Basics | Week 4 | Message

A couple years ago, me and two of my friends were on a leadership conference out of state and we decided to fly southwest. Now, good news is southwest has recently figured out that assigned seating is the way to go for airplanes

because when you fly Southwest, it's basically like being in the Hunger Games. It's every man for themselves and may the odds be ever in your favor to find a seat. And, the plane we're on was packed.

I'm sitting down and I have an empty seat next to me. Now, you're probably a better person than me but when I'm on a plane and I have an empty seat next to me, all I'm looking at is who's coming down the aisle and who's gonna be sitting next to me for the next two and a half hours.

Because there's certain type of people, I just don't wanna sit next to me on a plane. For example, if you are a parent with a newborn baby, I love you, do not sit next to me on a plane, please. I got three crying babies at home, I don't need to hear it anymore.

Another type of person I don't wanna sit next to me is like an NFL linebacker. I just don't want you sitting next to me. So I'm on the plane, I'm looking down the aisle and this guy gets on the plane. He had to be six six or for the youth in the room, six seven. Sorry.

If you're over 20 just ask someone under and they'll tell you that it means nothing. He had to be six six. I'd tell you, he's probably 350

and he's just staring at me. So he walks down the aisle and he looks at me and he he had one of those like compression shirts on that was like two sizes too small for him and he had these big old muscles and you can see every muscle of his body and you see these sweat

stains on his shirt and this guy walks down to this big old guy and he's like, hey, can I sit next to you? And I'm like, I wanna be like Forrest Gump and be like, seats taken. I'm like, alright, you can sit here. He gets in the seat, he takes up that entire seat and like half of my seat. So I'm over here like, and I'm an introvert, I'm like, don't talk to me, don't touch me. His sweat stains are like rubbing up against my arms and I'm like, oh, this is what Paul meant by we're gonna suffer for Christ. Like this is terrible.

I power through, we get off the plane and my friends who are with me saw this whole thing go down. So they're making fun of me, they're laughing about it. Well, we get to the hotel and I get to my room and I see that my friends had left me a gift on the bed. It was a compression shirt.

And I laughed, I thought it was funny and then I picked up the box and I started reading it and it said, do you want a narrow waist and firm chest? Yeah. If so, looking good has never been easier. I thought maybe that guy was actually onto something. So I opened the box and I got this shirt on my body.

I gotta tell you, it did not deliver on its promises. I did not get narrow waist and firm chest. I got high blood pressure and shortness of breath.

Because as soon as I put the shirt on, I immediately tried to take it off. Now here's the problem, these shirts don't come off very easy. Now I understand why the guy in the airport had the shirt on. He probably was wearing it for three weeks, just couldn't figure out how to get the shirt off.

Because I'm in my room and I'm wrestling with this shirt and I cannot figure out how to get this shirt off. And the hard part was I spend I begin to sweat so it starts sticking to my body even more. I said some words that I'm not proud of. Don't judge me. You are not in my circumstance. After ten minutes of wrestling with this shirt and losing,

I finally get the shirt off, I take it, I throw it against the wall as hard as I can because I was so angry at the shirt for whatever reason because it wronged me and I had to decompress for like fifteen minutes because of my compression shirt. Now, at any point in my struggle

I simply coulda walked out of the hotel room, knocked on my friend's hotel room and says, hey guys, I got your shirt, thank you. I can't get it off. Would you help me get out of this shirt? But I didn't do that. And I didn't do that because I did not want them to see me in struggle and I didn't want them to see me looking

vulnerable. Because there's something in me and I believe there's something in you as well, that we definitely want people to see us a certain way. That we want people to see us in a certain light. So what I tend to do and what we tend to do is we show people only the good side of us and not the full side of us.

And what we're gonna discover in our time together in John chapter four is this, to be truly accepted you must be fully known. We all have a desire to be accepted. We all wanna be accepted by those around us, accepted by God. But to be accepted we have to be willing to be fully known. John chapter four.

I'm gonna read this entire encounter at once, so stay with me. We're gonna start in verse four. It says, now he, this is Jesus, now he had to go to Samaria. So he came to town in Samaria called Sicar.

There's a plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there and Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water Jesus said to her, will you give me a drink? His disciples had gone into town to buy food.

The Samaritan woman said to him, you are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink? For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus answered her and said, if you knew the gift of God and who it is to ask you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

Sir, the woman said, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave it thus the well and drank from it himself as also did his sons and his livestock? Jesus answered,

everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water so I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming back to draw water.

He told her, go, call your husband and come back. I have no husband she replied. Jesus said to her, you are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is you've had one, two, three, four, five husbands and the man you're sleeping with now is not your husband. Sorry I got off there. What you have said is quite true.

Sir, the woman said, I can see that you're a prophet. Our ancestors have worshiped on this mountain but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.

Woman, Jesus replied, believe me a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain or in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know, we worship what we do know. For salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming, it has now come,

when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. The woman said, I know that the messiah called Christ is coming and when he comes he'll explain everything to us.

Then Jesus declared, I, the one speaking to you, I am he.

The story starts and says that Jesus had to go to Samaria. Now if you understand the map in the first century, Jesus did not have to go to Samaria. In fact most Jews wouldn't dare to walk into Samaria because Jews saw Samaritan as lesser people. So as his way to Jerusalem

it says that he had to go through Samaria. Most of them would go around Samaria to avoid the people in Samaritans because the Jewish people believed that a good Samaritan was only a dead Samaritan. See because the Samaritan people were a mixed group of people.

When the Kingdom Of Israel was broken into the Northern and the South the Northern Kingdom was conquered by a group that came in and took over. And they came and took all the people out and then the Assyrians put foreign tribes into the nation.

Now, the Jewish people were meant to stay pure and not marry outside of their religion because the Messiah would come from that people. But they began to marry within these tribes and these tribes that came into the area had false gods. They celebrated

child sacrifices and they didn't do anything that the God of the bible tells them to do. So what you have is you have this mixed group of people building up and becoming part of the leadership team, the Samaritans.

These people believed that the only parts of the bible that were relevant were the first five books of the bible. The rest was was either altered or not okay.

And on top of that they took the five books of the bible and they changed some of it. Where in the bible it says you worship in Jerusalem, they change it and say no, no, no, worship in our place. And to a Jewish person, to, to alter the text of the bible was punishable by death. Jewish people could not stand Samaritans.

A good Samaritan is a dead Samaritan. So you can imagine the disciple's surprise when Jesus turns left and says we have to go through Samaria. And he gets there and he meets this woman.

And I love it because Jesus gets to the well and the woman shows up and he just engages with her. He just begins to have conversation with her. He's just like, give me a drink. I don't know if you read it this way but you can almost read her attitude in the text. She's like, okay first of all,

my people don't like your people, your people don't like my people. You're a Jew, I'm a Samaritan, why are you even talking to me? Jesus was ready for it though. He said, if you knew who I was, you would ask me for a drink of living water. You see her response? She says, you don't even have a cup.

How are you gonna get water out of the well? Oh you have living water? You got your own special brand of water? Oh aren't you fancy You got your own type of water.

This well is Jacob's well. Jacob drank from this well. Jacob's son drank from this well. Jacob's dog drank from this well and you can't drink from it? You're too good for that?

You spit in my eye.

The water in this well is going to leave you thirsty and you're gonna keep coming back because it's not going satisfy you. The water that I offer you will satisfy you, will satisfy the deepest longings of your soul because what I offer you will become a spring living in you and it will leave you never being thirsty again.

Can I have some please? Because she knew what it was like to be empty. She knew what it was like to be longing for more. She knew what it was like to not be satisfied.

And the moment Jesus offers her a chance at something greater, the moment Jesus offers her a chance of this living water, she says, can I have it? And what I find so fascinating is Jesus' response to this woman's plea. She says, can I have the water? And he says, go get your husband. It's

like a timeshare presentation. I need both of you here. I'm gonna sit you down and I'm gonna offer you living water or a luau. You get the pick. Go get your husband. This is where the woman has to correct Jesus where she's like, woah. I don't have a husband.

No. When you read the new testament and Jesus is wrong, you should pay attention because he's not wrong. He just knows something new and I don't know. Only Jesus could get away with this. It's like Jesus walking up to you and says hey, congratulations on the baby. And you're like I'm not pregnant,

you should take a test.

Or Jesus come up and say hey, I'm sorry about the job that you lost and you're like I didn't lose my job. Like yeah, you should check your email. Think you did. Jesus says go get your husband. She's like I don't have a husband.

Then Jesus reveals something about this woman that you and I would not know on our own. He reveals something about this woman that she's no ordinary woman. I don't know how to say this in church. She's like a woman of the night. Does that make sense?

No, it didn't make sense. Okay. Okay I know how to say it in church. She had a men's ministry, okay. You got it? Some of you got it.

She had been in relationship after relationship after relationship after relationship. Here's what you need to understand This is in the first century. In our time we're like wow, you're divorced five times. That's impressive. In this culture, this was unheard of. Women in the first century had no rights.

They did not have the ability to divorce someone which means this woman was divorced five different times. Five different men said, not good enough, not good enough, not good enough, not good enough. Five different men said, I don't want you, I don't want you, I don't want you, I don't want you, I don't want you.

Now we know why the woman is coming at noon.

Women did not go draw water at noon. Why would you go in the hottest part of the day to go get water? People would go get water, the women in this culture would get water in the early morning or in the evening when it's cool out. So the fact the woman's coming at noon tells us she does not wanna be around any people.

She wants to avoid her people and now we know why. She is the worst in the worst group. So she goes at noon because she wants to stay away from people, she wants to stay away from her community, she wants to stay isolated and Jesus goes after the very reason why she's there at noon to begin with.

He says, know about him, I know about him, know about him, know about him, him, know about him. Her response is, you must be a prophet. You think? This guy like read your mail and you're like, oh you're good, you're good at this. And then she says,

you know your people say we can only worship here, my people say we can only worship there. What's she doing? She's doing what so many of us tend to do. Jesus is trying to talk to her about her brokenness and she takes it and tries to turn it into a theological debate.

Because isn't it true? It's easier to get in a life group, to get with our friends, to get in our community and talk about theological topics than it is to talk about our brokenness. It's much easier to debate theology than to open up and say, here's how I'm broken.

And Jesus is going after this woman and she turns it into a theological conversation. And Jesus says, the time is coming where it doesn't matter where you worship, that it only matters if you worship in spirit and in

truth. Here's why this is so important for her and so important for you and I. You cannot simply worship Jesus on a spiritual level. There also needs to be the truth about who you are, who you What you've done and maybe what's been done to you. The truth is we are all broken.

It's not simply meant to be a spiritual moment. And it sounds harsh because Jesus is like, goes directly to the core of what she doesn't wanna talk about and you can sit here and go, man, that's harsh. It's not harsh, it's actually loving because if Jesus did not reveal that he knew this, she would go home,

she would get into the house and he would walk out of the bedroom and here's what she would think. It's how so many of us think. She would think, man, if Jesus knew about him, he would have not have treated me that way. So Jesus says, I'm gonna tell you I know about him and what I'm gonna tell you is we're good.

I know about him and we are good.

And Jesus doesn't want to leave her with just a spiritual moment because then she's gonna keep coming back to the well and try to encounter Jesus and he's not gonna be there. This is why it's so easy for us to walk into here, we sing this amazing worship song, we get a goose bump because it does something to us and maybe a tear. By the time we get to the car that emotion is gone because we're not meant to simply worship God in

spirit. It's also in truth, the truth of who we are and the fact that all of us are broken. I almost feel her at this point kinda give up on the conversation. She's like, I know, the Messiah is coming. Maybe he'll explain this to us. And I wonder if she's thinking, is that what's happening here? And Jesus picks this woman,

a broken Samaritan woman and says, for the first time in his public ministry, I'm the Messiah. He picks the loneliest, brokenest person he can find to reveal who he really is. It's as if he's saying, I know you, I know your brokenness but I'm gonna let you in on something that no one else knows. That is because I accept you.

They have this incredible moment and the disciples show up. Then the disciples return and they're surprised to find him talking to a woman. But no one asked,

what do you want or why are you talking to him? I mean how do you tell Jesus he's wrong? He speaks in red letters. You can't confront the guy. So they show up, they get their burgers and fries and they see Jesus talking to this woman. They're like, we

should not have left him alone. Peter, say something. It's always Peter. Peter's like, last time I confronted him he called me Satan. I don't think I wanna do that again. I think we just let this one go. The woman then leaving her jar,

the woman went back into town, look at this, and said to the people, come and see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah? They came out of town and made their way towards him. Skip down to verse 39. Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony. He told me everything I ever did.

So when the Samaritan came to town they urged him to stay with him. So he stayed two more days. And because of his word many more became believers.

They said to the woman, we no longer believe just because of what you said. Now we've heard for ourselves and we know that this man is the savior of the world. Think about this. This woman showed up at the well isolated, wanting to be around no people and she meets Jesus

and goes to the very people she's trying to avoid and says, let me tell you about a man I met. Let me tell you about this person who claims to be the Messiah. She goes to the very people she's trying to stay away from and says, let me tell you everything about me and this man that I just met.

And see, something happened and the Christian word is forgiveness.

That's not what happened. Freedom's what happened. She was no longer a slave to her past. She was no longer held back by chains for her guilt and things that she's done. She has now been free to say this is who I am for better or for worse. And she experienced true acceptance.

Once Jesus said, I know you and we're good. And what's true about her, what's true about us is all of us desire that type of acceptance. We desire to be fully accepted. But that comes on the other side of being known. See, true acceptance requires the courage to be fully known. True acceptance requires courage to be fully

known and what's difficult about a room this size like here at Rock Point is, it's easy to walk in here and think you are the only one who's broken. It's easy to walk in and think everyone else here has it all together. You get in the parking lot.

You park next to this couple and they're like singing worship songs. You're like, they're worshiping. Me and my spouse were going to war on the way here like look at these guys.

They get out of the car and their kids got like a bow tie on and like my kids got one shoe on and my bad kids over here ain't even listening to me. They pull out their stroller, they got the nice fancy one, they're like gliding through the parking lot and you got your raggedy stroller trying to get in and you

walk in here and think, no one else is struggling the way I'm struggling. No one else is dealing with what I'm dealing with and we can walk into a place like this and think we're the only ones broken. We're the only ones who have some things about us we're not excited about.

The truth is all of us starting with me are broken, all of us. Christianity's not a crutch, it's a stretcher. All of us are broken and all of us are in need of a savior. In fact, do me a favor. Turn the person next to you and say neighbor. Okay, none of you did it. Alright, we're gonna try that one more time.

I heard one person went for it, that was it. Okay, turn to the person next to you and say, neighbor. Neighbor. I'm so glad to hear. I'm You're as jacked up as I am. It's good.

This woman over there has been waiting twenty seven years to say that's your husband. You are jacked up in the name of Jesus. We're all broken. We're we're all jacked up. So why do we have the need to want to hide? Why do we want to pretend like everything's okay? Jesus talked a lot about this.

When he called people who hid, when he called people who pretended to be okay, he called them hypocrites. Now how many have ever heard the church is full of hypocrites? Yeah, let me help. That's absolutely true.

The church is full of hypocrites and if this is your first time here we are glad you're here, you're gonna fit right in.

The church is full of hypocrites. Every church you ever go to is full of hypocrites. Every restaurant you ever go to is full of hypocrites. If you're at home by yourself, you're in a home full of hypocrites. We're all hypocrites. Jesus is one of the first people to use that word in the way we do today.

In Jesus day in the first century a hypocrite was a stage actor. It would be someone who would go on stage and they'd put a mask on and they would play a character

in a show or in a movie or in a play. They'd put the mask on and they'd take the mask off. They'd put a different mask on, take the mask off, put a mask on, take it off. And Jesus would look at the religious people in his day and say, you are a hypocrite. Meaning, you are pretending

to be something that you're not and all of us are hypocrites. All of us are pretending to be something we're not. And Jesus would say, are you willing to take off the mask and just be who you really are, not who you want to be? Because here's the problem when you wear a mask. When you wear a mask,

no one knows the real you so no one can love the real you. So you put a mask on, you hide who you are and people try to love you but they're really only loving the mask because they don't know you. But when we take the mask off, we can experience the freedom that comes

from saying, I'm free to be me because of what Jesus did for me. Because you and I have a desire to be accepted, that comes on the other side of being known. And when we decide to take the mask off, we'll experience real freedom and real freedom comes from true acceptance. Real freedom comes from true acceptance.

Let me tell you how lions hunt. First Peter five eight, it's an incredible passage. It says, stay alert, watch out. You have a great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion

looking for someone to devour. Now male lions have it pretty good. Male lions do three things. They eat, sleep and make baby lions. That's about all they do and they roar. Here's what he's saying. He's saying, you and I have an enemy that is like a roaring lion. Let me tell you how they hunt in the world of lions.

They they would roar. They want their enemy, they want their prey to know I'm coming for you. Now the prey is in a group together. When they hear the roar it makes them scatter. The female lions then go out to hunt and they're looking for the prey that has gotten away from the pack.

And what Peter is saying that, do you know our enemy is gonna roar lies at you? That you are not lovable? You are not good enough? You are too broken and what that's gonna do is cause you to become more and more isolated. He says, be careful.

Your enemy wants to isolate you. Your enemy wants you to think that you're too broken, you're not good enough and get you in isolation. But when you and I have the courage to say no, no, no, that's not true. Jesus died for me in my brokenness. We can experience real freedom.

Heard a story of a first grade teacher teaching at a church, She's teaching Sunday school and she wants the first graders to understand what the gospel is. The gospel is that you and I are not good enough to get to God, that you and I cannot do enough to get to God so God came to us in the person of Jesus.

She's telling the first graders, she's making sure they understand the gospel and she's at the end of her message and she says, alright boys and girls, if I clean the church for an entire week would that be enough to get me into heaven?

And they all said no. She's like, oh good, they're understanding what the gospel is. So she's like, okay, if I gave all of you candy for a week would that get me into heaven? They all said no. She's like, yes, they're getting it. It's like, okay.

If I came over and cleaned your house would that get me into heaven? They all said no. So then she asked a big question. Okay, what do you have to do to get into heaven? And this five year old boy stands up and says, you gotta be dead.

He's not wrong.

So many of us, we think Christianity is simply about a way to get you into heaven when you die. Listen, God does not just wanna get you into heaven when you die, he wants to get heaven into you while you live. He wants you to experience peace, joy, contentment, freedom, this side of heaven

and that comes when you and I decide this is, we're gonna be who we're designed to be. First John one nine says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. That if we confess our sins, he is faithful to say you are a new creation. You are not

what happened to you. You are someone who's been made in the image of your living God. I was listening to a podcast from a professor at Biola University and he was talking about an experiment called the scar study. They took about 10 individuals

and they put a giant fake scar on their face and they wanted to send them into the community to see how the community would respond to the scar.

So they put the scar on their face and says, okay, you can look in the mirror but you can't look in the mirror after this moment. So they look at the scar on their face, they see how horrific it is. They take the mirror away and the makeup artist comes back and says, actually, let me adjust something real fast. And they took the scar off

and sent them into the community. Everyone came back and said, you wouldn't believe the looks they gave me because of my scar. Everyone came back and said, you wouldn't believe how they treated me because of my scar. And it wasn't there. But when you think you're broken, when you think you're unlovable, when you think

I'm not good enough, you will see everything through the lens of I'm broken and I'm not good enough. But when you understand that this car is not who you are, something that happened to you, but because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, you're free, you can experience peace, love, mercy and grace,

You don't walk around broken, you walk around forgiven and you walk around saying, I am free, not because I'm great, because there's a great God who died on my behalf. And that happens when we take off the mask and say, this is who I really am. The first time this was very real for me was when I was 19.

My dad was a pastor so I've literally been in church nine months before I was born and part of church my whole life when I got into high school I wasn't really interested in Christianity anymore. It wasn't that I thought it was wrong. I just, I didn't find it very relevant. And by the time I was 19,

I just completely disengaged from Christianity completely. All my Christian friends and everything just got into a different type of community. At 19 my dad had a stroke and they rushed him to the hospital and they found out that he had a brain tumor that was cancerous.

He went into an eight hour surgery and he survived the surgery, but the surgeon came to me and all of our family and said, I need to prepare you for something. The man that you knew going into the surgery is not the man you're gonna know coming out of the surgery. We had to cut too much of his brain out.

And he was right. My dad was never the same again. And I was angry. I was angry at God. I was angry at everyone. Even people that didn't have anything to do with the situation. I was extremely mad, confused, and frustrated.

And what I did was I continued to isolate more and more and more. I can begin to close off more and more and more from people. And, it was probably one of the lowest places I've ever been in my life where completely by myself and I felt like I was broken. And, everywhere I went I saw myself as broken. Tell a friend of mine

who's here this weekend, reached out to me who was a Christian friend of mine years ago, reached out and said, hey, let's just get coffee. I know what's going on with your dad. Didn't want to but he was a friend and I said, sure, why not? We get coffee and he tries to get me to open up but it's hard to take off the mask.

And I didn't open up at all. I was like, no, I'm good. I'm fine. He knew I wasn't. I knew I wasn't but that was the game I was playing. So he invited me to his life group and said, Hey, just come hang out. Come check it out. You don't have to say anything. Just come be a part of it.

So I go to his life group and it was so weird. They had these circles. They had circles of chairs lined up and I'm like, What did I just walk into? And they're all sitting there and I sit in my chair

and one after another they begin just to talk about what's going on in their life and what their relationship with Jesus is like. And I could not believe what I heard. The amount of raw honesty I heard. I didn't honestly think we could even do that as Christians. They'd be that raw and that transparent.

And I was shocked. I've never seen anything like this. Never seen that much authenticity in one room. One after another after another. It finally got to me and I wasn't planning on saying anything. I wasn't planning on sharing anything. I started talking and keep talking and then it all just kinda came out.

I just said, here's what I'm going on unfiltered. This is what I'm feeling about God. This is what I'm feeling about people. This is what I'm feeling about myself. I'm feeling broken. And the more I talked, the more I became surprised what I was feeling.

I thought I would feel shame and guilt. I thought I would feel judgment, but what I felt was freedom. I felt what this woman felt. I felt a weight off my chest that I was able just to be me. And the people sitting in those chairs were not judging me, they were loving me.

I walked out of that life group and they reached out to me. I continued to be in community with them. To say that it's one of the most pivotal moments of my life is an overstatement, that I don't think I'd be where I am today without someone reaching out to me and saying, come be a part of this community. Because you and I

are designed to be known and accepted at that level, but we can't do that in here. You cannot be known and accepted in rows. It happens in circles. It happens in homes. It happens in community.

So I wanna talk to three different kind of people in the room today. There's a group of you that you've been coming to church here for a long time or it's your first time and you know nobody here. You don't have to know everybody, but you gotta know somebody because we are made to be in community.

What I wanna challenge you or encourage you to consider doing is joining the Life Group here at Rock Point. We don't get anything out of it. It's simply what we want for you. It's something that we want you to experience.

There's a QR code on some of the chairs in front of you. If you scan that, it'll take you to a link that says join a life group. It'll be awkward. It'll be weird. You won't know anyone, but it could be the first step into freedom and the first step into experience that kind of community because there's people at this church who want to be there for you, who want to walk with you

and who will look at you and say, take off the mask. We're here with you.

So if that's you, want you to encourage to do that. There's another group of people in the room that you're in a community, you have your people but you just really wanna talk theology and you don't wanna talk about what's actually going on in your life.

I wanna challenge you to have the courage to take off the mask and be honest about what's happening in your life or what's happened. And then there's a third people in the room today that you can really relate with this woman. You've had something happen that,

man, you feel like you're broken and you feel like there's a big scar on your face. What I want to say to you is there's a God who loves you and who died for you and he knows about that scar.

He knows about what you've done. He knows about where you've been and God forbid, he knows about what's been done to you and he knows and he loves you. And our past will either be Satan's greatest weapon against you or God's most powerful tool for you. That that scar does not have to define who you are because failure

is an event. It's not a person. For you, I would say, have the courage to open up and talk about that because God can use your story in a very real way. My prayer is that this will be a church that is an authentic people.

That we don't just walk in here and pretend like everything's okay. We're a people that take off the mask and say, this is who I am but let me tell you about a God who died for me. Let me pray for us. Father, thank you for your grace. It's so hard to take off the mask. It's so hard to to not try to hide.

We hide because we want approval, but that approval doesn't actually satisfy us. It leaves us just wanting more. So I pray that we will be a church, we'll be a community that takes off the mask and say this is who I am for better or for worse. So we can experience the freedom that comes from that.

We can experience the love and mercy and grace that we feel when we we realize we're accepted as we are, not as we should be and you care so much about us, you will change us in that process. Father, help us be a people that are authentic,

who take it off, take the mask and say, I don't need this for approval. I don't need to get anyone's approval. I have God's approval. Give us the courage to do so. Father, pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.

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