Searching and Fearless
First B Jackson
2024-07-21

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

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Amen.

Thank you, Jeff. We're constantly throwing curveballs to that booth. We added that one this morning. How about this? It is well with my soul.

Y'all can have a seat and thank you. Have a couple of announcements that I know of. First, BBQ is happening again August 18. So that's still a little ways off, but I wanted you to know about it. We're doing it another time, couple of times this summer.

We're gonna call September summer. We're gonna do it. August 18, September 15. How many of you feel like you just barely got summer started at all? Yeah.

Me too. August 15 and September August 18, September 15 between services right out here on the green space, tables will be set up, barbecue grills and everything. We'll have breakfast between services. That's fun. Last night and the night before, there was the First Baptist Church camp out down at Palisades.

They have found a fantastic spot. Wide open, nice, flat, easy camping, lots of where you can pull in an RV. You can pull in the camper, can pull in a little trailer or you can do tent camping. All of that was happening last night. They had a couple of boats, a little floating dock.

It was just glorious. We went down for two hours because I don't like sleeping outside. So that's just me. That's just me. If that's not your thing, then you don't have to do that.

But going down and having a few s'mores, singing a song or two around the fire is always fun. But the next time that'll happen is August twenty third through the twenty fifth down at Palisades, probably the same area. They even got porta potties to make it easy. Right? It's really really nice.

Brian McCooey, Mike Demetrius have done a good job and they're the guys to talk to about it. Sunday school, miss Crystal is teaching kindergarten through first grade, second grade, and she takes all comers. Anybody that wants to come down is welcome. Middle school and high school, Sunday school still meeting during the 9AM service down in the library, and this is a big the We're We're We're in going to to be

We're church.

So there'll be all kinds of distractions available over there. So it's one of the weirdest places to try to preach under the big top with a lion's club breakfast going on before and sort of still during, but it is glorious. We have a great time. The community responds very well to that, I think, and we love it. So it'll be under the big top, one service at 10AM.

Don't come to the nine, don't come to the eleven, come to the ten over there under the big top. Any other thing I need to say about that? We'll break away from the current series, the one that we're going on today. I'm going break away that from that for next week in moments like these. I think that's it.

Would you all stand? There is still connect hour that happens between services, and there are some still some of the normal stuff I just didn't mention. The Thursday lunch study for men is on, the sisters saved by grace is on. All those sort of things are on, but we just set them and set them and set them and set them. So they're still happening.

Do not be alarmed. God help us in moments like these. Help us. Let's sing it again. Now his eyes on the sparrow.

Y'all can have a seat. I'm gonna invite the ushers to come forward. Lord God Almighty, we come before you in prayer right now, recognizing like that song, the highs and the lows. The highs and the lows of this life, the funerals and the births and the weddings and the baptisms and all of the significant milestones in life and all of the stuff in between. Lord God, thank you for giving us a Bible that looks at it straight on, that recognizes your goodness, your righteousness, and our frailty, and our lack.

And Lord, your goodness that can be imputed to us so that we actually might be of use to the kingdom. Lord, we ask you that you would do the work, that you would use our body. You'd use us individually, but collectively, Lord, to do your kingdom's work. We want to do it your will, Lord. We want to do it in your way.

Would you direct us on how that would be? Would you, Lord, do that? We know that your will done in your way won't lack your supply. So would you show us, Lord, how you would have us move forward, the steps ordained for us. In Jesus name, we ask your blessing on this offering and on the giver too, Lord.

Would you allow for us to go about your work in a way that is helpful. In Jesus name, amen. Amen. That's a quite a moving piece of music from what I could consider the campfire song, you know. Sincerely, that's beautiful.

I got kinda lost in it there for a moment. Oh, gracious. Here we go. Here we are together and if you have visited before and you've come in and you said, oh, just like coming back because it just takes a paragraph of scripture and goes straight through it. That's what I've always done, always done since I've been here for twelve and a half years.

I finished the New Testament a few a couple months back, two or three months back. And prayerfully considering where to go next, I felt pretty clear that needed to go through the thing that practically speaking, in actual practice, I feel like this sequential method is one of the best things that we can do for our own spiritual health. And so the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous originally and every addiction recovery group has used them since then, virtually every, is what we have been on. Now, they are thoroughly biblical. I will get to some of the biblical underpinning as we go today, but we'll talk through them.

Two weeks ago, we went through step one and two. And step one is this. Actually, before I get to that, we started with Jesus in the upper room with his disciples, speaking to him in the upper room the night that he was betrayed, the same night he instituted the Lord's Supper, the same night that he washed their feet and served them before that. Right? That's the night we're talking about.

He told them that it was good for them if he went away because if he didn't go away, we wouldn't send the comforter and whereas he can only be in one place at one time, the comforter, the Holy Spirit can be with them throughout all of their time And it can be writing the word of God on their heart so that they can know him more closer more closely than they ever had with Jesus. And he gave three of the aspects or roles of the Holy Spirit. He gave them this. He said, he would convict of sin. That's what the Holy Spirit would do.

Convict of sin. Convict the world of sin. Even those who don't know him, he is at work through their conscience and through their circumstances to convict of sin. Also, to convince of God's righteousness, so showing the goodness of God and that he is willing to help, to convince of the righteousness of God. So convict of sin, convince of righteousness, and to illumine his word and guide us into the truth.

And it is the work of the Holy Spirit. That's the way Jesus described it. In the 12 steps, we have step one as admitting that we were powerless over our own problem. Now, in 1939 when this book came out originally, it was from a group of guys who all struggled with the same problem, and that same issue was drinking to drunkenness, and it had caused all of them to have the same kinds of problems in their lives. And so admitting that they were powerless over the problem and admitting that their lives had become manageable was the first step out of 12 when they finally examined what it was that helped them to get sober in their case.

So step one, step one, admitting that you have a problem is a real good part of solving a problem. If you don't admit that you have it, you're just going to keep repeating the same behavior, getting the same results, and not get out of it. So admitting you're powerless over your problem, that your life will become manageable. And then I put this slide up. Now, forgot my whole intro, Diane.

I want to back up to the black slide. On the way here this morning, I thought of something. Anyway, let me do that. I'm back up. So, on the way home, this somebody just asked me right before the service.

The past two Sundays when I've gotten up, it's it's been kinda obviously heavy and there's been a lot of death and there's been a lot of difficulty and a lot of things in the body of this church and in the just one degree beyond the body and our families and whatnot and so I'm going give you kind of a little report. There were two funerals for the same person this week. It was a funeral here on Wednesday and it was beautiful. Everybody that came saw life that was well lived and beautifully saved by God and lived with a fire and fervency for the last two years while she had cancer. We did a funeral on Wednesday.

We did an interment ceremony for the same lady up on Aspen Hill on Thursday. And so there were there was another funeral on Friday. I was not doing it, I went to Casper to go to this funeral. Serendipitously, I kept seeing the highs and lows in all of the songs this morning in the first service and in this one. And going to this funeral on the way there, they were just going through Riverton, there were hot air balloons all over the place.

I was thinking, man, that's just a glorious beautiful thing, hadn't expected that. I went on to a difficult funeral for a young man who had died. And then coming home, I'm a car guy. And I was riding along and I'd seen several kind of cool cars and that's fun for me just being out on the highway. I've driven junk my whole life.

And riding along, I saw a guy, he was pulled over on the side of the road. He's got a '2 thousand Jeep, four point o, six cylinder. I know the exact engine. I've had one of them that was stolen in Mexico. Carl's Carl son has one back here that he got for me, and we just put a head gasket on it.

I've worked on those things a lot. And so I know a lot about the particular car, and I had my tools with me because like I said, I drive junk. So I had tools with me, And he's pulled over. And so I pulled over with him, and I got out and it's Wyoming. So I put my hands up and I said, hey, you didn't need of any help.

He had a dog and I was certain he had a gun. He had tools behind. He had tools in front. Hey, I'm here to help. Is there anything I could do to help?

And he said, well, it threw a belt. And he just kind of yelled. He didn't even look around the corner of the hood. He said, it threw a belt without shredding it. So that's one mechanic talking to another.

Normally, if you throw a belt, there's something wrong, obviously. But we're riding down the road, no problem. I was riding down the road, just me and the dog, and then it threw the belt off. And he said, I looked under there, it doesn't seem like there's anything wrong, but of course, when you throw a belt on a modern car, serpentine belt, you lose your alternator, so you can't charge your battery. You lose your water pump, so you can't cool your engine.

You lose your power steering because the power steering pump is what helps the power. It's all things, all systems go kablooey when you throw a belt. And so he was trying to put the belt on and he had it not routed correctly. There are no pictures or stickers, but like I said, I just fixed the head gasket on this. That's one of the things you have to do at the end of that job.

So I had a picture on my phone. That's fortuitous. Looked at the picture, showed him the picture, he starts trying to get it on. And he's just about there and he's got small hands and he's an older guy. He's trying to put it in there.

He can reach places I can't reach, but I can push things into place that he can't push into place. So got it on there and as I put it on, I realized that the pulley that is on the front of the water pump did this. It moved about that much. And so as we tighten down the tensioner, it squishes itself up against the water pump. And so I said, hey, this is a no go.

It's going to be bad. I said, obviously, when something's thrown, something's wrong. Not seeing anything, check the power steering pump, nothing. Check the alternator, nothing. Checked all the tensioners, nothing.

All of the issues and nothing appeared to be wrong until you could feel that water pump doing that. The shaft on that water pump was broken. It needs to be replaced. It's not going to pump any water anyway. It's not going to act as a tensioner and let you get down the road.

He said, I'm just going to drive back to Casper. It's only 45 miles. I said, you're not going to make it two miles and you're probably going blow the head gasket if you try to go further than that. But he had somebody that he could call. And so he when he called and when he when he finally got to a place that he could call him, and the guy said he was coming back, I left him alone.

I forgot till the end of that story in the first service. They're still worried about that man. He's fine. He's fine. He had somebody coming to get him.

But putting that belt back on, it just threw the belt off. Right? It just did. So he put it back on and I said, can get in and try it if you want to. He got in, cranked it up.

First time he revved the engine, threw the belt again because it's broken. First step is admitting you have a problem. And where we were, it was a problem we couldn't do anything about. He didn't have a water pump in the car. He did have a brand new serpentine belt, but that didn't help because that wasn't the problem.

Admitting that you have a problem you can't do anything about, your life has become unmanageable, you can't drive that car. We are designed to live in a certain way. And this is the way that we were designed to live. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Can I get an amen?

Amen. That's the way we're designed to live. In the garden, when God created Adam, they walked together in the cool of the day before sin entered in. You know what? God said it wasn't good that a man live alone and then so he created Eve and now Adam and Eve are walking naked and unashamed, and they are living in love and joy and peace and patience and kindness.

We don't know how long they lasted like that. But at some point when sin entered in, the works of the flesh became the default setting for human beings. Though we were designed to live like this and we can get back to that, these other things started showing up. Things like sexual immorality and impurity and sensuality, and I'll go into a longer list at the end today. But this list over here with rivalries and dissensions and divisions and envy and drunkenness is on the list, fits of anger, those things are the things with which we struggle.

And in some cases, we quit struggling as human beings. Not as Christians, I hope, but as human beings, we quit struggling with certain ones of those. Step two, after we figure out, after we know what it is that is the problem that we can't fix, we reach down to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and we realize we have no bootstraps. Right? We just can't get there.

Step two is we came to believe that a higher power, a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Whether we had believed it previously or not or just felt like, oh, I'm not going to bother Jesus with that. We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. That's good. We need to go through knowing that we can't do anything about it and believing that God can, and that'll get us up to step three.

And if you talk to anybody that's in the program, most people will say, step one, two, and three are on a constant. We're always realizing some places that we haven't given over our will and our lives to the care of God as we understood him. Step three was last week's sermon and it was we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. When we looked at first Thessalonians five for what God's will looks like, God's will looks like being grateful in all circumstances. God's will looks like encouraging one another and building each other up, a few of those things.

That as we understood him is often something that Christians will push back on and say, God is just who he is no matter what we think of him. That's true. That's true. But if you don't access him the way that you know him, the way that you understand him, if you're not willing to humble yourself and admit that you don't know him fully, you don't know him as intimately as you want to. You don't know him as well as you want to.

I want to know you more. I want to love you more. I want to serve you more. I realize my understanding is limited, but I believe that you're showing me my problem, convicting of sin. And showing me your righteousness, he can help me with it.

I'm gonna let you, Lord. I'm gonna go with what you say. As we understood him as a statement of humility about not thinking we've got it all figured out. And step four is today. And this one in many ways is the hardest of all the steps for a lot of people because we don't like to look at ourselves in a mirror and see flaws and defects of character and see painful things that are our fault.

We don't like that. It's much easier to look and see painful things about other people and their flaws and their faults and point out those things. But this step forward is we made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves instead of it being of someone else, it's of ourselves. Searching and fearless. I I think of David and Bathsheba.

Yeah. That's you gotta go there for this sermon, don't you? David and Bathsheba. Now David was up on a rooftop and he's looking down on a naked woman. There's a naked woman within view of somebody on top of a different rooftop.

That sin of David is he saw that and liked it and wanted to pursue it and did, and Uriah the Hittite's wife and David got together. And then in order to try to cover it up, David, instead of seeing that he had a problem that was against your rules, that's against your law, that's against you. Lord, forgive me. He didn't see that. He's the king.

He invites Uriah in to try to cover it up, and then when that doesn't work because Uriah is a man of integrity, he puts him on the front line to have him killed. So that's murder. He knew what he was doing. So sin compounds sin. If we don't deal with it, it gets other sins involved.

So to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, I'm going to point back to ourselves right here. I think it helps if I made a searching and fearless moral moral inventory immortal of myself. That helps tremendously, but sometimes we're blind to our own stuff. Do you agree? Sometimes we just can't see it.

Through persistent sin, we often get to a place where we've seared our conscience and it's hard to hear the still small voice of the Holy Spirit and we don't hear him when he's saying, hey, right now Ray, you're being a reviler. You're reviling. What you're saying is ugly. That's slander and malice. You understand?

If I keep on doing it, I quit listening to it. And David's case, he thought that he was above reproach. He thought that he was above the law. He's got so many other good qualities. He got so much other faith, but maybe he thought that pet sin was his own and he could just hold on to it and there'd be no repercussions.

Well, Nathan, his friend comes to him. This is when it goes from I and myself. Sometimes we can't see our sin and the reason one of the reasons why AA works so well is because the same people that are struggling with the same problem know how to spot a problem. And Nathan was able to go to David. David's a king.

Coulda had him killed. He says, I gotta figure out a way to do this. So David, if it pleased the king, I'm sure. Right? Can I tell a story?

Yes. There's a man who's got tons of sheep, just lots and lots and lots of sheep, very rich man. He's got all the sheep, all these sheep. And then there's this other guy, poor guy, he's one poor shepherd. He only has one sheep and then the big rich guy with all these sheep comes along and takes his and then kills him.

But what should happen to that rich guy that has all those sheep that did this? And David's like, that man should be killed. Absolutely. We're gonna right this wrong. And then Nathan, in all gentleness and humility and caring deeply for his friend David says, you're that guy.

You did that. That helped David to see this where whether he had been searching or not before that, we know for certain that it began a searching. Psalm one thirty nine, David says, search me, oh God, and know my heart. I want you to get down to the last little bit. Know my heart today.

I want you to cleanse me from sin. That's getting on up to steps five and six, you know. But step four, the searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Now, if you're sitting here today and going, I mean, I don't know what that'd be. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't chew, I don't run with girls that do.

Come on. Where do I start? Well, the Bible's got a list. It's got a lot of list actually. Here are all of them in one place.

This is this is to be helpful. When I say that it's not a list of do's and don'ts. It's not a list of do's and don'ts. If you're looking to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself, you got to have a grid to do that with. Right?

And it helps to go, God, I wanna please you in every way. I wanna turn my will over to your will. I know, James says, that you are not the author of sin, that you are not the one who tempts, that you are the one who helps overcome temptation. So God, I want for you to help me. Show me my own sin, please.

He will. I'm gonna turn over my will to you. Now, I'm gonna look. His job is to convict of sin, to convince of his righteousness, to illumine scripture. So I'm asking God for me and I'm hoping and praying that you will ask God for you, that as I read through this list slowly, we will look at it and we'll see if we are on there, if that's us.

Right? And I guarantee you, it's every single one of us at some point on this list. I also wanna be even handed about the presentation of it because I don't want to beat up anything that scripture doesn't beat up. Right? I want for it to just say, here is the list.

Let's hold ourselves up against the standard. Jesus was none of these things and we want to be like Christ. We want to be repentant like David. David's a great example. Christ had no sin.

Sometimes it's kinda hard to relate to Christ because he had no sin. Well, he didn't have to worry about sin. He had to worry about our sin. All of our sin. So we'll start with that first list from Galatians and I've got a list up here if I've got a list on my computer.

Somebody took my other list which is great. I'm glad. Galatians and first Corinthians and different places, they're usually the vice lists most often come with a list of vices and then say, but the spirit of the God is the the fruit of the spirit is this and take these things off in Colossians and put these things on. So usually near the vice list, there is the the opposite of those things nearby too. So here they are, sexual immorality.

Pourneia is the word there, and it covers everything outside of marital sexual relations. Sexual immorality, even some things within immorality, impurity, sensuality. Sensuality is an overwhelming occupation of things you can see, feel, taste, touch or smell, the senses. Idolatry, when anything takes the place of God. Anything that gets to be more important in our lives than God is idolatry.

I think we think about that as being a primitive thing, but then again, there are a lot of things in modern life that get in between us and God. And we we leave God behind and we make sure we have our phone. Sorcery. Sorcery is when you try to manipulate the spiritual or astronomical world to get a result for yourself in the here and now. Enmity, having enemies and feeling good about it.

Strife, yan yan is the way we would say it back home, when you're just always yan yan. Strife. Always mixed up in something. Contentious. Jealousy.

Fits of anger. Now, the Bible does say be angry but sin not. So there's a level of anger that is righteous indignation, but you're not supposed to sin. Two wrongs don't make a right. Fits of anger is on the list.

Rivalries. Rivalries. When we've got such an us and them mentality, especially when we get to the point of God is for us and he's against them. God wants to be for them by using us. He does not want for us to have rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these is the end of that list from Galatians, from Corinthians.

Sexual immorality tops the list again. It tops the list three times or four times in these lists that I've got. Sexual immorality, adultery, homosexual activity. I said I don't want to add any extra emphasis where the Bible does not place it, but I don't wanna skip any emphasis where the Bible does. And so this is on the list.

And it's in the two in the couple places that it mentions, it is there's no doubt about what it says. If we change it, we're changing it to accommodate our own understanding. That's true of many of the things on the list. Idolatry, again, anything taking the place of God. Thievery, to steal, greed, drunkenness makes the list.

There it is. Reviling. Reviling is kind of mocking, having contempt and speaking out that contempt on the day that Jesus was crucified while the soldiers are nailing him to the cross and the two thieves on either side of him before one of them had a change of heart. It says and both of them were reviling Jesus. They were insulting him, mocking him, and calling out ugly things to him.

Swindling. Swindling. Watch out. These days, swindling is on a on an upswing. People are constantly scamming and they're phishing scams and all that.

And then as I was standing up here in the first service, was like, y'all watch out for people, other people, those people scamming you. And then I thought, wait a second, God help me not ever to be guilty of swindling, of scamming, of getting it convinced in my own mind that it'd be alright if I just kinda parted them with their income, swindling, lying, evil talking, fornication, another form, sexual immorality, vulgar talk, empty words, disobedience. You know, James says to know to do right and to not do it, that's sin. And so if we are walking out of Christian life, certainly, and God says, want for you to witness to that person and we go, well, I don't wanna talk to that person. That's enough disobedience.

Right? Now, you might think, well, that's not gonna cause my life to become unmanageable. It gets harder and harder to hear the voice of God when you ignore him over and over. Empty words, disobedience, anger, again on the list, wrath, malice, slander, abusive language. You notice how many of these have to do with our words?

Quenching the spirit, despising the words of the prophets. He gave us his word for a reason. We should be listening to it. To be self indulgent, to be double tongue, speak out of both sides of our mouth. To be conceited, there's pride.

To be oh, this is a fun one. Filled with a morbid curiosity and craving for oh, filled with a morbid craving for controversy. Isn't that a sign of our times? Filled with a morbid, deadly craving for controversy and eagerness to be rich, greed. Being overtaken with stupid and senseless controversies.

Two different lists, but they sound almost just alike. To be quarrelsome. That's one of the things about elder of a church that says they're not to be quarrelsome. None of us are to be quarrelsome. It's on the list.

If being quarrelsome is your thing like drunkenness might be someone else's or pornography might be someone else's. The same recourse is available. Recognizing it is in front of handing it over to God and allowing for him to clean it up. Wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness. I had a buddy that I used to do handyman stuff with in seminary, And he had had a job as a salesman at a company that you could see riding down the highway, had a big old Christian fish on the side of the business.

And if people pull in there to buy something, and he was one of the salesman, and his boss called him in one day and he said, Chip, if you're going to work here, you're to have to get to be more crafty. He said, well, I try to do my best for the customer. He said, that's the problem. You work for me. And so Chip was like confused by that.

He's a very strong believer. He's a bivocational minute missionary ministry. And he said, he went home and instead of looking it up at Crafty, he said it over and over in his head all the way home. And instead of looking up in a in a dictionary, he knew what crafty meant, he looked it up in the Bible to see if there was anything in the Bible about it. And it's on a vice list and he just called the guy and says, I can't work there anymore.

I can't do it. I'm not I don't want to be crafty. I don't want to improve my craftiness. Gossip, slander, God haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, haughty. Pride comes up a lot on this list and it's the one behind a lot of the others.

Inventors of new ways to do evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish. Foolish is not just ignorance. Ignorance is not knowing. And I think that there's something to not knowing. We're supposed to be living our lives and showing the way.

Right? Jesus was showing all of us the way. And there were people that were ignorant of what was going on. But to know the truth and go against it is foolishness. Faithless, heartless, ruthless, lovers of themselves caring more about yourself than you do about anyone else.

Lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to parents, ungrateful. I mentioned this last week and I'll probably keep on mentioning it for a while. God, it doesn't surprise God. He put it in the Old Testament. He put it in the New Testament.

Last week's message was that this is God's will concerning you in Christ Jesus that you be grateful. Gratitude replaces anxiety. Brain science these days has proven that you can't be both grateful and anxious at the same time. Count your blessings, count them one by one, turns out to be really good advice. Ungrateful is up here as a list of sinful things.

Unholy, inhuman, implacable. Slanderers, using our words to tear other people down. Profligates, knowing how and going against it anyway. Brutes, that gets back to sensuality, haters of the good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, again there's pride, lovers of pleasure and hypocrisy. That's the list.

That's the grid, I would say. If you came in the door today and you said, well, I'll be glad when he gets through these 12 steps because I don't struggle with anything. Do you still feel that way? It's a pretty good grid to look through. I felt okay because I've been going through this for some time.

And I got in here and thought, Lord, I've got plenty, plenty, plenty of searching left to do. God, would you make us fearless? I know that looking at a list like that and feeling like, I'll never be pure, I'll never be whole, is daunting. And we have an enemy that is just milking that and saying, you're right, you never will. That's just a bunch of who anyway.

What does that 2,000 year old book have to do with you? You can live however you want to. God, would you help us to recognize the voice of the enemy of our adversary? And would you overcome him by your spirit? May we be be turning these things over to you as we figure them out, Lord.

May we be like David asking for you to search our heart every day. May we when we recognize that we have sinned, whether somebody had to bring it to our attention or we come to it on our own, may we be ready and willing, Lord, to to call it what it is. In Jesus name, I pray. Amen. I've got one song that I'd like to sing and I went way long in the first service or we started late, one or the other.

Did I forget anything? Okay. Alright. I've got a song here and I love this song and every time we sing it, the order of it impresses me. The order of the verses impresses me.

And it searched me. We don't have the words for it on the screen. I'm just gonna sing it. We'll still sing what we're gonna sing at the end. I need the every hour at the end.

But I'm always impressed with David once he realizes he was wrong. Then, he goes into this beautiful prayer in Psalm one thirty nine. In Psalm 51, we have another one but it's search me, oh God, and know my heart today. Try me, oh savior. Know my thoughts.

I want you to get past just the outside stuff and know my thoughts. When I'm plotting against Uriah the Hittite, I want you to stop me right there before I ever go wrong. When I see that, I go, woah, I don't need to be looking at that. Instead of focusing on it. Know my thoughts, I pray.

See if there be some wicked way in me and cleanse me from every sin and set me free. So at the the last line of that one simple verse, he goes from step four, I've made a fearless and searching moral inventory because I've asked you to search me. And I've asked you to know my thoughts. And I've asked you and your gentleness, God, to help me see where I'm going astray. And then it goes to turning it over to God by the end, which is the fifth step, sixth step, seventh step.

It's right in there that we really learn to lay down these things before God and allow him to clean them up. Allow him to take the burden on him. I'm gonna sing search me, oh God. If you'll pay attention to the order of the I think it's just genius the way it was written.

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.

I praise the Lord for cleansing me from sin. I'm gonna stop right there.

Did you hear how he recognized his own sin? I asked God to help him recognize even more and said, cleanse me from this and set me free. And then the next verse knows that he already has. The way that God promises that he'll do that is, if we will confess our sin, he is faithful and just to be forgiven our sins. He'll throw it as

far as the east is from the West. He'll remember it no more. We will have a clean slate. Second verse starts at that. I praise thee, 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. 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. Last verse. Oh, ghost, revival comes from thee.

Send a Start the work in me. Thy word declares, thou wilt supply our need. Four blessings now, o Lord, I humbly plead. Amen. Judy, would

you come up? And we're gonna sing, I need thee every hour. In the first service after the cleanse me, oh God, we sang the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and at work in us. Right? It's great to know that that that power that overcomes death is what we have available.

That is higher power and in this case, we're acknowledging our need for God. Every hour of the day, if we are to be surrendering to his spirit, we need to be in contact with him. Would you stand with us? I have a benediction slide coming up in a second, but I wanna pray for a second. Lord, like the fellow on the side of the road, first of all, help him fix that Jeep.

But Lord, like the fellow on the side of the road, you say in Jeremiah that there's coming a time where you'll take the heart of stone out. You remove that part and you'll place in us a heart of flesh that actually works. So Lord, may we have soft hearts that are input by our designer, our creator, the best mechanic anyone has ever known. Lord God, would you help us to be turning over our problem to you and allowing you to show us any others, keeping first things first, doing triage, recognizing what's the most important thing that you need to take right now. And then as we go, being more and more refined by the presence of the Holy Spirit, in the presence of our humility, and in the righteousness of a good and almighty God.

In Jesus name, we ask for your blessing to do just that. Amen. Ephesians one nineteen to 20 says this, I also pray that you'll understand the incredible greatness of God's power for those of us who believe in him. That this is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him at the place of honor at God's right hand in the heavenly realms. And if you go on to see what he's doing there, he is interceding for you.

Not only is there a higher power that can restore you to sanity, he wants to. As you turn your will over to him, the spirit is praying with utter groanings that you can't even understand, don't even know how you ought to pray. Jesus is sitting there praying for you too, and God Almighty is working it through your humility. He resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. Lord, would you help us this week to be completely set free and able to help others.

Amen.