HOW GOD GIVES NEW IDENTITY | Sermon

You need transcendent help. Help outside of yourself. But then we think we come to Christ and then he's gonna clean up some things. C. S. Lewis, who's a great theologian and philosopher.

He's one of my heroes in faith and here's what he said. He was an atheist and then started to recognize in his life that if he was an atheist, so many things didn't make sense. Morality,

the concept of the world being corrupt, which means intrinsically he understood a different better world. Anyway, read Mere Christianity, it'll blow your mind. But C. S. Lewis, he said, when you start to follow Christ, here's what happens. It's like inviting Jesus over to your house to do like a kitchen remodel. Okay?

So Jesus knocks on the door of your life and you're like, good. I invited you into my life. This is fantastic. Welcome. And you start to show him around.

And as you show them around, all, okay, here's the kitchen. We've got some really clear things. Right? I've got this past with addiction. I've got my problem going on over here. Our marriage is kind of falling apart. And it's kind of like leaky pipes and your

your stove doesn't work and your flooring needs to be replaced. So you give him permission. Right? You give Jesus, the God of the universe, permission to touch three areas of life. And you want him to stick to those things.

But then when you go to answer the door, you expect to find a guy. He's a carpenter, so he's probably got carpenter tools. Right? But you expect him to show up with like a screwdriver, maybe a tape measure, and a stud finder. Right? Just so he can do the dad trick. Beep beep beep. Oh, found him.

It the day you I've got five kids. The day my first kid was born, I just had to go buy a stud finder so I could do that. Joke. It's it's in the bible too. Okay. So but when Jesus shows up, he instead has a wrecking ball and a sledgehammer.

And when he lays out the blueprint of the house he plans on building, it doesn't look anything like your old house. In fact, there's nothing of your old house there anymore. It looks different. It's painted different. The structure is different. The living room is different. Everything about it is different. And where you have invited him to fix some rusty and leaking things, he has completely

demolished the house and built a new one. And you ask him, why? Oh, why do you do this? And he says, well, I intend to live here myself. I'm not building the house you dream of.

I'm building a house for myself. This is where I'm gonna dwell. This is where I'm going to live. And when you start to follow Jesus and you dig into the text, what you find is that the call to follow Jesus is not one just of external behavior.

Jesus' greatest enemies when he walked this earth, the people that he was constantly in having problems with. He would call them foxes and a brood of vipers. He also used this phrase with them that they are whitewashed sarcophagus.

That means like a bedazzled coffin. You you are you've got dead bones inside of you, but outside you're like, look how great I look. The pharisees practiced religion really well and yet internally he says, but their hearts are far from me. So you recognize that as you start to follow Jesus, the call to

deny self is not just external. It's not just I should probably swear a little bit less and I probably shouldn't throw things at my son's baseball game and I probably shouldn't like tell gossip and lies about my roommates just to get them in trouble. Like maybe something deeper needs to change.

And yet what I find in myself, and this is where I kinda wanna go today. And I'm this whole sermon is literally just me talking to myself. So if you wanna listen in, great. But this is just something that the Lord's teaching me in my life.

And he's teaching me almost predominantly through my kids. I've got, like I said, I've got five kids. The oldest one's nine. The youngest one's three. That's a lot in a short period of time. I recognize that. But my middle son Brady, he's middle middle. He's three of five in the middle son.

His job is pooper scooper. That's his job. So I go in the backyard the other day, we're gonna have our friends over and I say, Brady, I need you to clean up everything, all the fecal matter in the backyard. And as it as as if it was a compulsion, my son responds and says, I don't want to.

Okay. I'm like racking my brain going, I don't remember asking you that question. Like, this is really I'm really more of a benevolent dictator than I am someone that you're gonna negotiate with. I love you, but that was more of a royal decree than it was the beginning of a negotiation with you.

Almost as if to say, what does desire have to do with it? You're my son. I'm your dad. The fact that this is one of my main job as a dad. One of my main job as a as a dad is to rip out of all of my kids the idea that the primary filter that you process life through is your emotions, your desires, your heart, your affections. Why?

What what does the bible say about the heart? Jeremiah 17 verse nine. The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond repair. Who can tame it? No one. In fact, when Jesus says, if you want to follow me, Ezekiel 36 chapter 36 verse 26. He says, when I come and I call people to myself,

I don't do a little bit of heart surgery. I do heart transplant. I didn't come just to fix part of your heart. I came to take your old heart of stone, Ezekiel 36, and give you a heart of flesh. This is repeated also in Ezekiel eleven thirteen.

I've taken the old you out. This is what Paul talks about throughout the New Testament. This duality of you used to be dead and now you're alive. You used to have a cold heart and now you have a heart of flesh. You used to live in darkness but now you live in light. You used to be lost and now you are found.

And so one of my primary responsibilities dad is that when Brady hears a command or Peyton Harper, Brady, Leo Finley, when they hear commands, they don't go, I don't want to. Why?

Because you and I can all imagine at his age, processing the world through your heart is not gonna cost him very much. Right? The stakes are pretty low when you're five. You don't have a family or a mortgage or a car or a job. Right? Like, well, does have a job. He's gotta pay the rent but he doesn't. But

but you can see how if my son gets to an age of 18 or 20 or 25 or 30 or whatever it is, and he still processes every decree given to him by authority through the process of, do I want to? Is his life gonna be fruitful? Will he have any healthy relationships?

If you've been married for longer than ten minutes, you've recognized that rarely is the right thing to do the same thing as the thing that you wanted to do. Right? Thank you. Let's just close in prayer right now.

Ephesians five, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. It doesn't say submit to one another because you feel like it. Submit to one another because God has saved you from death. So submit to one another. That's what it says. And if he doesn't learn from that age that when

the father gives you a command, you don't process through whether or not you want to. Because to think like that is a juvenile, elementary, infantile, immature way of processing your life. And yet,

I'm sitting backstage before the service and I'm watching like the Rock Point Church slides, scroll and it's like serving kids ministry. Do you wanna know the first thing I thought of when it said, why don't you sign up to serving kids ministry? You wanna know the first thing I thought?

I don't want to.

We're gonna do it. We're gonna go in a time of tithes and offerings. I don't want to.

I got up late. Church is far away. You should come to church. I don't want to. And and the the crazy part about it is as easy it is for me to walk into my kid's room and go, nobody asked you.

It's not about what you feel. In fact, it's part of our responsibility as a dad that you would jump out of the idea that feelings are your primary emotion because that's infantile and elementary and juvenile. And it's super different when I do it. It's so different. When I say it's different

because it's it just is. You shut your mouth. You go back in your room. Don't you look at me like that. I'm your father. That's why. I

don't have a good reason that it's different. I just I need it to be different to make my life livable. Right? I gotta look in the mirror somehow, so I just ad hoc stomp my feet. It's different. It's different when people like me say, No, dad. I'm not. I can process my world through emotions but my son can't because that's immature.

So when Jesus invites us to follow him, he doesn't ask just for a change of behavior. He asks for a change of mind. In fact, the first word in Jesus' public ministry is the word repent.

The first word in John the Baptist public ministry is repent. The first word in the southern steps of the temple after at Pentecost when Peter preaches, guess what his first word is? Could you imagine if it wasn't repent? That'd be tricky, but it is. It's repent. The word repent comes from a Greek word metanoia,

which means to change your mind, to change your thinking. In military terms, would it would be your thinking needs to do like a one eighty, like an about face. You need to completely turn around and go the other direction.

And yet sometimes I I think when I'm following Jesus, I get so wrapped up in the external things that I forget that my thought process needs to change also. And I think this is what what Paul's getting at here in second Corinthians chapter five.

Paul, Time Magazine, it's a true story. The other a few years back, made a list of the 100 most influential people of all time. Paul of Tarsus was number two on the list. Why?

He's the reason you are probably sitting here today. Depending on what your heritage is and and where you come from, one of the disciples is the reason that you're sitting here today because someone in a long lineage of church planting got to either your ancestors or family or this is your first time at church. And Paul was a church planter and that church began to plant churches that became what we have today.

And he's so influential but he also started as a Pharisee. He was widely known and well respected

and he was going in his life and everything seemed to be going well and then Jesus said, you're gonna be on my team. And you would expect then if the God of the universe says, you're gonna work for me now, that his life would get simpler and richer and easier and more pleasant and less problems. And yet something very strange happened.

He gets beat by reeds five different times. He gets the punishment of 39 lashes. He's shipwrecked. He's bitten by a snake. How many of you, if you thought you were inside of God's will and then a snake bit you, would quit? I would. Because that's how I do will in my life. Don't you?

God's will is the path of least resistance. I hear people talking about it all the time. I say the same thing. If I'm choosing between two realities,

right? Like where should we go to dinner tonight? This place or this place? And one of them has a coupon going on. I'm like, so will of God to go to this place. Right? Like,

I'm deciding between colleges. Should it be this one or this one? This one gave me a scholarship. I'll go this way. I'm deciding between dating these two people. Oh, this one's a cardinals fan. Let's go with them. Right? Like, it it we've we think that God's will is always the path of least resistance, and yet when you find and open the scripture, what you find is the people who are closest to the will of God, their

lives are disasters. There's a guy named Jesus. Have you heard of him? He perfectly did the will of God and yet he finishes his life saying, it is finished. As he stripped naked, put a crown of thorns on him, they nail him to a cross and everyone abandons him. And he's like, I did it.

You did what? You kind of failed. Right? Like, because God's will oftentimes looks different. Look it looks very different than what we think it's gonna look like.

And he's trying to this is what I think all throughout the scripture, all throughout the book of Matthew, all throughout Pauline literature, all throughout the New Testament. This idea is pitched again and again. And sometimes we can read through a text and then jump over the difficult things and then jump back in

as if we're selectively or episodically reading the text. But here's what it says. Second Corinthians chapter five, for those who are saved. From now on, we regard this is beginning at verse 16 of chapter five.

So from now on, we regard no one from a worldly point of view. How come? Well, you got the verse before. It says, we believe that Christ died for all and therefore all died so that we should no longer live for ourselves. This is the same point that Paul makes in Romans chapter 12.

He says, therefore brothers and sisters. Okay. So I'm a I teach systematic theology. I'm a professor of systematic theology. Okay. Again, you're like, do they let 12 year olds teach college classes? I'm not 12. Okay. So first of all. Secondly, yes. And I always ask my students,

what is the therefore, therefore? If you're a good theologian, you always have to ask in Romans 12, it begins with the word therefore. The word therefore in Romans chapter 12 is the six thousand six hundred ninety fifth word in the book of Romans. Did I count? Yes. How come? I don't have friends.

So there's a lot before that. And it starts like this. Therefore brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. Living sacrifice is an interesting word because it's an oxymoron.

You know what an oxymoron is? It's when you take two words and you put them together but they're also opposites. Like pretty ugly.

Jumbo shrimp, plastic glasses, and I'm all done. I can't think of any more. But

living sacrifice is one because throughout the old testament, a sacrifice always dies. So how can I be a living dead person? This is exactly what we're called to be in Christ. Yes. I still have function. I'm I still have all of the accidents and press and ideas and principles of life, but in my will, I'm dead. I do what God wants me to do from here on out. I'm a living sacrifice.

And it says, and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. Romans 12 says, do not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the metanoia,

the renewing of the mind, the changing of the mind. Here's what he's getting at right here. We no longer regard anyone from a worldly point of view, so we ask these questions in our head. What is the pattern of the world? What is a worldly point of view? How did we used to think before we came to Christ? And if God's not just interested in changing the external,

what are the processes of decision making I used to go through before Christ that I'm now being asked to change now that I'm following Christ? Therefore, verse 17, very famous verse. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come. All this is from God who reconciled,

that means he ended the war to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. So who are we then? We are therefore Christ's ambassadors.

So not only when we follow Jesus do we get a new heart, we also get a new home. Our my citizenship used to be of the world and now my citizenship is in heaven. And if you follow Jesus, you are now a citizen of heaven. Not yet, but also right now. There is a place of heaven but there's also a a citizenship

in God's kingdom that we participate in right now. It's his church. If you're a follower of Jesus, then you're part of his church. Okay? Big word. Ecclesia in the Greek. Those who have been called out of death into life. That's what the word means. The called out ones. So as such,

if we are part of that group that's been called out, he calls us ambassadors. Which means, what does an ambassador do? An ambassador, ambassadors. That word means properly represent or distinguishably represent your country of origin.

So if I am an ambassador of Christ, when I go to my job, if I'm a plumber or I'm a teacher or I'm a politician or if I'm a baseball player or whatever I whatever I do, if I'm a coworker, if I'm a parent, if I'm a child, everything in life should be seen to this lens.

I'm approaching the world around me as if I'm coming from my kingdom of origin and telling them what Jesus is like. I'm ambassadoring for the king. I'm someone who's coming and going, I want you to know what the kingdom of heaven is like.

A terrifying reality for us as dads is to recognize that the primary way that your kids will understand the love, grace, peace, justice of God is the way they understand you. That's horrifying. But it's a massive responsibility as well.

Christ has sent me to my children as an ambassador. Do you wanna know one of the most profound truths that I've understood in my life? I know that Jesus is pursuing my kids because he's put me in their life. He's pursuing my kids through me.

I am an ambassador to them to let them know what Jesus is like. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors as though God were making his appeal through us. So we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to become sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

God made Jesus pay the price for a sinner so that me, a sinner, could be treated like the perfect Christ. He experienced hell for me that I could experience heaven through him. He paid the price of my sin. That's two Corinthians five twenty one. It's a great picture of the gospel.

And so if Jesus is asking us not just to renew our behaviors and not just to renew our priorities but to renew our mind,

we want to ask the question then, what are the patterns of this world that Romans 12 talks about? How did we used to think or some of us even that we're in church, we still have this old way of thinking that Paul's calling us out of.

As I'm processing this, I think one of the primary things we need to understand is that before Christ and in every advertisement, in every jingle, and in every part of this world, you're invited without Jesus to have the first perception, the first part of your process of decision making be your affections.

The first thing, the heart. In fact, without Christ, I am both conditioned and compelled and invited particularly in modernity, in post Christian modernity, in America especially. I wake up in the morning and I ask myself, what do I want to do with my day? I recognize there's responsibilities.

I get it. I gotta go to work. But it's still to get more of what I want. So I can have a long weekend. So I can get a new jet ski. So I can get that house on the beach. I'm still compelled by my affections. So when it comes to decision making processes, let's take one that I deal with a lot. I'm in the college area of San Diego. There's a 100,000 college students within ten minutes of my church. And so when we have a young adult program,

I get this all the time. Let's think about like a dating context. I'll get a girl that comes out to me and she's like, I want to be in a relationship. Okay? That's the first question without Christ that we ask. What do I want? And she says, I wanna be in a dating relationship.

The next thing without Christ, after we know what we want, we're invited to have that affect our behavior. Well if I want to do this, well then I'm gonna do this. Why wouldn't I? Why would I find desires inside of myself like the theologian Lady Gaga once said, I was born this way. I'm on the right track baby.

This is who I was made to be. These are the desires that I had. If God didn't want me to be in a relationship and to be pursuing guys all the time, he would have made me not want to do that all the time and here I find myself doing that. As if desire

should be the primary way that we understand ourselves. Here's the thing you should know about your heart. Your heart, like a car, is an excellent check engine light but a terrible GPS system. Okay? If you're sad, might go, check engine light. Something's wrong.

Well, what should I do about it? Let's ask the Holy Spirit and God's word. That's our GPS. He tells me what to think about this.

But if we process through our emotions, what do I want? I want a boyfriend real bad. So what am I gonna do? I'm gonna get one. What do they like? It doesn't matter. Just someone to transact love with. I give them love. They give me affection. I give them this. They give me that. It's a transactional relationship.

And then what you find is after they've practiced this pattern, here's what I want. Here's what I'm gonna do. Then they come to church and I open up the Bible to second Corinthians chapter five. It's just later down the page and it says this, right after five through 21, which we just read through, the next section is,

therefore Christians do not be unequally yoked with non believers. So don't tie yourself to someone who's going a different direction in life. Find someone who values the same things that you do. Whose main accountability,

final authority is the word of God. This is what it means to be equally yoked. And I get up there and I go, do not be unequally yoked to non believers. But so far in her life she's learned, but this is what I want and this is what I'm doing. Well then what do I think about what the Bible says?

I don't care what the Bible says. Because it doesn't align with what I want. And what I want is pure and right. My desires are good. So I do those things. And when I do that repeatedly, it becomes,

this must be a good thing because I'm doing it all the time and therefore I change my mind about it. And I go, wow. This guy's crazy. This guy up on the stage, he's using bible verses to tell me how to live my life. And I don't want to do what he's saying.

And then after a while, that becomes part of her identity.

I'm beautiful because he says I am. I'm valuable because he says I am. And this is not subject to girls at all. It's exactly the same thing in reverse. It's a guy going, well now I'm manly because I've been taught from a young age that if girls like you this is the case and if they do this. So everything else is kind of unimportant at this point. Then I find myself creating an identity in this. And it doesn't have to be relationships. This could be money.

I want to be rich. So I do the things that I need to be rich. I think that being rich is the most important thing you could be. And now I'm a rich person. That means I've got security and I've got safety and I've got meaning and I've got prowess.

And I I can do what I want to do. I've created freedom for myself and this is our identity. The thing about identity, any process of identity that starts at desires is extremely dangerous. Because the conclusion that you arrive at when you start with the deceptive heart is gonna be an identity that's fickle.

I'll give you an example. If my daughter walked up to me, I want you to picture this in your head. Your daughter, your son, whoever it is, someone that you love.

If my daughter walks up to me and she says, daddy, did you know that I'm valuable? And I said, of course I know that you're valuable. And before I can tell her why she's valuable, she says, because I'm the most beautiful girl in my class. If I hated my daughter, I would say, that's right. That is why you're valuable.

You're right. Your beauty gives you meaning. You're right. You should identify first and foremost in your life with how attractive you are. And you should find your identity in being the most beautiful girl in your class. I couldn't think of anything more hateful to say to my daughter. How come?

Because one day even though daddy thinks she's beautiful and she cares about that, there's a day fast approaching where my opinion won't outweigh a 15 year old with baggy pants opinion of her beauty. Right?

One day she'll take the scorecard out of daddy's hand and hand it to the other girls in her classroom. She'll also find that beauty is subjective. So while some sort of mathematical symmetry would tell her she might be the most beautiful person in a room,

Other people might find something else more beautiful than that and and and all of a sudden her identity goes, wait, wait, okay. So if being the most beautiful person gave me value, then what do I do now? Then what do I what I participate in now? Then who am I now? And then and then that identity is crushed and then in their most insecure moment, they're then asking their heart, well then who do I want to be now? Well, what do I want? And here's what I'm gonna do and then here's what I think and then here's who I am now. And we found that as you continue to take away, this was the great experiment of the last hundred years, as you begin to take God out culture and Jesus out of the conversation and identity in him out of everything and we promise with an advance in technology and sexual liberation, we're gonna finally find ourselves free from the bondage of religion and everyone gets to be whoever they wanna be. You can self identify. You can be who you want. You can be as you want. Can do what you want without any

sort of problem. There's no divine eye in the sky. How's it going? The generation coming up right now is the most depressed, medicated, anxious, and suicidal generation of all time. Why? Because Christ alone is a firm foundation. Only our identity in Christ will ever be solid and ever be secure. And we are invited in Christ

to translate our system and put it backwards because what you'll recognize is that once you've decided through the heart to do something and then think something and then identify with something, that thing changes. I can tell you this firsthand. In July 2021, after the birth of our fifth child, I lost my wife to suicide.

And spouse is a pretty secure identity. And it was a catastrophic medical diagnosis that led to mental health issues that turned into schizophrenia, and then it's and then you just feel like your life is crumbling apart.

And and in response to that, so many so many people from around the world are messaging me and emailing me and asking me questions, and they're just saying, how could you worship God at a time like this? How could you possibly follow someone who does that? And you're right. If I start at, what do I feel about God? Honestly and earnestly

getting that information, knowing what I know about God, I was ready to scream and yell. But in Christ, we change our processes around. I don't ask how do I feel about God in this moment. That doesn't direct my life.

So when you find out that information, start with, well, who am I? John six sixty six has become one of my most powerful life verses since the day that I found that out. Almost three years ago. Where else would I go?

This is what Peter says. To whom would we go? You alone hold the keys to eternal life. And I'm a son of the most high God. And so when I know that, Paul invites us to change our way of thinking. To then find ourselves in our identity and then move backwards.

See when Christ comes into your life, he doesn't just change the things that on the external, but an internal mindset shift. And yes, anyone who finds out their wife is dead, who starts with how do I feel arrives at a conclusion that I'm not following Jesus anymore. But anyone who starts with here's who I am in Christ perceives everything through that lens then.

And it doesn't mean that everything's happy go lucky. It doesn't mean that God and I didn't have a few knock down drag out arguments in the last three years. But it does mean that the situation shifts because in Christ, if you've accepted an identity from this world, then you've gotta keep it up. It's exhausting.

You've got a burden to then go, well, I'm I'm always the beautiful one. I'm always the popular one. I'm always the rich one. And then you look to your left and right and here comes other people's wealth. And so you gotta keep going. You gotta keep being more. You gotta keep and it's exhausting. It's like when Jesus speaks to the woman at the well in John chapter four and he says, aren't you tired of coming back every day to draw from the same well?

Jeremiah says, here's the problem with this world. They have rejected me, the spring of living water, and have instead turned their identity to broken cisterns that are incapable of holding any water.

So in Christ, identity isn't achieved, it's received. You'll never open up the scripture. This is the worst advice you can give if your kid's going, I don't know who I am. And you're like, well, go out and find yourself. Right? So you go hayahuasca,

go out into the mountains and just go, God, who am I? Like world, tell me what I am. Because they're gonna get a really negative response. Jesus never invites us to go seek who we are.

He stares at us in the face. If you're asking Jesus today whether you're a believer or non believer and you say, Jesus who am I? He's not gonna go, well for He's gonna have you look him right in the eye and he's gonna say this, you are mine. That's who you are.

You're not what this world says. You're not your failures. You're not even your successes. You're not your achievements or your bank account or your relationships or your sexual conquest. You're none of those things. It's all fickle. It's all here today and gone tomorrow. It's shifting sand.

A fool builds his house on sand. But if you're wise, you'll build your house on what I know about you, on who I am because I'm not going anywhere. I'm the eternal one. Alpha and omega, beginning and the end is a safe place to build your identity. And so Christianity

changes the process. And when we make decisions, we start with identity. We start with who I am. This is our decision making process AD. BC, it's all about the heart. AD, it's about my identity. So I begin with, because of who I am this is how I'm gonna make my decisions. Identity first. Because of who I am.

Because of who I am in Christ and what God says about these things.

Once I find my identity in him, I don't have to wonder how I perceive the world. I don't have to think about what I think about lying or stealing or cheating or infidelity. I don't have to ponder and think, what do I think about these things? I derive my ideas about life from my identity, which means I turn to the word of God

and he infiltrates my mind. He changes my way of thinking. Because of who I am and what God says about situation x, I'm gonna throw up my hands and shrug my shoulders and say, God I'm gonna do things your way. And you wanna know what's wild about that?

God is faithful to change not just what we do. He starts to change what you want to do.

But if you never go through this process, you'll never come to the really amazing conclusion that when we start with who we are and what God says about things and then we go, you know what? I'm just gonna do things your way. Why? Because when I do them my way, my life's a dumpster fire. That's why.

I'm a bad captain. My heart's a bad GPS system. What have I got to lose? I'm gonna do life your way. Not only does our behavior change but our affections begin to shift too. Which is why some of you, if you come from a background of alcoholism or addiction

or some sort of vice or history where you are participating in the things of this world, your old friends go, come on man. What is it about you? And you have a hard time explaining to them. You genuinely don't wanna do that anymore. And it's a stumbling block. It's foolishness, two Corinthians says.

And yet I can spend so much of my life getting asked to participate in things of the church. Getting asked to be forbearing

with my kids. Getting asked to not respond in anger. Getting asked to do all these things and I cross my arms like a five year old kid and say, I don't want to. As if the father's going, I don't remember asking you that. I've asked you who you are. And if you're a child of mine,

then what you think about serving, giving, loving, taking care of your wife, your kids comes from me. And I'm gonna need you to trust me enough to do what I say, and watch me change your affections. And this is what Jesus talks about when he says, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free from the bondage of slavery.

I have come that they may have life, John ten, and have it abundantly. And this is an invitation that Christ is inviting us into today to stop the bondage of the heart and move to being what Paul says, I'm a slave to Christ because he's a good master.

He never steers us in the wrong direction because he loves us. He changes our old broken identity and gives us a new heart. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation inside out. The old has gone and the new has come. Would you pray with me? Lord, we we we

surrender these things to you. Our fickle emotions, our old broken cisterns, those things that don't hold water.

Our ways of perceiving ourselves that have led us down really bad paths. Or maybe some of us right here are even saying, I still ask myself, even as a child of God, what do I want in all of these things? And I skeptically

say no to whatever you've called me to do because I'm just not ready to surrender my identity to you, but Lord, you are a good master and you are faithful not just to change what we think and what we do but how we feel as well. Would you take away our slavery to our emotions

and instead remind us that we are children of yours in all that we do. We pray these things in your name. Amen. Hey, thanks for joining us for service online this weekend. Be sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on the Rock Point Church app for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.