Gateway Church's Podcast
An Innocent Walk
I'm looking forward to speaking about this whole deal on one prayer. It's really amazing. And it's unprecedented. Thousands of churches are coming together under the same theme and talking about the one prayer. The one thing, if they could just pray about one thing, that particular communicator will lay it out. I've chosen to speak about an innocent walk. It wasn't long ago where I was with the Lord. And it was during a time when I was spending more time in prayer than common time. And as I was talking to the Lord, I just said, "God, I don't understand how you love me so much." And then I said, "God, I don't understand how I feel so innocent around you. The reason why I was able to say that is because of what the blood of Jesus has done for me. If you appreciate the blood of Jesus, give the Lord of hand right now in this place." But here's the fact, I'm not innocent. I'm not innocent. I've made mistakes. I've been off track. And some of you have as well. The reason why I like Pastor Robert Morrison, oh, by the way, his family is actually in the service right now at the Internet campus. Give your pastor a hand. Come on. I love the fact that you're hard. It's so clink. Here's the deal. Your pastor, Pastor Robert, the way that he gets up every day, he and Debbie, this right here is probably the healthiest church that I know of anywhere in America. I'm not just saying that because I'm in front of you. My friends believe that too. We talk about it. We whisper about it. I'm just going public. And I love the fact that you guys not only are a healthy church, but you don't act like you are. When I'm with Robert, he's acting like a kid. He cannot believe what God is doing. It's hard for him to comprehend. Some of you, you're not enjoying your walk with God because you do not have that innocence. It's really much more like a childlike faith. Years ago, I'm very ambitious and I want to do things. I want to get things done. I have goals and all that. And I decided to take my four-year-old fishing because he had never been fishing. And while we were out there, we weren't catching anything, but he didn't care. I mean, there's a few hours later, he just went and threw rocks. And so I'm still trying. And then when he wasn't looking, I caught a fish and I reeled it in really fast. I took it off the hook, I put it on his hook, and I let his hook go out. And I said, "Hunter, I really feel like if you come over right now, you'll catch something." And so he came over and he goes, "Wow, Dad, this does feel different." And he reeled it in and he caught the fish. The next day, I said, "Hunter, what did we do yesterday?" He said, "Dad, we went fishing." I said, "Well, do we catch anything?" He said, "Well, you did and you took it off the hook, put it on my hook." I said, "Hunter, you knew that the whole time." I said, "Why were you so happy?" He said, "Because Dad, I didn't really care what was happening. I just wanted to be with you." I'm going to tell you right now, that's the way that your Jesus is. God wants you to be happy, to be with Him. I am convinced that a lot of us through the process of time, we receive the Word, this is a healthy church, and I know of no place that has better worship and better communication. In fact, when you get to heaven, you're going to want to come back here on the weekends. I'm sure of it. But I think Gateway will be leading worship sometimes up there. And you know they're going to ask Robert to preach every now and then. But I got to say that there's a tendency, there's a chance for you to be a person that just receives the Word and doesn't do anything with it. Just hearing the Word and not being a doer of the Word. God wants us to have a balance. Are you all out there? The best stat to prove this. In marriage, if you study marriage in the world, people that are not Christ followers, one out of every two marriages in in divorce. But if you look at the Christian community, it's the same. One out of two. However, if you find a couple where they pray together and they're involved in a life-giving church, and then they're involved in community service in that church and a small group, it changes from one out of two to one out of eleven hundred and five. Come on, somebody, the Word of God, it works. But we can't just be spiritually obese, receiving, and receiving. But I've noticed we dry up and we stop doing anything for the Lord when we don't have an innocent walk. This childlike faith, look at this verse. In Mark chapter 10 and verse 15, it says, "Most certainly I tell you, wherever or whoever will not receive the kingdom of God is like a little child, and he will in no way enter into it." Now, I'm not a fool. I know that when you look at a child, there's some innocence attached to a child. But I also know that there's sin attached to a child. If you were to go and look in the nursery right now, those kids, they're not donating their cookies one to another. They are stealing cookies. They are slapping each other. You need to go get your kid right now before they die. But I do know there's also another side of kids that it's this innocence. You think about a Christmas when kids are up here singing. I mean, they can't sing. They can't sing a lick. They don't know the lyrics. They're pulling at their pants and waving at mom. They don't know anything about what's going on. But yeah, when it's done, we give a standing ovation. It's like, "What? That was unbelievable. It wasn't unbelievable." They're just, they're innocent. One time we were listening, it was around Valentine's Day and we were listening to the radio and it was talking about purity. And in my son, my little kid who is around eight or nine years of age, he heard this word purity over and over again. And he finally said, he said, "Purity? I haven't gone through purity yet. I think he missed it a little bit, but you are tracking with me." I told him, I said, "No, I think you have gone through purity for sure." Look, in the Bible, since the creation of people, you can see what God's original intent has always been. It's to be in the cool of the day with us, to walk with us. But what happens is we get off track. We forget about the power of his blood and his ability to forgive. Oh, by the way, he is very good at forgiving. But Adam and Eve and the original design and the cool of the day, walking with God. And then when they fail, we could describe all that, the tree of the knowledge, good and evil, and it was appealing to the eye. And the enemy came in and manipulated them and said, "You can be even closer to God if you eat from it." And he tried to worm his way into their life. And then they ate from it and they lost their innocence. And they did just what we do, but we have Jesus. What they did is they hid. And the Lord showed up again in the common day of the cool of the day, saying, "Adam, where are you?" And they said, "We're over here. Why are you over there? We're hiding. Why are you hiding?" Because we're afraid. That's the reason why some of us hide. We're afraid. The time that we need to run to the Lord more than any other time is when we're hiding. Look, this is what God wants to do today. I'm just going to set this up as fast as I can. I want all of you, somehow all of you, those that have been serving God for a long time and those that have lost their edge a long time ago, even people that have never known Christ. I want to believe in my heart that you're going to get this innocent walk. And when you walk out of here today, you're going to walk like a child, knowing that God has a plan for your life, knowing that He wants to do something in your life. And if you're ready for that, give the Lord a hand, even in our age. Come on, we're going to believe together, man. Look at this verse. This is a cool verse. In Isaiah 29, 13, the Lord says, "These people come nearer to me with their mouths, and they honor me with their lips, with their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men." God is just saying, "I can't stand to disconnect. I want you close by." So let's kind of, let's go through some ideas because I came over with 25 different ways that maybe we could restore innocence. And I certainly can't do that. So let's just break down a few. Number one, innocence is restored when we take back vision. Could everybody say vision? Look, look at this verse. Talking about purity and innocence. Matthew 5, 8, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God." Vision is awesome, but it's for those that are pure and they just believe it, even though circumstances may not be going their way. There's one verse that says, "Keep your eyes on the Lord." And because he's the author and the finisher. As you keep your eyes on the Lord, what I've noticed is we do not look forward. If you don't have this innocence, knowing that God loves you somehow, then you don't keep your eyes on him. And so you don't get the author side of God. You don't get the finishing side of God. We end up looking at all the peripheral things, and then God ends up being peripheral. We just do not have this connect. Somehow it's related to our dreams. Somehow it's related to vision. I remember studying years ago about Nazi Germany. Their favorite form of torture wasn't really painful physically at all, but it was extremely painful mentally. And all it was, they would take the prisoners of war, they would get them up in the morning, and they're 100 yards away. They would ask them to grab these rocks, which weren't heavy. Stones that maybe weigh 10 pounds, and they would pick them up and walk across 100 yards away and put them down, and then go and get another rock and then put it down all day long towards the end of the day, only a small lunch break, and they would finish. They had it timed out properly. The next day they would get up and go back and get the rocks with the new indention and bring it back to the indented ground. And then they would do that all day. And then the next day they would repeat the process. And after about a month, they would start losing their minds because they were having progress or they were having movement, but there was nothing meaningful attached to it. We all die when we have nothing that we're going for. If your life doesn't have purpose, many of us are going somewhere, but we're not going anywhere on purpose. And so we may live to be 90 years of age, but we die in our 20s when we lose our vision. I've said it for years. That many of us, we have backwards vision. It's clear to us in forward vision. And God is asking you to dream dreams again. You can tell when somebody is dreaming a dream for the Lord. You can tell when you're married to somebody that is dreaming dreams. You can also tell when they put down their dreams. Look, some of the best dreams you can ever have with God or when your eyes are wide open. And God is saying, hey, I want you to believe again. And what happens though is we lose our innocence. We lose our confidence. And we just live hiding out like Adam and Eve. There's stories like this in the Bible. You have Gideon. The Bible says he was in a hole in the ground. This enemy nation was coming in, destroying the people and taking their stuff. So he was in a hole in the ground. It was almost funny what he was doing because he was threshing wheat, which meant he was throwing it up in the wind so it would separate the wheat from the dirt and dust, but he was in a hole. The wind's not blowing down there. But he was down there because he was afraid. And God showed up through a theophany, showed up and looked at him and said, hey, mighty warrior. You are a mighty warrior. You can see it in Judges 6-12. When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, the Lord is with you, mighty warrior. And he did. Check this out. He did just what many of you do. He just said, but there's no way. How could you call me mighty? I'm not ready. So he said, blah, blah, blah, sir. This is what we do. We all start saying, blah, blah, blah. Some of us, when God challenges us, we have little butts and some of us have much bigger ones. All right? How about that? And but God is saying, I want you to get off your butts and go and do something. What about the heroes of the faith? Well, what if Noah would have said, I don't do boats. What if Paul would have said, I don't I don't write letters. I don't know. He had finger cramps. I don't want to do that. What if Mary would have said, I don't do virgin birds. I can tell you that right now. What if Jesus would have said, no, I don't want to do the cross. But I tell you where it gets tangled up is when we say, hey, we're not going to do our part. If 50% of the people here at Gateway decide to do their part, then only 50% of the dream. And I've heard about the dream in this church. I'll walk through the facility. I'm I'm telling the children's ministry there that the presence of God is already there. And I've seen the dream that that building is not the dream. It's much bigger than that. But if only 50% of you get involved in the vision of what is happening and you let everyone else carry the weight, then only 50% of what God really wants to do is going to be accomplished here. And if 75% of you get involved, then we can hit 75%. But if all of you dream dreams again and go for it, we can get this thing done. Can I have an amen this morning? Look at this. Number two, let's move on. Innocence is restored when we do life together, together. Look, in the book of Acts, I wish I had time to break this down. But in the book of Acts, they had the power of God way more than you do. But they didn't just have the power of God. They they had one another. God doesn't want you doing life alone. I grew up in a church where there was no community. No one enjoyed going to church. No one liked each other. My mom and dad had the worst marriage in the history of mankind. And and we would walk to this church. And by the time we walked in, we look like we had the best family in the world. And the reason why is we were not connected. No one knew what we were really going through. Because that would be the last thing you would do in that church is tell anybody what you were going through. God is trying to change that. Do you know this? You cannot do life alone. You can see that God wants you in relationships as much with others as with him, with him first and then others. You can see it in the greatest commandment where he says, "Love me with all of your heart and soul and then love other people." You can see it in the Ten Commandments. Ten Commandments are first for all vertical. It's you and Jesus. You and God. And having him first and respecting the Sabbath and his name and no other idols. But the last six are horizontal. It's you and relationships with other people. God knows if you get the vertical right, that you can have the rest right. But what's happened to us, and here's the honest truth. Many of us, we're living on an island. We don't have anybody that really knows the truth of what's going on. We're just alone. We're not connected. The Bible says that I can't say to the hand that I don't need you because we need each other. And we don't have anybody to celebrate with when things are really going well. And a lot of us, we don't have anybody to pray with us when things are going bad. Sometimes I want to pray and I can't wait to pray. But do you know what? Sometimes I don't like to pray. I'm a pastor and I'm not trying to shock you. But sometimes I don't want to pray. I need somebody praying for me. Sometimes I love digging into the Word of God. But there are other times where the Word of God bores me and I need somebody else giving me revelation. Sometimes it's like the Scripture jumps off the page and I can't wait to tell somebody about it. But other times it's my friends that they're having that happen. Look, we cannot do it alone. And the young generation that is following behind us, you've got to get it right. Don't do what we have done. In 1 Timothy chapter 4 and verse 12, it says, "Don't let anyone look down on you because you're a young." But set an example for the believers. This is talking to young people in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity. Listen, young people, don't do life alone. Some of you already are. Here are some stats on some young people that I was reading recently. Teenagers could stand in front of us today in America and say this, 33% of us have been drunk in the last month. One out of four of us have used illegal drugs. 8,000 of us, they could say, teenagers could say, 8,000 of us have contracted sexually transmitted diseases today and every day. They could say 340,000 of us have had an abortion in the last 12 months. They could say, 4 out of 10 of us have been raped or molested in our lifetime. They could say, 9 out of 10 of us have seen porn on the web in the last 30 days. They could say, 1/2 of us are no longer virgins. And they could say, 1 out of 5 of us have contemplated suicide in our lifetime. I'm just going to tell you right now, that is people that are doing life alone. We need God. Oh, yes. But God wants us to have others to stand with us and to pray with us. There's one verse that says, "If you confess your sins to God," and oh, by the way, I don't care what you've been doing. I don't care how good you've been doing it. I don't care how premeditated strongholds are on your life and sin. No matter what, if you confess your sins to God, he is able to forgive. That's a great place to say, amen. But there's another verse that says, "If you confess your sins to one another, you'll be healed." I don't know about you. I want to be forgiven, but I want to be healed. And so many of us were doing life alone, and we have blind spots, and nobody can tell us one of our worship leaders won American Idol the previous year, Chris Allen. And it was so cool to watch all that. But be honest with you, I still enjoy it when they can't sing a lick. And when they're terrible, especially when they interview them and they say, "Are you any good?" Oh, yes. I'm better than anyone who's ever sung on the planet. And I can't wait to see. And then they sing, it's like, "Don't they have a mama? Don't they have any friends? Don't they have any friends?" Here's what you probably never thought of. Yeah, they have friends, but their friends can't tell them because they're not connected. It's sort of like, "You tell them. I ain't going to tell them. No, I ain't going to tell them." But how many of us, we have blind spots in our life. We think we're good at it, or we think we have it going on, or we think we're healthy, and we don't have anybody that can tell us the truth. Again, innocence is restored. Number three, when we turn from shame, turn from shame, our first few years of being in the ministry, my wife and I, there was this girl. I'm going to tell you a whole story because it's powerful, but I've shared it here before. But there was this girl we were counseling with, and she was depressed. And one day I said to her, "After 100 hours plus of documented time trying to help her," and I looked at her and I said, "You know what? I don't know if you want to be helped. I don't even know if you're depressed. I'm wondering if you just want to hang out with my wife and I. I hate this story because that girl went home and committed suicide." I'm going to tell you right now, for the next year I was dead. No one knew. That's the biggest problem. Going back to relationships, no one knew that I was dead because I knew how to fake it. I knew when to say praise to the Lord, and hallelujah, and tell a cage and joke, and all that stuff. But I was dead on the inside. Shame was overtaking me. And then one day I read in Hebrews chapter 12 where it says, "For the joy of the Lord, He set forth towards the cross to destroy shame in your life." Do you know that God hates shame? Adam and Eve, they were walking with God in the cool of the day and they were naked and they felt no shame. The only good thing that came out of the curse is we got clothes. I'm going to be glad about that. But think about the rest of it though, except for that part. Think about the rest. Here they were. They had nothing hidden. There were no regrets. They're innocents walking with God. We can have this with Christ. He had never been late from work. She never burnt anything. He was the best looking man in the world. She was the best looking woman. No in-laws and no clothes. They had it going on, man. I don't even say it right now. But then they lost it all and then they hid. God hates shame. Paul's kind of trapped into it for a little bit. You can tell in Romans chapter 8 and verse 1, he said, "There is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus." And he outlays walking with the Spirit and how powerful it can be. But before he wrote Romans 8, he wrote Romans 7. Are you all tracking with me so far? And the reason why I think that's powerful is because in Romans 7, he got very honest about some discouragement in his life. You can read it. He started talking about it. He said, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do is not what I do. It's the evil that I keep on doing. Even though I know what I want to do. It's this evil that keeps going and it's raging war in my mind and making me a prisoner of death." He was talking about discouragement. And then he said, "And here's the heavy rev-y that you need." And then he said, "How am I going to get out of this?" And then it was reminded, "Oh, yeah. Thanks me to Jesus Christ, my Lord. Therefore there is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus." The Spirit of God is trying to bring you to a place where you don't have to walk around in shame. And then number four, her innocence is restored when we decide to forgive one another. Raise your hand if you've ever met somebody that ticked you off. Come on, man. Here's the fact of the matter, though. Some of you have ticked off other people. I remember this lady came and visited our church and after it was over, she sent me an email. She goes, "You are going to hell because you use technology." And then it hit me. This is an email. Saw wrote back at a very aggressive, but it was fun to write email. And before I sent it, I realized that ain't cool. Look, the Scripture says that the same amount of forgiveness that you extend to others, that's what you get. I've only been bitter one time in my life, and it was about three or four years ago, and a pastor friend of mine who was a mentor. He made a huge mistake. He heard his family, heard his church. And honestly, it hurt me. And one day I lost my innocence in one second. I was having trouble praying. I was mad. I remember, and I've only shared this a few times, but I remember looking at the wall, thinking, "I'm going to punch my hand through this sheet rock. I'm so mad." And obviously with these biceps, I could do it. No problem. But I remember looking and thinking, "How could he have done this?" And my wife, after two days, she had enough. And after two days, she came in, she said, "Buddy, you need to get this right." I said, "What are you talking about?" She goes, "Your countenance has changed. You've lost your edge." She goes, "In fact, you've gained another edge." She said, "It's no fun to talk with you. You've lost your joy. What is wrong with you? Can't you just forgive?" And I read this verse in Matthew 6, 14, "For if," everybody say, "If," "if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you." But if, say, "If again, if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive you of your sins." Innocence is restored when you decide to let somebody off the hook. And the fact of the matter is, you've hurt people in your life, too, unless you're perfect. And if you're perfect, let me just go ahead and say to help the rest of your family, you are a blast to live around. Perfect people are fun to be with, isn't that right? And you landed, flew in here and landed softly on your chair, and blessed are you. But the fact of the matter is, the fact of the matter is, you've hurt people in your life, and they need to hear a sermon on forgiving other people because of you. And every now and then, we kind of get into a place, "How did I do that? I can't believe that." I don't know if you say it like that, but maybe you do. And the Lord knew that this would destroy your innocence, and that's why He set it up with such high standards. The same amount of forgiveness that you extend to other people in your life, that's what I give you. And then the last thing that restores our innocence is when we see the value of a soul. I mean, you think about the Lord and the price that He paid to win a soul. You know, I love the whole deal because the Bible says that if God has 99, and one is missing, that He's thinking about the one. I love the fact that when one person calls on Jesus as Lord, some people are going to find Christ here in just a minute. It's going to happen. And if only one does, the Bible says, "All of heaven is throwing a party." He's like, "What's up?" All of heaven. I mean, it's awesome to me, but what have we done? And I think we've lost some of our innocence because we don't see it the way God sees it. The best illustration of this is the prodigal son. The prodigal son is actually. There were two of them. We always emphasized the one that went away in the sin, and He did, but then He came to His senses. He forgot about how much love the Father had, because He thought, "Man, I've got to go home. I could just be a hireling, and I'll just tell Him." I'll tell Him I was lost, and He rehearses the speech, and He's memorizing it, and He goes home. But what He forgot is how much the Father wanted Him back. The Father was on the front porch, and when He saw Him, the Bible says the Father ran out to Him, and grabbed Him, and He's trying to go to His speech, and the Father says, "All I know is you were lost, and now you're found I'm going to hook you up with some filet mignon right now." And He brought Him in. But here's the side of the story that we forget. There was another prodigal son who was in the house, an older brother, and He was ticked off that his younger brother came in. And we know that Jesus told us parable. You may not know this, but Jesus told the parable. You can tell why He told it based on the audience that He was speaking to. He was speaking to religious leaders. He didn't tell the parable for the prodigal that left. He told the parable for the prodigal that stayed, and the prodigal that stayed lost the value of a soul, and the values of the Father. He was just doing His life, working every day, doing the service, getting up, serving at church, and doing all the stuff. But then when He saw that the one who was lost came in and was being blessed, He goes, "I've been here. I've been faithful. You've never even done that for me." And the Father said, "Hey, your brother was lost. I learned the value of a soul one night about 11 years ago when my daughter was four years old. In the middle of the night, she saw a Hallmark movie with her brother, who was two. And in the Hallmark movie, they decided these kids ran away, who were much older than my kids, but they ran away. And my daughter, who's extremely aggressive in life, she decided, "Man, it'd be cool if we would run away." So she loads up a wagon, puts diapers in there for my two-year-old, and a bottle, and she's got her doll, and she's got skittles, because you've got to have skittles if you're going to run away. And she decides. So she wakes them up at like one in the morning, and she goes, "Come on, Tanner. I've got everything ready." And he goes, "No, you go on and go on too tired." And so she said, "All right." So she went without him. She's pulling the wagon. She left our cul-de-sac, went all the way down the industry, took her right, went all the way down the industry, another right, all the way down, another left, or a left and went to the end of the street, then to a four-lane highway, and a mile-and-a-half down the four-lane highway, pulling her wagon. I'm snoring upstairs. Then there's a knock on the door at three in the morning. What I didn't know was that this lady saw my daughter pulling a wagon down the road, and she pulled over and said, "Young lady, can I help you?" She goes, "No, I'm just running away." She said, "What?" She goes, "No, get in the car. I'll take you home." She goes, "No, I'm not allowed to get in the car with strangers." Like you're allowed to walk down the four-lane highway in the middle of the night. "Are y'all tracking with me?" So this lady did it right. She decided to follow my daughter all the way back home. That, my friend, took a long time, all the way back to my house. Every now and then, she said my daughter would stop and hold the door and put it back down. This lady's in the car going, "God!" And they get all the way back to the house. There's a knock on the door in the middle of the night. I'm still sleeping. I hear this knocking. She yelled, "Do you hear that?" "Yeah, I think I heard it again." She goes, "What is that?" She goes, "Somebody's knocking at the door." I said, "Go see who it is." That's not what happened, but it could happen. We both walk down and then we open the door and this lady is there with my daughter and she tells me what I just told you. I'm trying to figure this out. I bring Hayley in. When I brought Hayley in, we corrected her a little bit, but let me tell you what I've noticed since then. If Hayley would have never come home that night, I would still be looking for her. In fact, every time the phone would ring, I would wonder, is that her? Every email. I would even choose the friends that I have based on who was helping me find her and they would be my best. That is what the Great Commission is all about. Jesus said, "I know you're going to be busy from time to time. Stop looking down and lift up your eyes and see the harvest for it's ripe and it's ready." I'm going to tell you right now, God is hooking up people who are walking around in an innocent way like a kid saying, "What is it that God wants next?" Like I say, "Here I am, Simmy. What's up next? What is up?" I don't care where you've been. I don't care how negative it's been. Jesus can settle the case right now and give you back your innocence. If you believe that, give the Lord a hand right now in this place. Come on, gateway church. Love it. Love it. No one looking around, let's go to Lord and prayer. Like my son who said, "I haven't gone through purity yet." Look, some of you, you haven't gone through purity yet. The Lord is very good at forgiving people. The Lord wants you close by. He's not mad at you. He's discouraged because you won't give him a chance. But He's not mad at you. He's not trying to put cancer in your body. He's not trying to curse you. He just wants you close by. All around this room, if you've never known the Lord, maybe you're very good at running away from Him. Well, you cannot have a relationship with God unless you allow Him to forgive you. It's a month. So if you've never been born again, if you've never known Christ, you can find Him right now. Let's say, though, that you have known Him, but you're no longer walking around like a child with a childlike faith, with an innocence. You don't even believe anymore. No dreams and a lot of shame. And you want to be close to God again. Look, I prayed for a long time that the people who come today will leave this place with an innocent walk again. That has been my one prayer. It really has. So around the room, no one looking around, let's do this as honorable as we can. I'm not going to point you out or embarrass you, but I do crave to pray for you. So it's just me and you and God. So all around this room, if you're here right now and you cannot stay with confidence that you are right with God and you want Him close by. And I want you to raise your hands quickly all around this room. I see it. I got it. Okay, hands everywhere. And that's good enough for me. Let me pray. Lord, I thank you for the way that you crave to establish yourself in us. For the price it was paid on the cross. For the redemption there, the power of all that. Even the precedent you set on the cross. We call it good Friday, but it was bad Friday for you in some ways, the pain, the agony, but you were still saying, I forgive you. Forgive all of them. For they know not what they do. You're establishing a relationship with a thief and making sure your mom was taken care of and cry it out to the father with honest dialogue and stay and committed until it was finished, even though you were thirsty. And I thank you, Lord, God, that you went all out and then rose from the dead so we don't have to stay down, that we can get up and get out and walk around with forgiveness. All around this room, Lord, I ask for you to forgive those that raise their hand of the sin they remember and the sin they have forgotten. Or it's amazing how you went all out, the blood that was shed. You were unrecognizable as a human, but you went all out to give us forgiveness. We love you, Lord, God, and I'm so thankful that you can create a clean heart inside of us again. Restore unto us the joy of our salvation. Give us back your spirit. Let it be said and let it be done. It's always worth it to be close to you in Jesus' name.