Lust and Restraint

Here is the auto transcript from this week’s sermon on the Lust Abstinence is not deliverance

I have a real fun, upbeat sermon for you today.

Today we're gonna talk about lust.

Dun, dun, dun.

And I am gonna keep it as PG-13 as humanly possible.

But parents, you've read the Bible,

and the Bible talks about some things

that we should probably talk about

not only with our children,

but we should probably go back and read them

over and over and over again

because it's literally the warfare that's around us

in our society.

It's the American culture, it's the Western side of things,

it's the big pharma, the big tech,

it's all the algorithms.

You can't spend one second on Facebook

without them automatically knowing what you did on Amazon

and what you did on Instagram and what you did on TikTok.

Not if you're a conservative, you're not on TikTok,

but if you were on TikTok.

Twitch and all these other ones,

there's a newer one called Be Real,

which is, I love that, even though I've never been on it,

I don't know how it works,

because when I was in Nashville

and I felt the first time the Lord told me

that we were to plant a church,

which I never actually did talk to my wife about,

we were gonna call the church BeReal.Church

because there's just so many times

where the church is just operating in this facade,

this falseness, this fakeness.

And it's not just the church,

human beings in general do that.

And so BeReal.Church, it's time for us to be real.

Today I'm gonna talk about lust.

It is not an easy topic to talk about,

but after pride last week,

knowing that pride is the root of every single evil

that's out there, under lust, pride exists.

Under gluttony, pride exists.

Under laziness, pride exists.

And so to understand how some of these are interwoven

and how they interact with who we are and what we do,

I hope by the end of this series,

we'll have a better understanding

of not only what the Bible says,

but with the belief that we will fall into

that abstinence in our life is just the first step.

And so again, I wanna applaud everybody

who is currently walking in abstinence

of their pride or of lust or of gluttony

or of laziness or of greed or of all these things.

But sooner or later, the Bible says

that God will write his words on your heart.

It says that he will give you his spirit

and put that spirit to dwell in you.

That spirit will cause you to have the understanding

and the wisdom and the knowledge of his word.

And through those things,

you should be set free from that.

I was having lunch with a friend of ours

from the church this week,

unfortunately talking about this very topic

and getting some counsel.

And in doing so, he was talking to me about,

you know, my thoughts on the abstinence

verse deliverance comment of last week.

And I was telling him,

that was like a, "Thus saith the Lord,"

but I was telling him type of moment.

And I was telling him,

I believe so strongly in the power of God

from what I read in the text of the word of God.

And we're not just talking Pentecostal,

we're talking literally from Genesis 1.1.

And we should be very cautious

when we have pastors or teachers telling us

that we should not be looking at the Old Testament

and the Torah and the Tanakh,

because it absolutely confirms

what's happening in the New Testament.

You need all of it.

The Holy Spirit, Genesis 1.1, hovered over the waters.

And I was telling him that I believe so much in that truth

that if I was an alcoholic

and I had struggled with alcoholism

for years and years and years and years and years,

and then I became abstinent,

I became abstinent from my alcoholism,

year, two years, 10 years, three years,

I believe so strongly in the power of the Holy Spirit

that I could walk into a bar

after God gave me the deliverance,

not before, let me clarify that,

and I could have a beer and I could put it down

and I could walk away and have no other beers

for years and years and years afterwards,

because the power of deliverance means

that what your heart and your mind wanted before

and couldn't control before

have now been turned back to God,

by God and God's power.

For centuries, theologians and pastors

had wrestled with the Bible on lust.

We see lust dives into modesty policies and dress codes

and don't cause your brother to stumble,

and there's a whole playground that comes

when we start to talk about lust.

What constitutes an actual transgression,

how far is too far?

Pastors attempt to help men and women

through pornography, addiction, sexual abuse,

and all kinds of other sinful lust.

Infidelity has plagued the church for centuries.

We even see that before the New Testament church,

King David, one of the most held and high esteemed men

in all of Judaism, towards the latter years of his life,

succumbed to his own sinful lust.

Sinful lust, just like all other sins,

literally help rewire your brain.

Some of you who have been stuck in addictions,

you have those times in your mind where you're like,

I don't understand why I can't overcome this.

I don't understand, like I'm trying so hard,

I'm trying so hard, I'm trying so hard.

Why does this person not understand?

It literally rewires your brain.

Psychologically, when you're in addictive behavior,

it teaches you to think of things in a manner

that the Bible doesn't say

you should think of things that way.

This skewed lens starts to become the filter

by which you even read the word of God,

by how you even receive God.

This is where we see guilt, shame, condemnation.

The adversary can twist your thoughts.

He can make you say, God doesn't want you.

You're not good enough for God.

God, God can't heal you.

God doesn't care if you're looking at that.

God doesn't care if you're doing that.

It's okay.

It will rewire your thoughts

on even how the word of God is to be manifested in your life.

And then a pastor like me comes along and says,

after we go through all the book of Hebrews,

we're gonna talk about lust.

And we're gonna talk about it

because I believe God wants you to overcome it.

And I believe God wants to heal you from it.

And I believe God wants to set you free from it.

And some of you in this room

have been battling with sexual addictions

or have been battling with lust for 40 plus years.

You can remain absent for a period of time,

but then you fall.

Some of you in this room,

you've been betrayed by a loved one because

they engaged in sinful lust.

And you wrestle with the Lord

and you wrestle with your spouse.

Can I ever trust him again?

Can I ever afford them any grace or mercy?

What can I do?

I believe God wants healing and restorations.

And those are also miracles.

We're looking for people to be raised from the dead.

We get a testimony that cancer

has been completely eradicated from a body

when they went in for surgery.

But miracles are when God takes your spirit,

removes it, places his spirit,

and you overcome things that have had you enslaved.

Those are miracles as well.

Today, church, I'm not here again to bring,

and I'm gonna say it every week.

It's gonna be in my opening statement.

I'm not here to bring guilt, shame, or condemnation to you.

Those are of the devil.

Those are of the female version of Lucy,

the male version of Lucifer, Hasatan, the Satan,

the adversary.

Guilt, shame, and condemnation are no longer in Christ

when we repent and we are restored.

So today, I'm not here to make you feel guilty.

I'm not here to make you feel ashamed.

I'm here to tell you that I wanna go to war with you

because God wants to go to war with you

to heal you, to set you free.

And you could say, Chris, I don't have lust.

I believe everybody in this room has some lust.

It may not be towards another person.

It may be towards an office.

It may be, maybe you have a lust towards a spiritual gift

or a spiritual office.

I keep teasing future series for the rest of the year.

Maybe today in this room, you have a lust,

an unhealthy desire with wanting to be a prophet

or an evangelist or a teacher.

So I don't wanna just look at lust

just purely from the physical, sexual manner.

That's important because it plagues Christianity.

And I gotta tell you, as a person who's worked

on the inside of the roots base of the Christian movement,

it plagues a lot of leadership in that corner too, a lot.

You see, the Christian church isn't the only place

that sweeps things under the rug.

But I believe in that power

because not just it's my opinion, it's my belief

because God said so.

And it's not even a New Testament concept.

If you have your Bibles, turn with me

to Genesis chapter four, verse seven.

God comes to Cain and he tells him,

sin is crouching at the door and it's sins,

it's desire is for you, but you must master it.

While we all struggle with what the Jewish sages

called the Yetzirah or the evil appetite,

I remember back in a youth camp many years ago,

there was a statement and I'm gonna do my best

'cause it's not in my notes, but it seems applicable here.

There was a statement that Brent was teaching the kids

and it was, there are two natures that beat within my breast.

One is evil and one is blessed.

The one I love, what?

The one I love, what I hate, the one I feed

will dominate.

There's two natures.

Cain and Abel, it says there's an evil appetite.

Which one are you feeding?

You're feeding something inside yourself every day.

What you're watching, the conversations you're having,

the things you're doing.

You're feeding something inside you.

You're being discipled or discipling somebody.

Which nature inside you are you feeding?

That wrestle is real,

but it's true that we have had the power

to overcome the evil appetite and the snare of the devil,

even since Cain and Abel.

(congregation murmuring)

Again, when we talk about overcoming,

we talk about the power of the Holy Spirit,

we talk about these things.

Traditionally, these are things we talk about

as a New Testament church.

These are Book of Acts, these are Paul,

these are futuristic things.

They're interwoven into the entirety

of the narrative of the Bible.

And the reason why is because it's interwoven

into the entire narrative of this world.

You will wrestle and you will fight every single day

against two powers, a power that wants to bring you life.

John 10, 10 says, this is the contrary natures

we see in this world.

One power wants to bring you life.

John 10, 10, the thief comes to steal and destroy.

I came that they may have a life.

And not just life, life abundantly.

So just as harsh as it uses the terminology

that the devil wants to take you down a path

that leads to your destruction and your death,

Jesus wants you to live,

but he doesn't want you to just live.

He doesn't want you to just walk.

See, that's one of the things

that I wanna encourage you today, folks,

'cause some of you who have been abstaining

for years and years and years and years,

your standard has been set so low.

Well, I'm alive, I'm surviving, I'm making it through.

I come to church and I raise my hands.

I come to church and I sing.

Life abundantly.

I want you to think right now of one moment in your life,

one experience you have,

and guys, it better all be the same.

It better be the day you got married.

I want you, Isaac's back there laughing the hardest

'cause he's like, which one?

Like, I only had one good one.

So we're in this moment and we're saying,

"Hey, think back to something

"really, really good in your life, really, really good."

That's a moment that brings you joy.

It brings you excitement.

It brings life to you, even remembering it.

Parents, if it was you thinking about the birth of a child,

think of how amazing it was.

Maybe you were fearful ahead of time

or maybe you were scared or maybe there was complications,

but the moment that that baby cried

and you got to hold that baby and the joy that was there.

Yeah, we're not talking about just surviving church.

God says, "I want you to thrive abundantly."

So whatever that thought is, whatever that moment is,

whether it was your wedding day

or it was the time you had a child

or maybe it was this hike

or maybe if you're a baseball fan,

you got to see one of the best pitchers pitch ever,

I don't know what it is, but it's better than that

'cause that's only something

that human hands can create and do.

It's better than that.

It's abundant life, an eternal life that starts now.

Hebrews chapter 11, we talked about things hoped for.

It's not just something that's hoped for.

That is true, but it's also something we can do now.

But it doesn't necessarily happen overnight.

This is why as we continue to go through the gospel,

the sermon of the Hebrews and then into this series

and then into the power of the Holy Spirit,

we take believers who've walked Genesis to Revelation,

full Bible, roots-based, Torah-passionate,

Hebrew-passionate Christians who love Jesus,

and we say there's more to the Bible

than just the 52 readings that we do every single week.

When you put them all together,

there's power not only in the name of Jesus,

in the word of Jesus,

but in the covenants of Jesus

'cause he's gonna do what he said he was gonna do.

And some of you in this room right now,

you need a champion who's gonna show up,

who's never lost a battle, who's jealous for you,

who wants you to overcome that sin.

Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you for this day.

I thank you for each and every person in this church.

I thank you for each and every person who's watching online.

Lord, I don't want eloquent speech.

I want power that comes only by your spirit.

You know the hairs on each and every one of our heads.

So Lord, today I ask that you would speak through me,

that whether it's in my notes or it's not in my notes,

Lord, that every word that would be spoken

would be anointed by your power,

by your process, for your glory.

Thank you for all the times you have kept your word

and your covenant, for it's in the name of Yeshua.

Amen and amen.

Matthew 5, 13 through 16 shows us,

you are the salt of the earth,

but if the salt has lost its taste,

how shall its saltiness be restored?

Has anybody ever ate, I mean, this is America.

Have you ever ate a food where you're like,

man, they didn't put any salt on there?

And you're like, hey, can you pass the salt?

And they're like, oh, I put a lot of salt on there.

And you're like, there's no way you put salt on this.

Like, I'm tasting it right now and it's bland.

You didn't put salt.

That type of saltiness that has lost its saltiness

to be restored.

It is no longer good for anything

except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.

You are the light of the world

and the city on a hill cannot be hidden,

nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket,

but on a stand and it gives light to all the house.

In the same way, let your light shine before others

so that they may see your good works

and give glory to your Father in heaven.

Do not think that I've come to abolish the law

of the prophets, I have not come to abolish them,

but to fulfill them.

It is important for us to understand

because we talked about last week

and we've talked a couple of times

in our buildings blocks classes,

us who came from the Moses side of things,

the ones who are very Moses-centric,

it was easier for us to say I did not kill.

It was easier for me to say I did not rob.

It was easier for me to say I did not commit adultery

because I just never have partaken in the action.

I've remained abstinence from being a bank robber, shocking.

I've remained abstinence from being a murderer, shocking.

However, Jesus himself says I didn't come to abolish,

I came to fill up, to make whole,

and when he makes it whole in the Sermon on the Mount,

he says it's not just about what you do

with your hands or your feet,

it's about what you do with these.

And when Kurt does not respond to Planning Center,

if I even think about harming him, that's the same thing.

If I do text Kurt and then Kurt says

what he thinks in his mind, it's the same thing.

And now we're engaged in a mind game

of murdering and slandering each other.

I only say that 'cause Kurt and I have never done that.

We're great friends.

He's always very kind and generous to me

and I'm always kind and generous to him.

We've never fallen.

Jesus ups the game.

So to fulfill the law is to call

to a higher standard of saltiness.

And we're not talking about Southside Brent here,

where he's like, I'm salty with you.

We're talking about to have taste

and to bear fruit and to shine light.

A higher calling.

Why is it a higher calling?

Because no longer is the Spirit of the living God

only going to dwell behind a veil in a temple

it is now present and available to dwell

inside each and every one of you.

And everybody in this room knows the story

of the Levitical priesthood, the garments,

and all the things that would have to happen

for the high priest to go into the Holy of Holies.

Brent references again and again and again

towards the end of Hebrews when we started talking

about the great high priest in Jesus

and the role that's there.

So if we follow a portion of that protocol,

we have to constantly be cleansing ourselves

that the Spirit of the living God can dwell inside of us.

Can I repeat that last part?

On YouTube tomorrow, 'cause I don't,

it wasn't in my notes, so I'm sorry.

On YouTube this afternoon, actually,

that was an incorrect statement to you,

it will be available right after sermon.

Jesus then proceeds to institute those standards.

As Jesus followers who have sometimes spent more time

in Moses' commands than in the testimony

of the Sermon of Mount, we forget that elevated baseline,

so just like I said, the standard of living

isn't just to just get by.

It's not just to get by.

It's not just to have an okay marriage.

It's not just to be an okay person.

It's not just to get by.

It's to be the best you can possibly be.

And how do you become the best you can possibly be?

Through the Spirit of God living in you and me.

'Cause if this is the best we have,

the Spirit of God should encourage you

to clean your closet to be the best.

He also elevated support by elevating that calling.

Romans 13, 14, "But put on the Lord Jesus Christ

"and make no provision for the flesh

"to gratify your desires."

2 Timothy 2, 22, "So flee your youthful passions

"and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace,

"along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart."

We're to put on Jesus, the Spirit of Christ,

as Paul calls it.

We're to flee, to go away from whatever direction,

whatever thing we're doing, to go away.

We're to repent, to ask for forgiveness and take ownership,

and then live daily in restraint.

A lot of times, especially in the Hebrew passionate side

of Christianity, we think of restraint as bondage.

Sometimes restraint is good.

Sometimes restraint isn't to be restrictive

of the things that God doesn't want you to do.

Sometimes it's to protect you.

(audience member shouts)

I often think of it this way.

Sometimes we like to think,

well, God's just not allowing us to do things.

And I like to think of the mom arm.

Anybody know what the mom arm is?

You're driving along, you're driving along,

and it's, "Bah!"

(audience laughs)

Now, hopefully you guys are way kinder than my mom.

When I was driving at the age of 15 or 16,

my mom did that.

But my mom, and she is shorter than me,

so even in a car when we're sitting,

we're driving her old Lincoln Continental,

'cause we were fancy like Applebee's on a date night.

She just throws her arm over,

and she still says that it was unintentional.

It was to save me.

However, she just backhands me,

squaring the nose and the face.

I'm driving, I'm like swerving all over Western Railroad.

So that's not restraint.

That's not restraint.

Delilah's over there cracking up.

She's never ever hit her children like that.

My mom did.

Deb, you're outed.

You're outed.

That camera, Deb, you're outed.

It's public knowledge now.

You can repent later.

I'll answer my phone.

So the mom arm, the mom arm,

that's what I think of a lot of time with God.

It's not that God's sitting over there.

The other side of that is the monkey umbrella.

So you have this backpack that has this bungee string

for your child, and Jess used to have one

because she would run all over the place,

and you'd hold it, and you'd pull it back.

A lot of times we think that's what God's doing

in restraint, that he's like somehow got us

in the monkey backpack, and he's like pulling us,

and pulling us, and pulling us, and trying to direct.

No, a lot of times he's just saying,

"Hey, I want you to be who you are.

"I intended for you to be this way.

"I intended for you to grow and to go through these things."

And then all of a sudden we're like, squirrel.

And he's like, pop, car.

It's not restrictive, it's restraining.

We are to restrain our thoughts, to restrain our feet,

our eyes, our ears from things that trigger us

and cause fleshly desires.

This can only be done by first repenting

and then turning our feet and our eyes towards Jesus.

Guys, what you watch and what you do matters.

Now, I'm not a prude.

I'm not up here saying that the only thing you can watch

is something from 1976 and black and white.

I mean, again, there's restrictive things on both sides.

But if you come from generational cycles

of sexual addiction or broken marriages or whatever,

you should probably stay away from content

that would lead to that.

Just a rule of thought.

If you come from generations of abusive alcoholism,

you should probably pay attention to what happens

when alcohol is involved in your life.

Just a general rule of thumb.

If you come from a family that dies early

of a specific disease, you should probably not engage

in regular lifestyles that would encourage that.

'Cause it's like, I don't know what God's doing here.

It's like, God didn't do it.

You were the one who ate McDonald's

for the last 50 years every single day.

Sooner or later, we take some responsibility

for what we do.

We can't project that onto God.

God didn't say, I didn't give you the power

to turn yourself over to the bottle of alcohol.

No, God said, hey, if you do this,

you abstain from this, this won't be an issue.

And we're like, yeah, I understand God,

but I'm only gonna live 'til I'm 70 anyway,

so I might as well just have fun doing it.

I've heard that a lot.

I've said that a lot.

I actually said that this week.

I'm not perfect.

I'm still trying to figure it out too.

It's not a secret I like cigars.

I've got medical professionals in here,

it's like, and you like early death.

I mean, I understand.

I understand.

The point is not to be perfection.

The point is to make adjustments to live in a lifestyle.

I can tell you this, if I have a problem in the future,

I won't be blaming God for that.

I did that.

I made that choice.

That was on me.

That's not a wrestle with me and God.

That was me.

I made that choice.

I can take responsibility for that.

Lust is a desire, and while it's commonly used

to describe sexual desires, it's actually used

multiple times throughout the scripture

in other terminology of desires.

And so today, some of you in this room are saying,

I've never had a sexual issue.

I've been faithful to my wife.

I've never had those things.

That's awesome.

That's praise the Lord.

Some of you are saying, well, I have been sober for years.

Awesome, praise the Lord.

Some of you right now are in the midst of that battle.

Okay, awesome.

But lust is not always exclusive to sexual.

So at some point in time, if you didn't have a sexual issue

or you weren't wrestling or you aren't wrestling with that,

I wanna ask you, has there been times

where you've lusted after something else?

Maybe when you're driving down the road

and you see a really pretty car,

did you have an urge over that vehicle?

When you're driving by houses,

man, it would have been really great

if God would have just given me that house,

and then your life is that way.

And I'm not saying that those thoughts aren't natural.

They are natural, but they also could lead

to lustful things.

Oh, I really want that house, I want that lifestyle,

I wanna look like this.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna wake up every day

and I'm gonna go to the gym.

And it's not about being healthy, it's about being ripped.

And then I'm gonna tan, and I'm gonna do all these things

so that I'm going after my desire to be this person,

or this house, or this concept.

Lust is not just sexual.

Where do we see that?

We see that in 1 Timothy 3.1.

This is just kind of a doozy.

In December, we established elders in the congregation.

They're men and women who have walked with April and I

for a period of years.

Just absolutely people of integrity.

They've been wise counsel even before the church

in a lot of regards with them.

We've known them for a long time.

But in 1 Timothy 3.1, the same word

that is used when we're talking about sinful lust

is then used there, and it's in the context of an elder.

And you're like, oh, okay, okay.

Elders shouldn't have sexual sin.

That's not the context of the word.

It says that the elders should lust

after having the ability to teach.

They already have a positional authority.

They already have the opportunity to sit in a position.

And it's saying they should want or desire

this other capability in that office.

So that's not bad.

They're actually saying an elder should want that.

And it's the same word with the same concept

when it says you should flee from that.

So it's important to understand that that mindset

of there's two natures or there's two choices,

that's prevalent throughout the Bible.

So a lot of times, it's like,

well, I just have to overcome this.

I just have to overcome this.

Well, yes, yes, that's true.

But there's also something else I overcome

by changing my heart and my mind

towards what God has told us we should desire.

The priority is to replace our fleshly desires

with kingdom desires.

And that kingdom is not your kingdom.

That kingdom is Jesus'.

Since Genesis 1, 1, all the way to the end

of the book of Revelation and every other Christian book,

every other Jewish sage book, every other lost book,

Jesus is on the throne, has been on the throne,

and will be on the throne.

He is the only king of kings.

There's never a debate about it.

There's never an election.

He doesn't have to have a cognitive test

to remain in the presidential race.

He is the king of kings, Lord of lords, hands down, forever.

So it's his kingdom.

So if we're wrestling against another kingdom,

then we get to choose, are we wrestling against God?

We talked last week about making God an opponent.

He's the one we're wrestling against

because if God opposes the pride

and we're walking in pride, then God is now at odds with us.

So if we're at odds with God and his kingdom,

then we're obviously not building his kingdom.

We're building our kingdom or the adversary's kingdom,

which are similar because the adversary himself

was given authority and talents and gifts by the Lord.

And at some point in time, he got cross ways

and he said, "That's mine."

No, it wasn't.

It was God's.

Just like your money is God's, your thoughts are God's,

your time is God's, your marriage is God's,

all these wonderful children in the front row here,

they're God's.

You're all God's.

You're God's.

You're God's gift.

God gave you to this world for a purpose.

First Peter 1, 14 through 16.

As obedient children, do not be conformed

to the passions of your former ignorance,

but as he who has called you holy,

also be holy in all your conduct,

since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.

God is not gonna write something in his scripture

commanding you to do something

that is impossible for you to do.

Now, it might be impossible for you to do in your flesh.

Just like it's impossible for me to not sin,

I'm going to sin.

The Bible says, "For all have sinned

"and fallen short of the glory of God."

It's gonna happen.

So to be holy, there has to be a process

that God would lay out for you to be able to walk in that.

God's not, he's not saying, "Hey, I want you to do this."

And by the way, you realize it's not possible for you to do.

It is not possible for you to walk in deliverance

out of your own flesh, out of your own mind,

out of your own power.

It is possible to walk in deliverance

with God's mind and God's power.

But the two have to become one,

which means you can't be God,

you have to put him back where he's supposed to be.

So how do we fight lustful sin?

One, we have to first admit that we have a problem.

We talked about this last week, how do you combat pride?

You walk in humility, and humility is submission

to the Lord and the Lord's plan.

Same thing, we first have to admit there's a problem.

A lot of people are walking around,

and they have lustful issues, they have pride issues,

and they first don't want to admit

that it's actually a problem.

It's like, "Oh, I'm managing it well.

"I'm managing it well."

Yeah, it might be stage one, but as you manage it,

it's gonna move to stage two, and then stage three,

and stage four, and then you're dead.

And it's not the right type of death.

The right type of death is where you willingly die

to your flesh so that Christ can be manifested in you.

Number two, you have to repent of your problem.

You first acknowledge there's a problem.

Two, you actually have to repent.

You actually have to go through the process

of not only saying, "God, please forgive me,"

but making an action change.

How would you feel if you were in a relationship with people

and you said, "Hey, I'm sorry.

"Please forgive me," and they did,

but they already knew that it was gonna be

10 seconds later or a day later.

You're gonna do the same thing again,

and you're not even gonna try to combat it.

You're not gonna try to bring restraint into your life.

There's people who will say,

"A couple years ago, every other word out of my mouth,

"it was a very stressful time of my life.

"One of the people I was with on a daily basis

"was just a very angry person all the time,

"and I became a very angry person too,

"and there was a lot of conflict.

"And so every other word out of my mouth almost

"was what was considered a cuss word.

"I wasn't cursing anybody."

You know, we use those interchangeable,

but they were expletives.

And I'll just say across the board,

because some people, like that means different things

to different people.

Like if you say, "Shoot, there's a homeschool mom in here

"going, 'Oh, he did not.'"

(congregation laughing)

"Oh, no, he did not."

And so there's a gamut of what that is,

but I used to do it on a regular basis.

And it wasn't because I was trying to be cool or anything.

It was literally, I was so in despair inside myself

that that was where my heart was.

I was going to lunch with friends,

begging for a way to find my way out of hell.

But yet I still wanted to go back.

And there's no way I would have ever been able

to overcome that if, one,

if I would have stayed in the same environment,

or two, I would have replaced that environment

with people who were similar.

Just like if you're trying to overcome alcoholism,

you're not gonna go hang out in a bar.

This is common sense.

If you wrestle with your phone,

you best be giving your phone to your spouse

or to somebody else when you're not

in immediate need of it.

Do something different when you repent.

Do something, little, just little, start.

And then it builds, and it builds,

and it builds, and it builds.

Repentance means more than just saying words.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean like,

in my mind when I said do something,

I saw that meme on Facebook where it was like a stick,

and the stick figure's hitting something with it.

It's like, just do something,

kind of like the Dallas Cowboys.

It's like, will you win, please?

(congregation laughing)

But it's the same thing.

Every year, that wasn't in my notes,

and I can talk about it here

because I'm not emotionally attached to the Cowboys.

Every year is, this is our years.

We then boys, we then boys.

We set a standard, and every year it's the same thing.

They have possibly a very decent record

in the start of the year,

and then they're out in the first round of the playoffs

if they make the playoffs.

And then they talk about,

oh, we're gonna do something different,

we're gonna do something different, and they don't.

The reason why I can say that

is because I grew up a Bengals fan.

And anybody who's watched football over a period of time,

the Bengals shouldn't have been called football

almost any bit of the time they played football

unless we had Boomer Esiason or Joe Burrell.

That's where I got an amen.

(congregation laughing)

I mean, it is true.

But you have to do something different in your life.

If you want different expectations,

if you're trying to overcome a sin,

do something different.

People say, oh, you don't trust me.

You're right, I don't trust you

'cause you don't even trust yourself.

So stop passive aggressively putting that on your spouse

or on your friends or whatever.

It's not their problem, it's your problem.

God can work inside of you.

You need to do something.

Stop trying to make it everybody else's problem.

And they might be kind enough to say,

well, no, no, I'm just gonna look you in the eyes

and say, well, Larky,

is that a homeschool mom word I'm allowed to use too?

Like, I'm calling BS, I'm throwing the flag.

You have to do something.

Brandon Sammons, that's what I'm calling.

That's my childhood best friend.

Where's your mind, Brent?

You are the teaching elder of this church.

What were you doing?

(congregation laughing)

Apparently we're gonna have to have

two staff meetings this week.

I also have proof in my phone

that my best friend from high school's name

is Brandon Sammons, and I do still talk to him.

So that wasn't made up on the spot.

So number three, agree in prayer

that God can help you overcome your problem.

A lot of you in this room who've been wrestling with it,

you will read it and you'll say it.

You'll say, I believe God can do it.

But do you truly believe that God can change your heart?

Do you truly believe that?

Guys, I can promise you as a testimony,

my heart was dead.

I was telling everybody, I want out, I want out.

I worked in full-time ministry.

I worked with other pastors.

Oh, they call themselves pastors.

I worked with other pastors.

And I was the worst of all of them.

So if God can reach down and tell me,

this is not who I created you to be,

and then I can start talking to my friends

and my counsel saying, please help me, please help me.

I don't know what to do and I don't know what to do.

But then I wasn't even really willing to make a change

because there was this concept of

how do you provide for your family?

How do you provide for these things?

And so then all of a sudden God said,

you really, really, really want me to help you?

Boom.

And he gave me an Exodus moment.

And my heart completely changed.

But my mouth didn't completely change.

I had to do something different.

And little by little by little,

the words I speak began to change.

And the things I started to see

in the scripture began to change.

And the relationships with other people

began to change.

And little by little by little by little by little

of working and working and working,

I finally got to see and am seeing

what I believe God said he was doing in his word

from Genesis to Revelation,

which is healing people, raising them from the dead.

And sometimes that's just not like,

oh, I'm physically dead.

Sometimes you're spiritually dead

and a lot of times you're spiritually dead.

And he will raise you from the dead

with your spiritual death.

It says you must die to your flesh.

So that he can make you born again in him.

Number four, abstain from activities or spaces

where you are weak or may become weak.

What's more important, your true healing,

the true power of God,

or the awkwardness of a conversation?

I mean, my brother Nathan Harmon,

the one time came over

and everybody knows Nathan's testimony.

Nathan was an alcoholic.

He was doing drugs.

He was doing all these things,

ended up wrapping his car around a tree

and killing an individual

and spent some time in prison.

And while he was in prison, he got saved.

He was a young man when he did that.

And when I first met Nathan,

I didn't know anything about him

other than he invaded my space.

And that made me feel very uncomfortable.

He put his man bun inside the window of my car

and said, I'm coming with you.

Anybody who knows me,

I should have drawn on him, but I didn't.

And when he came to my house the first time,

I was sitting down and I was having a beer.

I was like, do you want a beer?

I didn't know.

This is a guy who's repented

and gone through the consequences of actions he's made.

And the Holy Spirit has filled him

and he's out evangelizing to people.

And he wasn't like, sure, I'll have a beer.

Or, yeah, no, thank you.

It was like, I don't drink.

Guess what?

You can actually respond if you drink.

You can say, okay, awesome, can I get you some water?

Like, what do you mean you don't drink a beer?

Are you Amish?

Are you like?

No, you can be respectful of people

because the awkward conversation is put there

in order to not put you back into a place

that would cause you to stumble.

And if you're truly supposed to be brothers and sisters

of the same family,

then we should want to have those awkward conversations

so we don't cause our brother and sisters to stumble.

Family on mission means that we war together

for each other's benefits.

Why?

Because sooner or later, you're gonna need that friend.

I got a friend who's been warring, warring.

And I will always go to war with that person.

Why?

Because I don't wanna put him in a space or a time

or a place that could cause a problem.

And so I wanna know how to be the best friend,

how to be the best support mechanism.

Time for us to do that for all people

and then allow people to do that for us as well.

And then number five, fill that time and space

that you abstain from the other things

with the word of God, prayer and fellowship.

Worship team, you can come back.

We see in Mark chapter one

that upon Jesus coming in from the wilderness,

the first thing Jesus had to do was had to be tempted.

He had to overcome the adversary.

I have a teaching on YouTube from back in the day

that said Yeshua conquered the death before the cross

or something like that.

And it was all about how Yeshua went into the wilderness

and went face to face with his adversary

and he did so before he even willingly

gave his life on the cross.

And so he overcame the world in the wilderness

'cause the devil threw everything he could at him.

I'll give you food, I'll give you power,

I'll give you whatever you want.

If you will bow to me.

And he said, no, I'm not gonna bow to you.

Get behind me, go.

And then he comes, then he comes in to the city.

And then he says, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.

He calls his disciples,

they immediately go into the synagogues.

And while they're in the synagogues,

there's a marvelous testimony,

just like there is throughout Isaiah and other places,

that Jesus, when he taught, he taught with authority.

And then he immediately casts out

unclean spirits and demons.

I've got some friends who are different denominations

and they're like, so are you Pentecostal?

Are you like more assemblies of God?

And I'm like, neither one would have me.

Messianic movement wouldn't have me, that's okay.

Never really was part of the Hebrew roots thing.

I wanna do the Bible things in Bible ways.

And if the Bible says that Jesus did these things

and he's given us these powers,

then I'm not saying we need to sit here and throw a coat

and somebody's got some unclean spirit running out the door.

I'm not saying we got some holy water up in here,

but I believe that through his power, his might,

and his direction, that the sins you are struggling with,

the desires you have,

whether you wanna admit you have them or not,

the desires you have are things

that he wants to set you free from.

Lust can be lusting after the things of God

and the calling of God on your life,

or lust can be after your flesh in this world.

One is what the Bible tells us we're supposed to do.

The other is what the Bible tells us

we're supposed to flee from.

A lot of times we allow our worldly lust,

our sinful lust to cause us to flee from godly lust.

If I've wrestled with a pornography addiction in the past,

at no point in time can I be restored

and ever be a preacher.

I've heard people say that, hogwash.

Well, I was a drunk driver

and I killed somebody when I was younger,

and so I can never be used by God, hogwash.

Well, I come to church and I pray

and I have a gift of prayer

and I'm praying for people and I'm praying for people,

but then when I go home, I struggle with this,

and so I really just don't believe

like God's really working, hogwash.

God's always working.

A lot of times people come through the doors

and they either have of themselves

that they project onto other people

that before you walk through the doors of a church

that you must be perfect, hogwash.

This is a place where you should come and meet with the Lord,

where you should cast your cares down

so you can be set free.

If you pursue Jesus and the Spirit of Jesus

with the same relent that He pursued you,

I promise you whatever addiction you have,

whatever misplacement, miscalculation of your desire

in an inappropriate way, God can remove them.

We're talking about the God who literally parted the seas.

We're talking about the God

who took the strongest human being

and the Pharaoh at that point in time took his firstborn.

We're talking about a God who took a bunch of slaves,

put them in the wilderness,

and while they were complaining,

and while they were struggling,

and while they were wrestling,

He turned them into a holy nation.

That God.

So this week I wanna challenge you with something.

I have no idea what seven deadly sin

we're gonna do next week.

But if there's any area of your life

that you have a lust for something that isn't of God,

I want you this week, challenging you.

When that thought comes and you say,

"Oh, there's no way I'll do this."

You can do it.

That's why it's a challenge.

I'm challenging you to take action.

The time when you have the thought,

open the Word of God, put on a song.

There's a line in this song that we're gonna sing today.

Talks about God being jealous.

God is jealous for you.

The time you spend on your screen, God is jealous for you.

The time you spend replacing good conversations

with bad conversations, God is jealous for you.

(gentle music)

But we have to fight in war

against the things that are literally around our eyes

and our ears 24/7.

So today we're gonna sing, "Come Be the Fire Inside of Me."

Some of you have fires inside of you

that are burning and they're raging,

and they're not God.

They're a God, but they're not the God.

They're not Yahweh.

And as we sing this song, go to war.

Go to war with whatever that voice is,

whatever that adversary is, and say,

"I want Jesus to be the fire,

"the Holy Spirit to be the fire inside of me.

"I wanna walk in a manner that the Torah tells us

"that Jesus instructs us on the Sermon of the Mount.

"I want to do these, but Lord,

"I cannot do them without you."

The more that's our cry,

that I know I can't do it by myself, but you can do it,

and I know if I work with you, you can do it in me,

the more I know he will show up,

and the reason why is because he goes and he works

with those who are asking him to work with.