Summer in Rome | Romans 13:8-14

In this message, Pastor Ben Kaempfer teaches through Romans 13:8–14, where the apostle Paul reminds believers that the debt we never finish paying is the debt of love. From Paul’s command to love our neighbor to his urgent call to wake from spiritual sleep and “put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” this sermon presses us to see that Christian faith is not passive, private, or sleepy. It is a life of active love, growing holiness, and daily repentance before God. This sermon shows how love fulfills the law, how spiritual apathy dulls obedience, and how the gospel calls us to walk in the light rather than keep making room for the flesh. If you have felt spiritually distracted, weary, or half-awake, this message is a timely invitation to return to Christ with sincerity and fresh obedience. Listen in, be encouraged by God’s Word, and consider how the Lord may be calling you to love more faithfully and follow Jesus more wholeheartedly today. Subscribe, share this episode, and pass it along to someone who needs a wake-up call from Scripture.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey, welcome to Downtown Community Church. We're so glad that you're joining us today. We're continuing our summer series, Summer in Rome, and today's message is from our lead pastor, Ben Kempfer. Before we jump in, if Downtown Community Church has been an encouragement to you, we would love for you to get connected. Whether that's serving and giving your time or supporting the ministry through your tithes and offerings, you can learn more at Downtown Community Church.com. And also be sure to follow us on Instagram at DCC Tally and Facebook at Downtown Community Church to stay up to date with everything happening here at DCC. Also, as you continue on your way this week, please keep our youth students and leaders in your prayers as they prepare for youth camp this week and head out next week. We're praying God does incredible things in their lives, and we can't wait to see the Lord work. Now let's get into today's message through Romans. Pastor Ben reminds us that the debt we never outgrow is the call to love one another. As we put off the works of darkness and put on the Lord Jesus Christ, we'll see that a life of love and holiness flows from the hearts transformed by the gospel and fixed on the hope of his coming. Thanks again for listening. Let's jump into the message.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

Alright, Romans 13, starting in verse 8. Oh no one anything except to love each other. For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Besides this, you know the time that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believe. The night is far gone, the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. Woo.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Thank you, Jeffy. If y'all don't know, that's a Jeff classic. Whenever he gets done, he just does like a little woo. It's like at the end of a rom-com, you know, it's like no matter how good it was, it's like, hey, you know, it's like Jeff, no matter what he says, it's like, woo, it's like, oh yeah, that was good. I like it. Thanks, Jeff. Um, my name is Ben, and I have the honor of serving as lead pastor here at DCC. Um, happy uh 4th of July weekend, 250th uh of the opportunity that we have to come here uh and talk about stuff like this. And so we're incredibly, incredibly thankful for that. Um let's pray together and ask this Jesus would just speak to us as we're gathered. Um, Father, we come before you and we ask you to speak to us, each and every one of us, no matter where we are in terms of our relationship with you. For some of us walked in and been loving, serving, following you for a long time. Um some of us, this is fairly new, have recently decided to see you, follow you, know you, and be known by you, Jesus. And I pray that you would help us to see what it looks like, a life lived after and for you. And for those of us who walked in the door, and we are still trying to figure this whole thing out. What Jesus, God, Bible, church, Christianity, a hundred different things, a hundred different thoughts and questions. God, I just pray and I ask that you would help all of us to see you clearly, no matter where we are in our relationship and our walk with you. Is that if that happens, we will all change. And it's in your name we pray. Amen. Amen. So we have been going, uh, started at the beginning of the summer, beginning of June at least, uh, through part of the book of Romans, the second half of the book of Romans. We're going through 12, chapter 12 to the end. And the reason is the first 11 chapters is a very, very dense theological complexity, inner working, outer working, this idea of they were both Jews and they were Gentiles present in the church together, uh, and not just present, but there had been a series of events that had happened. One is that all the people who were Gentiles, um, that first the gospel, Jesus, uh, his death, his resurrection, salvation, they thought it was just for the Jewish community. All of a sudden, it goes for the Gentile folks. Well, that was brand new. And then at one point, um the emperor of Rome basically says, all Christians, in fact, not all Christians, all Jewish folk, all Jews have to get out because there was such this internal restlessness between Jews and Christians because Christians were saying, No, no, no, no. Jesus is the fulfillment of all of these things. And as the gospel went forward to him, um, the church rang up. As the church rang up again, again, the the Jews all get kicked out of Rome. Well, now the only Christians that are left are Gentiles. And Gentiles, well, if you were to characterize or to describe both sides, the Gentiles would be the ones who would have the demarcation that their entire life growing up. What we would think of as sinfulness, what we would think of as some of like the moral decay and the moral depravity, what we would think of in terms of the way that they would use people, what we would think of in terms of sexual immorality, what we would think in terms of drawing, all that kind of stuff, right? To them, that was just the fabric or the expectation of life. And so that wasn't necessarily initially feeling immoral for them. Yet it was. And so he would look at them consistently and say, hey, when you just give yourself over to the same things over and over, what happens inevitably is you become destroyed. And on the other side of it, you had all these Jewish folk. And they had all of the background, all of the history, all of the prophets, all of the law. And Paul looks it up in chapter two and says, and you had all of it. And you still didn't do it, you still didn't get it right because we're all sinful and in need of mercy. And that he did. He made a righteousness apart from the law. A way that we can be right with God and not just be, yes, invited into forgiveness, not just grace, not just mercy, but also grace that we get sonship when we should have gotten imprisonment. And now he's invited us into this newness of life, this new humanity that he's creating, he's building. And so in Romans 12, again, he makes this kind of transition where it's everything now is in view of his mercy, in view of what God has done for us, in view of the realization of his extraordinary love, his death on the cross that we didn't deserve, we all rebelled against it. He says, our reasonable act of worship is to present our bodies as living sacrifices. And then he goes on to explain that that actually happens through the renewing of your mind as we see Jesus, as we look at him face to face, as we behold him, we become what we behold. And it renews our mind in a way that it displays in our life, and it displays in our life in a way that he begins to say, beginning of chapter 12, it's actually really interesting. That you don't think more highly of yourself than you are, than you think normally. You realize the gifts, the strengths that you have are not for your glorification, they're for the edification of the people around you. In fact, we're to love, we're to serve. And then he goes on and makes a crazy statement that Christians, Christians should be so in love with Jesus, Christians should be so committed to him that in the midst of a difficult state that they lived in, when Nero was emperor, he says, Christians, I know, I know, I know that you are no longer citizens of this world, you're citizens of heaven. But I want you to live subject as a citizen of this world, so that the citizens of this world will see the God of heaven. Who did not sit in heaven and say, Come on, but who came down to heaven, from heaven, to the earth, lived, and died. And then he's gonna make, I think, this statement, which kind of concludes some of this and in some ways transitions into the next movement of the book. And he says, Let me summarize some of this in chapter 13. So he's just talking about, you know, respect to who respect is due, honor to who honor is due. And then in verse 8 he says this, and so owe no one anything except to love each other. For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet. And any other commandment are summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Now let me tell you why that was really significant to them. Because there were two groups of people, and the people who were more grace-filled, we'll say. The people who would say, When we're just more loving, we're just more, you know, they had their background, it was probably the Jewish primary audience that they would be people who are just kind, they're thoughtful, they're loving, they're all these things, and they see these realities, they see these truths. And what Paul is saying to him is, hey, you need to see this. If you're a person who minimizes what's right and wrong because of your intention and your feeling, he's like, you need to know that love is not simply an intention or a feeling. In fact, in doing the things that are right and wrong, here's his central premise, is that you're doing what's loving. But then he also looks at the people and he says, hey, and in doing the things that are right and wrong, kind of don't forget to love. There's this there's this both and part. And he says, they're really not different. They're actually the same. And let me just pause and say this. We rarely find this in humanity. Almost every single one of us is either a love person or a law person, either a truth person or a gray person. Almost all of us, let me say it this way, a different thing. This is how I say it. Either they're black and white or it's all gray. If you're a gray person, then chances are what you have a tendency, what I, this is me, I'm a gray person. I'm my man, the world is full of nuance. It's like, is that true? I don't know. I love ethics class because it's like, yes, that's right. Unless, right? And so what I can do is I can see all this stuff, see all this nuance and say, ah, you know. He said, No, no, no, there is true, there is right, there is wrong, there is good, there is bad, this is what ought not to do. And here's the thing: what's what's at stake in that is actually love. Now, on the same time, for the person who's black, who's white, who's this or that, if it's binary is yes, no, right, wrong all the time. It has a tendency to do it to the erosion of love. In other words, here's what it looks like for you. You can know what's right and wrong, you can personally adhere to what's right and wrong, but you have such a difficult time with people who are nuanced in your presence. It's difficult, it's full of tension. Because this is going to sound crazy, but we all know this. Loving people, people are like us, who are broken, who are dirty, who have stuff wrong with them, who have issues, who have trauma, who have baggage, who have histories, who have things that need Jesus. And what's easy to do is in trying to restrict adherence, you actually become incredibly unloving because that becomes the way that you perform for God. You see, both sides have a tendency to not fully live in to the other. Let me read this verse and push it a little bit more. He says that all this is summed up in this word that you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. When it says wrong, it doesn't mean that love does nothing that makes another neighbor uncomfortable. Love does nothing that offends. Let's just say love does nothing that wrongs a neighbor. Here's what I find. There's some of us, I think, in this room, that the reality is there's a surrender that needs to happen in our life. And the surrender is that we need to surrender our comfort and our self-righteousness. And we need to embrace people. Embrace people who are hurting, embrace people who are broken, embrace people who are dirty. God has not called us as a group of people. He has not called us as a group of people to be in holy towers and holy huddles. Let me ask you this. Outside of work, the last five people you've texted, the last ten people that you've texted that are friends, do they all know Jesus? You see, the call of Christ is that he walked in dirty places. He walked in in intense places, he walked through Samaria to see the woman at the well, and and no one walked through there. You actually intentionally walked around and he walked intentionally through places of darkness. And let me just say this, man, as Christians, we get so comfortable because of the fact that we're with each other and we're holy. When was the last time? I mean, it was life on life. You were in the muck, you were in the mud, you went to places where people have have they ever actually, we were reading this in college night in Luke 15, where Jesus is about to give this parable and he's about to set up all this stuff, and it says he was eating with the tax collectors and sinners. When was the last time anybody looked at your life as a follower of Jesus and said, My goodness, how is it that you know Jesus and you hang out with so many people who are who are destitute and prostitutes? Like when was the last time we got hanged, we got accused as a as a God-honoring, Christ-exalting Jesus follower that we just hung out with too many dirty people. Too many people that were to the left or to the right morally. On the other side, some of us who we've just become so okay with our sin. We call it a struggle, but we don't struggle. We call it that's my that's my thing. It's my issue. And it's something that you know, but not something that we're actively fighting against. Not something you're actually trying to stop, not something that we're actually actively bringing to Jesus. In fact, isn't this true? We make structures in our life to perpetuate it. Circle it. You know. You know that when God made man and then he made took from the rib, made woman, one became two, and the two become one in the covenant of marriage, and you're sleeping with somebody who's not your wife or your husband. Cyclically engaged in pornography. One of my favorite, one of my favorite saints. One of my favorite guys, this is a theologian, St. Augustine. You ever driven out old St. Augustine? It's the same thing. Except for different. He had this really funny prayer. I love St. Augustine. He in his book, in fact, I'm gonna read you some of his book, Confessions, in a minute. He has this really funny line where he talks about when he was younger. And I think this is for for you, if you're more of the love person, and there's things in life that it's just, it's it's just it's difficult to surrender these things because they're part of our nature, they're part of our habit, they're part, but maybe they're part of our coping mechanisms of how we deal with the stress and the difficulties of this life. St. Augustine had this prayer. He said, God, give me chastity and continence. In other words, God, give me, deliver me from the desire of sexual immorality and give me self-control. This is what his prayer is. God, give me chastity and continence, but not yet. I love that, because he's honest. He's like, God, okay, I want this stuff and I want it to go away, but I want to fulfill the desire before you take the desire away because it sounds like fun. That's Saint Augustine. In his book, he's he's almost he's almost looking at himself, his former self, his previous self. And so I think Paul realizes and knows that, man, there are two big groups here, and again, again, this is to the person, this is what it looks like to live a life fully surrendered, that God, I, in view, in light of what you have done for me, what you have forgiven me, what you have called me to, this new life, this new humanity, this thing that you're offering now, I'm presenting my body as a living sacrifice. And so it's almost like he leans in and says, Okay, in case you didn't really get the picture, verse 11. Besides this, besides this, you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us now than we first believed. He said, Okay, so so besides this, besides this, he says, besides the fact that what's right is what's loving, and what's loving is what's right. And that's gonna be hard for the right people, and that's gonna be hard for the loving people, but you need to know both. That's why he was, by the way, the the fullness of grace and truth. Because grace was truth and truth was grace. And his name was Jesus. And he says, and besides this, you know that the time has come, that the hour is here. And so he says, Wake up. Wake up from your sleep. This is kind of the point of this passage. You say, okay, okay, Romans, I know you know Jesus, but I also need you to wake up and realize there is no potential that we sleepwalk. With this honestly, somewhat bifurcated allegiance, this dual allegiance, this allegiance, this dedication to both God and to the world. And for some of us, you've been thinking about that and wrestling it for a while. I want to read you a couple of chapters. If you've never read this book before, I would highly recommend not reading it at the beach. I tried to read Augustine's Confessions at St. George Island this past uh June, and it I got two pages, and I'm like, this is not happening right here. I need Jimmy Buffett. But when you have some time and you're kind of reading and paying attention, what I love, and if you don't have any other part that you could read, I would read um kind of chapter eight or book eight, where he talks about his conversion experience. You see, if you're not familiar, Augustine wasn't a Jesus follower when he was born and raised. He's born and raised in around 350 in Rome. He was born around the time when what was popular in Rome was to be a thinker, was to be a philosopher, was to be a speaker. And so Augustine had studied kind of some Neoplatonism. He had studied kind of the classic, you know, Plato schools of thought, a lot closer when Plato was actually around. He studied a bunch of different versions and a bunch of different thoughts and a bunch of different philosophies and a bunch of the truth. In fact, in fact, before coming to Christ, Augustine was one of the most skilled and one of the most eloquent speakers and debaters and truth tellers and philosophers in all of the Roman Empire. I mean, people know who he was or knew who he was. And as much as he looked, as much as he searched, as much as he found, he kept finding this concurrent reality that all these different things, all these different philosophies feel like they're missing something. But when he would look and he would find and he would study the person, the work, the thoughts and the ideas, the beauty of Christ, he became increasingly convinced that all of this is real, that all of this is true, and yet he found this one thing to be problematic. As much as he knew that, there was something still holding him back. That all of the previous issues, all of the previous conceptual, philosophical, ideological, logical, conceptual, those he started to see, he started to understand the fact the more that he dug into it, the more he realized this is so deeply intellectually satisfying. And by the way, if you have not gotten to that place in faith, then you haven't fully understood the faith. I want to read you a part of his book. He says this. There was uncertainty around that. But now I was indeed quite sure about it. Yet I was still bound to the earth. I was refusing to become your soldier. Here's what he means by that. He means life offering, their concept. He said, you know, as a soldier, I go wherever, whenever, I do whatever, my life is not my own. I am under the orders of my commanding officer. So now want to be that. And I used to think that there was all these kind of hesitancies that were conceptual, that were logical, that were thought-based, intellect-based. Yet I was still bound to the earth. I was refusing to become your soldier. And he kind of has this insight. I was afraid, I was as afraid of being rid of all my burdens as I ought to have been at the prospect of carrying them. I was as concerned at the prospect of loss, of denial, as I ought to have been at the realization of the cost of continuing to carry them. Paul, this is why he says. He says the salvation is nearered now than when we first believed. He says, the night is far gone, the day is at hand. He says, so let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor. This is a military concept. Put on the armor of light. He says, let us walk properly in the daytime, not in orgies, drunkenness, sexual immorality, sensuality, non-quarreling or jealousy. Let me tell you the Christian context of that. We usually read that list and say, okay, I'm good with at least one of those, if not two of those. I don't really struggle that much with those two. So now I'm good. He's like, no, no, no. All of these are the deeds. And when we think about trying to not live into that and trying to not have that, trying to whatever it is that you're fleshly, whether it is leaning in and loving and feeling like, oh my goodness, like this is this is love that's costly. Here's what I mean by love that's costly. Just to be honest, in today's day and age in church, we love to have homeless ministries without actually personally loving anybody who doesn't have a home. Because as long as my church has a program that's affiliated with it, I don't have to get dirty. We love having ministries to prisoners. But then how many people clutch their purses and get scared and concerned when a prisoner walks in the door? One of my favorite things that happen is when we come back from Jefferson and men who get done out there, they come and they show up their very first Sunday as a free person. They walk into this room and they want to see every single person who has loved them, cared for them. Oftentimes before they go back home, they will come here with their family. Because it can't just be an off the cuff type of a thing, but for some of us, that's really incredibly difficult. Because it stretches you and you don't know. And what about boundaries and what ifs. The other side of it. You have things that you know you need to surrender to Jesus. You know, things that you know. Man, I need to just I need to be accountable for this, and I know that I'm not going to be perfect in it, but I need to take this stuff and I need to surrender it to God. He continues and he says this. The burden of the world weighed me down with a sweet drowsiness. I love how he. I just want you to know there's not condemnation in that. Don't feel shame for that. Feel the normal sense of sinfulness that exists in all of our humanity. But we don't want to give that stuff up. He said, I had no answer to make when you said to me, Arise, you who are asleep, rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light. Though at every point you showed me what you were saying was true. Yet I, convinced by that truth, had no answer. I had no answer to give you except merely slowly and sleepy words. At once. But presently. Just a little longer, please. But at once, at once never came to the point of decision. Just a little longer, please, went on and on for a long while. And the reason I loved reading it is the continuity of that which every single person who has come to any crossroads and has chosen Jesus has felt this. In fact, in my life, I've felt it over and over and over. Because what can be one day's surrender, and I mean it, and I truly mean it, sometimes it's that I begin to take back the control of my life. And sometimes that full surrender is full surrender in that moment. And as I grow in maturity and faith, I realize, wait, there's still a deeper level of surrender that I need to go. But it's this feeling. Is it worth it? It's this belief that at the end of it, God's law, his commandments. They feel more like denial than they feel like delight. They feel more like pain than they do joy. So Augustine is wrapped. He's at this place and he goes out into the garden and he starts praying and he throws himself on the ground. He prays and he throws himself on the ground. He's just doing all kinds of stuff, trying to say, God, why is it? Why is it that I can't seem to let this go? Why is it that everything inside of me wants to, desires to, but can't. And he's been reading through Romans this entire time. Reading and reading, and he's just this, this, I feel this, you know, this Romans 7 type of I do the things that I don't want to do, and I do the thing, don't do the things that I that I that I should and I ought and I want to. And he's walked away. He's got a friend there who's in the garden who's praying for him. And as he walks away, he he's he's in the midst of this this these throes of tension. And then he says, it's as if I hear this voice. He's like, it's like a little kid's voice. It's kind of, he's like, I couldn't tell if it was a boy's voice or a girl's voice. It almost sounded like it was the chant of some childhood game, but I couldn't remember the game. But it kept saying, pick it up and read it. Pick it up and read it. Pick it up and read it. Pick it up and read it. And so he picks up Romans chapter 13 and immediately looked at verse 13 and says, Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. And he read these next words, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the realization that he came to. This whole time he had thought denial, denial, denial. I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to, I have to. He realized that, oh my gosh, all I do is I put on Christ, and those things that felt like denial now become delight. Those things where I felt like that, that potential of letting go of that hurt that had happened and releasing that and bringing that to Christ and actually forgiving the person. He realized, man, I felt like if I was gonna do that, something was gonna be bad, something was gonna be wrong, but I realized there was joy, there was light, there was delight that this was in fact what God had made and created me for. Because this is love and this is law, and this is what God has called, and this is what God has said. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision of the flesh to gratify its desires. You know what provision of the flesh means? Make no plans, no advanced plans, no advanced structures in your life that naturally and easily lead you to sin. I just want to pause and say, man, what if we as Christians actually did this? What I mean by that is what if we said, okay, I'm not gonna put in just put up structures in my life? In fact, I'm gonna put structures in my life that make it easy to obey to obey. I'm gonna put in structures in my life that prioritize time with God. I'm gonna put structures in my life that prioritize my time in his word. I'm not gonna put the structure of my life to be so busy that I can never spend time with Jesus. I'm not gonna make the structures in my life so busy, so consumed, that I can't spend time edifying the body, loving, serving, joining the community with the body. I'm not gonna have structures in my life that make it easy to not forgive. By surrounding my people, myself and people who are all negative, and say, Yeah, you're right. I'm gonna put structures in my life of accountability. People will say, you know, you probably ought to repent. I'm gonna put structures and things in my life. To where I'm gonna have somebody ask me. Who are you hanging out with? Who are you spending time with? That looks nothing like Jesus. You see the the thing that I feel like God's put on my heart to say to all of us, and myself included, is on the other side of surrender. What initially feels like denial, what initially feels like a life of perpetuating frustration, is actually a life of freedom. Many of you have felt that before. You said yes to Jesus. And on the other side of that, yes, there was this deep sense of joy. I'm gonna read you this last little section. Now he again is writing this, looking back. And so right before he talks about this moment, this Romans 13 moment, that he felt like God was specifically saying to him, today is the day, wake up, the night's over, the day is here, make a decision, follow him, put on Christ, and don't make continual allowances and provisions and life structures that just lead into your flesh. The tumult of my heart took me out into the garden where no one can interfere with the burning struggle with myself, in which I was engaged until the matter could be settled. And it's almost like he's reflecting and saying this to God. He says, This you knew it, but I did not, what the outcome would be. My madness with myself was part of the process of recovering health. He says, that little thing that you feel when you're considering surrender, it's part of the process. And in the agony of death, I was coming to life. And I love this last line. I was aware of how ill I was. I was aware of how ill I was, but unaware of how well I was soon to be. Today is the day. If you for a long time have been hobbling, not fully surrendered, not to the point where you say, Jesus, every day I'm putting on you. I'm putting on this armor. I'm putting on, I'm every day I'm gonna spend time with you, every day I'm gonna go to you, I'm gonna pray. And when I walk out of these doors, Jesus, then every single day I'm gonna walk down and clothe with you, you protecting me, you going before me, you doing, and I'm gonna try to my best to be like you because I know what you are is love, what you are is life, what you are in those two things are truth, and God, you are all of those things combined. So I'm just gonna try to be like you. I surrender to you, and God, I know, I know that right now it might feel like a type of way, it might feel like a denial, it might feel like a frustration, but it is really freedom and it is really delight on the other side. So here's the question, a real simple question. Is your life a living sacrifice? Is it fully surrendered to God, who gave everything for us, who loved us, served us, died for us? Instead, and I didn't just do that. I also came that you would have life and have it more abundantly. One of my favorite parts of the Bible is in Kings when Elijah is about to go on Mount Carmel, he's about to make this big sacrifice and it's been a drought for forever. And before he goes up, he looks at the whole nation and says, If the Lord is God, follow him. And if Baal is God, we'll follow him. If you've already decided and you already know that Jesus is Lord, follow him, surrender your life to him. Today is the day. Salvation, we only have so long to live, to glorify him. We only have so long to live in this life by faith. And what you feel like might be a deficit that might feel like it's frustration is really the delight of freedom on the other side of obedience. During this last song, I'm just gonna invite you to spend time directly with God. Say what you need to say, surrender what you need to surrender, but know that you have a loving heavenly father who does not look at you, he does not hate you, he is not mad at you, he is not angry at you, he loves you. And just like every single sinner, he loves to long, to embrace his children, returning to him. Let's pray. God, I ask that you would speak, move in our hearts, help us to surrender completely and fully to you. God, we know that putting off those deeds of the darkness. God, it comes from this sense, this self, this sinfulness that we want to grab a hold of. But Jesus, we surrender that. We know that you are greater, you are better, you are more. For those of us in the room who that feels obvious, but have a difficult time loving, would you help us to feel the conviction, the weight, the sense in which you came, you loved, you served, you died? And for those of us who are in the room who have a difficult time feeling the clarity and the conviction of truth, that perhaps there's sin that's lingering in our life, sticking around longer than we wanted to. God, maybe for us we've become to identify with. And we're more burdened by carrying it. Then we ought to be at the prospect of losing it. Even though we not know it's not good for us. Then the prospect of carrying this burden for the rest of our life. Jesus, will you help us to see that life is only found in you? That when we do what you say, we are both doing what's true and doing what's loving, because those are not separate from one another. And you, God, who ultimately loved us, gave everything for us in your Son. And Jesus, we trust you. In light of your mercy, that you loved us, that you served us, that you saved us, and that you've called us to more. Jesus, we surrender to you. So in this moment, would you please work in the heart of every single one of us, your saints, to come to a deeper and a more full surrender of you so we can live in light and be light to the world. In your name we pray.

unknown 40:50

Amen.