#21 Addressing Our Sins

Dale O'Shields: Thank you for joining us for today's Practical Living broadcast. I pray that through this message, you will learn how to apply God's word and truths to any situation in your life. Stay with us as we discover God's truths that will transform us. Join me if you will in welcoming our Frederick campus. Give them a good round of applause. Welcome to all of you from Frederick and those joining us online as well on this 4th of July weekend. Just a couple of things I do want to draw your attention to before I get into today's message. Many of you are aware of the terrible earthquakes that happened in Venezuela. Of course, you need to know that we as a church are very much aware of these different needs that happen around the world. Over the years, we have made a commitment to partner with different ministries that assist in ways that deal with disasters. It would be practically impossible for me to mention every weekend all the different disasters that happen. We have a church of over 100 different nations. So, having 100 different nations represented, there's no way that I can always mention every nation that has a crisis going on. So, we've decided as a church to partner with certain ministries that actually are on the ground assisting when these kind of crisis points come. In the Venezuela crisis, as well as many others around the world, we are partners with Samaritan's Purse, as well as Convoy of Hope. They are our missions partners, and so we were able to give a substantial gift this past week to Samaritan's Purse to assist in the earthquake relief in Venezuela. Certainly praying for those who have gone through terrible loss with their families there and many crises around the world. Know that the missions program of our church is very robust and we're very committed to always reaching people in need. But we always do it with organizations that do it in Jesus' name, not just passing out food and relief, but to make sure it's being done with the gospel given as well. So, know for those of you from Venezuela or have family there that we are indeed praying for you. I'm going to share with you a message today. Actually, it's the 21st message in our series entitled Lifequakes. Today, I'm actually breaking a record. This is indeed the longest series I have ever done in 40 years here at the church. So, you guys are history made today. History makers in the room. Monday of this week, once I got past a certain point, I normally prepare my messages two or three months in advance at least, generally speaking, to get a sense of where I'm going with things. I had done that with the Lifequakes series, and yet what happened is the more I got into the series, the more inspiration I was beginning to receive from it. There came a point when I ran out of messages that I had actually prepared, so I got into the mode of starting to prepare week by week for the messages upcoming on the weekend. So, this past Monday, I prepared a message that I shared with our team because they have to get everything ready for us, all the notes and those kind of things. By the way, don't you appreciate the people behind the scenes making it happen? It couldn't happen without those people. So, they had all the notes, everything was ready, going to press and all of that with it. Then Thursday morning, I sat down at my devotional time and I began to read and study. I felt the Holy Spirit speak to me and say, "I want you to change the message for this weekend." I thought, "Well, I can do that, but it's not really convenient for all those other people because I've got to change not only me, but they've got to change all the notes and those kind of things as well." I went ahead and prepared the message and sent it to them and said, "Yeah, I'm so sorry, but I really sense that we need to change this." I'm happy to report that all the team that I sent it to said, "No problem, Pastor. We want you to go with what the Holy Spirit leads you to go with." That's a great team to have that kind of an attitude. They worked on their day off to prepare all of this for you. I just wanted to acknowledge them and appreciate them for the work that they put in in terms of that, just appreciate them so very much. But I felt a deep conviction in my heart that I needed to change the message for this weekend from this past Monday that I had prepared. Well, see, maybe I'll preach that next weekend. I want to talk to you this morning about addressing sin in your life. As soon as I give you the topic, a lot of people will say, "I'm leaving right now." But hang around. It's going to be good. I promise it's going to be good addressing sin in your life. We're talking about Lifequakes. A lifequake is anything that shakes up your life, right? Anything that comes along might be sudden, might be gradual, but it shakes your world in some way to where you're no longer at that place of equilibrium that you had before. Jesus made it really clear that everybody goes through these quaking moments of life. In Matthew chapter 7, he described men building houses. One man built his house on a rock, another on sand, and the storms of life came to both people. Only the man whose house was built on rock survived. So, we're talking about how do you build your life in such a way that the quaking moments do not destroy you? How do you make sure that you're building your life on the rock, on the solid rock of God's word, obedience to God's word? How do you do that and how do you do that well? We've talked about a lot of different things that challenge us, that are shaking things in our lives. As I said, what I want to talk to you about today is probably one of the biggest things, if not the biggest thing, that can actually shake your world. I want to talk to us about how do you deal with this terrible problem called sin, because sin actually, when it enters into your life or remains in your life, it actually undermines and suddenly or even slowly destroys your life. Sin is extremely destructive and there's only one way to deal with sin. The only way to deal with sin according to the Bible, how do you actually address it in your life? The only way to deal with it is through the word that we're going to focus primarily on today associated with sin, and that is the word repentance. Would you say that word with me? Repentance. Over the last several weeks, we've talked about overcoming doubt. Remember that? We talked about overcoming doubt and we talked about how we have faith and confidence that God is, having faith and confidence that God's word is true, how to have faith and confidence that Jesus is the Son of God. I hope those messages were helpful for you. But we've talked about faith. How do you have faith in God? Faith in the Messiah, Jesus? As I begin to think about this idea of faith, we start with, yes, we believe there is a God and we believe His word is true and we believe that Jesus is the Son of God. So, now how do we approach Him? The way we approach Him, that faith leads us to dealing with sin. It leads us to dealing with this thing called repentance. In fact, one of the most wonderful things in our lives will be a true meaningful relationship with God that is produced through repentance. I believe that repentance is one of the greatest blessings you'll ever experience in life because it brings you into relationship with God. The passage that I was reading on Thursday, early morning Thursday, that changed my focus for this weekend is the 32nd chapter of the Book of Psalms. I want to read for you the first seven verses from the NIV translation and then we're going to talk about how we address our sin today. David's words: "Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit." Not trying to deceive God. Verse 3: "When I kept silent," implied there when I didn't acknowledge, "when I kept silent about my sins, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy on me. My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity." "I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord' and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Therefore, let all the faithful pray to you while you may be found. Surely the rising of the mighty waters will not reach them. You are my hiding place. You will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance." David here in this passage describes what I believe to be the first door that faith leads you to. That faith in God leads you to the door called repentance. What is repentance? True repentance involves recognizing and addressing things in our lives with God that separate us from God, that damage our relationship with God and that damage our relationship with others. Let me repeat that. What is repentance? Repentance involves recognizing and addressing, not just recognizing but addressing with God, it's with Him, anything in your life, multiple things in your life that are separating you from God or damaging your relationship with God or your relationship with other people. What is sin? Sin is any disregard, disobedience to God's word, to God's will, to God's ways. So, repentance is the action that leads us back to God. Repentance indeed is an action. Repentance is not primarily a feeling. A lot of times people say, "Well, I felt convicted and I repented." Well, there's nothing wrong with feeling conviction, we'll talk about that in a moment, but that's not repentance. Real repentance is an action. It's not just about feeling guilty or feeling sorry or making some kind of promise to God that you're going to try to do better. That's all good, but that's not really the essence of repentance. Repentance according to the Bible is turning away from sin and turning to God. That's what repentance is. Turning away from sin and turning to God. Say it with me. Repentance is turning away from sin and turning to God. This is the theme of repentance all through the pages of the Bible. Turning away from sin and turning to God. Away from anything that is disobedient to God's word, God's will, God's way and turning to God. I believe that one of the greatest and often ignored doors to blessing in life is the door of repentance. A lot of people never open up that door or they rarely open up the door of repentance. Because they rarely open the door of repentance in their life, they experience far less of the blessing of God that He has in store for them. It's something that you and I need to practice our entire Christian journey. So, my question for us today that I want to answer in these next few moments is, how do we open the door of repentance in our lives so that we can address our sin and we can find the renewal of our relationship with God in an ongoing manner? I'm going to share with you six things that I believe are essential to open up the door of repentance, which leads you through your faith to blessing from God in your life. Number one, to open the door of repentance, you and I need to first develop a tender conscience. There's never any repentance without an awareness of sin. You will never repent of something you're not aware of. You'll never repent of a sin that you're not aware of. When I say being aware of sin, I'm not just talking about some kind of general sense, "Oh, yeah, I do bad things from time to time." But I'm talking about an awareness of specific sins in your life that need to be addressed. To be able to be aware of specific sins in your life that need to be addressed, you need a tender conscience, not a hard conscience but a tender conscience, a soft conscience, a conscience that is responsive to God. There are certain, we might say, characteristics of a tender conscience. The first characteristic is that a person with a tender conscience listens to God. They're paying attention to what God has to say to them, and they do so primarily through the word of God. So, they're giving personal attention to God's word, listening to how the word of God personally applies to them and taking personal responsibility for it. So, you know that you have a tender conscience before God if you're listening for what God wants to say to you through His word that brings adjustment or correction in your life and thinking about your own responsibility to God in regard to it. A beautiful example of this is found in Isaiah chapter 6. We notice the prophet Isaiah, he has an encounter with God, an amazing encounter with God that changes his life. But notice the tenderness of Isaiah's conscience. Chapter 6 verse 1: "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim," that's an angel, angelic forces. "Each with six wings: with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.' At the sound of their voices, the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke." Stop there with me for a moment and notice what's going on. Isaiah is in the very presence of the holy God. Angels are flying around and they're shouting, singing, declaring, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." What would be your response in a moment like that? I would say, "Somebody give me my phone. I want to take some pictures. I've got to capture this moment. This is incredible." But I want you to notice Isaiah's response. We see in verse number 5, three words. Would you read them with me? What are the first words out of Isaiah's mouth in that moment? "Woe to me." "Woe to me," I cried. What does he mean by this? Well, he tells us: "For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." Isaiah there in that moment, in the glorious moment, angels flying around, the declaration of holy, holy, holy, Isaiah recognizes I'm in trouble. Woe is me because there's some things in my life that I need to deal with. A tender conscience before God. Repentance always starts with a tender conscience. So, I would ask you this morning, how tender is your conscience? How easy is it for God to get your attention about some part of your life that displeases Him? How easy is it? Does God have to kind of get a 2x4 and hit you beside the head to get your attention? Or does God whisper to you through the scriptures and get your attention by His spirit at work in your life because your heart, your conscience has been tenderized by God? There're so many people that are living in sin today, ignorantly, unaware, because of a hardened conscience. All of us do that at times as well. We miss the very thing that God's trying to speak to us because we have a hardness of heart that needs to be tenderized and softened before God. So, if you're going to walk through the door of repentance that leads you to blessing in your life, the first thing that must occur is you need to have a tenderized conscience. Number two, the second thing that's necessary is to open that door, you have to understand the difference between real and false guilt. And there is a difference. As I mentioned, repentance requires a tender conscience, but it also requires a healthy conscience. Your conscience is sort of like a program inside your inner being, your spirit, your soul, and it runs on software. It runs on how it's been programmed. So, your conscience needs to be programmed by the right stuff to be healthy. Of course, we know that the Bible is what programs our conscience, not the culture around us. But the Bible tells us what is right and what is wrong and what pleases God and what doesn't please God. So, your conscience needs to be healthy so that you can have the right guilt whenever you need to have the right guilt. Guilt is not a bad thing in your life. It can become bad, but guilt can be a very good thing. I'm thankful that on my vehicle, the car that I drive, there is a fuel gauge. Are you glad about that as well? Because the fuel gauge will tell you in the way that my car works is there's a little thing that comes on the dash that says, "You need to go to the gas station." It doesn't say it in those words, but it's telling me I'm in trouble right now. I only have a few more miles to drive or else I'm going to be out of gas. So, it's a warning and there're all kind of warnings on the dashboard of your vehicle. God gives us a warning on the dashboard of our lives, and that warning light is called guilt. It will flash in moments in your life when you need to pay attention, as long as your conscience has been properly programmed to know the difference between what truly is right and what truly is wrong. So, we need to understand the difference between true guilt and false guilt. True guilt results in conviction. That's a word that you need to be aware of. The word conviction is something that describes this moment in your life when there's this sort of pricking inside of you that I recognize, "Oh, yeah, that's wrong. This doesn't please God." There's this little guilt thing or sometimes a large sense of guilt in your life that allows you to be aware of the fact that you are at this moment through the behaviors of your life or the attitudes that you possess or the words you're speaking that you're actually displeasing God. So, this is the moment that you're convicted of your sin. You're convicted of the reality in your conscience that something is wrong in your life. Conviction is painful, but it's also hopeful. God never condemns you. God is never saying, "You know what? I'm just fed up with you." This is not God. This is not the voice of God. But the real voice of conviction comes in and says, "This is wrong in your life. I want to help you move out of this place in your life." So, it's yes, it is painful in the moment. I found myself being at times when God has convicted me of things, being very pained by that hurt in my soul that I've been displeasing to God in that manner, but at the same time feeling well there's still hope that I can come out of this. Perhaps the classic story of this in the Bible is in Luke chapter 15 when the young man who had been given his inheritance went away and wasted everything and then he came to his senses and said, "I'm going home to be a servant to my father." Conviction in one's life. When God convicts you of something, it is not God hating you. It's God loving you. Are you hearing me today? Anytime God says, "That's wrong. Stop it. Get rid of this thing in your life," that is not God hating you. That is actually God loving on you. He loves you so much that He's working in you to conform you more to His image so that your life can be more fully blessed. On the other side of true guilt is false guilt. False guilt is when we begin to feel overwhelmed by something that's bad in our lives and we feel shameful about it and we feel condemned by it and we want to hide ourselves from God and others because of it. That's called condemnation in our lives and condemnation doesn't come from God. Condemnation comes from the devil. The devil is the accuser of those of us who are followers of Christ, the brethren of Jesus. We are subject to the accusations of the enemy. Condemnation. God doesn't condemn you, but God does convict you. The difference between condemnation and conviction, conviction says, "Yes, it hurts, but I know that I can get better." Condemnation says, "Yeah, this hurts, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to deal with it," and you begin to feel oppressed by it. Jesus reminded us of the difference between conviction and condemnation in John chapter 3 verses 16 and 17: "For God so loved the world," notice this, He so loved the world, that's us, "that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." Notice verse 17: "For God did not send his Son into the world to do what? To condemn the world, but to save the world through him." So, condemnation discourages and it destroys, but conviction saves. How do you walk through the door of repentance so you experience blessing in your life? How do you address your sin? Number three, you need to take some time and consider when you're under conviction, consider the pain and the problems that sin causes. There are consequences to sin. It's healthy to stop for a moment and say, "What is this doing to me? God, you've convicted me of this in my life. Let me think for a moment what this is doing to me and what this is doing to my relationship with you and what this is doing in my relationships with other people, and why is this so bad?" You take a moment and you consider the pain and the problems that are being caused in your life by sin. You don't need to feel hopeless in your sin, but you do need to recognize the consequences of sin and you need to be sobered by the consequences because only when you're sobered by the consequences of sin will there be motivation enough to change, to begin to let God do a work in your life to change your actions, to change your attitudes, to change your thoughts, to change your words, to change the way that you relate to other people. Conviction, yes, but contemplation. Let me think about what this is doing to me and to my relationship with God and to others. Paul the apostle reminds us of this in Romans 13 verses 11 and 12. Listen to what he says here. I love this passage. He's wrapping up this amazing book of Romans, writing to some people he loved dearly, and he says: "And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed." Notice those words. What does Paul say to the Romans? "Wake up." I believe if we could hear through the pen of the apostle Paul at that moment, it wouldn't just be "Wake up." I believe it would be "WAKE UP!" Wake up! Think about what's really going on in your life right now for our salvation is near, that is Jesus is returning soon. Our salvation is near than when we first believed. The night is almost gone, the day of salvation will soon be here, so remove your dark deeds like dirty clothes and put on the shining armor of right living. Paul says, "Think about it. Sober up." Sobriety. What is sobriety? Sobriety is coming out from under the influence of anything that's intoxicating. Sin can be very intoxicating in your life. It can promise you things and can mess with your mind and mess with your emotions in ways that you think you're getting something that you're not actually getting. It intoxicates you. So, sin can have this effect, and Paul says, "Wake up. Be sober. Be aware of the fact of what this is really doing to you." Number four, this is where we begin to turn things around. Tender conscience, healthy conscience, thinking about what God is convicting me of in terms of my sin in my life, being sobered about this. Then I have to own my sin. Own your sin. Own it. This is vital. You know that real repentance is happening in your heart when your heart and your mind stop thinking about the sins of other people and placing blame on other people and pointing fingers at other people. All of a sudden, the only person in the room is you and God. That's how you know real repentance is happening. As long as you're going through some issue in your life and you want to point the finger at somebody else and blame somebody else and blame something else for your life, you haven't come to repentance yet. Real repentance happens when it's just you and God, and you realize this is not about blaming anyone else. Right now, it's me and God. It's the moment I'm before God myself. Nobody else's sin matters at this moment. It's only my sin that matters with God. So, to confess is to specifically own up to your sin before God. It's again, to God. Why? Because God is the only one that can forgive sins. Notice how David describes it. Psalm 32 verse 5. We read it a moment ago. After coming through the season of conviction, David says, "Then I acknowledged," notice that I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, "I will do what? I will confess. I will confess my transgressions" to who? To the Lord. "I acknowledged my sin," David said, and I also said, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord." Think about that word confession for a moment. What does it actually mean? Let's put it in modern-day terms. If someone commits a crime and they're arrested for that crime, they're usually brought into a particular place where they're interrogated to see what they're going to do. Are they going to own up to the fact that they've done the deed, that they've committed the crime? In the interrogation, they're given the opportunity to say, "Did you do this or not?" Anyone who's done the crime and is willing to confess will then acknowledge, "Yes, I am guilty. I did this. I am taking responsibility for what I did." This is the same is true with God, that when you and I have done something that has hurt the heart of God, that is disobedient to His word in our behaviors, in our attitudes, in our thoughts, in our relationships, in our words, and God convicts us of that sin, what He wants from us next is the acknowledgment of God. I am owning up to this. I confess you are right, the charges you're bringing against me are true. I have no excuse. Nobody else is in the room. Not blaming anyone else for what's going on in my life. The charges that you are now indicting me with, they are true. I agree with them. I own up to the responsibility that God, that attitude stinks. You're right, it's sin. That behavior is wrong. I agree, it's sin. Those words I said, I agree, those are sin. And we go through that process of owning up as David said: "I acknowledged my sin to you. I will confess my transgressions to the Lord." Notice again what happens here. The next thing that transpires is there's a process in this. Once confession transpires, there's then the fifth thing that occurs here, and that's the acceptance of God's grace and forgiveness. I'm thankful for number five being in our list today, aren't you? I said, I'm thankful for number five being in our list today. How about you? I'm thankful that we didn't stop with number four. I'm thankful that number five is in our list today to accept God's grace and forgiveness. Because real repentance, yes, it leads to conviction and sobriety and confession of our sin to God, but all of that leads to something very beautiful. It leads to actual forgiveness, the washing away of our sins, the removal of our guilt, the removal of our shame, the removal of anything that has separated us from God, the restoring of our relationship with Him. Notice again Psalm 32 verses 1 and 2: "Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them and in whose spirit there is no deceit." Verse 5: "Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord' and you forgave the guilt of my sin." Can we say hallelujah? Can we say hallelujah? See, this is all God wants. He just wants relationship with you. That's all He wants. He just wants, He loves you. All He wants is relationship with you. He wants to be in right relationship with Him. He's done everything to make that possible. So, you come back to God through acknowledging your sin to Him and being sobered about the reality of it and coming to God and saying, "God, I confess this before you." God says, "Okay, that's what I was waiting on. Now understand that I forgive you. I placed all of that guilt over on Jesus on the cross. He paid the price for you for your forgiveness." So, confession is what leads to the cleansing of your conscience but not just sort of a superficial confession, but the confession that comes out of this point of repentance in your life. Godly sorrow is what leads to repentance in your life, to this owning of these things that result in a restoring of relationship with God. It clears your conscience. There's a restoring of that relationship, a refreshing in your life. It's incredible. I've been around people before and experienced this in my own life as well, that God convicts of sin and they come under conviction and they realize, "Yes, this is wrong," and they realize what they're doing to their relationship with God and their relationship with other people, and they confess that with repentance to God. It's amazing what happens when they receive that forgiveness of God. There's a freshness that comes to them that can only come through repentance. It's like they've taken an amazing bath. They've been all dirty, all filthy, but now they've been washed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Made clean, made whole, made new and refreshed again by the process of repentance. There's a cleanness, a freshness about them. Beautiful thing. It opens the door of blessing in your life. There's one last thing. With this, we're going to conclude today. How do you walk through the door of repentance? All that we've talked about so far, but there's a final thing. You then have to seek to live differently. I'll give you a moment to write that down, but I want you to listen to this next statement that I'm going to make as well. Because the real fruit of repentance is not just feeling sorry for a few minutes about what you did or said or an attitude you had, but the real fruit of repentance is change. That's the real fruit of repentance. Repentance is never meant to be, listen to this, it's never meant to be a revolving door. "I sin, I confess, I receive forgiveness, then I go back and sin again and confess and receive forgiveness." There are some people that are going through what I call the revolving door of grace. Just sinning, confessing, sinning, confessing, sinning, confessing, doing the same thing over and over again. God's design for you and plan for you is not to leave you in the revolving door of sin, but to deliver you from sin. Amen? To deliver you from the very thing that has been dominating your life, afflicting your life, hurting your relationship with God, hurting your life, hurting your relationships with others. Jesus came not just to forgive us of our sins, but to deliver us from the power of sin in our life. Step by step, little by little, it's called sanctification. That means simply making you more like Jesus, making you holy, making you more like Him. Changing and transforming your life so that your life is different. Christians should be growing in such a manner that day by day and year by year and decade by decade, that our lives are becoming more and more different. By that, I mean more and more like Jesus. Amen? I hope and pray that I'm more like Jesus today than I used to be. How about you? I hope and pray. I hope and pray that next year, I'll be more like Jesus than I am right now. I hope and pray if God gives me another decade of life, I hope and pray that in 10 more years, I'm a whole lot more like Jesus than I am today. Because I don't want to just go through life and stay the same. How about you? But the whole idea of repentance is to bring about that change. Yes, we confess and we're forgiven, but God says, "Now I want to help you to change." Now, this change doesn't always mean that you're instantly changed. I'm not saying that at all. Some people are. Sometimes, and I've had experiences in my life when I've repented of something and I never had an issue with that again. It seemed to go away. It seemed to be something that God helped me to kind of deal with in my life and I was kind of got past that very dramatically and very miraculously. But other things I had to keep working on. Anybody have to work on some stuff in your life? Come on, anybody have to work on some stuff in your life? If you're not raising your hand, you need to work on lying right now. So, yes, there are times that you have to go back and ask forgiveness for the same stuff. Yeah, we get that, we understand that. But the idea is that repentance leads you, although it may not be an overnight change, there's a commitment to change. There is a direction of change that is now set by repentance. You're moving toward change. You're no longer happy and content to be where you were. Anytime it comes up in your life again, you say, "No, I'm going to go back and deal with that. I'm not going to stay in this same place." I want you to notice what David said about his life after repentance. If anyone had to learn something about repentance, David did. Not just one time. We often think of David's repentance when it comes to Bathsheba. Yes, that was a big one, but there were a lot of different things in David's life. David was not a perfect man. Amen. In Psalm 51, he gives us this incredible prayer that he prays for his cleansing and forgiveness, and I'm only going to read a portion of it for you. I do want to read from the Living Bible paraphrase because I love the way it phrases this for us. It's a prayer of David: "Create in me a new, clean heart, O God, filled with clean thoughts and right desires. Don't toss me aside, banished forever from your presence. Don't take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me again the joy of your salvation and make me willing to obey you." See the change there? Make me willing to do what? Help me to learn to put my will in line with your will. Make me willing to obey you. Notice verse 13: "Then, after you've done this in my life, then I will teach your ways to other sinners and they, guilty like me, will repent and return to you." David says, "Lord, when I come out of this whole mess that I'm in, I want to be different. When I come out of this mess that I'm in, I want to be someone that you can use to help other people become more like you as well, to repent as I've learned to repent and to return to you as I've learned to return to you." So, can I ask you today, how are you doing with God? I started to title today's message Getting Right with God. Are you right with God? I'm not here today to incite in you guilt. That's not my desire. But I am here today to encourage you to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit through His word in your life. If there's anything in your life that God speaks to you about that you know that you need to address, today is a great day to address it. I'm going to ask us all to bow our heads together. If the Frederick campus will stay with me as well through these next few moments. I'm not going to ask for a response, of visible response from you today. This is just about you and God right now. But will you just take a moment right where you are and just begin to say, "Lord, search my heart. Show me, Lord, anything in my life that you're not pleased with. It might be some things you've been doing, some relationships you may have been involved in, might be some attitudes you've been tolerating in your life, some words you've been speaking, some relationship patterns that God's saying, 'You know what? That needs to stop in your life.'" What is it? Only the Lord can make you know that today, but I want you to be open to that right now. And I want you now just to think about, soberly think about what was this doing to my relationship with God? What's this doing to me? What's this doing to the people around me? Just in your own heart today, in your own own words from your inner being, just sort of whisper to God: "I own that, God. I'm sorry. I accept responsibility. I confess to you. You're right. That's not pleasing to you and I confess that that's wrong. The charges you're bringing against me right now are true. I own that." Lord, I thank you this morning that one of the most disruptive, horrible lifequakes for any of us is the lifequake of sin. It comes in and shakes up our lives sometimes in a very sudden way and sometimes a very subtle, more slow, eroding sort of way in our lives. But it undermines the solid foundation upon which you want us to build our lives. We thank you for the work of the Holy Spirit, for the work of the word of God, to bring to our attention things that we need to be aware of, that we would never be aware of ourselves. I thank you that across this worship center this morning, across the Frederick campus, those watching online, I thank you that the Holy Spirit of God is breathing upon us in this morning, making us aware. I thank you that the spirit of conviction is at work among us today, not to condemn us, not to make us feel miserable about ourselves, but to help us to see that we have some places in our lives that are broken before you that you want to address. Now, Lord, we confess those to you. We own them. And we ask you for forgiveness. And we thank you for the promise of your word that says that if we will confess our sins, that you are faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from unrighteousness. Thank you for washing us and cleansing us from guilt and shame and sin. Lord, I also pray this morning, and I really pray this, God, there's some patterns in this room right now, in the Frederick campus as well, people that have been struggling with certain areas of their life. I pray that in their repentance today will come a liberation, a freedom, that whatever has been tripping them up and trapping them, that they will not go back to it again in Jesus' name. That today there will be a period put on that part of their lives. I sense that by your spirit, that people today, Lord, will leave this place and things they've struggled with maybe for decades, Lord, they're going to leave it behind today in Jesus' name. And that each one of us would progressively allow you to sanctify our lives so that we become more and more like you, day by day, week by week, year by year, decade by decade, that Jesus may be formed in each one of us. For that we thank you in the name that is above every name, the precious, the powerful, the lovely, the beautiful name of Jesus. Thank you, Lord. I would like to close today by giving you an opportunity to ask Jesus to be the Lord of your life. Would you pray with me right now? Right where you are, just simply bow your head with me and I'm going to give you a prayer to pray and you can simply speak this prayer out, whisper this prayer out, and from the sincerity of your heart call upon God, and I promise you that He will hear and answer you. So, let's pray together. Start by simply whispering the name Jesus. Let there come from your heart just the declaration of His name. Say, "Jesus, I know that that I am a sinner, that I have fallen short with you. I'm sorry for all of my sins." "Jesus, I believe in you. I believe that you are God's Son. I believe that you are the Savior of the world. I believe that you died on the cross for my sins. And I believe that you rose from the grave, that you are alive today." Now pray these words. Say, "Lord Jesus, come into my heart. Come into my life. Forgive me of my sins. Give me a new start in you. I commit my life to you in Jesus' name. Amen." Now, if you prayed that prayer with me, I want to encourage you with a promise from God's word that says that when we call upon God's name, we call upon the Son of God, there is salvation that comes to our lives. He changes us from the inside out and you become a new creation. Old things pass away, all things become new. And that's exactly what has happened to you today. Your next step really is to make sure that you get into a good Bible-believing church, and you begin to study God's word, get God's word in you, and to make sure that you get a copy of the Bible if you don't have one and begin to read it. Spend some time every day in prayer. I would encourage you also to check out the resources on our website that will help you to get going in your relationship with Jesus. You can find them at church-redeemer.org. Get those into your hands. Get started in your new life with Jesus Christ. Thanks again for joining us today. May God bless you and we look forward to seeing you next time.