(This transcript was generated by AI. Apologies for any inacuracies)

I wanted to talk to you about something that is something that we talk about a lot.

You know, we hear about it a lot.

Everybody gets the forgiveness aspect of it, but this is so foundational to what we are.

And I think that sometimes we get away from it and we kind of lose sight of things.

But we're going to camp out today.

If you got your Bibles with you, we're going to camp out in Matthew 18.

If we don't get, and I want you to hear me for a second, if we as Christians don't get Matthew 18, if we don't get that right, the gospel that we speak is a joke.

The gospel that we are trying to claim and trying to live out is false.

If we don't get Matthew 18 right.

So turn to your Bibles, Matthew 18, we're going to start in verse 21.

Then Peter approached him and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me?

As many as seven times?

Jesus replies, I tell you, not as many as seven, but 70 times seven.

Now, I'll pause right there for a second.

I want to give you some background.

It's important when we read the Bible to kind of understand some context.

Peter in this moment is being kind of cute.

Like he's kind of being a teacher's pet, because in the pharisaical teachings, what they taught is that if you forgave somebody three times, you were like super godly.

You were the man or the woman if you forgave somebody three times.

So Peter's like, how many times should I forgive him?

Seven times?

And Jesus says to him, no, Peter, not seven times, 70 times seven.

Now I'm a country boy from a trailer park in West Virginia, but I can do simple math.

That's 490.

And what's crazy is that he's also not saying to forgive somebody 490 times.

That's it's not a literal translation.

Sometimes we get way too literal with the Bible.

And Jesus is using hyperbole here.

That's an extreme exaggeration.

But what it means is that, Peter, you shouldn't be counting.

Why are you counting?

But we do that, right?

Is it OK if we get real today?

Is it OK if I just bust a wide open and we just preach and get real about stuff today?

We do this.

Because unsuspectingly, and we probably never admit it out loud, we are incredibly selfish.

We get real quick on forgetting how much we've been forgiven for and start looking at people.

And one of the greatest risks to the church as a whole globally is not bad teachers and false pastors and all of that stuff.

Those guys, God works all that stuff out.

It is Christians who have gotten real high and mighty and forgotten where they came from.

Christians who get up a little bit and they start, you know, they they get their attendance just right.

And they've been like 15 different Bible studies.

And I read the Bible cover to cover and my YouVersion streak is like 500 days.

All these little lightning bolts right here.

And we start to look down our long nose at other people.

And that's a real danger.

It's not just a danger to the church.

It's a danger to your soul.

Hear me, it's a danger to your soul.

So Jesus goes on in 18 verses 24 through 26.

Sorry.

For this reason, the kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants.

When he began to settle the accounts, one who owed 10,000 talents, 10,000 talents, we're going to cover that in a second, was brought before him.

Since he did not have the money to pay it, his master commanded that he, his wife, his children and everything he had be sold to pay the debt.

At this, the servant fell face down before him and said, Be patient with me and I will pay everything.

And then the master of that servant had compassion.

Everyone say compassion, released him and forgave the loan. 10,000 talents.

Let me bring that into today's dollars.

That's approximately 13.2 billion dollars in today's money.

Let that sink in.

That's billion with a B. He owed a lot of money, a lot.

The master was well within his rights to demand it, well within his rights to say, Hey, I gave you this loan.

I gave you 13.2 billion dollars.

You owe me that.

Where's my money?

And he did what we do when we come to the cross of Christ.

He fell face down.

Can you imagine the weight of owing that much?

Like some of us, we have a mortgage, we have two car notes, and, you know, we got that 50 bucks that we owe Carl from bowling last week.

And like, and that stuff bothers us when we lay in bed at night.

Can you imagine him having breakfast for this wife?

Because he knows the Jewish custom.

The Jewish custom is that if they can't pay, then they're sold to somebody to the person and work it off.

I want you to understand this is not God condoning slavery in any way.

That's not what's happening in this culture.

It was indentured servitude.

You had to go and work that money off, but there was also a limit to it.

And this isn't a limit that Jesus said.

This is a limit that was actually set all the way back in Deuteronomy when in the Mosaic law, when he said that somebody can only owe you something for six years.

On the seventh year, all debts are canceled.

You don't owe me anything anymore.

But imagine having breakfast with your wife, knowing that I really messed up.

I don't have this money and you about to be working for it.

That's tough, but he forgave the don't.

And I wish that's where the story ended, because then this would be a super cushy message and you'd feel all warm and fuzzy.

But I love you enough to tell you the truth from God's word.

I heard between services.

Actually, Alicia told my wife to say this.

It is not my job to convict you.

That's the spirit's job.

It's my job to preach to you the truth of the word of God.

So in this, I wish that it ended there and that was it.

But it doesn't.

He goes on.

That servant went out, found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii, that's fifty eight hundred dollars.

He grabbed him, started choking him, choking him and said, pay what you owe.

At this, his fellow servant fell down and began begging him, be patient with me and I will pay you back.

But he wasn't willing.

That's crazy because that sounds familiar, right?

Be patient with me and I will pay you back.

But he wasn't willing.

Instead, he went and threw him into prison until he could pay what was owed.

When the other servants saw what had taken place, they were deeply distressed and went and reported to their master everything that had happened.

Then after he had summoned them, his master said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you begged me.

Shouldn't you also have had mercy?

Everyone say mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you.

Some couple of really important things here.

They went and told the master, but he was talking to a fellow servant, someone who was on the same level as him.

That's like people sucking air on planet Earth.

We are level.

We are all in the same level, but God is not.

And if God in his perfection can forgive me, surely I can forgive you.

But I want you to understand the caveat in this, because it's not just as simple as that.

What it says is that if you don't, if you don't, you are not forgiven.

In fact, he says it right there in Matthew six.

Let me get Matthew six.

We have that now.

For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly father will forgive you as well.

But if you don't forgive others, your father will not forgive your offenses.

I know that don't feel good.

And I know that there are some pastors that have kind of twisted this up a little bit and kind of bended it some.

So it felt really good for you.

I love you too much to let you leave out here.

And if you go to church every Sunday and every Sunday you walk out the doors feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, you need to go to a different church.

If you don't ever walk out with your toes sore and kind of hurt a little bit and kind of frustrated with that guy that was talking, you need to go to a different church because you're not growing there.

Here, we're about growth.

We're about you stepping into your God given purpose and becoming more than you were last week.

So in this, it means if you don't, you're not saved.

And that's a lot to swallow.

But the problem is, is that sometimes we get confused and we're human.

Don't get me wrong.

Listen, I want you to hear from me.

I have not arrived.

OK, I've gone to seminary.

I've done some things and I've read the Bible a lot.

I preach the word.

God's giving me a calling on my life, but I have not arrived.

We're still working on things.

I'm still struggling daily.

I still need the blood from that cross every single day, just like you do.

I put my pants on one foot at a time, just like you do.

I have not arrived, but I've learned a couple of things because I remember where I came from.

So if you come here and you go to church, you know, you're you're praying to God and all that.

But then you get nasty with a girl making your sandwich at McDonald's.

What's the gospel that you're living?

If you go to Jersey Mike's and you're fussing at this teenager, this made you a sub and you're flipping out on them.

Is that the gospel that you're living out?

You're freaking out with road rage, screaming obscenities out a window.

Is that the gospel that you're living out?

Because you don't have enough mercy, enough compassion to understand that they're struggling the way that you're struggling.

I don't know what they're dealing with, but I bet it's something.

And I bet they could probably use a little mercy, a little love, a little compassion, a little bit of what the master gave to me.

And surely I can give it to you if he gave all that to me.

It's funny because it's what Jesus said just a couple of chapters before that in chapter 11, verses 28 through 30.

Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened.

And I will give you rest.

Take up my yoke and learn from me because I am, everybody say I am, lowly and humble in heart.

And you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Rest for my soul.

And maybe you haven't been there.

Maybe you're coming in today and you're just kind of, you know, looking at the claims of Christ.

And I don't know about this stuff.

My neighbor asked me to come and she'd been asking for like 14 weeks.

So finally I was like, fine, I'll go.

And maybe you came today and I want you to understand there are no coincidences on this planet.

I've lived long enough to understand that there's just not a single coincidence, not a coincidence that you're here.

And if you're here and you're so burdened by your shame and your guilt and your frustration and your anger with yourself and your depression and your anxiety, that you feel like you can't breathe and then you can't sleep.

And then when you wake up in the morning, it's like the same groundhog day over and over and over again.

You don't have to leave that way today.

Freedom is available to you.

Mercy is available to you.

We've gotten away from some things that this gospel of mercy, this gospel of grace, and we've turned it into a gospel of behavioralism and a gospel of intellectualism, intellectualism, where I know a ton of stuff about God.

Like I like I'm at a hundred percent on the Bible trivia game.

That's good.

Please hear me.

It is good to know your Bible.

And if you're a Christian, you ought to learn your Bible because that's how we learn from God.

That's how the spirit talks.

You know, students ask me like, Hey, Pastor Jared, how do I hear God?

And I'm like, read the Bible.

And they're like, how do I hear him out loud?

And I'm like, read the Bible out loud.

But in all of the things that we're going through as a whole, what we'll need from one another is mercy, compassion, because it's not about my behaviors.

It's not about me just changing some things in the things that I do.

And then I'm okay.

Jesus talked to the Pharisees about that.

He said, you whitewash tombs.

You paint the outside, but the inside is filled with death.

You wash the outside of the cup, but you don't wash the inside of the cup.

I'm not worried.

And God's not so worried about your behavior.

He wants to know about your heart.

How is your heart?

And if your heart is in here and you're like, man, I hear what he's saying.

And I really want to know about this.

Keep listening.

We're going to arrive.

We'll land this plane.

But the way that I treat others and the reflection that I am, I am, Jesus says, I am humble and lowly of heart.

The God of the universe is humble and lowly of heart.

If he can come down, eat with sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, all that.

What in the world would I be doing looking down my nose?

Like suddenly I'm somebody.

Like suddenly I'm not the same kind of sinner that was in need of the same blood from the same cross and that I needed on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and Saturday.

And I probably need double of it on next Friday.

Why would I act like that?

What I should be is a light.

But sometimes we get stuck in this wheel of always pointing out all the darkness in the world.

We get so angry.

Now I want you to hear me.

You know, we were flipping out because there was a gay pride festival.

Yeah, we're going to get real like that for a second.

I'm not saying that we should hate sin.

The Bible tells us to hate sin.

It tells us that we should be furious about sin.

We should hate it.

But we should not hate sinners, hate the sin, love the person, hate what they're doing to themselves, but love them enough to help them with it.

Love them enough to have some mercy, some compassion and lift them up and tell them what things could be like if they would turn to God and that it's not about their behavior.

My job as a Christian is not to point out every dark place on the planet.

My job is to be a light.

My job is to walk in light in every room that I come in becomes a little bit brighter because he walks with me, he is in me, and he exudes through me.

I am conduit.

Jesus says you're the light of the world.

Jesus says you're the salt of the earth.

Salt changes its environment by being salt.

It doesn't have to do anything special.

It doesn't have to do flips or cartwheels or anything like that.

It just is what it is, and it changes the environment.

So that's our job, not to stand on a corner somewhere with a megaphone.

That's not effective.

But love, oh, baby, love is effective.

Love will change broken people.

We have a prison ministry that we go in there, you know, we tell them, we tell them they're loved and we watch their lives change.

We watch everything about them change, people that have come in here.

And that's what it was like for me when I came here, because when I first came to a little place called Barefoot Church over on Main Street, I wasn't this.

No, I wasn't even fresh out of hell.

I was still there.

I was still in and she drug me.

She drug me.

Wives, drag him.

Husbands, drag her.

Get her to church.

Just just watch what God can do.

But I know that her gospel is true.

I know that the gospel that she spoke is true because she loves me enough to continue to pray over me.

And I know that her name is in the book of life because she has forgiven me more times than anybody else on the planet.

Probably has.

And I'm just being real with you.

But I came here and all of that muck and mire.

This would be real and vulnerable.

I was a drug addict.

I was addicted to money.

That's my whole life was revolving around then.

And all of these things.

And I wasn't even clean when I first came to church.

I was just being real with you.

I wasn't even clean then.

But they treated me like I was somebody.

They treated me like I was just another brother that needed God's love the same way that they did.

And they bet that I would find it.

And if I worshipped here long enough and I hung around these people long enough, you know, kind of like if you hang around a barbershop long enough, you won't get a haircut.

I hung around a barbershop long enough, got me a haircut.

God is good.

But come to me, all who are weary.

And I will give you rest.

Is there anyone here that's weary?

They need some rest.

That you've been going and going and going, and you've been trying so hard, and you've been struggling, you've been striving, and you've been trying to get it right.

You can't get it right.

And you keep on stumbling.

And every time that you do, you pick that shame and you pick that guilt back up one more time.

And God says, stop struggling, stop striving, be still and know that I am God.

You are my child.

I am God.

I came today to tell you that we serve a king who is compassionate.

And you don't have to leave today the way that you came.

But this servant didn't treat his fellow servant the way that he had been treated.

And in the caveat, if we don't forgive others the way we were forgiven, we are not forgiven.

If we don't show mercy and compassion to others, not only is our gospel weak as water, but we are not saved, we are not forgiven.

Let me drive this.

Jesus doesn't say to forgive others unless.

They were really mean.

Or they hurt you, or they hurt your family, or they hurt your kids.

Or they were a church person that hurt you.

Forgive unless they do it again.

Forgive unless they don't even wanna be forgiven.

They don't care that they hurt you.

None of that or anything that Jesus said about forgiveness.

And I'll tell you part of why it is is because forgiveness really has much less to do with them and more to do with me.

And that's what leads me to the first part of the how.

Because my goal here is always the same with your students on Wednesday night, to give them something that they can apply to their lives.

Not just this teaching from the Bible, but something that I can activate on Monday morning.

And by Friday, I'll probably see a change in my life.

And if I do it again for another whole week, I'll see some more change because that's what preaching should be.

That's what teaching, that's what discipleship is.

It's teaching you how to apply the word.

And the word is actually incredibly simple.

We mysticize it, we bend it.

We try to make it fit into something.

And that's not the way that the word of God works.

It's actually insanely simple, black and white.

We try to read between the lines and make it say things that it doesn't say so that it feels good.

Anybody ever like gone through the Bible, trying to look for a verse that justifies the action that you already knew was wrong?

No, I know somewhere he said that this is okay.

Well, if it's, no.

In fact, Jesus summed up the entirety of the 666 love letters that he left us with with two sentences.

The first, the greatest commandment of all is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

And the second is like it.

To love your neighbor as yourself.

And then there's that question, but who's my neighbor?

Every other human being that's sucking air on planet earth right now, that is your neighbor.

People that look different than you, people with skin colors that are different than yours, people with thought processes that are different than yours, people with belief systems that are different than yours, that's my neighbor and I'm called to love them, I'm called to show them mercy, I'm trying to show them kindness and to teach them about the word of God through my actions before I tell them a single verse from this Bible, because if I don't live my gospel, nobody will hear it.

But what's the how?

First, I have to acknowledge.

Because forgiving is not just forgetting.

I want to tell you about the things that it's not.

Forgetting can be a product of true forgiveness, but forgiving isn't just not, I don't think about it because when I think about it, it hurts.

And I'm just gonna stuff that down here and never bring it up again.

That's not forgiving, okay?

Forgiving is sitting down in the pain for a second.

Understanding this hurt, it doesn't condone the wrong, it doesn't excuse the wrong, it says you hurt me, that hurt really bad, it's probably gonna take me a little bit of time to work through this and to move on from it, but I am moving on.

But I have to acknowledge some things like that, but then I have to acknowledge me.

And I want you to know that freedom is so often found in a mirror.

Because we love to play the blame game.

I know for me, all the problem that I had in my life, I blamed her for a long time.

I blamed my job, I blamed other people for it.

I was blaming and blaming and blaming, and everyone was the problem except for me.

Some of us are here today, and you need to understand that almost all of your problems are you.

You are the problem.

And I'm not saying that hurt your feelings, I'm saying that because there is freedom in that.

Because as long as you are a victim, you can never be a victor.

And this nation is filled with victims now.

And we used to be victorious because we were one nation under God, and that God was Jesus.

And Jesus says, I didn't make you to be a victim, I made you to be a victor.

We have to stop living like it's Friday.

It's not Friday anymore.

He was hung on the cross on Friday.

Sunday came, Sunday came, and now he's risen.

I'm not serving a dead God.

He's still working things out in me, but I have to acknowledge the issues that I have, the heart issues that I have, and submit them to him.

Submit, give it to him.

God, I don't know what you're gonna do with this part.

This is jacked up, and you're the only person that I know that could possibly do anything with it.

I have to acknowledge the hurt, acknowledge what needs to be forgiven.

And we can't forget it.

Like, we can't just forget, right?

Like, God, he says when he forgives something, as far as the East is from the West, cast into a sea of forgiveness.

It's no longer held against us, but I'm a human, and I can't forget it.

Here's what I've learned about the remembering.

I can truly forgive and remember sometimes.

And every single time that I remember, I get the opportunity to forgive it again.

I get the opportunity to show the same grace and mercy that I was shown again, because forgiveness is practice, and it takes practice, church.

I'm not saying that you're gonna hear this and go, I'm like, you know what?

I forgive everybody.

It's hard work, but we have to be willing to do the work so that we can see the glory of God show itself in somebody else.

That's what it's like.

And don't get me wrong, the devil's gonna come at you.

Oh, he's coming.

He's as real as heaven is.

He's coming.

And he knows exactly what to do because he is a photographer.

He's been taking pictures of you your whole life.

Every mistake, every bad decision you made, every bad thing somebody else did.

And he knows exactly when to replay them.

He knows exactly when you're laying in bed at night, what video to start, where to push, where to hit rewind and play it again and play it again and play it again and play it again and play it again until you feel beat down and you feel like you can't even come to God.

But your God is not a photographer.

Your God is an author.

He's still writing.

And if you're still breathing, he ain't set the pen down yet.

The last chapter might've really sucked, but I'll bet God can take something to do with it in the next chapter that's incredible.

It's incredible.

But I have to believe it.

I'm gonna have to acknowledge some things in me and some things that need to change and some things in you that probably need to change, but I bet we can do it together because I need to understand that we are on the same level.

I don't care if you're a 50-year Christian.

I don't care if you're a five-second Christian.

I don't care if you just said the prayer in the bathroom.

We are on the same level.

I am a child of God.

You are a child of God made in His likeness, made in His image.

I am in need of grace and mercy constantly in my life.

I try not to abuse it.

I'm trying to walk in my calling.

I'm trying to do everything that I can, but what I've realized is that it ain't as much about the things that I'm doing with my hands.

It's the things I'm doing with my heart.

What am I doing with my heart?

Do I really want this for everybody?

Do I really want to see everybody in heaven?

Do I really want to see the enemy lose again today?

But we have to stop giving the devil so much credit too.

See, sometimes forgiveness doesn't mean that there aren't consequences.

You're with me?

The Bible says that the wages of sin is death.

Now Jesus died on our behalf to forgive us of that consequence.

We don't have to die.

These earthies are gonna die, but I'm gonna live on forever with Christ my King.

But sometimes it comes with consequences.

And those consequences, you know, I mean, if I do something stupid and get my arm cut off, he ain't just gonna grow it back for me.

You know what I mean?

I still can be swimming in circles, you know?

I'm just saying there are consequences to it, but holding on to things will kill me.

I'm not built for it.

So the second thing I wrote down is releasing.

First, releasing yourself from the shame and the guilt.

Hear me.

Shame and guilt should not be a part of your life.

You shouldn't be thinking like that.

God does not use shame or guilt to change you or correct you.

Shame, guilt, and conviction are very different things.

The devil uses shame and guilt.

God uses conviction.

Conviction says, don't do that, that's stupid, you'll regret it.

Shame and guilt says, look how terrible you are.

Golly, all that Jesus stuff you were talking about, I guess you forgot that because you're disgusting.

You're repugnant.

I don't know about you, but these are the soundtracks that play in my head sometimes and I'm just being real about it.

It's really, really hard because he knows all the tactics, just like I said.

And it's my job to say, but God, you're right, that was me.

But God has changed some things.

God says that he is faithful to complete the good work in me that he started.

He's faithful to finish it.

He ain't done with me yet.

He's still writing the story and I've got to release myself from the bondage, which means I have to accept it.

I have to accept that cross as mine.

I have to accept that blood as mine.

And some of you, you're forgiven.

You know, you've prayed the prayer, all that, and it really is real for you, but you keep picking that shame and that guilt back up, and that makes it really hard for you to move forward.

I'm gonna tell you something that he kind of showed me because that was me, I really struggled with it, and not walking in this gospel of mercy because that's what it is.

And he said, how long, baby, how long?

How long are you gonna stand at that cross, looking at the savior of the world bleeding out for you, dying for your sin, and look him in the eyes and tell him that it's not enough.

It's not enough to forgive me.

How many times?

How long will you sit in that shame and that guilt before you say, you know what, Friday is gone, Sunday has come, and the Bible says that who the son sets free is free indeed, and I'm gonna walk in this freedom.

It's the only thing that I have.

I've gotta lay this down and move on and say I'm never picking it up again.

He took that, that's not my job anymore.

And there will be problems in your life that are bigger than you, and you're gonna have to do it again and take it and set it down and say that's not my job anymore, that's too big for me.

It's above my pay grade.

God, I'm gonna need you to work this out because I don't know what to do.

That's the correct posture of our hearts when we start to release things.

And when we forgive, we release resentment.

We release bitterness.

When we truly release ourselves, we can release others.

And when the devil reminds you of your past, you can remind him of his future.

But look what the Bible says in Ephesians four, verses 31 through five one.

This is Paul talking to the church in Ephesus.

Let all bitterness, anger, and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you.

Remove it.

Along with all malice, and be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.

Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children, and walk in love as Christ also loved us, and he gave himself for us as a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God.

That's the church.

In a nutshell, that's the gospel that we preach.

Because what this does in your life leads me to my last point.

Forgiveness will restore.

Forgiveness redeems.

It takes the damaged thing and brings it back to its full worth.

It takes what was broken and makes it more than it was.

And when God restores something, it's restored.

But for me to truly forgive somebody, that means I have to restore the relationship.

Now, I want you to hear me for a second.

That doesn't mean that you need to stay with that abusive husband or wife.

God cares more about you than he does establishments, even ones that he himself invented.

That doesn't mean that you have to let that person back into the inner circle of your heart.

Sometimes the restoration, the reset is a factory reset, where I can't be involved in your life like that anymore.

But what I can do is love you as the child of God you are, the image bearer of the God of the universe that you are, and respect that and pray for you and want God's very best in your life.

But it doesn't mean that we have to be best buddies again.

Some things, because we're little, and God knows we're little, He can do that.

But then there are other things that if you allow Him to fully restore it, church, He'll really restore it.

He'll make it more than it ever was before it got broken, more than it ever was.

And I'm just gonna be really vulnerable with you for a minute because I want you to know the kind of man that's standing here, the kind of man that God has taken from the mire and put onto a rock.

That old girl over there, I've been married to her for almost 19 years.

We first met at a little place called Pizza Oven in Hedgesville, West Virginia.

She was the hottest girl I'd ever seen.

And I knew the only girl I'd ever met that I really thought I'd been ever shot with.

But we started dating.

And then two months out of high school, we got married.

I was 19, she was 18.

We had nothing.

We had this tiny little one bedroom apartment and we only had enough money to pay rent for three months.

So we lived there for three months.

We moved in with my grandma.

We moved in with my mom for a little while.

She was with me when we lived in a hotel for six months.

She rode with me through all of it.

All the ups and downs, every mistake, every turn, every time that we fell flat on our face, every time that they shut the power off and I went out and I stole power.

She was with me through all of that.

But see, then we made it.

I got a job that was really, really great.

I made a lot of money and money was the cure for everything because that's all my problems had always been financial because I grew up poor.

So I mean, the money was gonna fix everything.

And then anxiety and depression entered into our marriage and it lasted for a really long time.

And I did something so flipping stupid.

I hurt her.

I broke her.

I broke the trust that we had.

I betrayed her.

And I remember like it was yesterday.

God sat me down and for the first time in our marriage, even through all the stuff that we'd been through, she left me.

And then I saw the gospel that she talked about a few days later when she called me.

And she said, so when do you want me to come home?

I was like, what?

Why would you wanna come home?

What are you coming home to?

You're not coming home to me, right?

She's like, no, I love you and we're gonna work this out.

We're gonna figure this out.

And for the first time in my life, I saw real unconditional love in that way.

That even in this place, you still wanna ride this thing out with me?

You still wanna figure this out and work through it with me?

You're still here like that?

And so God's got a funny way of setting me down.

He kicked me down my stairs.

I mean that in the most literal way possible.

Of 36 stairs up through my house, we live in a house on the stilts.

He knocked me down every single one of them.

Thank goodness my mom was staying with us then because I was knocked out cold.

But what it did is it made me sit down for a whole week and look at me and look at everything that I had become, all the things I swore I'd never be.

But she came home and she loved me through it.

And she didn't condone my mistakes or condone the man that I had become at that time.

But what she did is she stayed and she prayed over it and she trusted God with it and she submitted it to God over and over and over again.

And I watched the break-in and listen to me, if you've hurt somebody, you don't get to put a time limit on their healing.

You work with them in the healing.

You give them time, you give them patience, you give them compassion, mercy and grace.

And it took years.

And then in the midst of all that, she brought me to a place called Barefoot Church.

And I was so broken, I had nothing else.

Clay talked about this Jesus God.

I'm like, I've heard about him, but then I felt it for the first time.

He loves me even more than she does.

And I gave it all to him right there.

And then I was baptized that Easter and they laid that old man down to rest and they brought a new one up and I ain't been the same ever since.

And then I got a call.

I started to get my calling.

I kept hearing, feed my sheep, feed my sheep, feed my sheep.

I couldn't get away from it.

It was everywhere.

And I'm like, God, what does that mean?

He's like, stop playing stupid.

You know exactly what it means.

And I'm like, there is no shot.

There's no possibility that I am a pastor.

Broken me.

And he's like, maybe it ain't about you.

And then I learned something.

That if I'll just continue to submit and if she will continue to submit and what God has done is he's made our marriage more than it ever was, greater than it ever was.

How more in love with her than I was at 17.

Our children know that they're loved.

They know that they're safe.

They know that they're in a secure home because mama and daddy worked together because we've seen some things and we've been through some things, but everything in our life is submitted to God.

And that's what it takes.

He's just asking for everything that you have.

So today, if you're that person and you feel like I'm the lowest of the low, it's okay.

I promise if he can use me, he can use you too.

All you gotta do is get on your knees and say, God help me.

And in a minute, I'm gonna give you an opportunity to do it.

In just a second, they're gonna come out and they're gonna play a song.

And I want, if that's you, and if that's on your heart, and if you're like, man, I can't do this like this anymore.

I can't live this out anymore.

I need help.

And you can acknowledge it.

And then you can release it.

He, I promise you, oh, I promise you, he will restore it.

He'll restore you.

He'll make you more than you ever were.

Our prayer partners are gonna come up here in the front in just a second.

And they're gonna play that song.

And I want you to unashamedly, I want you to be so bold.

It's just a walk down the stairs and stand in front of somebody and let them pray over you.

That's it, that's all you gotta do.

We don't need your, we don't, you're not asking for anything else from you.

Just come up here and let somebody pray for you, pray with you, because in this space and in this place, I have lived it.

These people will help you grow.

This is a hospital where people come and they get better, church.

I promise, just give it all today.

You ain't gotta hold it anymore.

Let me pray for you.

Father, thank you for this day.

God, thank you for the opportunity just to gather together and worship you.

God, thank you for mercy.

Thank you for compassion.

Thank you for your grace.

Thank you for your son who shed his blood on Calvary, that my sins might be washed clean, that I might be redeemed and restored and be called a son of the Most High God, that we might be sons and daughters of the King.

Father, I pray if there's one here today that doesn't know you, that today would be the day that they would lay all the pretenses behind and they would step boldly to your throne and say, Father, let me come.

Fill me with your spirit.

Lord, I pray that the spirit would wash through this room like wildfire, God, that it would be like it was in Ezekiel when he walked into the water, and first it was at his ankles, and then it was at his knees, and then it was in his waist, and then he swam.

God, let us swim in your spirit today.

We love you, Father.

We give you the glory.

And all God's children said, amen.