Now, how often do we, or how
often have I gone to God and I just want to make a business
deal, right? I mean, not really even thinking
through how poor theological thought that is. Like, if this
was a business deal, I've gone bankrupt completely, right? But
how many times have you gone before God and gone, Lord, I
swear, if you do this, I know, I will never do this
again. I promise to always do that, right? And it's like, stop. It's possible to believe in God
in theory, that it's very possible for any single one of us, like
right here and right now, to be outwardly professing. I believe
that Jesus is able to show up to church to go through all the
religious motions, all these different things, every single
one of us, and not truly believe in God? Like, believing in God,
I believe He exists and all these other things, and you're professing
a creed and that Jesus is the Son of God, but do you believe
Him? Do you trust Him? Are you willing to believe that
He is worthy of you following after Him? for you to give your
life in service to Him, that He's worthy of that, that He's
able to work in your life. There's a lot of us in here this
evening, and you've heard testimonies of other people. You've even
seen testimonies in your own life of God working in your life
at different times. But we're still wondering, is
He going to show up in this part of my life? Is he gonna show up in this moment,
at this time, in this way? You know, I believe that he was able
to work, and I believe that he was able to work in her, I believe
that he was able to work in him, but do I truly believe that now? And I don't know what that is
for you. For some of you, it's really believing that he has
the willingness and ability to forgive you. And I'm not talking
about you going, yeah, I believe that God's able to forgive. I'm
talking about believing it. I'm forgiven. And I'm no longer
going to live in the fear and condemnation and shame and guilt
of my past because I'm forgiven. And I believe that the blood
of Jesus washes me white as snow. And that I can walk in the newness
of life that I don't have to walk in my past anymore. You
see, that's where the actually the rubber meets the road. It's
very easy for us to walk around saying, I'm forgiven. But yet
you still live in fear. You're still incredibly critical
of other people. Right? We're prideful and critical
of others because it makes us feel better about ourselves because
really deep down in our hearts, we're still fearful that we're
not good enough. in that people are still judging
me and looking at me based upon what I did before. Because you
know what? When I begin to live in forgiveness, I'm free. Free
to not have to beat myself up all the time. I'm able to not
have to defend myself all the time. Right? I'm able for people to speak
into my life. That's a really good way to actually
begin to understand, am I living in the forgiveness of God? Is
whether or not you can allow other people to speak truth into
your life. Like, are people allowed to?
Or do you immediately, you know? You know, like, nobody's allowed
to tell me nothing. Now, of course, we don't say
that. Well, sometimes we do, maybe. But that, you know, I
don't know what that is for you tonight. Maybe it's forgiveness,
you know, it's shame and guilt and some of those different things. You know, some, I don't know
how many times I've had people say to me, you know, Darren,
I believe that God can save and all these other things, but you
don't know what I've done. And not truly believing that
God is able to save you. So of course, there's going to
be times, like maybe even tonight, where we are saying, God, I do
believe you're able to work in my life, like right now, and
in these different ways. And you're persistent. You're
diligently seeking after him. And you know what? God isn't
going to move the mountain. that we were hoping he would
move. That's the real challenging thing, right? I mean, more often
than not, I find myself in these situations that I'm sure many
of you are in right now. And you're saying to yourself,
I do believe that he's able to do that. I'm just not sure he
will. And you know what? That's OK. That's OK. Because you know what? What it
really truly means to trust God, to believe And to follow Him
is to not follow Him dependent upon the outcome. That's what
gets so challenging. Because you know what? Oftentimes
what we do is we'll say, all right, God, I'll believe. I'm
going to do this. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do all
these other things. And when God doesn't show up the way that
we were hoping He would or we want Him to, we go, you know
what? I tried that. It didn't work. And all the while,
we're really not believing God because of who He is. We're really
just believing in Him for an outcome we're hoping for.