[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 830 or 10:30 a.m. if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison church, find
[email protected] dot. Be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Alan Patton wrote a novel, and in his novel, it tells a very real, a raw and honest story that I think we can all connect with. That happens to deal with a topic that is very heavy, but crucially important, and that's repentance.
In order to tell this story of repentance, he uses a character by the name of Piterland. Piter is a guy that's a husband, a father. He's a police officer. He's got a really good friend named Cappy. And one of the things that they share as an interest is they trade and look at and study stamps.
And one of the struggles that Piter had in his life was that he grew up with what some call fatherhood issues. His father was absent when he needed him. And so, as he was growing up, that brought a lot of difficulties and challenges to Piter's life. And so Piter, as Alan puts it, was on the edge of having an affair with a younger woman.
And so what Piter did, he got out a pen and a paper. He was ready to go to Piter's house because he knew he needed to confess what was about to happen, because he knew he desperately needed his help.
So he got out that pen and paper, and this is what he wrote.
I am in desperate need of your help.
I'm on the verge of doing something that could completely wreck my life. And this is what he ended with. I need somebody to speak God into my life.
He put that note in his pocket, and he headed to Cappy's house.
He got there, and Cappy could tell, even though they were looking at stamps and talking, that something was off. And so he said to Piter, are you okay?
To which he replied, oh, yeah, I'm fine.
And then throughout their time together, he could still tell that something's off, that something's not right. And so Cappy said to him, he's like, hey, man, is there something that you need to tell me?
And his response is something that we've all probably been guilty of.
And even with that note in his pocket and every intention in his heart to say something, to make the charade end, to be honest as he could be, he said, no, I'm fine.
I just had an empty house, and I guess I just wanted to talk stamps.
And as Alan put it, he left unchanged.
There's a line in that book that very much sticks out to me, because I think we felt this before.
When Alan wrote this of Piter, he said, ah, if he could have told, and yet he would not tell this morning.
One of my goals as we look into this text in Ezra nine and ten, is to help us re see what repentance really is.
I grew up kind of thinking of repentance as just, like, a negative thing.
And don't get me wrong, as we look at this morning, we are going to see that repentance is a challenge in the fact that there is a process involved.
But more than anything, that I hope this morning that you see that when we repent, it's not God punishing us, but repentance is actually a privilege, it's an honor, because it's God trying to win us back.
But I also understand that a lot of us in this room are kind of like Piter.
And just to speak frankly for a second, I think especially a lot of us as men, one thing that we struggle with, I think, as men, is being vulnerable, as transparent. It's almost seen as a sign of weakness. Yet you go through the scriptures, and you see that God highlights it as actually a huge strength to be able to say, as a man or a man of God, I've done wrong. I need help. But we understand, yes, it might require a risk. It also requires vulnerability to open my heart, to say, listen, I'm in a point right now in my life that I'm in over my head. I've tried to fix it. I've tried to change it, and I can't do it. I need your help.
And so this morning, we are going to look at. And again, this is just my opinion that this might be the most incredible example of repentance in all of scripture.
And the reason it is to me is because there's two things involved.
Number one, there's a very deep seated sin that's happening at the moment.
And it's very difficult, right. To walk away from something that has been a part of your life for as long as you can remember, and especially, it's difficult to repent and to walk away from a sin or a sinful lifestyle when it's kind of like, man, this is who I've been. To say no to this would also to be saying yes to this and to say no to this would be saying yes to this. And so it's a difficult decision now.
But what makes this so amazing to me is that we've also been in a situation, too, that we know if we choose to repent, that there's going to be pieces that we have to pick up later, too.
So it's not just a challenge now, but there's even challenges ahead.
And so when you think about that, you think, well, why would I make that risk? Why would I be vulnerable with something like that? What I want us to see this morning is to see repentance in a very positive light.
It's us asking the power of God to join us at a time where we feel very weak and to understand that one of the strongest, most faith filled things that we can ever do is to say, I need help.
And so I want us to look in this text this morning in Ezra, chapter nine, where we'll see how this amazing example of a revival takes place.
But I want you to notice something. It starts with one person I was watching online this week while my family was here this past Sunday, I was sick. I don't know if I picked up something in Peru or not, but if y'all have ever watched our online services before, and you know that somebody comes forward, one of the things that you'll know that usually happens is the screen goes black to protect their privacy to them, to know that, hey, they can talk about things with their church family in a very safe way. And so I'm watching online, I was like, who came forward? And, like, I'm wanting to drive up there, like, I can't, you know, be who is it? And so I text the ministers and I text Brandon because I heard that five people came forward. And when I asked who those people were, in my opinion, those are people in my life that I look up to greatly.
And I know they didn't do it for that. And in a moment, we're going to read an example of Ezra, that that was not his goal. What I see in those men and what I see in Ezra here in just a second, is this is a group of people that, number one, have a deep rooted love for God and his word, but also when they understand something is wrong in their life, it's not that they're sorry that they got caught. I think what it is is that they're sorry they hurt the heart of God.
That's what I want to be.
And I hope, as you read this narrative with me of Ezra this morning, that we will learn to understand the power of those risks, of saying, hey, I've done wrong. But to understand that it's a risk worth.
So let's look at this example, because I'm telling y'all, it's incredibly heavy. This is what it says. The people of Israel and the priests and Levites have not separated themselves from the people of the lands with their abominations. They have taken some of their daughters to be wives for themselves.
What this text is speaking about, and this is the major issue, is that God's people had intermarried with pagan wives. This was something God was very clear about in deuteronomy seven, that he did not want to happen. And here's why. He did not want his people to lose their distinctiveness. Now, I want to say, from the very beginning, this text has at times been used to almost bring it about as, like, a racial issue. This is not a racial issue that's being depicted in this text. And here's why I know that it's not talking about interracial marriage or anything like that, that people have twisted this to be number one because Moses married a cushite woman, which was an ethiopian. I also know that you hear of Ruth. Of course. She was a moabite, married into Judaism. And by the way, when Miriam didn't like who Moses married, she got leprosy. So there's that.
But this is not a racial issue. But this is what it is. It is a religious issue, because here's why. God knows, if people compromise in this, they're going to compromise everything.
In fact, as you go through scripture, give an example. Samson, y'all, he was a guy since birth that the spirit of the Lord rushed upon. God had given him superhuman strength. He was a man that had it physically. He had been given it spiritually. Yet it was the attitudes of lust, entitlement, and pride that got a very strong man to be incredibly weak.
You see example after example. And what happened to Samson? Well, think about it for a second. You got a guy like David that made very similar decisions. But guess who David had in his life? He had a Samuel, he had a Nathan, he had a Jonathan. Look at Samson's main relationship.
It was a foreign woman that God told him not to be with.
And so we see throughout scripture, the challenge of this is that God doesn't want people to lose their distinctiveness, to compromise, because, like Samson and others read judges first and second Samuel, first and second kings, not only do they go through a difficult time, but oftentimes that whole people groups disappear.
God doesn't want them to lose their distinctiveness.
But here's the bigger challenge to me in all of this, and where it kind of really hits home is this.
It says, the leaders and the officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness.
Here's why this really hits home is we've talked about here that all of us are different leaders in different capacities. But I do think it brings an awareness, number one, for us to always be praying for our leaders, but also to understand that whatever leadership position you're in, maybe it's a leadership position in the church, maybe it's a leadership position at your home. Maybe it's a leadership position at your work. Satan is trying to attack you because he hates you.
He's going to attack you because if he can get you, he can get other people. But the other thing that I think about as I was reading this this past week is I've gone to preaching workshops and ministers retreats, and I've heard statements like this, you know, practice what you preach. You need to got to make sure we practice what we preach. And I get the sentiment. But the danger for me, as I hear that, is oftentimes my motivation to do right has been in the past. I need to do right because I'm preaching it.
That doesn't last very long.
Like, I want to get to a place that Andrew Itzen will choose to practice what he preaches, not because he preaches it, but because he really believes in it. Does that make sense?
And so what I love about what we're about to read next is this. One man's response is not because he's just preaching it, but you see deep in his heart and back in his background that he believes it, because this is Ezra's response.
He says, as soon as I heard this, I tore my garment, my cloak, I pulled my hair from my head and my beard, and I sat appalled.
It's one thing to read this. It's a whole other thing to actually picture this.
So let's think about it for a second, y'all. He rips his clothes like Hulk Hogan style.
That's amazing. Like, you know, if we, most of us were trying to do that, they'd have to at least, like, cut it a little bit to get it going for us. But, like, this guy rips his clothing, and then it says he rips out the hair from his head and his beard.
Now, I've been in situations before where I was holding one of our kids and they ripped out some of my hair. I'm like, no, daddy doesn't have a lot. You know, it's thinning and it's going backwards. Like, please, no take from here, right? And by the way, why is this thicker than here? But anyway, a lot of thoughts, but, you know, you pull out a hair from here, it's difficult to pull out, but a beard hair.
So I'm saying all that to say that this man's response is he pulls out his hair, rips his clothes, he's bloody.
And as I was reading and thinking about his response, it made me think about how our response to sin oftentimes tells a lot about what we really believe about that sin.
I'm saying, from the standpoint, if you're the one that hears about the sin or you're the one that's experiencing and living through that sin, when you hear of someone's sin, how do you respond?
Are you excited that you found out first so you can let other people know or be the one? When you find out about people's sin, is your first thought, hey, I got to go to them and take them to breakfast. Be with them. But also, what is your response when you sin?
Is that, man, I got caught.
I'm going to be found out.
There's a response of Joseph that has always been amazing to me. If you remember when Potiphar's wife was trying to tempt him to lay down with her, and his response was, how could I do this and get caught?
Do you all want to know what it said in the Bible? It said, how could I do this great wickedness and sin against God?
He didn't call it a fling. He didn't call it a thing. He didn't call it a moment. He didn't call it a lapse of judgment. He didn't make an excuse. He didn't try to defer. He wasn't indifferent. He wasn't apathetic. He called it what it is, great wickedness, and understood that it was against his goddess.
But notice how he ends up going on to say, what can we say after this? For we have forsaken your commands. Here's why I think this is amazing. Ezra didn't even do this yet he identifies himself with the people as if he did.
He doesn't point fingers.
He says, this is a we problem, because I think he's trying to tell us an important fact about sin is sin is not just personal. Sin is always social.
It's social in the family. It's social in the workplace. I mean, think about your own families for a second. If you've got one person that is choosing wrong, it doesn't just impact that person, right?
I mean, it impacts Thanksgiving, it impacts Christmas, it impacts your kids, your grandkids, right?
Sin is incredibly social. And it's amazing to me that he's saying, you know what? Hey, we've done this. It's the idea that we have to sniff this out.
And so what you notice from him is that his appreciation for the reality of sin then starts to open the other doors for other people to say, hey, we've done it, too.
And so when I read the fact that this guy rips out his hair, he rips out his beard hair, he rips his clothes for a sin he did not even commit. Where does a person get to be like that?
Because, again, just put yourself in his shoes. It's as if, like, somebody in our church family was doing that, but then somebody else ripped their clothes on their behalf.
Y'all, that's an incredible way to see the weight and the reality of sin. How do you get like that? Here's how he got like that is the way we're going to put it this morning, is, for Ezra, this crisis did not create this kind of commitment. It revealed what he had already had set in motion.
And why that's important is we are all going to be faced with moments of crisis.
And I know for me, my lapses of judgment have oftentimes been, well, now's the time to start studying. Now's the time to start praying. And yes, you do.
But for your first response, to be a heart that's ripped, clothes that are ripped, is to have a person that has already had that in place in their heart and that kind of connection with God's word. Look at his connection that preceded this amazing example of repentance and confession. It says, for Ezra had set. So this is something that had already happened. He's had his heart set to study the law of the Lord, to do it, and to teach it the statutes and the rules in Israel. There's a guy named John Maxwell, and he has a leadership Bible. And in that leadership Bible, he talks about that the three ways to truly pass on your faith to the next generation is not just to learn it, but to learn it, to live it, and to loan it.
Don't you notice in this text? That's exactly what he's doing.
Ezra learned it like he studied it for himself.
His heart had been set on it.
It says that he was doing it, which is Ezra actually living out the teachings that he learned, but then he was what? He was loaning it out to other people.
Now, I'm about to show you some statistics that I thought were pretty incredible. And when I share these with you, I'm not saying that just because you read the word that you're going to always do the right things and do it with the right heart, because we're going to get to in just a second, be comes before due and we're going to get to that in just a second. But I do think that these are very important to mention. This comes from the Institute for Biblical Research.
They said if you read God's word one day a week, it has almost no impact.
If you read the word two to three days a week, you can see a negligible difference.
But then notice this.
If you read it at least four days a week, you are 228% more likely to share your faith, 407% more likely to internalize scripture, 59% less likely to view lustful content pornography, and 30% less likely to struggle with loneliness, depression or anxiety.
So how each of you carry this out is up to you. And I usually don't give the action step midway through the lesson. But here's my challenge to all of us now. I'm going to speak to those of us that are maybe around my generation and some of you that older, younger, we both share this challenge, I think social media.
So here's my challenge for you. If you fall into that group, I want to challenge all of us to do a four day. You can call it a fast, you can call it a deferment to something greater, whatever you want to do.
But for the next four days. So now through Thursday, anytime you are tempted to get on social media, replace that with scripture and prayer. Four days.
Four days.
You might not catch the church family news. We do have emails, so that's good.
Maybe for some of you, it's Coca Cola that you need to replace. Maybe it's worry.
Whatever it is, I challenge us to put this to the test and see how it works. Well, why would those stats possibly be that way? Well, think about it.
If before all we're hearing and think about is what we're doing and letting other people know what we're doing, but also learning and focusing on what other people are doing and how other people view what they're doing, about what they're doing. You know, that's what we're constantly thinking about and doing. So our messaging and our emphasis is constantly the world.
So what if we replace the word with the world? Don't y'all think things in our life would change?
I think we would see each moment with that person that has no relationship, that moment with that person that is frustrating us. We'd see it quite differently.
But here's what's amazing to me about Ezra, that his response comes from a place, from his heart. His heart was ripped before his clothes were.
That what you see happening with Ezra is exactly where repentance starts. And we're going to talk about this this morning, that God always wants to construct our being before our doing.
That repentance starts here, before it starts out there.
And so here's what's neat. Because of this one man's response, a guy named Shekaniah, who I'd never really heard of before, was like, hey, that's in my family, too. In fact, one of the commentaries, it said Shekaniah was basically a nobody, but yet he had the guts to say, hey, what you're talking about is in my family right now, and we're going to do something about it. We've broken faith. But I love this man's faith filled statement. He says, but even now, there is hope. Here's what I'm saying is that some of you right now, you might be in a situation that just like Ezra and the people, that right now is deep, like you've been in it for years.
And to break it, you might think, well, that could break trust. I'm telling you, you'll get even more trust.
You think, well, that could hurt a relationship. I'm telling you, it will actually help a relationship. Is it going to be a process? Absolutely. Are there going to be pieces to be picked up? Absolutely.
But maybe for some of us, it's also the fact that now I'm going to have to see the. I'm telling you, when we confessed, it is one of the greatest times and points of honesty, and it is also one of the greatest times of growth. That's where the hope comes from. So this proclamation goes out to Judah, Jerusalem, and all the returned exiles, and they start assembling at Jerusalem.
Anybody within the next three days, by the order of the officials and the elders, all his property should be forfeited, and he himself banned from that congregation of the exiles. He's like, hey, this is serious. Get here.
We have got to talk about the sin that is in this camp.
And so all the men of Judah and Benjamin assembled at Jerusalem within three days.
Okay, put yourself in their shoes. Hey, we just got an email blast, a text blast. We are. These people are living in sin. Hey, we'll be there in three days. They show up, and it says, all the people sat in the open square before the house of God, trembling because of this matter and because of the heavy rain. So I'm going to try to put the scene for you in a picture to fully appreciate the emotion of this moment, but the reality of this moment.
If you look in most commentaries, it says it's about December of 458 BC, and it's the heaviest of raining seasons.
So it's cold, it's raining.
And where these guys are, is that like an elevated spot where they're getting all the rain?
But also the way it was depicted in one of the commentaries, that people in the towns would have been looking up at all these men that are gathered together to confess their sins.
Can you imagine being there in that moment, and all of a sudden, we find out that all of them, except for what the Bible kind of shows as four of them put their hands in as if it were and said, all right, guys, we've been doing wrong for a long time. There's gonna be a lot of pieces to pick up. But what we're gonna do is we're gonna do it.
See? Ezra said, listen, you've broken faith. You've married foreign women, and you increased the guilt of Israel.
Now then, make first a confession to the Lord, the God of your fathers, and do his will. Separate yourselves from the people of the land and from the foreign wives. You notice first what he says. You got to confess that you did it.
Confession is very difficult, but it's kind of like what a farmer does to prepare the soil for that next crop. That's what confession does for our heart. It's getting us ready for what God is going to do next.
And as I was thinking about this, I couldn't help but think about David in psalm 32. This psalm talks about a time in David's life where he had just committed adultery with Bathsheba.
And, you know, right after he had committed adultery. Do y'all think he slept good that night?
But it's not just that night. I think about the nights that followed. Ydehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe do y'all think he slept good the night after?
Y'all think he slept good? Maybe the night after Uriah was on the front lines, but, you know, to me, though, there was pieces to be picked up.
I think the best night's sleep he had is after Nathan showed up, because here's what it said in verse three.
When I was silent about it, my bones were wasting away.
You know what's interesting? In the hebrew, that actually means it was making him physically sick. We tend to talk about the spiritual element. He's saying, it makes me physically sick.
He said, I was groaning all day long, but I love this part. He says, day and night, your hand was heavy on me. It's a picture. God is there waiting for us, but he's not going to make you do it, right? He wants you to choose him.
He says, my strength was dried up as by the heat of the summer. But notice what happens next in verse five. He said, I acknowledge my sin to you.
I did not cover up my iniquity.
I confessed my transgressions to the Lord, and look what it says next. And you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
And so all the assembled people answered with a loud voice. It is so we must do as you just said.
And then they made this acknowledgement.
They said, you know what? There's a lot of us here.
It's raining a ton. We can't just keep standing here in the open knowing, hey, we got to do something next. This is a big task for, like, a day or two, because we have greatly transgressed in this matter. See, we learned something right here about repentance, and it's this, that it is a process.
Now, we have to speak very openly about what's happening here, because there's different dynamics.
God's wanting them, and Ezra knows they need to leave these relationships. But we also know God hates divorce.
So what do we do?
So here's the challenge, because it seems simple on the surface. Well, did you have a pagan wife or not? If you did leave, it's not that simple, because they married and they had kids.
So now kids are involved. And so you might think, well, why is this a day or two process? Here's why it's a day or two process. What they needed was the wisdom of judges. They needed wisdom of elders to say, hey, listen, how can we leave these relationships that are leading us down a difficult path and an awful path while simultaneously not neglecting the children and not neglecting the women?
Y'all see, that's why I'm just trying to paint a real picture of what's happening here. It shows us the reality of the process at which repentance goes about it. Takes time. Martin Luther said, all of life is repentance. What he's saying is it's choice after choice after choice. The process of salvation, sanctification is not an event.
It's choosing him. Every day.
We're going to say no to some things. Yes to some things. We're going to live in regret. We're going to live in discipline. Both of those involve pain.
We got to pick which pain.
And sometimes the pieces aren't easy. But here's what I want us to understand next, though, about repentance.
We're doing it wrong if we just think that it's God wanting us to feel like a failure.
Repentance is nothing.
Beating yourself up, it's not self degradation. It's not. I'm going to beat myself up so I can show God how righteous I am. No.
In fact, y'all remember that the very people that put Jesus on the cross were also there for Peter's second sermon, right when he healed that lame man in acts three.
And when he preaches to them, you know what he says to them? Hey, repent. Because there's a time of refreshing that's going to come.
He paints repentance in a very positive light. That's why I want to mention this. Repentance is not punishment. I want us to start seeing repentance as a privilege.
When I was a kid, I always had, like, a negative connotation. If someone came forward, I used to think, oh, man, they did something wrong. Well, yeah, maybe sometimes. Or, you know, they're doing this because they're in big trouble.
I'll go ahead and tell you now. I see. I was like, they're doing that because they're ready to experience redemption. They're doing that because they're ready to have new life.
And by the way, this is not to get too much off topic. I've wondered, too, before. Do I come forward for a public sin? Do I come forward for a private sin? You know, is it just public thing if I've done something publicly? Well, here's the thing I know is this.
I've seen both, but I've also seen the response to both, whether the public or the private be incredibly impactful. I've seen young men and women come forward about something they're struggling with in private. And I've seen a line out the door before with people that have dealt with the exact same thing, able to minister to them now because now they know.
I've also seen times where people publicly confess sin and they get support in unbelievable ways.
Reaching out to a friend, reaching out to a shepherd, reaching out to your church family is not go sick of God. It's God.
Change them. Work through them, just like you've worked through me or God help me. It's not us walking down something to lose life. God's actually giving us more. But here's the next thing that we have to understand with that repentance. It's first a change mind before it's a change direction.
I know in my past times when I've done Bible studies with people, I've emphasized this wrongly, and part of it is right, but the root of it is wrong. And when we would get to that part, and as we talk about salvation, I get talking about repentance, I would say it means to turn. I said, you know, I would give them the example. It's like you were going this way. Now you're going this way. And I focus more on, like, the physical part of it. And yes, it is.
But if you just turn physically without turning in your heart, right.
If your being is not constructed before you're doing, guess what's gonna happen? You're gonna turn right back around that. Repentance is, first a changed mind before it's a changed direction. In fact, we know this because the word repentance comes from the greek word metanoah, which means a paradigm shift, a change of perspective, or a changed worldview.
And so it's not you or saying, man, I'm sorry I got caught, and then you go a different direction. That's just a change direction. It's, hey, I'm sorry I hurt the heart of goddess.
Like, my heart breaks because God's heart right now is broken.
That's a changed mind.
It's only when you have that divinely changed mind that we'll actually have a changed direction. I want to show you this video, but before I do, I want to give you a quick intro. This is somebody I love very dearly, Joe Harless. And Joe, in this video, to me, gives an amazing example, almost like Shekaniah, because you might wonder, hey, how does my faithfulness, or maybe I make a decision to repent, to change. Is that really going to help me? Is that going to change things for my family? Absolutely. I want you all to watch this video, and you can kind of see for yourself.
[00:36:07] Speaker C: So when I was in my early twenties, I got addicted to nicotine, and mine was the smokeless version, and I was really, really addicted. In fact, I had two surgeries to remove precancerous lesions in my mouth. And, you know, you would think that would be a deterrent. But I continued, and it wasn't until I saw the scriptures living in my wife to be.
You know, our bodies are the temple of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit.
We need to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. I saw this living in her and in others around me, and it encouraged me to finally, you know, stop this thing. And. And I did. One day I stopped, and I never even had the desire to do it again. It just, you know, seeing the scriptures live in those people changed me. It encouraged me to change, and it changed my life forever.
[00:37:09] Speaker B: If you'll notice something that he said there, he said this. He said, it wasn't until I saw the scriptures, you know, when we view God's word, kind of like Ezra, with the fact of setting our hearts to it, here's what's going to happen. There are going to be moments where God's word challenges your life, challenges your lifestyle, and calls out what you're doing, where you're headed, and where you're going.
And that can be difficult. But I also want to say that is the best of news.
I don't want, and we shouldn't want a God that always agrees with us.
The Bible says that our hearts are deceitful above everything else.
I love this quote by Tim Keller. He says this, if you don't trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a relationship with God? If you just pick and choose what you want to believe and you reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won't. You'll have a step for God. You don't want a step for God. A God essentially of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction. Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make your struggle, as in a real friendship or marriage, will you know that you have gotten ahold of real gold and not a figment of your own imagination.
What? In your life right now, as you look into God's word and see, hey, the two don't match, maybe you're like Piter. You're on the edge of reaching out. You're on the edge of asking for help. I encourage you to open your heart.
You can come forward this morning to not just have a change direction, but maybe what you specifically need to pray for is a change mind.
I want to change my mind about the way that I see these things.
I want to change my mind about the way I see myself.
I want to change my mind about the way I see repentance. I want to change my mind about the way I see Jesus. Whatever it is, I encourage you to come forward this morning, but I want to remind you of what Peter said there to those people that had crucified Jesus. He said, listen, let God refresh you.
Maybe you're here this morning and you need to confess sin.
Maybe this morning what you're also dealing with before. You've been sad about what you've done, but that hasn't produced much. Second Corinthians seven. Paul says, this godly sorrow with repentance produces great gain, which also tells us that there's ungodly sorrow, which is man, I'm sorry I got caught. Maybe you're here this morning and you're at the point where you're sorry that you've hurt God's heart. Maybe you're here this morning and you've been living without God. You've never given your life to him in a relationship that you've never made that decision to put on Christ in baptism. Whatever your need is, you can come forward right here. You can go to one of the exits to meet with one of the shepherds. Whatever it is, we would love to pray with you, encourage you while we stand, and we sing this song together.
