- Well welcome, good to see all of you up here worshiping in our worship center upstairs and also those in the lower area worshiping. Welcome to Rockpoint Church. Good to have all of you with us and also those that are with us online. You know, we have all heard the phrase that hindsight is what? 20/20, right, hindsight's always 20/20. We get a new perspective. We learn a little bit. We gain some wisdom and knowledge. We learn some lessons and then we start making decisions differently. And some of us have those, you know, wow, I wish I would have done it differently and if I would have known this I would have made this choice. And sometimes when we're making choices in life it involves decisions that are automatic. They're just easy to make. Other times you have to kind of stop and think about the decision before you and that is especially true when it comes to making moral choices. Now yesterday we had our men's retreat here at Rockpoint Church. If you were not with us I'd highly recommend, guys, women are not allowed, show up for our next one. We need each other. It was a great opportunity. I was with a group of guys as we were talking in a small group about the topic that was raised. The topic that was raised dealt with the issue of integrity and how we develop integrity in our lives and how we're honest with one another. And one of the individuals had just a great statement. He said, "You know, integrity's easy "when it involves maybe a dollar "or it involves something little that you have to do." It might not even be a big decision. It might be a minor decision and it's easy to maintain your integrity to be honest. However, once the stakes are raised and once there's really a lot of money involved or perhaps it involves your own personal, you know, humility or something's involved where there's something that is just something huge at stake regarding your own view of other people and how you function and how you think, then once the stakes are high enough all of a sudden that's when we begin to be tempted to compromise. And that goes at the very heart of what we want to talk about today. In light of sin and in light of how we have been impacted by our sinful nature can I actually make right choices today? So here's what I want you to do. I want you to take your Bibles out and I want you to turn to the book of Romans chapter six and locate verse one. If you're gonna grab the Bible in front of you go ahead and turn to page 642 and you'll locate Romans 6:1. We're gonna spend our time there. Grab your notes and a pen as you begin to take some notes and we walk our way through this today. So let me pray for us as we open up and begin to take a look at this truth. Father, I ask that as we quiet our hearts and we listen to what you would have for us today that we would have eyes that see your truth and hearts willing to obey. It's in Christ's name that we pray, amen. Now if you were not with us last week we were looking at the unshakeable truth of sin, original sin and how it has impacted all of our lives from the moment of conception on. We all struggle with it. It's a reality. It's right before us. And sin really is summarized with one simple word, independence. When Adam and Eve chose to do what they wanted, when Adam and Eve chose to make decisions on their own and decide what was right and wrong they decided to live independent of a loving relationship with God. And they decided that they wanted to have an independent life where they weren't accountable to anybody but themselves. And when they made that choice the relationship with God was broken and we learned about that from Genesis 3. If you weren't with us last week you can pull up the series online. And today we want to look at the second part of that unshakeable truth that sin is a reality. And when they made a choice to choose to disobey God it changed their very nature. It says in Genesis 3 that their eyes were opened. They thought they were choosing freedom but they were really choosing bondage. You see, sin is not the freedom to do whatever you want or sin is the freedom to do, thinking you're doing whatever you want to do in your life but in reality it means bondage because freedom is not doing what you want. Freedom is doing what you ought to do. However we ended last week with an understanding that there was hope and that hope was given to us through Jesus Christ who died for our sin. He rose from the grave and he offers us a new and living hope. And by turning back to him and starting to rely upon him and being dependent upon him we can start to make some wise choice in life in the midst of the world in which we live. That's really what we're gonna look at today. So to start out we're gonna consider who we are as a follower of Christ and the choice that we are about to make. The first thing you have to do in making a wise choice is to begin not with yourself but begin with who God is and having a relationship with him. Now I've had you jump right in. We're gonna jump right into Romans 6 and begin to take a look at a fundamental change that has happened in your heart and in your life. Now for some of you this might be new. It might be brand new information. You've never landed here in the book of Romans. You've never been in chapter six. You have no idea how you even found it unless I gave you the page number. This will revolutionize your view of how to live the Christian life. And if you've never been there before it'll change the dynamic of everything. So today your little step might be to understand who you are in Jesus Christ and the fundamental change that can happen in your heart and in your life. So let's jump right in. Paul says right away in verse one, "What shall we say then? "Are we to continue to sin that grace may abound?" Now there's a couple things I want you to be aware of. First off, Paul is taking to individuals who have committed their life to Jesus Christ. If you have no idea what that looks like or means a relationship with God can , excuse me, only be established when you come to the end of yourself, you acknowledge your sin, and you turn in repentance to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. By trusting in Christ as a person, that he paid the price for your sin, that he rose from the grave, and by trusting in him you can have forgiveness and new life. When that has happened your very life has dramatically changed. And so Paul is talking to individuals who have made that choice and then he says, "Now that you've made the choice to trust Christ "should you continue to sin "as you did before you made that choice?" Now when he uses the word sin here this is very, very important. Keep this in mind. Paul is not talking about the little sins that you do throughout life. He's not talking about lying. Not talking about cheating but then eventually comes up. But when he uses the word sin here in this section of God's word he's talking about the power of sin over your life. The idea here is that once you've made a decision to trust Christ should you continue to live as you once did under the penalty of sin which was separation from God and separation from one another in loving relationships, should you continue under the power of sin where you no longer have the ability to make the choice you ought to make? Well, he says, "By no means." As a matter of fact he tells us in the strongest possible words he possibly can come up with, "By no means." You've been changed. And so now let me give you the foundation for living a new life. He says, "How can we who died to sin still live in it? "Do you not know that all of us "who have been baptized into Christ Jesus "were baptized into his death? "We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death "in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead "by the glory of the Father we to might," and here he says, "walk in newness of light." You see where he's going? He's trying to help you understand what it means to live a new and different life. He says, "For we have been united with him "in a death like this. "We shall certainly be united with him "in a resurrection like this. "We know that our old self was crucified with him "in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing "so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. "For one who has died has been set free from sin." Now if we have died with Christ we believe that we also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him for the death he died, he died to sin once for all but the life he lives, he lives to God. And here's where Paul gives really the first command. You know this information. We'll unpack it just a minute. And now he gives a command. He says, "So you also must consider yourself dead to sin "and alive to God in Christ Jesus." Now this if foundational. When he uses the word consider he says the word means declare it to be true. So in other words I know that all this stuff has happened to me so now every single day of my life I can get up in the morning and declare I am dead to that person. Now remember I said sin was this power over your life. The moment Adam and Eve chose to live independent from God and to do what they wanted which really gets to a huge cultural topic today, the difference between objective and subjective truth. When they looked at the fruit and they determined themselves wow, that's gonna make us wise, God never said that. The truth was God said very clearly, "No, you'll discover evil "that you've never experienced before." But they said, "No, no, it looks so good." What were they doing? They were saying I'm gonna look inside of myself towards a subjective sense of truth and I will live independent from God's objective standard of truth. And the moment they did that he said, "You're gonna die. "There's gonna be separation from me, "separation from one another, "and you will actually begin to experience evil," which God was trying to keep them from. That's the idea. But the moment you trust Christ as Savior that old person separated from God subject to the penalty of sin, separation from God forever, subject to the power of sin died. That's the idea. He says here, "You've been baptized "into the death of Christ." He actually says in verse six that I've been, in the most graphic term he could come up with, crucified with Christ. That means dead, okay. When he says dead I mean he's really, really, really, really dead, okay. It's gone. That old person, you didn't sense it, you didn't feel it, but the moment you committed your life to Jesus Christ that old individual that was guilty of sin, no relationship with God, was nailed to the cross with Christ and buried. And then you were given a new nature, a new life with Jesus Christ. The word baptism here, perhaps it's unfamiliar with some of you but you're thinking in your mind sprinkling or immersion or whatever that looks like. The word baptized here actually means to be dipped into, to identify with. So in other words when I committed my life to Jesus Christ this internal change happened on the inside whether you felt it or not and the best way to look at this is what was true of Jesus has now been made true of you. That old self, that old person under the power and the penalty of sin has changed. Your very nature was changed and that's why Paul uses over and over here, says you've been given new life. You're no longer enslaved. It no longer had, you know, sin doesn't have dominion over Christ. It doesn't have dominion over you. In other words you're at a point now where your nature's changed so that you can start living a new life. How many of you went to state fair this year?

- [Woman In Audience] Woo!

- Okay, some of you love the state fair. Okay, well I don't share the same love all the time but I like to go and sample the food and then I pay for it for the next month, right? And one of the places that I enjoy going more than any other part of the fair believe it or not is the pig barn, okay. Anybody like the pig barn? I love pigs. They're just really unique creatures. Churchill said this. He said, "Cats try and rule over you," which is really true, "dogs adore you, and pigs treat you as equals." Isn't that great? So I love because you can get an eye on they're wandering down. They could care less about you, right? They're oinking and doing whatever they do and they're just funny creatures. And plus when I look at them I just think bacon, bacon, bacon, right? Hey a lot of bacon here. And I like watching the kids show them off with the judges and they're all cleaned up. They look so nice. I don't know if they put perfume on them or not but anyway they look so nice. What happens after the judging? Okay, they go back to their pen and when they go back to the farm where do they go? Back in the muck and the mire and they get filthy once again. Why, because it's in their nature. It's what they do. What Paul is saying, the moment you give your life to Jesus Christ you might be right on that edge. You might have just crossed that line. You may be considering it. There has been a change to your nature so that you now can come to a crossroad and you can begin to consider who you are and the choice that you're about to make because you don't have to sin anymore. Doesn't mean you're not going to, we'll get there in a second, but you don't have to. In verse 12 of Romans 5 you're welcome to look there. I'll just read. It says therefore just as sin came into the world through one man, he's talking about Adam, and death through sin, right. We all experience physical death but also spiritual death, separation from God. That's his idea. And so death spread to all men because all sin. We all receive the guilt of that and we all receive this nature change, this capacity to sin, but the remarkable thing is that he says in verse 17 and this is what I want you to see in chapter five, "For if because of one man's trespass "death reigned through that one man," that was Adam, "much more will those "who receive the abundance of grace "and the free gift of righteousness reign in life "through the one man, Jesus Christ." If you've never heard this phrase before Jesus Christ was the second Adam. Adam was the first man created and we fell unto sin because of the choice that was made. Jesus Christ came to reverse the curse. Jesus Christ came to provide for us a right standing before God not based on baptism, not based on going to church, not based on doing the right things, but based on the right living of Jesus Christ and the sacrifice as the perfect sacrifice for my sin. And the moment I trust him as my savior the right standing before God, the righteousness of Christ was given to me. I was nailed to that cross. He took my sin and instead gave me a right standing with him so that now sin doesn't have dominion over me. And that's why Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 he says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ." Notice that, that's the relationship. "He's a new creation. "The old has passed away. "Behold, the new has come." I'm a different person. You know, freedom to Adam and Eve became bondage because as I said, freedom is not doing whatever you want. It's doing what you ought to do. They lost freedom but it's regained the moment we commit our life to Jesus Christ. That's why I love this diagram I keep bringing up week after week in the midst of this because to me it's the center of life. The moment we were separated from God but it's the cross of Jesus Christ where he came and paid for our sin that allows us by trust in what he has done for us to renew the relationship with God. And then we begin to understand with that lens how to see our world. We then begin to understand the truth that we talked about, who God is and that I'm created in his image. We then begin to understand that to be created in the image of God means that I represent him but I cannot represent him, I cannot live the way he would live, I cannot do the things he would ask me to do unless the cross is central to my life. And when that submission happens I taste his love. I taste his grace. I experience his forgiveness so that then I can begin to love others the way he does. You see, the cross is central. You restore that relationship and then we can begin to live out this new life how God would live in the midst of loving relationships. So based on that, based on that fundamental understanding of who you are and that might be your takeaway today. I didn't know that about myself. Well that's great. Now every day you get up and you say wait a minute. That's who I am. This old person over here connected to the wound and the addictions and all that, that is not me. Every day, every day declare it to be true that you are a new person in Jesus Christ. And now you come to a fork in the road where you begin to look at the choice. Just stop and pause. You're presented a choice to be honest at school or to cheat on a test. Where are you gonna go? You need to stop and pause. Don't just jump into it, think about it. You know, maybe you're presented with a choice to forgive, to be kind, to choose to remember to be calm and patient in the midst of whatever circumstance you're in. Some of you were confronted with the reality of a choice coming in here, right? Something was said and you were about ready to blow a gasket, okay. You had a choice at that point. This first step to gaining victory, making right choices in the midst of a sinful world is to understand who you are and then stop and realize the choice. Consider the circumstances that you face. Stop and consider the choice before you. Very practical step. Next compare the choice to God. Here's my choice, right? I can go this road or I can go this road. So now the next point is consider who God is. Consider who you are in light of who he is. But the word to declare to be true, this is who I am because this is who God is. We've got to go back to who he is because he tells us how to live our life. See, with Adam and Eve they looked at the fruit and they said, "Wow, this is gonna make us wise." Well again, they started looking to themselves and not what God had said. They lost track of the truth because he never said that. He was trying to protect them from all the evil. He said, "Look, this is what's going to happen." But Satan told them, "Well you're not gonna die," and so they bought the lie and then all of a sudden they started looking at themselves and trying to determine well it looks wise. See, that's subjective truth. Here's what I want you to understand. The issue that Satan did not tell them, okay. So here's the playbook that Satan goes with. What he didn't tell them is that there was no way that they as humans could accurately, that's the key word, determine right from wrong. They could not accurately do it. Why, because they weren't the original source, God was. If you want to know what to do you have to go back to the original source. And God and God alone is the arbiter of what is right and what is wrong, not them within themselves. Why, because he's the creator and they are the creation. The only way we have any sense of right and wrong goes back to an outside objective source. Logically you got to think about it. I mean if you're searching to do what's right what do you naturally do? You start saying well, hey, could you help me with my decision here? Is there something I can read to figure out what is right and wrong here? I'm always searching for something to help me make that choice. And when Adam and Eve chose to live an independent life apart from God, to break that relationship then what were they doing? They were setting themselves up as God in essence. I will make that choice without any accountability and right and godly choices start with putting God back on the throne. And when we live a dependent life upon him then all of a sudden we start experiencing the goodness and the joy and the meaning of life that he designed, right. And godly choices that bring fulfillment are based upon him being at the core center of our life. He and he alone establishes the boundaries. Now I want you to write this down because I think it's a really important principle. Truth is always determined by the original, that's it. Truth is always determined by the original, not something else. I mean even if you look at let's say a priceless work of art, the value of a reproduction of that is based on how close it is to the original. Am I not right? I mean if you look at a reproduction of a world-class painting the value of that reproduction is always based on how accurately it conforms to what? To the original. It's just a logical conclusion in life. Truth is always determined by the original. So we need to stop and say wait a minute, who is God? And then how do I live in light of the original? If I'm created in his image, if I'm created to represent him that's the lens that I begin to look at life through. Now for some of you that are parents and grandparents you've probably done this. I've probably done this but little Johnny comes around and he's, you know, you say well you need to be honest and you need to tell us the truth. And in our house truthfulness was kind of just a prerequisite. We needed to know whether we were dealing with a lying kid or a truthful kid and so we had to figure out what the truth was. So you gotta tell us the truth. So little Johnny comes along because he's really smart, right? And he says why? And what is the natural response that many? Well, because the Bible tells us so, right? That's the song that we sing, right, the Bible tells me so? So it's because it's the Bible. Well I'm being very, very gentle here for you, okay? That's not totally accurate, okay, it's not. Sure, the Bible says that but what's the why? Why should I tell the truth? It's not simply because the Bible says. It's because God is truthful, that's the issue. Connect it back with the image of God and who he is. Johnny, you need to be truthful. You need to be honest because that's who God is by nature and you're representing him. Go back to him. The Bible opens up to us who God is so that we can understand it and then we begin to download who he is because truth is always based on his nature and on his character. This is why we started with the unshakeable truth of God. That's the pillar. The lens we have to look at through life is that yeah, there is a God and he's created this world. And when I put that lens in things start to come into focus. But then I realize there's this issue of sin that showed up in my life. Well he provided a solution for us. And now as I go back to him because that relationship was restored through the power of Christ then I can begin to look at how I should live my new life. It's like getting a brand new operating system on your computer. You get a brand new operating system unless the computer was shipped with you or to you with all the software on it you gotta load the data. Somebody has to load the data on the operating system. You've been given a brand new operating system as a follower of Jesus Christ. You've been given a brand new nature. You can start living out this new life. And now you begin to input the data from God's word about the truth of who he is so that as you live in the context of loving relationships you represent him rightly. That's why Romans 8, Paul says in verse five and six, "For those who live according to the flesh "set their minds on the things of the flesh, "but those who live according to the Spirit," this is the new person who's received Christ as Savior, "set their minds on the things of the Spirit." I can make that choice now. "For to set the mind on the flesh is death, "but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace." In other words what Paul is saying here is that as I input the truth of how I'm supposed to live and I live that way based on an objective source of truth, the original, then all of a sudden I begin to experience life and peace and the way God meant for me to live. But you've got to download that truth in your mind. Romans 12:2 says don't be conformed to this world. That's the old life. That's the old self that was crucified. Don't feed what's dead. He's not gonna take it anyway. Don't feed it. Don't feed the monster. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed, be changed. The idea there is metamorphosis. It's like a caterpillar being changed into a butterfly. Well that happens, "by," he says, "the renewal of your mind." The data is inputted there so that my attitudes and my actions flow from the truth in my mind. That by testing you may discern what the will of God is, what is good because he is good, what is acceptable, and what is perfect because he's perfect. It's all based on his nature. And as I understand who he is I can begin to be truthful because God is truthful. I can begin to be honest because God is honest. And once I come to that point then the third step is you got to commit to God's way. Here's where it's tough because you understand who you are, you stop, you pause, you say wow, here's the choice. I'm at a crossroads, okay. So now I evaluate my decision. Well what would God do? Who is he? How am I supposed to live in light of my creator so that I'm going to the original, an objective source of truth? Well now you're at a point where you have to commit your way to him. And so now if you look down at verse 12 he gives us the second command. He says, "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body "to make you obey its passions." Now if you weren't able to do this he wouldn't tell you to do it. But the only way you're gonna do it is through the power of Christ in your life. But he tells you you can know. You're a new person. You're a new creature. And then he gives you the command in a negative and then a positive. He says, "Do not present your members to sin "as instruments for unrighteousness." Don't make that choice but here's the fork. "But present," that's the command, "yourself to God." Do what he's asking you to do. "As those who have been brought from death to life "in your members to God as instruments of righteousness "or for righteousness for sin will have no dominion over you "since you are not under law but under grace." You want to live apart from the power of sin? You can, you can make that choice. I'd like to say it this way. If you are not a follower of Jesus Christ you are committing sins. You weren't even aware of it but you're just simply subject to whatever your heart wanted to. I like to say it this way. Before a person commits their life to Christ you just turn up the heat. That's all the enemy Satan has to do. You turn up the heat high enough and he'll get you to do anything anytime, anyway he wants. Why, because you're subject to that power. But that's been broken the moment you've trusted Christ to save you. That's what he's saying here. I know he has dominion over me. I can make this choice to step out in faith and do what God is asking me to do. Now that doesn't mean it's easy, right? Shake your head. Some of you, you know this, right? So that's why we're gonna take a look at just a few verses in Romans 7. You're right there in Romans 6. This way it fits so well together. If you look at Romans 7 I want you to locate verse 16. Now I am going to describe to you the reality of living out this new life. I can see the choice. I know I got to commit my way to God but I got to tell you it's tough. It's not easy and we're going to illustrate it by probably one of the most holy men that's ever lived, okay, apart from Christ and that's the apostle Paul. This is what he says about himself. Notice this, verse 16, chapter seven. "Now if I do what I do not want "I agree with the law that it is good. "So now it is no longer I who do it "but sin that dwells within me. "For I know that nothing good dwells in me "that is in my flesh for I have the desire "to do what is right but not the ability to carry it out." For those of you that have made the decision to follow Christ the Savior have you ever been in a situation where I want to do this but I'm struggling with doing it? Anybody else been there or am I the only one in the room? "For I do not do the good I want "but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. "Now if I do what I do not want "it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me." Paul is describing the reality of walking with Jesus Christ in a world whereby I still experience this flesh, this part of me that has a propensity to sin. It no longer dominates my life, I can choose a different path, but we still struggle, right? And Paul even says, I mean he says it in this passage. You need to go back and read all this. He says, "I don't even always know what's going on "but I know I got this struggle in my life." Anybody been there? So he says in verse 21, "So I find it to be a law "that when I want to do right "evil lies close at hand." Have you ever been there where I want to make the right choice? I'm going to make the right choice. I am going to hold my tongue. I am not gonna say that word and it's like right there dragging me, pulling me, and sometimes I say the word I shouldn't say. So he goes on. He says, "For I delight in the law of God in my inner being "but I see in the members, in my members another law "waging war against the law of my mind "and making me captive, pulling me back towards sin "to the law of sin that dwells in my members." He's just going overboard over and over to try and show us this is the reality of my life. This is Saint Paul, for goodness sakes. He struggles with the same issues we do. That's why I love this section. But then notice what he says in verse 24. "Wretched man that I am." Now do you find comfort in that? I do. This is Saint Paul. He calls himself wretched, all right. So I'm right there with him. I'm realizing the struggle and he's going back and forth. I want to do what I, and he just, finally he says, "Who will deliver me from this body of death?" Is there any solution to this? And he says in verse 25, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." That's the solution. He says I'm struggling but I got to go back to the cross. I got to go back to submitting to say he wants me to do this. I've got to submit to him. I've got to say God, I now have a choice. Thank you because Christ delivered me from the penalty and the power of sin. So now I can actually commit my way to you and live a life that's honoring and pleasing to you. You have that ability to do that. You can say no. Now he's gonna give you the strength to do it. We'll come back to that in just a second. But he says you can do it. Now when we encounter this struggle, this battle of committing our way to him there's two things to keep in mind, okay. These will be helpful steps in saying I need to step forward. Okay God, you've asked me not to say that. You've asked me to do this. Here's two things to keep in mind. Be careful not to rationalize because you're right at that edge and that's where, that's that gap, the struggle that oftentimes we encounter. Be careful not to rationalize. Remember God's character. The choice is clear. God would do this and it's the same, you know, application for kids, students, and adults. But then all of a sudden I start, you know, rationalizing. And that's because as I said earlier, the stakes get high. If the stakes are high enough you're gonna be tempted to rationalize in every situation because you're trying to preserve yourself. You're trying to preserve your net worth. You're gonna be humiliated, right? You mess up at work. You don't want to be humiliated. You don't want to lose your job. And so what do you do? You start covering your backside. If the stakes are high enough you're gonna do that. Or you know, you're gonna give the silent treatment to your spouse because they disrespected you on your way to church this morning. Well they deserved it. How dare they speak to me that way. You may want to check your arrogant level at that point but, but that's reality, right? We live in a real world. Well they deserve what I'm gonna do to them. I'm gonna make their life really hard, you know. I'm gonna give it to the man upstairs in the corner office. Stick it to the man because the company owes me, right? Well if the stakes are high enough that's where we're at. And it justifies our actions and the fringe benefit, I will warn you of this. The fringe benefit of rationalization is you rationalize and justify your actions and then you get this fringe benefit, right, that says well, I'm not so bad and neither are they. And so we're all in the same sinkhole together and it not only justifies you, it keeps you from being judgmental of others, right? What does Paul say? Again, go back to the truth. "Put to death therefore "what is earthly in you." In other words, kill it, stop it. Put to death means stop, you turn your back on that. No, I can go this road. It's who I am. I can step out. God, I'm gonna need your strength. I'm gonna trust you to give me the ability to do this because I step out and do the right thing I believe you're gonna give me the ability to pull it off but you deny anything that doesn't please the one who loves you and gave himself up for you. Now a classic illustration of this is one of the biggest issues that people struggle with today, both men and women, is the issue of pornography. Now when you get to that point, it's a real issue that people struggle with. The baseline, I've learned enough about helping people with this. The baseline is this. You have to cut the supply chain. It's just basic. If you're not willing to do that then recovery's not gonna happen in your life. You just have to stop it. Now it may mean having somebody right next to you all the time. It may mean putting stuff on your computer where you can't go anywhere. You may need to get a flip phone. You may need to put a phone on your wallet. Do you know what those are? Some of you don't even know what that is anymore. I don't care what it is, you stop it. And the reason why I say it that way is you say well that's not possible. You can't do that because if you say well I'm just gonna cut back to 75% you'll never recover. You'll get sucked down to the same road you've been all along and you'll begin to view your life through that and that's the trouble. There'll be shame and there'll be guilt. You have to cut the supply chain. Well I don't feel like it. See, that's the other issue here that's involved in putting to death and turning your back. Well I just don't feel like it. Look, let me help you with that one, okay. Feelings can't make decisions, they just feel. They never can make decisions. Your will makes the decision, not your feeling. When Adam and Eve looked at that fruit and they said, "Well it's gonna make us wise," do you know what they were doing? They were going to a subjective source of truth, how they felt not based on the objective standard of the original. And so feelings can't make choices. You have to say wait a minute, I've got to stop and then here's the other one. Once you start going down that road the second thing you have to keep in mind is don't get discouraged and don't give up because you've been there and I've been there. We try and we try and we try and we fail and then we try and we gain some and we're right in I'm doing what I don't want to do. And I know I should do this but I'm struggling. And so I just can't get past this and then you give up. It's not easy but that's why you go back to the cross. That's why you declare this is true of me. God, I need your help every single moment, every single day. I'm trusting my life to you. I need you to live your life through me. Say that prayer every single morning. It's not easy but thanks be to God you can actually get there. Don't give up. I love what Mark Twain said. He said, "Quitting smoking is easy. "I've done it dozens of times." I think you get the idea. And then finally as you step out here's the last step. Count on God's protection and provision in your life because he's gonna give you exactly what you need. Life's not easy, it's tough, but you're going to have his protection from shame and guilt and consequences. And you're also gonna have his provision in life as you step out in faith. It's why I love John 15 where Jesus is saying the Father is the vine dresser. I'm the vine. A relationship with the Father is through me. As you connect with me and you rely upon me and you depend upon me you don't live this independent life that got us all in this mess to begin with. As you depend upon me I'm gonna bring about growth in your life. And then he says in John 15:5, he says, "For apart from me you can do nothing." So as you ask me for strength he gives it to us. And as we step out and try to do the right thing he encourages us to do that and he gives us the very ability to do it. And then he gives us a promise because in Galatians 5:16 Paul says, "But I say, walk by the Spirit." When I'm relying upon him, depending upon him, living out his character in me because I'm created in his image to reflect him and represent him to the world as I walk the way he wants me to walk, that's what it means by walking by the Spirit, "You will not gratify the desires of the flesh." So if you're here today and this is all brand new to you, you just committed your life to Christ, I think this process will really help you begin to grow in a way you've never grown before. Go back to Romans 6, go back to Romans 7, read it over and over and look at it and God will begin to open up your eyes to see new dynamics of who you are. That person's dead. I can live a new life. And for those of you that are struggling and you're failing and you're saying oh, I just, you know, I've tried but I keep falling into sin, don't give up. Be diligent, go back, review these. And then here's the key. Get involved in someone else's life and let them get involved in your life. Get connected in community. Truth is discovered and lived out in the context of relationships with one another. That's what we've been talking about. So jump into a life group. Get involved with a group of guys. Don't go off on your own. If you live independent it doesn't work out well. Get connected with others so that they can begin to help you, hold you accountable, and move you forward. And then for those of you that think you've got life figured out because you've been doing this for a long time, don't switch to autopilot. It's disastrous because sin is always right there. Go back and review the principles. Be ready for what is coming your way and start building these into someone else's life. Let's pray. Father, thank you for who you are. Thank you for the truth of your word. Thank you for the power that you have given to us through the person and the work of the Lord Jesus to live out a new life. So Lord, as we take these practical points may we live them for you so that we can reflect you to our world. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.