Good News for the Sinners in This Room

In one paragraph

This sermon was the tenth installment in Pastor Carl's series walking through the twelve steps as a framework for understanding sin, repentance, and restoration. Step 10 is the practice of continuing personal inventory and promptly admitting when we are wrong. The service also included communion, which Pastor Carl tied directly to that same call to honest self-examination. Pastor Carl opened by...

Read together

1. Psalm 92:1-2 quoted at the opening to lead into worship
2. 1 John 4:9-11 read before a song about God's love being the first move toward us
3. Psalm 19 referenced in prayer about creation pouring forth speech every day
4. John 5 referenced as the story of Jesus asking the man at the Pool of Bethesda if he wanted to be made well, used to illustrate step six
5. Lamentations 3 cited for the truth that God's mercies are new every morning
6. Galatians 2:20 quoted by Paul about being crucified with Christ, used to illustrate reckoning oneself co-crucified with Christ
7. Matthew 26 Jesus telling Peter, James and John to keep watching and praying so they would not come into temptation, used to illustrate the continual nature of step ten
8. John 16 upper room discourse promise that the Holy Spirit will guide believers into all truth and disclose what is to come
9. Colossians 1 quoted about being previously alienated and hostile but now reconciled, with a call to continue in the faith firmly established
10. James 1:12-25 referenced about being not just a hearer but a doer, and the warning about looking in a mirror and walking away unchanged
11. Philippians 1:6 quoted that he who began a good work in you will complete it by the day of Christ Jesus

Talk about it

1. Pastor Carl opened with a song where Pastor Leonard J. Jerome asked his congregation to stand if certain sins applied to them, and eventually the whole room was standing. What does it do to you personally when you are reminded that every person in the room is in the same boat as a sinner who needs saving?
2. Step four calls for a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, and Pastor Carl noted how much easier it is to turn that inventory toward everyone else. What makes it so hard to turn that honest look inward, and what would help you do it?
3. Step ten involves continuing to take personal inventory and promptly admitting when we are wrong. Pastor Carl described a friend who caught himself mid-conversation and immediately said he was sorry, not because he had offended Carl but because he recognized his own wrong attitude. What gets in the way of that kind of promptness in your own life?
4. Pastor Carl drew on Galatians to describe Paul reckoning himself as co-crucified with Christ, meaning his own will did not get it done but Christ's will can. What does it look like practically, day to day, to live as though your old will has been put to death alongside Christ?
5. Pastor Carl used the image of carrying a trash bag full of receipts to an accountant once a year versus filing them in a folder each week, as a picture of how we can approach confession and inventory with God. How would your relationship with God look different if you kept that kind of short, daily account with Him?