Good at Looking

Welcome to Salt Church this morning. Hey, hey, our first service is getting a little more full. Yay! Welcome to the early morning service. So glad to have you here with us today.

My name is Pastor Leon, and if you're new with us today, I'd invite you to fill out a connection card. I'd love to connect with you. We like to send something special in the mail to you. You can also hit our next steps area, turn in that connection card, and we've got something for you to take with you today. And yeah, it's just a privilege to have you with us.

I hope you are blessed. It's an honor that when we see new people, and also see some returning people, and also seeing people we haven't seen in a while come in the church. Amen? It's always great to see family, especially after all this time, all these moves, and everything that we've done during this last year. And how many of you are excited about the future of Salt Church?

Amen? Are you excited about the future of Salt Church? How many of you are ready for our church to grow to the next level? Amen? We've added the second service, and how many of you are ready to invite some people to church?

Because we've got a big season coming up. Amen? Amen. Now let me just mention this. I want to mention this real quick.

If you are a volunteer, or we call this our dream team or our serve teams, the serve teams here, the people that you see all around and about that show up. Some of you show up at 6 o'clock in the morning. Praise God that we have people that will show up for 6 o'clock in the morning and get things ready so that you can come in and sit to see. And then we have people outside, and we have people in the kids, and all those serve teams. If you want to join a serve team, if you want to be a part of this church, this is an awesome opportunity to take the next step.

And we have a lunch with Leon today at 12 o'clock at Beach Bella Pizza. And I would love to invite you to be a part of that if you're new with us. You can come right over to Beach Bella Pizza. You can connect with somebody at the table, and they'll give you some information of how to be there. We call that our guest lunch.

We kind of nicknamed it Lunch with Leon. So, you know, kind of a little tagline there, Lunch with Leon. You can have lunch with me and our leadership and learn a little bit about our church and taking that next step. Also, those of you who are regular volunteers, regular serve team members, we are going to have a Dream It Together event on October 16th. It's a Saturday.

You can bring your kids. And we're going to get together, and we're going to talk about the season coming up. We've got Christmas coming. That's right around the corner. We've got one of our biggest outreach events in the city coming up.

Man, we're on the news during this time because we're collecting turkeys for the homeless, and people have been getting involved. And we're excited about this new season, and I want us to come together. So if you are a volunteer or you're considering being a part of our church, our church family, and want to take the next steps and want to serve in our church and help our church grow and be a part of making something happen here, reaching people with the gospel of Jesus Christ is what we're all about. We're a gospel-centered church that believes that salt always makes a difference, and a little bit of salt goes a long way. And no matter who you are, where you are, where you're from, God has given you something special, has given you a gift to reach people for his gospel, and we do this together as a church.

And I'd love for you to come out. October 16th, 2B announced the location, but go ahead and write that date down, and we'll have that ready for you next week where we will be meeting. Also, beginning of the season, we've got this thing, and most of you are familiar with this, and some of you that are from other churches or moved into the city from other churches may have been a part of this. But this is a national project from Samaritan's Purse called Operation Christmas Child. Operation Christmas Child is coming up, guys.

And we want to collect as many boxes as we possibly can for Operation Christmas Child. You can choose a boy, a girl. You've got a box here. You've got, like, different... Christina's already packed a box for this year.

We've got toys here. And they have a certain list of things to send kids. So these are kids that will not have a Christmas, will probably not have a Christmas. They come from impoverished countries around the world. They...

But we do what we do so that we can impact a child's life, and they get to be seated with the gospel of Jesus Christ in the... And they get to be seated with the gospel of Jesus Christ in the... Process through Billy Graham Ministries, Operation Christmas Child, Samaritan's Purse. So next week we will start handing out these boxes. You can grab a box on your way out.

You can grab two boxes, three boxes. Some of you packed five to ten boxes. Last year, how many boxes did we collect last year, Christina? 150 boxes! Okay, so we're gonna beat that number this year, okay?

Amen? So if you can pack ten, you can pack twenty, you can pack five. My kids are gonna be doing it. I'm gonna be doing it. We're gonna pack as many boxes as possible, and we're gonna impact this world through mission, through Operation Christmas Child.

Very simple way to do that. So you can grab those next week, and I'm excited about that. Well, guys, we are in a message series, as you know, called Right in the Eye. And the idea of this series comes from the book of Judges. And let me open up my pad here.

I'm a little behind today. I usually have this open and ready to go. And so let me begin, just kind of set up this message, this third part of Right in the Eye. Let me begin by saying this. Do you really want to be like everybody else?

Do you really want to be like everybody else? Do you want to be average? I mean, nobody says, I just want to be average, right? Nobody walks in and says, you know, I'm just going to be that average person. You don't say, your goal in life, if somebody asks you what your goal in life was, it's like, I think I'm just going to be like everybody else.

Nobody wants a marriage like, do you want a marriage like everybody else? Do you want relationships like everybody else? Do you want kids like everybody else? Do you want finances like everybody else? Do you want to manage your money, manage your morality like everybody else?

Have you ever had a time where you said, hey, can't I just be like everybody else? I want to be like everybody else. Yet the truth for many of us is we are like everybody else. So let's talk about everybody else just for a minute. Let's talk about everybody else, not you because you're here, not you.

We're talking about everybody else. Let's just talk about everybody else today. We're not talking about you, okay? I just want to make that, I want to confirm that because, you know, we're Salt Church. We're not like everybody else.

But let's talk about everybody else because everybody else is living with the hope that his or her life is like a beer ad. It's like a beer ad, if we'll flash that on the screen. It's like a beer ad. Man, isn't that fun? Isn't that great?

Everybody's happy. Everybody's at the beach. Everybody's life is just good. Nobody has financial issues. Nobody has issues with relationships.

Nobody has any problems. They're going to be young forever. They're going to live forever. And they're going to just, the sun's shining every day of their lives. That's everybody else.

A lot of people live like that. Like, this is just where I'm trying to get to. This is what I want. Who are these people? They all are beautiful.

They all have these beautiful friends. And we all want to be like everybody else. But let me tell you about everybody else. Everybody else is anxious. Everybody else is worried.

Everybody else is stressed. Everybody else is in debt to their eyeballs. And they don't know what they're going to do. Everybody else is focused on not turning out like their parents. And because they try to focus on that, put all their energy in that, they end up turning out like their parents anyway.

Because that's kind of how it works. Everybody else doesn't enjoy what they have because they're too focused on getting the next thing. Everybody else is insecure so they hide behind trying to look like a person that they're not. And act like a person that they're not. And dress like a person that they're not because they're so insecure.

That's everybody else. In the world of everybody else, everyone is dysfunctional. And they blame their parents. Everybody else is bored. In the world of everybody else, their dreams aren't really coming true.

And they blame their parents. Their lives, they thought they would be there by now, but they're not, and their lives are at a dead end, their lives are on a cul-de-sac, they're at a dead end, and they just can't figure out how to get, and their dreams have been dashed. In a world of everybody else, everybody else drinks too much, everybody else takes too many prescription pills, and we think they're happy. But they are happy because they're chemically happy. And you're like, I want to be as happy as they are, but when you find out that sometimes they're a little too happy, maybe there's something more to that, because in a world of everybody else, everybody is like that.

In a world of everybody else, single women are afraid they're going to be alone, so they troll their bodies, hoping to find the right guy, and they always end up in the wrong relationships, and they wonder why. Single guys wonder if it's even possible to be married, or maybe I don't need to be married because I get the benefits of marriage, and don't have to be married. After all, when I think I find the right person, it's not the right person, and they have daddy issues, and there's all these things that go along with that. And I want a perfect marriage, and somehow they think that a perfect marriage is perfect after they get married, as it is before they get married, because somehow that's how it works. Marriage is just perfect when you get married, right?

Because that's what they think. And they've not seen a successful marriage anyway. They see how marriage is, so why would I want to be married? Why? That's the world of everybody else.

Everybody else, married women, they're suspicious of their husbands cheating. In the world of everybody else, husbands are trying to see if they can get away with it, because they have a relationship on the side that they've gone a little too far with, and they actually kind of like it, but they're scared of ruining their family and their children, and losing everything they have. But maybe it will work out. That's in the world of everybody else, so they live in that area. In the world of everybody else, teenagers are worried about other people, what other people think in their school.

And as much as we tell them as parents, we say, listen, listen, you're not even going to know these kids after four years. They're not even going to be in your life. Don't allow them to dictate who you are and how you are. But you tell them, but they're still worried. In the world of everybody else, in the world of everybody else, college students are fearful of not getting a job, because they are looking at an economy they cannot control.

Parents are so focused on making kids successful that they drive them away. That's a world of everybody else. See, and then we look at this beer ad. This beer ad. We scroll through social media, and we see these people drinking, and having a good time, and all that.

And then we're like, oh wait, I know the secret to this. They pour the beer. They hold the beer. But they don't drink the beer. That must be the secret, right?

Right? And for some of you, that's probably a good first step. Right? Some of you are nudging your partner, nudging your spouse, and you're like, yeah, that's probably a good first step to take. Yeah.

But all jokes aside, the truth is everyone else takes cues from everyone else. Everybody else takes cues from everybody else. And if you take your cues from everybody else, you will end up like everybody else. But the problem is, and here's the problem is, we take our cues from highlight reels. People are giving you their best.

When you see the pictures on social media, when you scroll through, they're giving you their best. They're not giving you the background of their lives. They're not telling you they're in counseling. They're not telling you they haven't had sex in nine months, although it looks like they have it all the time. They're not telling you that they're in financial rulings and they don't know what to do next.

They're not telling you that their spouse is getting ready to be checked into rehab. They're not telling you that they think they've lost their teenagers to the world and they don't know what to do next. They don't know what to do to addictions and they don't know what to do. They're not telling you those things because we see the outside. We don't see the inside.

So it's an outside versus in culture. We live in a culture where we're looking at the outside and we're taking our cues from the outsides, but we can't see the scars. We can't see the memories. We can't see the hurts and pains. We only see the outside.

And if you could have seen how, and you're asking this question, if you could only, if I'd only known that the inside looked like that, if I'd only known, I might have made a different choice. I might, nobody told me, nobody told me that, that they were like that. I took those cues, but nobody told me that their lives were really like that on the inside and you might have made some different choices about your life, but nobody told us that part. But maybe it's because we didn't listen anyway because we were so enamored with their life and what it looked like. So if you had known that living like that on the outside would leave you feeling like this on the inside, maybe you would have made a different choice.

Maybe you would have made a different decision. Maybe you wouldn't have embraced that lifestyle. Maybe you wouldn't have embraced that person. Maybe you wouldn't have bought that thing. Maybe you wouldn't have done that.

Maybe you wouldn't have compromised your beliefs if you had only known. And that's the world of everybody else. And that's what happens when you decide to be like everybody else, but don't really intend to be like everybody else, but somehow we end up like everybody else and we don't like being like everybody else. And you didn't mean to. You just looked around.

You saw things and you said, hey, you know what? It looks good for them. Why not me? Maybe it'll work for me. Maybe it'll work for me.

It worked for them. Bottom line is this. And this is the key of this series. You did what was right in your own eyes. In the end, you did what was right in your own eyes.

You did what you wanted, when you wanted, with whom you wanted. But you abandoned, get this, you abandoned, you need to write this down, you abandoned what you suspected in your heart was right. You abandoned what you suspected was right in your own heart. And now, you're on the other side of this. You've made some decisions.

You've made some lifestyle choices. You've done some things. And you made some adult decisions that you're still living the consequences of. Because you decided in your heart, or you decided you were going to do what you want, when we want, with whom you wanted. So, the question is this.

And this is kind of going to set us up for the rest of the marriage. Do you really want to be like everybody else? Let me ask it this way. Do you want to continue to be like everybody else? Because you don't have to be like everybody else.

You don't have to be locked in that world like everybody else. Because Jesus invites us to know our perfect, loving, heavenly Father. A perfect, loving, heavenly Father that doesn't desire us to want to be like everybody else. And no matter what your Father's situation was, we have a Father who is perfect. We have a Father that is perfect.

We have a Father that is kind. And Jesus tells us that we have a Father who wants to have and be a part of our lives. So that we don't have to be like everybody else. So, let's just review. Let's go to the Bible for a minute and review exactly what we're talking about here.

If you were with us the last couple of weeks, you know this because you're getting this down. And we're reviewing this again. We're going back to the Old Testament, to the book of Judges. We're talking about the book of Judges. And by the way, next week we're going to hit one of the Judges.

And if you plan not to be here next week, you need to change your plans. Because I'm talking about Samson, okay? And this is going to be a really good one. So, if you have kids, they need to be in Salt Kids, okay? All right?

And if you have teenagers, they need to be on the front row, okay? You need to bring them and put them on the front row, and that's going to be it this next week. And if you have a friend that doesn't want to come to church and you're kind of, I don't know if I should invite them to church, I don't want to scare them away, bring them next week. They're going to love it, and they're going to come back and say, look, this pastor talks about this kind of stuff. I'm coming back the following week, okay?

They're going to come back, okay? So you need to bring somebody next week. But we're in the book of Judges, and here's the timeline for Judges. So Judges takes place after Joshua. Joshua comes in.

He releases the land. They conquer the land. The land flowing with milk and honey that we hear about in the Bible, they take the land. It's about 1380 BC, right? 1380 BC.

There should be BC up there. Apologize for that. This doesn't mean 1380 afterwards. It means before Christ, okay? So it was 1380 BC, and then we have the king.

You know, Saul comes into the picture. David comes into the picture later on. So this was in between the time of the kings, and everybody kind of did what they wanted to during this 330-year period in Judges. They didn't have a king. They didn't have a ruler.

God was their monarchy. God was their ruler. There was a theocracy taking place, and they had to obey. But the problem with that was people liked to do what they wanted to do. It's like you and me.

We just want to do what we want to do. Even if we have rules, even if we have instructions, we just want to do ultimately what we want to do, right? So what happened? They disobeyed God. They disobeyed God.

We have this cyclical pattern. If you pop that up on the screen, they disobeyed God. Then they went to disaster. Everything didn't work out because they disobeyed God, and they wanted to do what was right in their own eyes when they wanted, whom they wanted. You know, they did what was wrong, and then they started crying out to God, right?

God, come and deliver us. Come and deliver us. And what did God do? Because God's a compassionate God, and God's a loving God, and God doesn't abandon us. He came in, and He sent judges, and He sent people, and He sent deliverers to rule them out, and it just happened over and over again because they didn't learn their lesson the first time.

It's a lot like what I talked about in the first week when you were a teenager, and you disobeyed your parents' rules, right? And they said, no, no, no, don't do that. And you said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to do it anyway. And then the next thing you know, you're in the police station giving your dad a call, the very one that you disobeyed his rule to ask him for help. Can you help me?

I'm sorry, Dad. Dad, I disobeyed you. Can you help me? Right? God is the same way.

They would call out to God, and He didn't abandon His people because God is a God of compassion, but He also allows us, and He's not a God who's going to force His will on us. So He allows us to make choices in our life, but we have to suffer from those choices. But ultimately, He's not going to abandon us. He's not going to abandon us. So we take you to the theme scripture, and the last scripture in Judges.

If you don't know this, it didn't end well in Judges. There was a battle. Everything was torn apart because they did what was right in their own eyes. And this is how it ended. Judges 21, 25.

In those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes, and it was over. Until Samuel comes into the picture, there was nothing. There was no ruler, there was no savior, there was no king, there was nobody that came into the picture. It ended horribly.

And last week, we learned that because they became like the nations around them, they became like the nations around them, they ended up being ruled by the nations around them. God told them to be a different people, not to mingle with the nations around them, but they wanted to adopt. And Joshua warned them not to be like the nations around them. But what did they do? They went to the nations, and they looked at what they saw.

And that's kind of setting up for what we're talking about today, kind of part two of that. They looked at nations, and ultimately, that thing that, just like you, that thing that mastered you, that thing that masters you now, was once an act of freedom. It was a practice of your freedom to do what you wanted, when you wanted, with whom you wanted, and then it ended up, you're doing it. Not what you want, when you want, with whom you want, because that thing now controls you, and in the same way Israel did that. Israel was doing what they wanted, when they wanted, with whom they wanted, and ultimately the Canaanites came in and took them over, and they had no freedom.

And ultimately things that masters you now was a practice of that very American thing, you know, I'm going to do what I want because I'm a free person, right? So they were in captivity, a very nation that they wanted to copy. They ended up being in captivity, so they traded one king for another. And that was our landing point last week. They ultimately traded one king for another.

So Joshua gives this farewell speech, just going back to the book of Joshua. We're going to start there again, and then we'll enter into the book of Judges again next week. But I'm going to back up a little bit and set up because I want you to know what's going on here in Judges with the people. So Joshua is giving this farewell speech about their propensity and ours to take our cues from what everybody else does. And he says that you cannot be like everybody else.

God has something special for you. He has something different for you. You are going to have the tendency, you are going to have the tendency when you go here to be like everybody else. You're going to look at what they're doing. It's going to be attractional.

You're actually going to want to do it. It's not, this is not something that you need to just say, oh, it's okay. You have, you're going to have the tendency to look at others and want to be like everybody else. But you can't be like everybody else. And let me say this to the church.

God has something special for you. Just like he has something special for Israel and he says, I've got something special for Israel. He's got something special for you. And he wants you to be different. So in Joshua 23, 13, he says, don't ally or ally, I like to use the word ally, yourselves with the survivors of these nations that remain among you.

So he says, so there's people that were there. The people that they conquered were still there. They were living among them. They said, you're going to be with these people. You're going to live among these people.

After all, there's these laws that were set up, the law of Moses, where you had to be good neighbors. You had to be good to the people around you. You had to be good to the people that were living near you. You're going to have to work among the people and stuff. But do not ally.

Do not ally. Do not be with. Do not be like. Do not be with the people. You live among the people.

You be good to the people, but do not cling to. Do not take cues from them. Don't look like them. Don't embrace their values, okay? Don't embrace their values.

Quit looking over there and comparing, okay? Don't look over there when you're there. Live among the people, but don't be like the people. He's warning them. And then he says, or this will happen in verse 13.

They will become snares and traps for you. Whips on your backs and thorns in your eyes. Because you'll be like everybody else. And what looks good will actually turn out bad. Because if you start looking, if you start embracing, if you start compensating, if you start fishing, if you start exploring, if you start doing these compromising, compensating for these ideas, then it's going to be hard.

It's going to be hard. It's going to be bad. And it's going to be appealing. You're going to want to do it. You're going to know it's wrong, but you're going to want to do it.

It's something your heart tells you not to, but you're going to say, you know what? It's working really good for them. Why can't it work good for me? Maybe it won't hurt anything just to get in there a little bit. And he warns them, and he warns them, and he says, they will become like whips and thorns.

Whips to your back and thorns to your eyes. It's the same thing we talked about last week. You know, the thing that masters you. I talked about it a minute ago. The thing that masters you.

Ultimately, the thing that masters you now. Or the thing. That you thought was good, that you entered in, now masters you. And he was warning them, he says, this is going to be a bad thing. And isn't it true that if you could go back, you wish you could do one of two things?

If you could go back, do you wish you could unsee some things? Don't you wish you could unsee some things? If I had never saw that person, or I never saw that text, or I never invited that person over, or I never been there, or I never saw that car that I liked that most of my friends that I wanted so bad, and I got in my own car, and it smelled like family, you know, and it smelled like new seats and fresh interior, and then you got into that debt because you wanted that car. Don't you wish you could unsee some things, you know? Don't you wish you could unsee some things?

Or maybe you wish you could un-meet some people, right? You wish you could un-meet some people. I never wish I met her. I wish I never met him. I wish I never returned that call, that email, that instant message that just popped up on my social media of this guy or this girl that I didn't know, and I wish I never, ever, ever met that person, that I ever connected with that person.

All of us have regrets. All of us have that question, aren't there people, because what happened, they ended up being snares and traps. Snares and traps. Just like the nation of Israel, those things that you wish you could have unseen and unmet ended up being snares and traps. And the things that capture your attention eventually impact the direction of your life.

Did you know that? That the things that capture your attention capture our affection. They capture your affection and ultimately determine the direction and quality of your life. And the next thing we know, we're living like everybody else, we're dating like everybody else, we're spending money like everybody else, we're raising children like everybody else. And then, before you know it, and you didn't intend to, but you just kind of got there, because you kind of looked around and you started being like everybody else, and here you are like everybody else, and you determine that your life is not going in the direction that you want it to go.

Well, because it just looked good. And then he goes on to say, until you perish from this good land, until you perish from this good land, which the Lord your God has given you. See, Israel struggled with thinking, and this is the key right here, and this is where I kind of want to plateau a little bit here, and then start heading into the next, you know, the ending of this message. Here's what Israel was thinking, here's what Israel thought, is God holding something back from me? Because they struggled with thinking, was God keeping something from me?

I mean, look at them, all those good things. God wasn't trying to keep something good from them, he was trying to give them something good. He was trying to give them something good, and he was trying to make them special. He was trying to make them like nobody else. He was trying to give them something precious, something good, something of quality, something eternal, something lasting.

He wasn't trying to keep things. So here's the question. Here's the question for all of us. Here's the question. Whether you're a new Christian, whether you're, maybe you're not a Christian at all in here today.

Maybe you've come to church, you're just trying to give God a chance, you haven't figured out if you want to serve this Jesus guy or not yet or whatever, or maybe you're in your Christian walk, and you're struggling with a few things. Maybe you have some stronghold. Maybe you walked away from God at one time in your life because your family raised you in church and all that, and you said, no, God's not for me, and maybe you're considering coming back. Here's the question we're all going to have to wrestle with. Is God for me?

Is God for me, or is God keeping something good from me? If I say yes to God, am I going to have to say a lot of no's to a lot of good things? That's ultimately the question. Is God for me? Does God actually have something good for me?

How I handle my family? How I handle my family? How... How I handle my service. Is God trying to keep something from me?

Or is God trying to give something good to me? It goes all the way back to Genesis, the very first temptation. When Adam and Eve were in the garden, and there was a snake and a tree, and what does he do? He tempts Adam and Eve, says, God is holding something back from you. Something good.

And what God was trying to give them that was good, Satan warped to make them think that he was trying to keep something from them. You could be like God. He knows things that you don't know. And what did that do? It started a snowball effect that would affect the entire world all the way until today.

Because one man decided, I'm going to do what I want, when I want, with whom I want, because God's keeping something from me. And then later in the speech, Joshua pleads with the people. He says, don't believe those lies. Don't believe the lies from the Old Testament. Don't believe the lies in Genesis.

Don't believe the lies... It was their Old Testament. Genesis was their Old Testament. They were living out the Old Testament then. But their Old Testament was Genesis.

Don't believe those lies. Don't believe the lies of the people. Don't believe the lies of the culture. Don't be manipulated into those things. And then he says, now then, said Joshua, throw away your foreign gods.

Throw away your foreign gods that are among you. And some of you have some gods that are among you you need to get rid of. We've got some gods in our lives. It isn't a stoned, carved image, okay? These are gods in our lives.

He says, at all costs, get rid of those things. Cut those things off. Do whatever you have to. Jesus went as far as to say, and please don't cut off your arm. He says, cut off your arm if it makes you do things.

Or cut out your eyes if it makes you do things. He didn't mean it that way, like literally. But he meant the seriousness of it. When he says that, and Joshua was saying the same thing. Isn't it beautiful how the Bible connects together?

Everybody's teaching the same thing. You've got to get rid of some of those things in your life. Go to extreme measures if needed. And then here's the heart of the matter. And this is kind of the landing point.

Here's the heart of the matter. And yield your heart to the Lord of Israel. Yield your heart. Yield your heart to the God of Israel. Not the culture around you.

You've been yielding your heart to the outside. But I'm asking you to yield your heart to an invisible king. Not a visible king. An invisible king. So here's the deal.

Here's the landing part. Here, here. So this kingdom, the kingdom of God is very much a kingdom of conscience. It's very much a kingdom of conscience. It's a kingdom of the heart.

And that's why, you know, we need to be praying, God help me see the world the way you see the world. Help me see people the way you see people. Help me love people because I can only be obedient to you. I'm predisposed to be you, to follow you and follow your will if I am able to see the kingdom of conscience, the kingdom of the heart. But there's another kingdom on the flip side.

And it's the kingdom of covet. The kingdom of conscience is an inside out kingdom. But then a kingdom of covet is an outside in. And there lies the battle. It all comes, the kingdom of covet all comes through the eyes.

It comes through the ears and what we do. It pushes us to want to do what we want to, do what we don't want to do, right? And our bodies and our guts and our flesh kind of roll that direction because it's what we take in. It's what we see. It's what the others are doing.

It's what everybody else is doing. It's a kingdom of covet. It's an inside out versus an outside in. And Joshua pleads with the nation and I plead with you. And I want to give you a very different approach.

I plead with you, live inside out. Live inside out. The Kingdom of the Heart. Live that way. Because here's what I know about all of you.

Here's what I know. Because you're smart people, you get this, but this really makes sense, right? All of you know that you're smart enough to know that this is true and that it's better. Isn't it better? Isn't it better to live a healthy, not to allow your heart to be polluted on the inside?

That if you start with the outside in, you're allowing your heart to be polluted. But if you start with a healthy heart, a healthy inside, a healthy focus, a healthy relationship with God, a healthy inside, it works out. Why is this? Why do we all know this, whether we're walking with God or not? We all know this because all of us have a piece of God inside of us because we have a creator and we are a created being.

And scripture tells us that we were made in God's image and life is better lived with a healthy inside. Life is better lived when we live a healthy inside, a spirit-led inside. And Joshua says, I want you to be an inside-out kingdom yielding your heart because you will have compassion. If you live like this, you will have compassion, you will have compassion, but you will not conform. You will have compassion in this culture, but you will not conform.

You will have empathy, but you will not embrace. You will have love, but you will not be led by them. You will not be led by them. Now, isn't that a better way to live? Isn't that a better way forward?

Lord, isn't that a better way to go? And isn't it true that your greatest regret that you have would have been avoided if you had just made a decision not to be like everybody else? Not to be like everybody else. What else could you expect from a perfect, loving, heavenly father? What else could you expect from a father who's not like the father you grew up with, the father that wasn't perfect, the father that abandoned you, the father?

What else would you expect from a perfect, loving, heavenly father that Jesus calls this a perfect, loving, calls our God a perfect, loving, heavenly father? What more could we want from God? So I leave you with this question today. Have you decided to yield yourself to God? Have you yielded your heart to the Lord your God?

Have you yielded your heart to the Lord your God? Well, pastor, I'm not a Christian. You know, I'm just coming. That's a good place to start. Let's just start with God, with knowing God.

Are you ready to yield your... There's something inside of you. You all know, as I mentioned, that kingdom of conscience is inside of us. There's a piece of God inside of us that's drawing us and it's luring us in. And we're like, what would you consider yielding your heart?

Because, you know, it's not worked out being like everybody else anyway. What do you got to lose? Or maybe you're somebody, you know, I served God and I was in a Christian family and there was just too many rules and I walked away from the church. So, you know, I've been there, done that. Well, will you consider coming back to yielding your heart?

Will you reconsider yielding your heart once again to the living God? Would you consider that? Or maybe you just need to take a next step in your life, in your Christian walk, because you're coming to a dead end once again in your life. You're living for God, but you're not really living for God. So you're struggling with some issues in your life.

Maybe you need to yield some gods. You need to yield to the true God. You need to get rid of some gods and yield to the true God. You need to get rid of some of those things. So with all heads bowed and all eyes closed as we land this service, this is a very, very pivotal and very important moment.

And I believe the Holy Spirit is there. I've been working in this place since the very beginning of the service, even before we walked in the doors here. As somebody here, you're here today, and there's no mistake that you're here today. You're here today because God has led you here. And maybe this is your opportunity, wherever you are in your Christian walk, wherever you need to take your next step, wherever you need to take your next step towards God, maybe this is the opportunity to do that.

And I would invite you, as Jesus invites us and invites everyone through His cross, through His sacrifice, He invites us to have a relationship with the one true living God. Would you consider that today, wherever you are, that you would consider God and declare your heart to the living God? Father, we believe that you are the one true living God. Nothing else in this world has made sense. The people around us have not led us to a place that we really want to be.

So today, God, I surrender my life to you. I surrender my life to you once again because I've walked away from you. I surrender my life to you, Lord, because it's the first time and I've never given you a chance. And there's nothing else in this world, Lord. So I surrender my life to you.

I surrender my life to you once again. God, I've been walking with you, but I've kind of started fading out a little bit, started pulling away a little bit. But Lord, today, I declare my heart yours today. God, you are ruler. You are king because I was made to be ruled over.

But I was made to be ruled over by a good king, a good father, a perfect, heavenly father. And by your son, Jesus, I receive. Come into my life. Come into my heart. Rededicate.

I rededicate myself. I dedicate myself. I dedicate myself. I dedicate myself. I dedicate myself.

I dedicate myself. I dedicate myself.