and more about the condition of your heart. And he might sit there and say, whoa, I thought God really cared about sin and hated sin. He does. But he actually cares more of the condition and the attitude and the direction of your heart than he cares about what you actually do.
And there's so many evidences of that in scripture you take David, how could David be a man after God's own heart? David King, David who committed adultery and murder. He didn't just go like this. He went there and God said, you know what? David did mess up. But David confessed, he came back to God and God said, you know what? David from the beginning has always had a heart that no matter what he did wrong, he's always come back to me for some of us that might be helpful in the moment to know that God cares less about your sin. And he cares more about the condition of your heart. So not just who are your eyes trained to look back, but where is your heart? What is your heart connecting with when it's spiritually? Now it's interesting when Jesus talks about this idea of caring less about your sin and more about the condition of your heart, he actually uses a word.
There's, there's a word later in the passage that we've just talked about. He actually uses the word adultery and here's an interesting thought Jesus would not be okay. Like it wouldn't be okay with him. If there was just, let's say in our tri towns area, in the Nyah area, Longmont area, let's say on the front range, if there were no acts of adultery and we're like, that would be good, man. Not some of you like I've seen that in my family. That would be really good. Jesus would not be satisfied with that. And he says it in Matthew chapter five versus 27, 28, he says, you've heard it said you shall not commit adultery. So he's acknowledging that's 10 commandments, right? But what's the 10 commandments. It's a code of conduct. What's the B attitudes. It's deeper issues of the heart in talking about character. He says, you've heard it said you should not commit adultery.
But I say to you raise the bar that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in their heart because Jesus knows that our heart goes to what our eyes are focused on. So what's in our heart will come out through our actions ultimately. So Jesus says I'm not waiting all the way down to line to the symptoms of what's already into your heart. When they come out, I'm concerned with your heart right now because your heart is gonna do some things. If there is negative in there, if there's sinful in there, it's gonna come out through your life and it will hurt you. And Jesus says, man, I am the only one that can help you get past that and experience a different life. Man, Jesus is deeply concerned with our heart for Samuels Samuels 16 seven says, man, looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the hearts.
Man, Jesus did not come into our world just to try to fix a few bad habits. Jesus came into our world to fix some broken hearts and to give us new hearts that could change the world we live in. So what Jesus mean, bless her to the pure heart for, they will see God. What does he mean by a pure heart? Now we talked about eyes only for God, but let's, let's go a little bit deeper. What's Jesus actually talking about. It's interesting in James chapter four, James is the brother of Jesus. If you didn't know that and James chapter four versus four through 10, we'll just kind of go through it. He uses some of the same language. So just listen with me and we're gonna read it. You don't have to go there cause I'm gonna read it in a different version. We're gonna read it in the message, which is a paraphrase.
It's not actually a translation, but it's a paraphrase. And it's right down the lines of what Jesus is saying right here. Here's how he says it. James four, four through six, he says, you're cheating God. And that that's pretty pointed. He says, you're cheating. God. If all you want your own way, flirting with the world, every chance you get, you end up enemies of God and his way. And do you suppose that God doesn't care? The proverb has it. He's a fiercely jealous lover. I mean, just notice the language we've already talked about. He said, GE Jesus, God is like, he is after you. He can't keep his eyes off of you. You're the only thing in his sights. He's pursuing you. He loves you. He wants what's best for you. He is a fiercely jealous lover. And what's he jealous of is you going toward other competing things because he knows it's not best.
What happens is we go through those things and we do those things. And we end up on the backside going, dang, that wasn't best. God's saying, I'm trying to save you from that. He says, he's a fiercely jealous lover. And what he gives in love is far better than anything else you will ever find message. Version says, you're cheating God. The new international version, which we usually use says you adulterous people and he's talking to church people. If you're sitting here today and you never committed your life to Christ, man, you just, you can listen, but this isn't pointed toward you because you haven't made that commitment to him. You're not in that relationship with him. And I think you should be. And I think the best comes out of that. And we tell you how to do that. But, but he's talking to Christians and he says, you adulterous people.
And he's not talking about people who are breaking their marriage vows. He's talking about everyone whose heart is divided from commitment to the world and commitment to God. People who have wandering eyes that they're going after all of these other things that are leading them away from God. Only one thing can have our focus. And James is talking about this idea of a pure heart, same thing as Jesus. And what's interesting about it is he takes a little bit different take when James talks about purity of heart, he's talking about the issue and the idea of wholeness.
So think the word integrity for a second. We know how we would describe integrity, but let me give you some history. The word integrity actually comes from the word integer. Like if you won't go all the back to like your math days, like way back, like I can't even remember those days, but you wanna go all the way back to school, age stuff. And you think about math, man. You know what an integer is or an integer it's, it's a whole number, right? It means some of you just like, oh yeah, I forgot that. Right? It's a whole number. It's it's not a decimal. It's not a fraction. It's the idea of something not being part, but being the whole, you see, that's where we get our word integrity. Now what's interesting is you don't, let's take it a step further. You don't just get the word integrity from that word. You also get the word integration. Now think about this. Let's just track this for a second. You and I, we know what segregation is. Segregation is when you take people or things and you divide them by their differences. And we know from history, that's not good.
What integration is is no matter what our differences are, no matter what the parts of the whole, no matter if we have different ideas, different thoughts, different backgrounds, different skin colors, different gifts, different. We don't segregate those things. Integration is bringing all those things together in one huge human family, right? And we would say that's best because we learn from each other. And at the core of who we are, we're all the same. We are created in the image of God. That's integration. So think about it this way. A lot of people, they segregate their lives. Think it of it like a pie. They take their life and they segregate it into different slices of the pie. And that's what James is talking about right here. He's saying, we just say, you know, here's my church friends and here's my work friends and here's my school friends and here's my party friends and here's my family life.
And here's my work life. And here's my sports life. And here's my hobby life. And here's my secret life. Don't want anybody to know about. And we segregate all those different parts as what happens in most people's lives is as they flow through those different parts of the pie, they're different in each of those places. Like, I'll be honest. Like there's probably today. There's some of you sitting here and feeling a little bit because you know, you walk in and you say hi to the church family. Like, Hey, what's up? How's it going guys? Everything's good. And going, and you're heading out tomorrow or Friday night. And if somebody sees you with those friends, not that you shouldn't have those friends, but it's a different action and attitude and language and everything else between this place and that place, somebody that stand up and we worship. And then we sleep around on Monday.
And what James is saying is, dude, that's cheating on God. He's saying integrity is not the parts of the pie. That's not integration. He's saying integrity is the filling that goes through the whole pie. Like your life. That's what we're supposed. You wanna talk about purity of heart. It's keeping our eyes focused on one thing and making sure that one things fills every parts of the pie for us. Then when you're hanging with your church friends and you're hanging with your work friends and you're hanging with your family and you're hanging with your sports buddies or, or your ladies now, whatever it might be, there is a similarity to all of those things that invades it. And we can say, yes, my eyes are still on God.
And for some of us, we kind of sit back and we're like, no, I, I don't know if that would really be true. And what James is saying is, man, we've got to integrate God into every part of our life. And that is purity of heart. And that is something beautiful. So big question is like, how do we do that? Like how do we create purity heart? Can I just stop for a second and say this? You can't. You're like great, Sean. That was really helpful today. really appreciate that. No, you just need to understand. I need to understand. We all need to understand that purity of heart is not something you achieve. It is something you receive. Let me say that again. Purity of heart is not something you achieve. It is something that you receive.
Like we know the story of scripture. What Jesus did is he came here to a world of people who'd segregated. Their life messed up their life. That sin was as they had taken their eyes off of God, we've wondered. And each and every one of us, we have sinned for all of sin and fall short of the glory of God, Roman chapters three verse 23 says it. And there had to be something paid for that impurity because what impurity does is it distance us from God, just like sitting there. If I were to do this, man, my wife, her heart is gonna go P it's the same thing with God. Sin separates us from God. But what Jesus did on the cross is he came and he, because he could not keep his eyes off of you. He pursued you. You're the one thing he kept his eyes on. And he said, I love these people so much that I'm gonna come. And I'm the only perfect one. The only one with purity of heart. And he came and he allowed that pure heart and life and soul and body to be crucified on a cross.
And what he says is for you and me, is that because he was the one who was perfect enough to pay that penalty. Then he was the one that was able to give, to give that freedom to anyone who asked man, guys, purity of heart. There's so much good. And we're gonna talk about it in a second, but there's so much good impurity of heart. It clears our, our, the spiritual blindness away from us. It brings us closer to God. It feels good. It is good. It leads us toward good. And the only way you receive that is by asking Jesus Christ to be your Lord and savior and people who ask Jesus Christ to be their Lord and savior have placed their belief in him. They've said, I want to change my life. They have confessed him as their savior. And just like you saw today, man, they pledge their life to him as they get baptized.
And it's the picture of the death, the burial and the resurrection of Jesus. And you should do that. And you're like, is that easy? All I gotta do is say, I need him and Jesus, would you be my savior? And would you forgive me and, and pray and ask him to be a part of my life and then step into those waters. And because of your faith receive forgiveness in the holy spirit, it's that easy? Here's the deal. Tomorrow's the fourth. We're gonna celebrate independence. You know what? You oughta celebrate the 24th of July when we're at Anderson farms and doing Rocky at the farm. Talk about that a little bit later, but we're gonna have a baptism service that day, man. You just show up and you'll be ready and you should come forward that day because God's saying, Hey, I'm ready to start a new journey and I'm ready to purify your heart and make some changes in you.
Now purity of heart cannot be achieved. There's nothing you can do to create purity in your life, but it can be pursued. Like for us, we, we have to, you need to understand like Jesus gives it to us. And then it begins this journey of pursuing deeper purity and deeper understanding of him. And so you might say right now, Sean, what do I do? Well, first you accept him is your savior. Second thing you do is simply this. It is the idea of James talks about in verse seven through 10, he says this. He says, so let God work. His will in you yell aloud no to the devil and watch him make himself scarce. Say a quiet yes to God. And he will be there in no time. Quit dabbling in sin, Abilene, sin, purify your inner life. Quit playing the field hit bottom, cry your eyes out.
The fun of games are over. Get serious, get really serious. Get down on your knees. Excuse me, before the master. It's the only way that you'll get back on your feet. So what James is talking about in the NIV, it just says it. Plainly James is talking about the beginning of really pursuing purity is the word confession getting down on knees admitting before God crying out to God and saying, yes, this is in my life. It is the beginning of this idea of confession. Augustine famous church. Historians said it this way. He says the confession of bad works is the beginning of good works. Amen. I love that. The confession of bad works is the beginning of good works. Confession is the idea it's it's like this confession is like detoxification for your spirit. Like that's what God's saying. He said, there's stuff in there.
There's impurities in there. And even though I have forgiven the consequences of your sin, there's stuff that you're allowing to be in your life that we need to get out. And there is something freeing about this idea, a confession first John, one nine says if we confess our sins to God, he will keep his promise and do what is right. He will forgive our sins and purify us from all our wrongdoing. Now, now catch this. The word confession is the same idea. It's it's, it's actually made of two Greek words. So the word confession in English is made of two Greek words. One that means to speak. And the other means to see. So what the idea of confession is is that we speak the same about our sin, that God sees about our sin. We speak the same about our sin as God speaks about our sin. Cuz a lot of times what we do is man, we try to just give, like, we try to give excuses about it and here's what happened or I wouldn't have, or, or we try to bargain with God and say, God, man, if, if you'll just forgive this thing I'll never do it again. We try to do all those different things. And what God's saying is would you just look at this thing though? Same way I look at it, sin a sin. It's not a FAPA it's not a mess up it's sin.
And if we will look at our sin and say, God, it is this, I lied, I cheated. I was disingenuous. I've been angry. And I've had an issue with anger. I keep going along with the crowd at school and following them. I did this. I did, man. If we just, you know what, God's not up there doing, he's not on someone. Yep. What he's doing, he's saying, okay, let's take that one. Let's set aside. Let's take that one. Let's set it aside because you know what Jesus paid for that on the cross. But what's good for your heart is when you admit it to me. And what I can do is I come in and I begin cleaning up your heart. And you know, this is true because you've done this before. Sometimes when you have something with somebody and you've done and you just finally, you just have to get it out and you just say it to 'em and say, I'm sorry, I did this.
And they're like, oh man, thanks for telling me. And you just feel this weight off your shoulders. Now sometimes you do that with people and they say, you did what God never does that. God never does that. He's like, I already know. And I already paid and what's good for your heart is to get out off of your chest, man. You really want to get close to God and you really want to start the purification process in your life. Here's what I would encourage you to do is I'd encourage you just to admit it. I'd encourage you to sit down with a pad and paper this week and in your prayer time, just pray and say, God, just show me the things that are taking my eyes off of you. Where are my eyes wondering?
And then when he gives you something, write it down. So don't mean it's gonna be really quick. You're gonna have a list, right? You're gonna, but here's what I want you to do. I want you to write first John one nine over each one or over the whole list. The idea that simply says that when I confess my sin, he is faithful and just, and he forgives me of all unrighteousness. The confession of bad works is the beginning of good works. Now it's not just, that's not the only thing we can do. When we begin to unload things. When we begin to detoxify our body, what do we do? Normally with our bodies, we begin to re purify it. We begin to put healthy things into our body, right? So confession is the first step to really pursuing purity. But then the second step is that we begin filling up with what is good.
We replace the bad with good things and what happens. And what's interesting about that is how good we actually feel. And then what begins to come out of our life because of what good is coming into our life. Like our eyes, follow our heart, follows what our eyes are focused on. When you begin focusing on God, what begins to come out of your life becomes the things of God. Luke chapter six, verse 45 says a good man brings good things outta the good stored up in their heart. And an evil man brings evil out of the evil, stored up in their heart for out of the mouth for the mouth, speaks what the heart is full of. Man, here's a good health principle. You are what you eat. You are what you eat. If you eat a dozen donuts a day, you're gonna turn into a big donut, right? Amounts, just life. On the other hand, spiritually speaking, if you fill up with God, what you will become is you will become a more purified version of what he created you to be. And people will begin to notice. And man, when we live in that place where eyes wander from God, we always feel it. And it comes around and, and in the moment the pleasure might be, feel good. But the aftermath, we all know the aftermath feels horrible.
A couple months ago. I, I, I shared this a little bit, but a couple months ago, my daughter, she challenged me. She said, dad, father's day is two months away. And she said, I wanna do this. I think you should do this with me. Let's go. No desserts, no sugary stuff, no extra stuff. Let's just do this for two months in rock and roll. And I was all good. And I was in because six days a week, I eat really good because my wife and our house like the rules are we eat good. And so I just follow. But on Sunday, Sunday around my house for dad is called Sunday fun. Nobody tells me what to eat. Like I watched a show that I want, you can judge me, whatever. I got my show at the end of the night, it's like a long day crazy day.
You're gonna judge me. I watch walking dead. That's my show. You're like, oh my gosh, I cannot go to his church. He watched walking dead. No I do. I do. And I sit there and you, my wife will walk out and she will just look at me and shake her head because I will have a pile of candy bar rappers, guys. It's not one candy bar rapper. It's like a pile of candy bar rappers. I'm like, I'm just catching up from the week. My wife, my daughter asked me, she said, dad, can we do this? Can we just go all the way through? You know? And to two months. And I was like, yes. And every Sunday I, it was just killing me. But the crazy thing is I was feeling good. I will walk into work on Monday going, oh man, on Mondays, I'm walking in.
I'm like, it's a Monday. Let's go. Let's get after this thing. And I was feeling great. Father's day got there guys. I have never eaten so many calories in my entire life. I pounded, like, I think for my like body type and whatever, it's like, you know, 3000 calories, a little under you know, a day is good for that. And if you're active I'm I swear it had to be like 7,000 calories. I pounded so many things either was brownies. And you know what I felt, I felt horrible in the moment. I was like, these turtle brownies my wife makes, or on my birthday, she makes that father's day. She makes that it was awesome. Six hours later, I'm dying. And it's the same thing, what we run through. And, and we're like half the time in life. We're like, yep. Sunday is God's day, but is Friday fun day and a Saturday fun day. And then we come back around, we try to clean up and God's saying, no, no, no, here's the deal. If you're following me, I know what's best for you. And I've got things that I wanna feed you in scripture and in worship. And in all those things in Christian community, biblical fellowship with other people, I wanna feed you that stuff. And here's what happens when we engage with that on a regular basis, we feel great.
There's those moments where we step back in and we go back into our old ways and we feed ourselves that just things that are not good and it feels terrible guys, what God is calling us to do. He says, you will never be sinless, but you can sin less. We can security in our life with God, James chapter four verse eight says draw near to God and he will draw near to you. It's what he talks about. He says, you begin to put godly things into your body and what will happen in your life is good. Things will begin to come out and it will feel good. And other people will notice the changes and say, that looks good. And I want some of that. And what's going on with you. And some of you will say, yeah, you got all that Christian. Some of some people have friends will say you got all that Christian stuff and whatever, but in the inside they're going, they got something I'm not ready for it yet, but it looks good.
And I think God wants that for us. Scripture goes on and just talks about this idea of the blessed or the pure and heart. But it says the eyes, the lamp of the body, if your eyes are good and your whole body will be full of light, like there is a light that comes into our body through the good things of God. That just feels so good. Do you realize that there's a promise that's associated with every one of the be attitudes like God says, Hey, blessed to the pure in heart. So we pursue purity. We, we give our lives to Christ. We confess our sins. We start putting good things of God into our life. But he says this, when that happens, there's a blessing that happens that bless her to the pure and heart for they will. What, see God. And what's he talking about there?
What he's talking about is that they may not see God. Literally what he's saying is they're gonna see God active in their daily life because the good things they're putting in and the good things that are coming out, there's still gonna be things that rock our world, but we're gonna start to see how God's working in those things. And he takes difficulty and he makes them good. And we just watch how God's available and there for us and pursuing us and only having eyes for us. I've told this story before, when I was 19 years old, I had a torn retina tore about 50% off the back of my eye. I went into surgery. I had surgery. There was a lot of trauma to my eye, even after the surgery I get out. And I remember taking the patch off my eye and man, guys, I could barely see.
There was so much trauma in my eye was bloodshot. There was people look at my eye and like, whoa, there was so much blood. And on the inside, from my perspective, you could see it from the outside. But from the inside, all I could see was this big red liquidy glob that was going on. They put this big bubble in my eye to hold the outside of my eye up so they could laser back the down the retina. And when that thing started to dissipate, it became like a thousand bubbles in there. and so all I could see was just this big red glob of bubbles and all of that. And you know what happened over time, it began to dissipate and the redness began to go away and then the bubbles went away and then I could begin to see, but it was blurry.
And then I went to the doctor and they gave me prescription for contacts. And then they gave me glasses and I put those glasses on for the first time. And I was like, there is a whole nother world out there, spiritually speaking, what purity does for us. It clears the blinders that sin puts in front of our eyes. It clears the spiritual blinders that that keep us from being able to see God and puts in this prescription where we begin to be able to look around and say, I see God there. I saw God there today. I saw 'em there yesterday. I know I'm gonna see them there tomorrow. I am seeing things I've never seen before. And my question to you is when's the last time you saw God,
Because
If you're not seeing them Sienna, you might teach to just question your heart a little bit, because God's not hiding from you. The deal is this God in our lives, he says, I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. I will always be with you. He is right here by your side, in the pure times, in the IUR times in all of it. And he's saying I've got something better for you. And if you would just clear your spiritual eyes, if you would just pursue purity, you'll find out I'm there. And when you find out I'm there and we partner together, man, there's nothing we can't beat together. When's the last time you saw God. If you're not seeing him, it may be a heart problem. It may not be a God problem. I think we get it with our minds. That's why we show up here today. But the problem is, is a lot of times we get it with our minds, but we don't take it to the depth of our heart. So we show up here and there when we need and we get on our knees when we need
Inter Bennett says that it's the longest journey you ever taken. Your lifetime is the 18 inches between your head and your heart. Every person in here, every person over there, every person out there online, you know that that's why you're watching, but do you know it here? And when you find it here, man, you will find God and you will find a whole different world. Let's pray father, for those of us today that just need to confess some things. Maybe it's just a little too big, even for us, just to even just sit down and know how to even say it to you, father. I pray that they'll hit our prayer teams up front at each campus after no there's no judgment. We've all been there. We've all prayed those prayers and ask for help, praying in those prayers. And I pray they would for the person online father, I pray that they just get down on their knees and just ask for forgiveness for some things.
And the father for us, I pray. We pursue purity. And when we pursue purity, Lord, I pray. You would show yourself to us. I pray that we'd see you, father. I pray that we would pursue as a church. Just putting the good things of you and of this place into our lives on a consistent basis. I pray, we'd even check on in on somebody that we know is struggling and, and needs this. But's not here, but it's a part of our family. They're just not, I pray. We'd reach out to them. And the father I pray is we as a, a community of believers would go out and we will live pure lives, integrated lives in every area of our life. And that people would see it, that they would want it. And more people would come to you and experience the goodness of following you. God, we love you. We are so grateful for your grace. It's in Jesus name that we pray. Amen.
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