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Freedom From Offense | The Unoffendable Heart Pt. 1 | Pastor Mike Signorelli
(upbeat music) - Okay, so we're gonna be talking about offense and this series is called the unoffendable heart, which as I mentioned, I believe it's really a heart transplant. I don't think our heart can be unoffendable. I think we've got to get a heart transplant and we need the heart of the Father transplanted into our chest because his heart is unoffendable. But I believe that if you'll let that happen, you don't have to live your whole life with elevated cortisol. You don't have to live your entire life. PTSD, trauma response triggered. You don't have to live your life always looking over your shoulder, trying to figure out who's coming for you, who's rejecting you. You don't have to live your life like that. And it's not the absence of the battle. It's his presence in the midst of it. It's who's sitting at the table with you while all the craziness is going on. Because some of you are asking God to remove the battle, but he's trying to tell you no, you take a seat at the table, let's feast together in the presence of your enemies. So sometimes God removes your enemies and sometimes God allows them to remain until they have their work in you. Ain't nobody amen in me today. So for the note takers though, let's write down the definition of offense. I want you to journey with me over the next month. Would you all commit, whether you're watching online or you're in a physical campus or you're in a revival home, that for the next month you'll all lock in with me. Would you all commit to that just to let the Lord do his work for one month? Okay. So the definition for offense is when someone, so when someone else does or says something that hurts or upsets another person. So when someone does or says something that upsets another person, you know, that's basically the definition of offense. But once you establish that definition you have to go deeper because there are perceived offenses and there are real offenses. Perceived offenses is when you get hurt or disturbed or bothered by something that wasn't intended to hurt you. And then a real offense is when some wrong was done against you and in that injustice you were hurt. And we have to make a distinction between both of those because sometimes you were hurt even though someone didn't hurt you and sometimes you were hurt because someone hurt you. Are you with me? Okay. You know, once we establish that definition we've got to go deeper. Let's look at the scriptures. Proverbs chapter 18 verse 17 says, the one who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him. Okay, let me just make this relevant for you all. The person who post on Facebook first seems right until they get cross-examined. The person who comes to you at the dinner table and gossip and tells you their side of the story first seems right until they're examined. There's actually three sides to every story. There's your side, there's their side and then there's the truth. So wisdom is understanding what the offense is and whether or not the offense that was done to you was legitimately done towards you or you just metabolized it into an offense. You just made it an offense. And let me just tell my daughter, Everly. Now I pay her $5 per mention when I use her for material in my sermons and I think she made $15 today. So she's paying for El Salton. (congregation laughing) But my daughter is 10 years old and the other day my daughter was like so upset. I mean, I heard her screaming and crying from the other room and I walked in there and I was like, Everly, what is going on? And she was like, they got the pool party. I wasn't invited to the pool party. They left me out and she's talking and I'm like, wait a second, that's not true. The pool party was for the big girls and you're a little girl. And she went, I'm not a little girl! (congregation laughing) Just proven my point, you know? I'm like, okay. (chuckling) And so I took her and sat her down at the table and I said, Everly, listen. You were not rejected by any of your friends. That is not a real offense. Your mommy and daddy already made a plan and you were not supposed to be at that pool party. You're gonna actually go to another party and we already worked it out for you. But see at 10 years old, as a father, I sat her down at the table and helped narrate and explain that situation because even at 10 years old, she's already learned how to take a situation, draw the wrong conclusions and actually take it up an offense that's not there. So, why do I want you to lock in for the next month? Because many of you have developed more intellectually than you have emotionally. Let me put it like this. You had to go 12 years in school to increase your intellect and so your IQ increased, but your emotional quotient, your emotional development did not increase to the same degree that your intelligence did. And I'm saying this in love because I had to go through this journey as well. Because what should happen in the development of a child is that a father, a father should actually sit them down at a table and should actually give them wisdom in every stage of their life to help them understand the context of what's happening and how to deal with situations. But if your life has been anything like mine, you never had that experience. So you went to school and you learned geography and you learned geometry and you learned science but you never learned how to deal with offense. And that's why you got people on social media fighting each other like crazy because it's intellect against intellect with an underdeveloped emotional quotient. And the gap between those two developmental stages were offense thrives because it's people trying to logically catch each other up. Intellectually, yeah, what an ironic, intellectually stump each other, but you know it's possible to win an argument and still not win. And then we enter into marriages and we learned how to have sex through pornography but we don't know anything about intimacy which has more to do with how you deal with offense than how you take your clothes off. I know it got awkward. But you see it's like we're learning all of these things but our emotional development has an increase to the same degree that our intellectual, our sexual, your physical and then what happens when we have parents is they do such a good job putting a roof over our head and clothes on our body but they were deficient in the area of training us and providing for us emotionally. So what I'm gonna do is this, I'm not your daddy. And I know that for some of you I'm a father in the faith but really we have a heavenly father and I'm just gonna try to be an extension of him and try to prepare a table every seven days so we can sit down and expedite some training that we should have had a long time ago. And do you believe that God can do in a month what should have happened over the course of 18 years? 'Cause I have to believe that. Okay, so let's look at offense. So it's when someone insults you, when someone hurts you intentionally or unintentionally and we've got to get a revelation of this because you cannot live your life offended. You know offense, it's this very powerful force and we really experience offenses on a daily basis and it affects us emotionally, it affects us in our physical bodies. Some of you carry that with you but I wanna read Matthew chapter six verse 14 and write this down if you can because this is a verse I want us to go back to this entire series. For if you. So let's look at it closer again. Matthew chapter six verse 14. For if you forgive other people when they sin against you. So it doesn't say if they sin against you, it says when. So that means it's coming. And if somebody hasn't sinned against you today, probably by the end of the day, they will. Can I just clarify something because we got a national audience right now? Did you know that when you're on the highway, the lane all the way to the left is for fast driving? And if that was new information for you, can you write that down in your notes? And then if you're not a fast driver, can you go to the lane all the way to the right or the shoulder? 'Cause I'm Italian. We like to drive fast. But see, you doing the speed limit in the fast lane, you don't realize you're offending me. But I have to choose to live unoffended. Now what does it mean? I might pass you going 120 in the other lane. I'm not gonna flick you off because I'm sanctified. I'm just gonna think about it. And somebody got delivered in the third aisle. But you know what I love about the word of God is how accurate and exacting the language is. For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others of their sins, this is conditional language, your Father will not forgive you. And you know, somehow we've created this Christianity that's all about our personal relationship with God, and we've actually deleted the communal revelation. When they said Jesus teach us how to pray, he never said I or me, he only said we and us. But why do our prayers not sound like the prayers Jesus taught us to pray? Because you're an American and Americans are selfish. Americans make it all about us. But when Jesus said, oh, I'll tell you how I prayed, our Father who art in heaven, how would forgive us? See that language? And then how many of you when you're praying, and we're all guilty of it, it's God help me today, please Jesus, me, me, me, I, I, I, I. And I think we need to get a revelation of us. I think we need to get a revelation of we, why? Because do you know that historically, when you talk about the Day of Atonement, which by the way, the million woman march that's happening in DC is happening on the Day of Atonement this year. But did you know that Israel viewed their sins collectively and communally? So in other words, if Dennis committed a sin, it was as if we all committed it. You understand like they viewed it as like, this is an us thing. So then the scripture says, confess your sins one to another and you'll be healed. Why? Because when you tell on yourself, there could be no gossip in a church when everybody's already confessing their sins. The devil can't blackmail you when you've already told on yourself. So confess your sins one to another in a church where everybody's confessing their sins one to another. There's healing because there's no room to gossip because someone say, you're not telling me anything new, they already confessed it last week. So it's about the us and the we over the I and the me. And we need biblical Christianity, not this selfish, self-centered, crazy American Christianity. But I think a lot of us are like, Lord, I don't feel your presence. And he was like, yeah, forgive that person that just offended you and you will. Because this is legal language. He's like, I wanna forgive you. My forgiveness is available, but you need to go on a journey of becoming more like me by forgiving them. And as you forgive them, it's gonna release more grace in your life because what you sow is what you reap. It doesn't say don't judge. So for all of you with the tattoos that says only God can judge me, they'll get a cover up. (congregation laughing) It's not true. The Bible says, judge not less ye be judged. So the Bible doesn't say don't judge, it just says, just understand that if you are going to judge, you will reap judgment. And there are some people that have to righteously judge. That's their assignment. And don't try to get out of your lane and do something God hasn't called you to do. I will tell you this, if I'm gonna reap anything, I'd rather reap mercy, come on, kindness instead of justice. I'd rather, I'm telling you, what you sow is what you reap. And a lot of what you think is judgment is actually deflection. 'Cause if I can do this magic trick, 'cause you know, listen, I don't wanna ruin for you, but all magic is is the sleight of hand. It's an optical illusion. It's doing something that you're, the human eye can't perceive. And I think a lot of what people call righteous judgment is a magic trick. It's, hey, if I can get you paying attention to their sin, you won't notice mine. It's a sleight of hand. If I can get you fixated on their sin, you might not notice mine. It's a diversion. That's what magic is, it's a delusion. And it's funny because you find the people that operate in the highest realms of witchcraft are also usually the ones trying to call everybody else out. Because it's an illusion. It's a diversion. It's focusing on that. And that's why the scriptures are so plain. They say, forgive others and you'll be forgiven. Judge not lest you be judged. It's very plain. And some of you are gonna leave the sermon being like Pastor Mike, that was the most simple sermon that you've ever preached. And all you're doing is proving my point that your intellect is more developed than your emotions because you're itching ears, crave revelation. But you don't have application. We need application. It's not about how hard it is to understand. It's about how hard it is to do it. And I think the legends and the faith, and I'm not one of them, but these men and women of God who've gone before us have been the kind of people who said, I got good at the things that were basic and you were seeking revelation while I was mastering application. It's like this, like, you know, some don't come out by prayer and fasting. It's not understanding fasting that increases authority. It's actually fasting. And so some people want a new profound revelation on forgiveness. No, do it. That's how you're gonna get the revelation. And it's so much easier to talk about it. And I think we've built this Christianity around these diversions. And there are some people that are so addicted to revelation partly because it becomes the distraction from the application. And I know I'm gonna get back to this in a second 'cause we're gonna memorize Psalm chapter 139 verses 23 and 24 like an actual Sunday school this whole month. Because this is gonna be our liturgical confession across every location. And if we gotta say this every day, we're gonna say it every day because we're gonna memorize this verse. But before I read it, I was talking to somebody between services. And I thought about this, Jesus ascended after the resurrection. And he now is in heaven. Do we all agree on that? Okay. Then Jesus said it's better that I go because I send another, my Holy Spirit. And he will empower you to be witnesses. Do we all agree on that? Okay. Then there's a parable that Jesus gives where he says it's like the master leaves. And as the master leaves there, he leaves his property and everything he owns in the stewardship of servants. And then you don't know when he's coming back. But the master will come back. And when the master comes back, you better be found doing what you were supposed to do. Do we all agree this? And almost the revelation that I got is, think about, 'cause sometimes when you think about the Bible literally, it'll give you a deeper understanding of the heart of Christ. Imagine you have, how many of you have kids? Wait a minute if you have kids. Okay, many of you, breeders. Congratulations. (congregation laughing) So imagine, some of you are like, pastor, you're unhinged to get them, get them to El Salto. But imagine you tell your kids, hey, I'm gonna go to the grocery store, but I want you to do the laundry. I want you to clean the kitchen. I want you to vacuum the floor. And then all of a sudden, you come back, and they don't know when you're coming back from the grocery store. But you come back, and instead of them doing the chores, they're all fighting over how it should be done, who's doing it, who should get that job, who's greater than who, and you hear them fighting. Wouldn't you not be just like you fools? I gave you something to do, and I came back and you're judging each other, but the work's not done. And so for me, when I think about that, like if Jesus Christ were to come back right now, praise God, what a great moment for me. But I often think to myself, what stupidity will he find me in when the master comes back? Me blogging? You know, you think about like the futility, the futility of so many of the things that we waste our time doing. It's like, if I don't know when my dad is coming back, I wanna expend most of my energy doing the things that if he did, is gonna make me look like I'm an actual son, and I'm in alignment with his will. And but on the flip side, imagine he leaves, and he's coming back, and you don't know when he's coming back, but you're actually saying, oh God, I wanna get this right. God, I wanna do your will. I'm doing these dishes. I'm vacuuming the floor. I'm taking care of everything yet. Matter of fact, my brother did new his job, so I'm gonna do extra work to try to get this done, 'cause I wanna please you when you come home. And I know I don't get it all right. I don't do it like you would do it, dad, but I'm gonna do it the best I can. Now imagine he comes back, what are you gonna get? Mercy, mercy, mercy. And there's something about this sermon. There's oil on the sermon for someone, because I think the secret to my life is soul winning. You can mess up a whole bunch of stuff, but if you devote your life to leading people to Jesus, somehow you will end up right on track. There is a grace on my life for soul winning. And I'm telling you, the Lord will provision and protect your life so you can get the gospel to more people. He's not looking for a perfect vessel. He's looking for a yielded vessel. He doesn't care about your eloquence or your intelligence. He's looking for your surrender. I'm telling you, if you will live unoffended and you'll just say, God, I wanna please you with my life. I don't wanna get caught up in my brother and sister's conversation. Matter of fact, when they're talking, they can't be working, so I'll do their job too, Lord. I'll do whatever I can. I'm telling you when the master comes home, I already know the verdict for my life. I know the verdict for my life. You can say a lot of things about me, but you can't say I'm not doing what he told me to do. So, Psalm 139. This is how I've learned to metabolize offense. Matthew chapter, Psalm 139, we already did Matthew. Praise God. Psalm 139 verse 23 says this, search me, God. Why do these people never blog about themselves? Can you imagine? David blogged about himself and it's called Psalms. Are you getting this? I think this is like something. It's like David was, Lord, created me a pure heart, renew a right spirit within me. Like David blogged about it. David exposed himself and it became scripture. People are exposing other people and it's becoming gossip in the works of darkness. It's not about the feelings, it's about what you do with them. And if I could sit you at the table of development that you should have been sat down when you were a kid, this is what you would have learned. Everly, it's okay for your feelings to be heard, but forgive those people, drop your stones and everly, let's pray for them right now. You are not rejected and guess what? They didn't do it on purpose this time, but baby girl, they are gonna reject you on purpose sometime and when it happens, you better get used to forgiveness. You better get used to it. And some of you are finally getting sat down at that table, but it's about what confidence you have and who your confidence is in. My confidence is not in me, it's in my God. So you can't cancel me because you didn't call me, you can't stop me because you didn't start me. And if something's born in the eternal realm, it does not die. So that's it. Search me, God. What does David do when Saul dies if he defined his life by his enemies? (gentle music) He didn't define his life by his enemies. He defined his life in response to being a man after God's own heart. So it's like for many of you, you've defined too much of your identity around your enemies. What are you gonna do when they die? It's about you, God, God was trying to, some of your life, but Pastor Mike, I had the worst biological father. Yeah, you had the father that you were supposed to have. What do you mean? What do you mean? That was the father out. Yeah, God knows what you needed. Your biological father's rejection drove you to the throne. And God's sovereign will. It couldn't have been any other way. I remember talking to God and I said, God, why did you give me the debt? He said, I gave you the debt you needed because even his rejection drove you to my embrace. You had the best debt because I used that situation to bring you to me, Michael. So it's always been about what God has been doing in us. So that's why it says, search me, God. And know my heart, the world is obsessed with exposing other people. But when I read the scripts or the language of the scripture is search my heart. It's free, test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. See, there's two ways. There's a divergence in the road. There's the temporary and there's the everlasting. There's the flesh and there's the spirit. There's lust and then there's marriage. There's commitment, then there's covenant. Come on, I'm talking to somebody. There's a convergence in the road. And this is what the Psalmist is saying. Lead me the way everlasting. I wanna go in this everlasting journey. So as a church for the next month, we are gonna confess these two verses over ourselves. And I feel the anointing on this because I don't know that I've ever attended a church with thousands of people instead of pointing this way and locking and loading our gun and friendly fire like the church so often is guilty of. We actually dismantle, disengage. We actually take the bullets out of the gun and then we say, okay, God, I'm lifting my hands and surrender, reveal my heart. Reveal what's in me, God. Reveal my mind. See, because when that begins to happen, the glory and the presence of God will just invade like never before. How many times in the Old Testament, they all put on sackcloth. They all covered themselves in ashes. They all fasted. Why? Because it wasn't, hey, God's gonna judge us 'cause your sin was worse than mine. Why'd you have to do that last week, girl? They understood we all need to repent. We all need to fast. We all need to be an ashes and sackcloth. And as they did that, the freedom of God, the mercy of God would be released upon them. So we're gonna make this confession of Psalm 139, 23. Okay, lastly, I wanna show you communion. Let me get, oh, here it is. Do you gotta have your communion cup at every location? Now, I wanna tell you something. If you're watching here in America and you have an Amazon account, you can get these by the box on Amazon. And I wanna encourage you to do that. My wife and I, we used our own Amazon account and we bought two boxes of communion because you know what? It's not if they sin against you. It's when, hello. And so my wife and I said, we are gonna do communion every time we read something on the internet that offends us. Every single time we hear or see something, if somebody comes to us with something that's offensive and we're just gonna do communion because didn't Jesus say for as often as you do this, do this in remembrance of me? It's almost, stay with me. It's almost as if he knew that we're gonna be offended so frequently that as often as we do this, do this in remembrance of me, like, you know, we need a reminder. So this cup is a reminder. But dare I say it's more than a symbol. It's a transformational supernatural experience. So at our house, you know the bowls that you have cereal in? You know, like a cereal bowl? We have two cereal bowls full of communion and my wife and I, we do communion whenever we need to. I'm thinking about putting a live stream camera on the bowls and then that way, if both bowls are empty, you know, pray for your pastors that week. Some weeks, only one bowl is empty. Some week is both bowls by Tuesday. But we do communion and it's a reminder. But here's what the reminder is. God, search me, know me, know my thoughts. I'm not gonna obsess about them. I'm not gonna make a diversion to get caught up about what they're doing. I'm gonna say, God, show me what I'm doing. And you know, as we begin to do that, something special happens. So I wanna demonstrate for you the way that I pray as your pastor and I'm a little mortified, I'm a little embarrassed, but can I keep it 100 and be a real human being in front of you right now? So why don't you stand to your feet with me? We're gonna do communion, but I'm gonna show you the application. 'Cause we're trying to move from revelation to application. So I see stuff online about me that hurts me. Because I know it's not true. And I know my own life and my own story and my own heart. I see stuff about my wife. I see stuff about our church. I hear things and it's devastating and it can be extremely discouraging, especially when you know your motive. And I'm just being real with you. And I'm not trying to be messy and I'm not trying to start anything. And I'm not trying to flare anything up. But I think that we have this series, The Unoffendable Heart, and you can ask our staff, we had a plan over six months ago. I said, "Wow, God's got great timing." He knows exactly when to give the medicine and who to give it to. And I needed a reminder of the Unoffendable Heart. Not only that, but my publisher Baker, they asked for my second book that it's entitled, The Unoffendable Heart. And they believe that God is gonna use it tremendously. And so we had planned to teach more on this topic through the month of July. And the convergence of it was just very, very, very intentional. I believe by God. But when I experience these things and I go to take communion, the Bible says, "Bless those that curse you." Yeah, see how nobody shouting, "Yes!" Come on, bless them, Lord! Some of us wanna be like, "Bless them, Lord!" Bless them, bless, bless, bless! (laughing) But we need to learn how to bless. So because what is the, okay, what is your human nature, which is your flesh? You have to do the opposite of that. So if your flesh says, "Attack them," then the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. So instead of attacking them, pray for them, pray for their marriage, pray for their finances, pray for favor on their life from God, pray, and don't pray, 'cause sometimes I find myself getting into those honorary prayers, or I'm like, "Lord, bless them." You know how jacked up and messed up they are, and you know how ugly they are, Lord, you know they struggle, look at 'em, Lord. I'm teasing, I'm teasing, but I'm also a human. I'm not Jesus. And so when I'm taking communion, I go to the garage, and if you have a garage, you might wanna go there, 'cause I think the problem with some of you who are like, "Man, I struggle with prayer." It's, isn't it weird how you could talk to your friends all day, but you can't pray to God more than five minutes, and the problem is you're talking to God differently than how you talk to your friends. You need to start talking to God freely. Can you need to give your whole heart to Him? And you don't have to filter yourself. Some of you are filtering yourself, and you're trying to come before God, and you're editing yourself, and the Lord's like, "I already see it in your heart. Why don't you just tell me about it? This is how I survived. This is how I didn't kill myself. This is how I didn't quit, as I've gone before God. If y'all heard my prayer life, you would be like, "That guy needs therapy more." Because sometimes I go like this, "Lord, I'm so ticked off. I'm like, I'm sick of it. They're relentless. When are they gonna quit? Are they manic? Why won't they stop? This is stupid, and I'm literally, I can't stand them, Lord. I tried. I did everything I could. You know how much I gave? You know how much I served? You know how good I spoke about them in public? And I'm literally like, "Get it out." And God there, I can't believe how immature, how stupid, and then most of the time while I'm doing, and I'm ranting. That's why I put these sound treatments in my garage. True story. And I'm ranting to God. God, I can't, Lord, why can't I be Old Covenant Christian? Why can't you break their jaw, strike them down, electrocute them, send a bear to maul 'em, something, God. And do it swiftly on my behalf. Come on, y'all know you get Old Covenant real quick. Old Covenant real quick. And I'm ranting, and I'm saying, and I'm getting it out. But here's the thing. My conversation to God probably sounds a lot like your conversation to your friend. But when you do it, it's spreading gossip and guile and toxicity, but when I do it, he's safe enough. I mean, there's something about his presence. He can handle it. So it's like sometimes you're trying to transmit the weight of information to somebody who doesn't have the grace to bear it. You know what I mean? And some of you, you don't even realize that when you start dumping and on people all the time, there's only two kinds of people that will let you dump on them. One is they're codependent and they need to be needed. And the more you tell them about how bad your life is, the more they feel needed. And they actually like the fact that your life is messed up. And then secretly, they're gossiping about your gossip to other gossipers because they love the fact that they know that you don't have it all together, which makes them feel better about not having it all together. Then the second kind of person is you're dumping on them and they finally reach a threshold and they say, I don't even wanna talk to them anymore 'cause I can't enjoy anything because they don't enjoy anything. So the solution to what you do is you stop reaching for the phone and you start reaching for the scroll. You stop reaching for the phone and you start reaching for the throne. Come on, I'm trying to help you. And you tell God, you rant, you rave, you tell God everything you gotta tell them. And if it's anything like what happens in my secret place, he'll say, okay, son, are you done? And I'm like, no, I'm not done because now that I started talking about it, Aaron craniac, you know what? Come to think about it. And literally, I'll go on. You know, two prophets recently came to me and they don't even know each other. And they said, God wants me to tell you, you are his friend. And I was like, I'm his friend. Yeah, the Lord says you're his friend. And then all of a sudden on the other side of the planet, another prophet comes up to me and says, the Lord wants me to tell you you're his friend. And I was thinking, Lord, what does that mean? Why did two prophets tell me I'm your friend? And he said, because you come to me and you talk to me about the burdens you bear because you put me first. Everything else comes into alignment. And we've become friends. And you know, there's a difference between a son and a friend. Sometimes you have children that you're, they're your child, but not your friend. And so you get what I'm saying? Sometimes, listen, but then sometimes you have a child who's also your friend. And I feel like the Lord was just trying to say, Mike and all this ranting and raving and complaining, you've been so real to me that you've allowed me to be real to you. And there's many of you that you, the Lord's saying, be real with me. I can handle it. And then you'll be credited a friend of God. And where did I learn that, Moses? Was it Moses called a friend of God? But when he went to God, he was always complaining. He's like, Lord, these people. I don't know what to do. And God's like, come here, you're my friend. I wanna show you my glory. Telling you, there's realms of God's glory that you can only access when you become his friend and you start getting this out to him. So then all of a sudden, finally, when I say, okay, Lord, I'm done, I'm done, God, I got it all out. You know what he usually tells me? Hey, by the way, Mike, all those things that you said those people did to you, you know you did all those things to me on the cross. So why don't you forgive them just like I forgive you? So right now, I want you to take this way for, this represents his body. A fence wants you to fixate on what was done to you, but communion causes you to fixate on what was done to Jesus. See, a fence is always about how you got hurt, but communion is about how he was broken for your healing. See, there's a turnaround, there's a flip that happens in communion. See, we wanna go before God is a victim, but communion is when we realize that he was sacrificed so that we can be free. It's when there's a turnaround. It's when the situation gets flipped. So why don't you take this way for right now, and let's eat it. And while you're still chewing, science says that when you're chewing, your stress goes down. And the Lord says that I'm gonna make a table before your enemies, and you're gonna learn how to feast instead of fight. The Lord's gonna exchange the fight for a feast. See, if the devil can't stop you from fighting, he will assign the wrong battle, but the Lord says this time you're gonna feast, sit up my table, and let me fight on your behalf, because I am the victorious one. Somebody, do you believe that? So while you're still taking the body of Christ, I want you to grab this cup, Jesus' blood never fails you. How often should I do this? 70 times seven in a day, forgiving everybody all the time, forgiving ourself, some of you need to get some bowls full of communion at your house until you're transformed daily by the renewing of your mind, and you say, God, have your way. But before we take this cup as a church, I want us to make the declaration of Psalm, chapter 139, verse 23, everybody say this with me. Search me, God, and know my heart. Test me, and know my thoughts. See if there is a fence in me, and lead me in the way of our lasting. Come on, let's take this cup. Father, I pray over our entire church right now, that we would be a church that forgives, a church that takes communion at home, a church, God, that goes to you with all of our desires, all of our needs, all of our struggles, God, a church that would seek your face, a church, God, that would take offense, and say, Lord, let this do a work in me that makes me more like your son, Jesus. Father, I thank you that we're gonna rapidly mature. I thank you, Father, over the next month, as we sit at the table and feast instead of fight, redeem instead of flee. God, that you're gonna use us in a mighty way as a sign to this culture, to this civilization, that there is another way. Your cross, Jesus, your death, your resurrection, in Jesus' name, somebody shout, amen. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (gentle music)