Search Me and Know My Heart
First B Jackson
2024-07-21

Automatically transcribed. Where this and the recording disagree, the recording is the record.

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Good morning, everybody. Very good to see you this morning. Would you stand? I would love to sing together. I'd love to sing the Lord's Prayer together.

You've heard it in scripture, but I'd love to sing it. Father, let your kingdom come. Let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven right here in our hearts. Lord, we make it our prayer and our song. Amen.

So

Alright. Let's see what the announcements are together. The doo dad's not working at the moment. Y'all can still hear me though. Right?

There it goes. Here we go. One, first announcement. Their church camp out was going on this weekend, last night. And it was great to just be sitting around the campfire and eating, you know, junk together.

They had great stuff, I'm sure. I just got there for the junk. But that was a lot of fun. It's happening again. They've they've found a great spot on Palisades, and I think it's the same spot they plan on going to next time.

Nice and flat and open and lots and lots and lots of people can be together. So if you wanna go down next time, Brian McCooey, Mike Demetrius are still the guys to talk to, but there are a lot of other people who were on the trip that can give you a little more information. That was a lot of fun. So first b b q is happening. August 18 is the next one.

That is when we get together out here on the green space between services, and that's a fun time. Food game, games fun fellowship, and it's great. Sunday school classes, third through fifth grade Sunday school class. We're giving a break to the teachers and allowing the kids to just kinda hang out up here. So third through fifth grade is not meeting throughout the summer.

But if they want to go downstairs, miss Crystal said, they can come down with the first and second graders, kindergarten first and second graders, but that's that. Middle school and high school Sunday school does still meet during this service down in the library. And next week, this is a big one. So next week, we are doing church under the big top at the Teton County Fair. It is that way, but you're welcome to park here.

Parking is limited in both places, but if you wanna park here and walk over, it's down there. And you can look for the big top. That's where we're gonna be. The Lions Club does a breakfast immediately beforehand, and then we just kinda come in while they're still going really. And we get kinda set up, and we'll eventually get the music going.

It's a fun time. I think we've done this for, what, eight seven or eight, nine years, something like that. It's a good time, but church will not meet here that day. We'll meet one service only. It'll be at 10:00 under the big top at the Teton County Fair.

Is there anything else, Jeff? Alright. Well, I stand amazed. Why don't y'all stand with me?

Into armies. You turn seas into highways. You're the only one who can. You're the only one who can.

So from Psalm 16, right in line with this song, it's you make known to me the path of life. Consider that for a moment. Right? Life is messy. It's complex.

It can be complicated. But yet, God makes known to us the path of life. But even more so, it's you fill me with joy in your presence. And we can be filled with God's joy. We can recognize his grace.

That's what joy is. It's the recognition of God's grace to us. We can experience joy even in suffering and pain and through sorrow. We can. It's available to us in Christ.

So you fill me with joy in your presence and the pleasure of living with you forever. It's not just it's not just life eternal with with Christ. It is life now abundant in full. Amen? Amen.

Amen. And then another another verse. It is, how about Ephesians 10 for this song? It's we are God's workmanship. We're his workmanship, and we're created in Christ for good works.

And even more than that, it's the works that God prepared beforehand. Beforehand, He knew the works that he would want to accomplish through us. The work that's most important is the work of Christ. We know that. Yes, church?

Yes.

But once we are in Christ, there is work to be done. There's work to be done. And God is preparing in advance that work that we should walk in it. You can have a seat here for a moment. And I'd like the ushers to come on forward, and we're gonna sing a a song, another song.

And there's a song that I feel like goes along with it. Psalm 86, it says, you, Lord, you are forgiving and you are good. You're abounding in steadfast love to all who would call on you. God, that we would call on you. Before we sing, Ray, may ask you to pray?

Yep. Lord, thank you. Stand before you amazed as the song says, so grateful, Lord, for all that you have given. Thankful for the blessings of the week. I thank you for the way that you are moving in the midst of the difficulty of the week.

Lord, that you are ever present with us, ever present help in time of trouble, Lord, that we can pray and just be right with you, listening to hear for your direction. Lord, I pray that you would show who we are. I started to say show who you are, Lord, but you are showing who you are. Day after day, creation pours forth speech. Night after night, there's no language where you can't be heard, Lord.

I pray that we would humble ourselves before that, listen to what it is you're saying, and that we would just like Carl said, that we'd walk in the steps that you've prepared for us. Lord, would you take this which were given back that you've already given to us. We recognize you as the giver of every good and perfect gift. Lord, you we trust you. We trust you to do what you will with it.

May your gospel advance because of what's happening here and not in spite of it, Lord. You are the supreme mover, but you've chosen to use us. This is plan a. Would you use these humble and obedient servants? Would you use these these offerings placed in these plates to do what you want to have done here, your will, Lord, in your way, starting from this place and going to the very uttermost parts.

It's in Jesus' name, we ask your blessing on this operatory. Amen. Amen. And it's time for children's church downstairs, k through second grade for sure. Middle school and high school.

Oh, how are y'all? Everybody alright? Yeah. Are there any groggy ones that made it up from the campfire? Actually, the sound booth got it.

Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty good. He was here when I got here. Well, here we are.

I have this week gotten up to what what we're going over these past few weeks, past three this is the third. Past two weeks is the 12 steps. And it's a little odd if you've been in here before a summer or two ago and you've visited and you thought, wow, he sticks exactly with what it says. I love this. I'm coming back because he's right in there.

I promise you this is all biblical. Okay? I promise you that it is. There's an underpinning for this that's absolutely biblical. But these steps, if they're taken seriously, really work.

And so we have made it through steps one, two, and three, and today we're up to step four. Before we get going, got a story. On the way back from a funeral on Friday, I was riding in my truck and enjoying windshield time because I love it. You know, I've got all my tools with me because I have always driven junk. So I've got my tools with me and I see a guy pulled over on the side of the road.

He's got a 2000 Cherokee. I've had one of those before, worked on one of those a lot actually. And we're riding along, and I'm and I see he's pulled over and he's in a safe spot. And I see he's got a toolbox behind him, so he knows kinda what he's doing. Got a toolbox in front of him, so he's had problems before.

And I thought, well, I'll stop and encourage him if I don't do anything else. So pulled over off the road just before rain. And when I stopped, he said I said, you alright? You need any help? I I he had a dog, so I'm standing back.

You know? It's Wyoming. I have my hands up because I don't wanna get shot. Hey. I'm here.

I come in peace. I've got tools and a little bit of know how. You need any help? And he said, well, it threw the belt, but it didn't shred it. And from mechanic to a mechanic, like, oh, okay.

Alright. Threw the belt, didn't shred it. I'm going through my checklist before I even come around to the front of the car. He's already been through his. He said, I had an extra belt in the car since it threw that one.

I just decided to use the new one to see if it throw that one too. And so he's trying to put it back on. He says, I don't have a diagram anywhere. Well, I actually just put a head on one of these things, what, two months ago, month and a half ago. And so I said, oh, probably have a picture on my phone.

We're out in the middle of somewhere with no service. I found it. By the time I got back to him, he had gotten it home pretty close to right, and he was trying to get it in there. He had little hands and he can reach places I can't reach. And he was trying to put the belt on and he got it on there.

And as he said, well, I'll just drive back to I'll just drive over to Casper. We're only forty five minutes from Casper, you know. And I thought, it threw the belt for a reason. Right? You don't just throw belts.

That's that doesn't just happen. You you have a problem, and you put the new one on and just feel like, okay, let's go. Well, Mikey, what would it be, man? Didn't shred it. Oh, it's power steering pump.

Could lock that up. Oh, it's the air condition. I look around and see all the mechanics in the room, and they're all nod they wanna say amen. I so we go to put it back on, and he's reached down there. He's not a real strong guy.

So he said, I can't get this last little bit over the water pump pulley. And when I put it on the water pump pulley, I felt the water pump pulley was like this. I'm like, oh, it's a broken shaft on the inside of the water pump. So it's not pumping water, and it's not ever gonna do anything because it's in Spanish, we

call it Flojo. Lazy.

It won't hold it. I said, if it does go, it's gonna chew that water pump up and might even eat into the block by the time you get to Casper if you could get it to go. And he couldn't. He'd started it up through the belt immediately. So you gotta you gotta consider that things do break.

Right? They can be actually broken. And you can have some pretty good tools, and you can have some pretty good a pretty good idea of what's wrong and even have a replacement part in this case, and it's still something that you can't fix. The design of the thing, when you lose that belt, you lose the ability to cool the car, you lose the ability to charge the battery, you lose the ability to steer the car comfortably, you lose the ability to do everything. The lights all come on at once and it feels like, woah, this is a catastrophe.

And you have to end up somebody get somebody to pull you back in. You go with the designer of the car, they know the car, right, inside and out. And you replacement part was necessary in this case. Now all analogies break down at some point. But when we have gone through our life and we hit a place where it's just plain difficult and it's touching on everything else in our life.

Right? It's all of our ability to self regulate. Everything becomes unmanageable. We can't keep on going down the road the normal way we go down the road. We gotta consider step one.

I mean, if that guy just said, I'm going anyway, he wouldn't have made it two miles, probably wouldn't made it one mile, and he would have obliterated a whole lot more components and, you know, warped ahead, caused all kinds of problems. Could have been an even he was in a safe space where he was when he admitted he had a problem. But that's good. We admitted we were powerless over a problem that our lives have become unmanageable. This one I talked about two weeks ago.

I talked about this one and the second step. It's important for us to realize it. And if you ask anybody in the building and y'all say it to me all the time, you're asking me, how are you? And the answer is almost busy but good. You know, busy but good.

We're busy. We're busy. I'm too busy. I'm very busy busy busy. There's a lot going on and we're trying to maintain a lot and we're trying to keep up with a lot.

And there might be something that is a nagging like light, a little light on the dashboard that says, you're off here. Oil pressure dangerously low. That's gonna cause a problem if we don't do something about it. We admitted we're powerless over our problem. And I stack this up against Galatians five.

What we are operated, the way we were designed is to run-in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Did you see that picture in early Genesis when Adam and Eve were in the garden together and they had not yet sinned? Was this a picture of Eden? It is. Love, joy, peace, patience, walking with God in the cool of the day.

That's what we were designed to do now. Sin enters in and then the works of the flesh are evident, it says over here. And we've been over those for the past couple weeks. I'm gonna add to that list this week. So I'm gonna add from the vice lists in the New Testament.

Step two, after you know that you have a problem that is a part of you, And it is usually the cause of sin and it can be yours or someone else's that gets it going. But there is a we came to believe that there is a power greater than ourselves. There's a higher power. Greater than ourselves that could restore us to sanity. We admitted the possibility that we don't know everything about this.

That guy on the side the road the other day, he didn't know me. But after I walked up and we did a little bit of the mechanical measuring, you know, where we decide who is who is the better mechanic, suddenly, he he said it's it's this is beyond me. I don't know what's causing it. I wasn't sure. I was pretty sure, but I couldn't do anything to fix it.

I'm not the higher power. I might have been a help for him for a while, but like I said a few weeks ago, we make pitiful saviors. As quickly as we can, we introduce the higher power to the person for for who he is. We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. That's good.

I wanna say in that first sermon, the way I started it off was from John 16 from the upper room discourse when Jesus is describing the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. So the well, the role of the Holy Spirit anyway, but the role of the Holy Spirit. And he says that it is to convict of sin, to convince of God's righteousness, and to illumine his word. Those are three of the roles that convict us of our sin, to convince us of his righteousness, and convicting us of our sin. Very likely in the 12 steps, it's usually about addiction recovery.

There's a sin in there. And admitting that that sin is our problem that we can't do anything about is it. Right? Doing that. And then there is a higher power that can restore us to sanity.

God's righteousness. He is almighty and he's able. So if you get step one and step two, that's goes a long way, a long way into these 12 steps of recovery. Step three is, I know I can't do it, is step one. There is a higher power God who can.

So we made a decision to turn our will in our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. And as we understood him, I said last week, is a statement of humility. The humility of just knowing that we are powerless, he is able, and I don't know how he's gonna do it. That's not my business. If I take on myself the prerogative of God and how he would do it, that's actually blasphemy for me to say, I know better than God.

Does that make sense to you? Alright. Y'all are with me up to step three. That's good. We made a decision.

Where do you get saved? This is I had this question last week. Where in this these 12 steps do you get saved? You know what? Admitting you have a problem is a good place.

That goes a long way into getting saved because that's a humbling step to recognize that I can't do this on my own. I reached down for my bootstraps, and I have no bootstraps. Right? Realizing that there is a God, that that's a big step in getting saved. There is a higher power that could restore me to sanity.

If you don't know him or you've got an errant view of him, then that that's that's a hard thing. Because getting to know who God is and how God is, I've said a couple weeks ago, you can do that by reading the gospel of John, get to see Jesus. He is exactly what God looks like in human form, and we understand human form. Think about that. That's why he did it that way, so we can see it.

That's great. But then recognizing that even the disciples were constantly confused by the way Jesus acted, by the way that the things that he said, by the way he underwent things. Step three is the making the decision to turn our will. My will is what got me into this issue and my life to turn it over to him. That sounds like salvation to me.

If it's true, that sounds a lot like salvation to me. In the New Testament, I've said this before for a few of you have heard me say this before. I had a long doctrinal statement I was supposed to write. It's a 240 doctrinal statement. And it was everything you believe about all of these issues and scriptural support for what's why you believe what you believe, all the scriptural support you a 204, not 240.

204 And I got to point number 186. And I have been writing furiously for days. It's time to turn it in soon. And point one eighty six is what is the ordo salutis? What is the order of salvation?

And from the New Testament, I see it go down in several different ways. And I see it happen differently to different people. Now God's the one that's doing it. You know? And you say, well, he doesn't ever act on us.

He knocked Paul off of that horse, didn't he? Paul was going against him when he leaned on him pretty heavy and said, why are you persecuting me? We have others that are investigating like the Ethiopian eunuch in that chariot. Right? We have a lot of different forms.

So on my test, I put musterion. Just being a smart aleck, I wrote it in Greek. Mystery. It's a mystery. I don't know.

Exactly. I see this here. I see this there. I see this here. These are the five different ways I see it in the New Testament.

Any of those are fine. Outside of that, I'm not sure. If you have to take the points, take the points. I was angry. It was point number 186, and it's not clear from scripture what is the order of salvation.

And I got back the paper and I had I would have had a 100 except for that question. He took the points because I didn't answer with any great conviction. And I said it was a mystery. And so I held on to that, and I let it fester in my heart for quite some time. And I ran into that professor the next next semester.

And I said, doctor Hodges, I just gotta say something to you. I said, I wouldn't and plus I had lost when I got to when I got to point like 186 wherever I was. Right before that, I lost a computer file. It went poof, and it was gone, and I had to redo that whole thing. And so by the time I got there, musterion's what came out, and it was probably rage.

And and I said, doctor Hodges, I said, it bothers me. It's been bothering me, and I've held on to it, and I and I don't wanna hold on to it. I wanna be living as much as I can at peace with all, but I've been holding something against you, man. And you took those points, and I wanna know why. He goes, it must have been my grader.

He didn't even read it. And he took the points because I said to. That was a good lesson for me. We made a decision. Let me get back to the sermon.

We made a decision to turn our will in our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. God, we don't know you as intimately as we want to. Lord, I think there are some of us in the room that are scared to get you to get to know you any better than we do. But collectively, as a group of your followers, as plan a for how you're gonna reach the world with your love, and your grace, and your forgiveness, and your mercy, and your kingdom and your service. Lord God almighty, I pray that we would not be afraid, that we would not be afraid, that we would together encourage one another to get to know you better, to be more refined about how we understand you, to be more willing to walk those steps that you have ahead of time, Lord.

I pray that you would show us how we might be used. Amen. So step four is this, we made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. It's right here. So I start with me.

If I start to just leave off the up ourselves, we made a searching and fearless moral inventory, and we're looking pretty good. Right? I think that that's our attitude a lot of times, but this is huge. I've talked to a lot of people in the program and they said, whoo, that fourth step, man, is tough. The fourth step is really really hard because I only wanna see a little bit of what's wrong with me at a time.

Now the other thing is seared consciences. We do eventually, if we persist in sin, it might be that the Holy Spirit's been urging us to stop, but the still small voice is drowned out when we keep on and keep on and keep on and keep on persisting in our sin. And in Romans it says that it eventually gets to a place where we just get turned over to that, and that's a that's a hard place to be. But it's a persistence on our part that gets us there that sears the conscience. I don't wanna be guilty of that.

So making a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself, if I am the relative starting point, then that's difficult because I don't think my sin's all that bad. Yours, that's bad. Oh, that's terrible. I'm glad that I'm not in that position. No.

It starts with us. It has to be it has to be right here. We made a searching. I wanna know Lord. Do you all remember the story of David and Bathsheba?

David's up on a high rooftop, Bathsheba's up on a lower rooftop, and she's bathing and David is watching. And that was wrong. Maybe it was wrong for Bathsheba to be bathing on the rooftop where he could see her. Maybe that was wrong too. But David has to deal with David.

Bathsheba has to deal with Bathsheba. I don't know if you all have heard this. You all ever heard every tub sits on its own bottom? There are like three southerners in here. Every tub sits on its own bottom.

It's like a washtub. Like a washtub, you don't take a washtub that's got a hole in it and put it in another washtub. That washtub with a hole in it does either gotta be fixed or it's useless. Every tub sits on its own bottom. Right?

So we have to deal with our own stuff. We have to hand over our stuff, should say. That's the next step. But we have to recognize our own issues, and that's where this is really important. The pace kind of slows down right here to me because making a searching and fearless moral inventory.

First of all, going back to the other three, I've got a problem that I'm causing my self if I keep on doing what I've been doing, I'm gonna keep on getting what I've been getting. It doesn't change. Definition of insanity. Right? Do the same thing, expect different results.

There is a higher power who can restore me to sanity. God can do this. Now my question at that point is, does he want to? From all I've read in the Old Testament and New Testament, God has a plan and he is a loving and merciful God who resist the proud and gives grace to the humble. And so if we can keep ourselves in a humble place, and it says, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God.

It is a possibility even a command. Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. If we can maintain the humility of realizing that we are not right and believe that God can, it says that he will restore us. I'm gonna let him. Step three hits this.

Now where do we go from there? I need to know I'm convinced of my sin at this point and convicted that God could do it. At this the point of turning it over to him, I believe that he will, but he asked me to start right here. Now he's gonna help me by his spirit. The whole process is aided by the spirit of God.

But I like it we can break things down sequentially and the fourth step is a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. It's pointed back to me. David Bathsheba, back to that. After David sins with Bathsheba and covers it up with a murder and a bunch of lies. There is a guy.

There's a we up here. It helps to do this in community. It helps to have accountability. David and Nathan are having a conversation, and Nathan's like, oh,

he's the king.

I know he's my friend, but he's the king. He is not gonna like this message. David was just rocking right on along until Nathan helped him see it. Okay? And David helped him see it.

I mean, Nathan helped him see it. Hey, there's this guy. He has a bunch of sheep and then this other guy, only had one little sheep. What what should happen to this guy since this guy with one little sheep kinda got taken over by the guy's a bunch of sheep. Oh, let's just kill that man.

It's alright. David's really, he knows righteousness. He just wasn't able to see it in his own case. Imagine Nathan saying, hey, man. You're that man.

And when that happened, he went into a mode of having recognized his sin and openly so and fallen on his face before God and we've got several Psalms, right? Psalm 51 is one. Psalm one thirty nine, we've got a lot of places where David hid it and was immediately he saw that in himself and he had to do something with it. Hand it over to God. He he does step four and five in this in the turnaround of two verses, which I love.

He recognizes and he trusts God. You might not feel that you're in a place where you yet are trusting God with all of your stuff because you feel like there's too much and you feel like he can't do this. He can, and he's asking you to. Now one of the things I say in the program a lot is first things first. If one of your sins is causing you to sin in a lot of other different ways, and I'll use one that they use often in the big book, is if drinking to excess drunkenness leads you to a place where you are lascivious and you start to chase after other people that are not your wife or your husband.

If it starts causing you to say things that you wouldn't normally say because the inhibition is gone, Then there are several sins that stem from it. But first things first, if you can handle the booze first, then you can clarify. Making a searching and fearless moral inventory in some ways is a prioritization of the things. It's a it's a triage situation where we're we're gonna find out where the worst bleeding is and we're stopping that bleeding first. And then we check the airway.

We do everything else. Right? I've got lots of crazy metaphors in this. Are they making sense? Is this making sense?

Okay. These are from the vice lists in the New Testament. I know they're small. I'm gonna read them slowly. We've got seven minutes left.

Aided by the Holy Spirit, like I said, we all like David might have sin in our life that we are conscious of and trying to cover up, but not yet willing to give over to God. That's mine. He made me this way. I'm gonna hold on to that. Okay?

That's that's one that we we might want to hold on to. I'll send you the slides if you want them, these pictures from right here. So I'm gonna just read them slowly and they are in English. I think they're easy to understand. If there's one that I hit that think Greek would help, I'd change over and do that whole thing.

But I think I think it's pretty I think they're pretty easy to understand. First list is right there. I've used it for the last couple of weeks. It's in Galatians. Sexual impurity, sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, and an overwhelming focus on the things that we can taste, see, feel, touch, smell, sensuality, idolatry, putting anything in the place of God, sorcery, trying to get what we want out of manipulating the spiritual or astronomical realm.

Enmity, being at odds with other human beings, having enemies is enmity. Strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions. Do you notice how close together some of these are in their theme like like the rivalries and dissensions and divisions all kinda go together there. Envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. Starting another list from Corinthians, sexual immorality, adultery, homosexual activity.

That's what it says. That one is one that is very difficult in our time, and it's very difficult for the person experiencing it under the conviction of Christ. It is very difficult, yet it is on the list. Idolatry, putting anything before God. Thievery, stealing.

Greed, drunkenness, reviling, reviling. That we see examples when Jesus was on the middle cross and it says those two thieves, bandits, whatever you want to call them, the insurrectionist, rowdy guys. It says, while they were on the ground and he's being nailed to the cross, it says both of them were reviling him. Reviling, taunting, mocking, hating, reviling. Swindling.

Oh, watch out for swindling. Scams are another way of swim swindling, phishing scams and that sort of thing. So many have lost so much by not recognizing it. And then again, swindling is something that is a possibility that we also might do. We might not just be the victim of, we might actually get ourselves into the position where we have begun to swindle other people.

God forgive us if that's the case. Right? Since we're looking at it moral fearless and searching moral inventories, not just that they might do it, it's that I might do it. Lying. Oh, an ever present help in time of trouble.

Nobody got that. Lying, just not telling the truth. God is the ever present help in time of trouble. Lying is not. Evil talking, fornication, vulgar talk, empty words, disobedience.

Oh my goodness. If God urges upon you, this is the next step. James says, to know to do right and not do it is sin. Right? So wow.

God help me. Disobedience, anger. It is possible to be angry and sin not. Stewing and festering anger, feeding your own anger is a problem though. Wrath, malice, slander, speaking evil of other people, malice, wishing them ill, abusive language, quenching the spirit, despising the words of the prophets, self indulgence, being double tongued, out of both sides of your mouth, conceited.

Oh, here's one for the times, filled with a morbid craving for controversy. To be filled with a morbid craving for controversy. An eagerness to be rich, overtaken with stupid and senseless controversies. Those are two different lists, it said twice, you gotta take it seriously. Right?

If it said once, we ought to take it seriously. Quarrelsome, wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice, being full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness. I had a buddy that I worked as a handyman with. I worked as a handyman with him because he had formerly been working as a salesman and his boss had a huge Christian fish on the side of his business. And this guy worked for him for a while and his boss came in and said, you're not doing very well, Chip.

And Chip said, well, I'm trying to do the best I can by the customer. He said, yeah, that's the problem. You work for me. If you're gonna keep on doing this job, you need to be more crafty. And he said, crafty?

Crafty. So he went home and he literally looked it up in his concordance on his Bible and was like, looking crafty doesn't sound good to me. And it was in this list and he said, I gotta quit this job. Right. Yeah.

You wanna help build such and such? Yeah. Craftiness. Figuring out how you can get in there and do that. Gossip.

It's on the same list with all those other bad ones that those other people do. Slander, God haters, insolent, haughty, there's pride, boastful, there's pride, Inventors of new ways to do evil. Rebellious toward parents. Foolish. Foolish is on the list.

It's a vice. I think that there's an difference between ignorance and foolishness. Right? Not knowing is kind of ignorant, but being foolish is just knowing and still doing it anyway. Being faithless, being heartless, being ruthless, lovers of themselves, putting themselves first.

Lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to parent shows up again, ungrateful. I said last week, studies are proven now and you're hearing it a lot more now in brain science studies, but you've been seated in the page of scripture for thousands of years that you cannot be grateful and anxious at the same time. To step back and look and count your blessings and think about how can I be grateful in the midst of this situation is very helpful? To be unholy, to be inhuman, to be implacable. I need an English dictionary for that one.

Slander, profligates, brutes, haters of the good, to be treacherous, to be reckless, to be swollen up with conceit, pride keeps on showing up, To be lovers of pleasure or to be hypocritical. So I figured that we would just go through the New Testament list. These are representative list. I don't think they're exhaustive. There might be other things that the spirit of God convicts you about, but he most often begins in the pages of his word.

And if you didn't know where these were or you weren't really sure where to look for them, these are the list from the New Testament of vices. And this is a good place as a grid when you start your fearless and searching moral inventory. Literally, you might take that list and go, God, thank you that that's not my issue. I cannot imagine that being my issue. Instead of saying to them, look at yourself and go, God, thank you that that that you've placed a strong conviction on my heart to be truthful and not lie.

That line, it would be a terrible thing if I were a liar. God, how can I help somebody that's struggling in that area? Right? Do you see what I'm saying? So think this is a good place to start.

I don't have any more slides that I remember. Let's see. No more slides? Okay. I'm gonna go back now, and we'll sing a song at the end.

I'm gonna check my paper notes. The next step is to turn over whatever you find in your fearless and searching moral inventory to turn it over to God, to confess it to God and the steps say, and one other person because it really helps. It really helps to have at least one other person. Accountability groups help tremendously because if you're struggling with the same thing, you probably are having the same experiences and you can help each other to get out of it in a similar way. Told you about the Jeep.

James. Yep. Would you all mind if I sing a song if it's in the hymn book? We'll sing same power together, but I want you to track with and if you would if you know the song, you can sing along. It's called search me or cleanse me depending on your hymnal.

Actually, maybe we'll just close with this. Is that alright, Carl? Okay. You don't have to stand. You can just sit if you'd like.

I realized that this one's been heavy. This is with people that are going through the program. Usually where I get the most visits is right here where they go, I can't stand to look at myself. And I said, but step 5 is right around the corner. You're gonna hand all this over to God.

Every bit the whole reason for stacking this stuff up in this little pile is so that you can give it to him. And with that said, this song kinda says that really well. So here we go. Psalm one thirty nine twenty three, David says, search me, oh God, and know my heart. Search

me, oh God, and know my heart today. Try me, oh savior. Know my thoughts, I pray. See if there be some wicked way in me. Cleanse me from every sin and

set me free. That's steps four and five. Search me and know my heart. Let me know what it is. See if there's any wickedness in me.

You've given me a good grid Lord. I want to be clean. Cleanse me from every sin and set me free. That's the

first verse. After that, I praise the Lord for cleansing me from sin. Fulfill thy word and make me pure within. Fill me with fire where once I burned with shame. Grant my desire to magnify thy name.

That is possible when you turn it over to God. He will do the work. He is the higher power. Lord, take my life and make it holy thine. Fill my poor heart with thy great love divine.

Take all my will, my passion, self, and pride. I now surrender lord in me. Abide. And on the last verse it says this, oh holy ghost revival comes from thee. Send a revival, start the work in me.

Thy word declares, Thou will supply our need for blessings now, oh Lord, I humbly plead. Amen.

I changed my mind again, Carl. Will the band come up? The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is what gets this to happen. Would you stand with us and we'll sing together?

To wait lives in us, lives in us. The same power that moves mountains when he speaks. Same power that can conquer agency lives in us.

Amen. And from Ephesians one nineteen and twenty, I also pray that you'll understand the incredible greatness of God's power for those who believe. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God's right hand in the heavenly realms. And think about this, as you consider, he died for your sins and you're looking for them. You want to see them.

He is interceding for you right now. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to search. In Jesus name, I pray Lord that you would bring it up so that you can take it and heal us. Amen.