I'm gonna attempt to teach today. Now, I'm not much of a teacher. I've tried over the years, but I always end up preaching, so I'll give it my best try. Your job, it's almost like Mission Impossible, if you choose to accept it, is to tell me I did a wonderful job today when you see me in the lobby, okay? The Lord will oversee it if you have to stretch that a little bit. But I wanna talk about who am I in Christ, because realistically, this is the truth. that in the flurry of religious activity in this or any other generation can actually get lost. You remember the day that Josiah the king was rebuilding the temple, and as they're rebuilding the temple, one of the priests comes running to him and they discovered something when they were kind of renovating, and it was the Word of God that they had. back in that generation. So they really lost the Word of God. And we can actually lose the truth of Scripture as it applies to each one of our hearts, especially in the flurry of activity and human activity. I want to be able to answer the question today, who am I in Christ? Who am I in Christ? Father, I thank you, God, for the anointing of your Holy Spirit. I thank you, God, that it is true, the entrance of your Word gives light. I thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, that you are the one building your church, not us, you are. I ask you, Holy Spirit, to speak through this frail human vessel one more time today. I ask for an anointing, God, that will go into the hearts, Lord, where there are deep questions not yet answered, where there are struggles not yet fully living in victory. God, would you demolish the works of darkness? Would you demolish, Lord, strongholds today? Would you tear down, Lord, those things that need to be torn down and build up those things that need to be built up in Christ? Father, I pray, God, that you would just deliver me from any preconceived ideas of what I should say. And God, help me to land on the truths that apply to the questions that are in the hearts of those that you brought here today. No one is here today by accident. It's an appointed time, an appointed meeting. And we thank you for your presence that has been here right from the outset. in this gathering time today. God, help me. Let the anointing, Lord Jesus Christ, break the yoke. And I thank you for it in your precious name. Amen. Who am I in Christ? I'm going to start with 2 Corinthians 5, verse 17, which is Potentially one of my favorite verses in the entire New Testament. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. He, that includes she too as well. Old things have passed away, and behold, all things have become new. Not will one day pass away or should pass away or might pass away. The old things, the old struggles, the old trials, the old difficulties, the old weaknesses have passed away. and all things have become new. So in Christ, we are indeed a new creation. The things that we couldn't be in our own strength, we now have been given the potential to be, not by our own strength or reasoning or power, but by the Spirit of God and the truth of God and the redemption of God through Jesus Christ that now belongs to us because of the cross. And by faith, we've accepted the sacrifice of Christ for each of our lives, to set us free from the penalty and power of sin and to bring us into this newness of life that is promised by God. This is the verse that actually won me to Christ. Now the gentleman, the police officer that shared a lot of truth with me, he shared a lot of things with me, but it was this particular verse, because as with everybody else, I was in a position where there were things in my life, I could fake it, I could get through life like everybody, most everybody can without Christ, but there were things in me I didn't like. There were aspects of my character, and I know, that I made promises to people and to myself that I couldn't keep. Every New Year's Eve, has everybody ever done that here? New Year's Eve, we sing, for old acquaintance be forgot, and we get all sentimental, and we promise to be a better husband, a better father, a better brother, a better friend, a better employee. How long does that last? What, 12, 10, roughly? And it's all gone. We can't do it. So it's important to know. It's important to reconcile with what we were before Christ. If we're going to be a new creation in Christ, we have to know what are we actually being redeemed from in Christ. That's the easiest way to understand it. Here's the dilemma that faced humanity. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, they bit into a theological fruit. That's my opinion for what it's worth. Yeah, they might have done some kind of physical action, but actually they bit into a rotten theological fruit, and that theological fruit was that I can be as God is without God. I can be godly without God. I can determine what's good and what's evil. I can determine the course of my own life, and somehow I end up at a utopian end. at the end of all of this. And I do it all by myself. I'm a virtuous person in myself. And that's the knowledge of good and evil that God warned Adam and Eve they should not partake of. But when they ingested that idea that I can be godly without God, that's when sin entered the human race. And God, right way back in Genesis, the gospel is... I don't have time to go into all of this. This is like a three-hour teaching I'm doing in 30 minutes. But back in Genesis, He made a promise that there was going to be a seed born that was going to step, in a sense, on the head of this thought process the devil had infused into humanity that I can be godly without God. There was going to be a Redeemer. And he even said of the Redeemer in Genesis chapter 3, you're going to bruise his feet, but he's going to bruise your head. In other words, you're gonna drive a nail through his feet, but his feet are gonna step on your head and destroy your power over humanity, destroy the thought that you've infused into humanity that was in the devil himself, that without God, you can be godly. You can determine your own course, your own future, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so God promised that he was going to have a seed on the earth through whom was going to come a redemption And God was going to bring us back into relationship with himself again. He was going to destroy and defeat the power of sin. And for that purpose, he established a people group on the earth. Abraham was the first, and it was the people group following Abraham. And he said, it's through your lineage this redemption is going to come. But that people group still had a problem. Just like we do, we come to church and God says, I'm gonna bless you. Remember what he said to Abraham, I'm gonna make you bigger, your descendants bigger than the stars of heaven. I'm gonna so bless you that the whole world's gonna be blessed through you. It's a wonderful promise, which we are the inheritors of, the co-inheritors actually in Christ of that promise. But lest we should think that we can do this in our own strength, God instituted a series of laws, over 600 laws, and he gave it to the descendants of Abraham and said, now I'm going to bring through you this redemption. I'm going to bring through you this redemption that's going to make people into new creations and bring them back into relationship with me, but it's nothing to do with you. I'm going to do this. It's not your initiative. It's not your strength. It's not your power. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do the whole thing. But I have to deal with the thought in your heart that you have any part of this. So I'm going to give you, if you think you can be godly in your own strength, I'm going to give you 600 plus laws to obey. And if you can do it, it proves that you can be godly in your own strength. But if you can't, If you break even one, that means you've broken them all, you're not God, you're not godly in your own strength, so you gotta go back and start all over again. So it created a whole system of religion where people would come in, they'd bring a lamb, They'd give it to the priest, they'd go through all the ritual cleansings, the priest would offer up the lamb or the goat or turtle dove, whatever it is they could bring in, and they would be declared clean. Can you imagine? Just imagine yourself being a person who really wanted to walk with God, right? And you'd come into this Old Testament temple, and you bring your lamb with you, and you give it to the, because you really do want to walk with God. You don't want to be, you're actually, and you're trying your best. And as you understand it, there's a whole bunch of rules that you have to obey. Some people see God that way in the Christian church, sad to say. You have to obey all these rules, then you're accepted with God. That was their dilemma. So, you take your lamb, you sacrifice it, and the priest declares you finally clean. And you go out and you feel, ha, so good. Amazing. So you walk out and say, God, I'm clean. I'm free to start all over. And I believe I can do it. I can do it this time. I promise you, God, I promise you I'll be a better person. I promise you I'll speak the truth. I promise you I'll love my fellow man. And then you leave the temple and you get on the edge of the outer court and some guy runs over your brand new boots with his cart and you curse him out as he goes down the road. and you've broken another law again. Oh dear, so you go back to where they sell goats and sheep and stuff and you say, I need a goat. And the guy looks and says, weren't you just here? Shut up, just sell me another goat. And you take another goat and you go back in and you start the rigmarole all over again. And that whole system called the law brought us into a place of hopelessness, which is what it was actually designed to do. Now, Romans chapter seven, Paul describes it beginning in verse 14. I believe the scripture should be on the screen here. Paul said, for we know the law is spiritual. In other words, it was instituted by God. There's no doubt about that. But I'm carnal, sold under sin. For what I'm doing, I do not understand. You ever been there? I don't know why I do what I do. Why do I do what I do? For what I will to do, that I do not practice, but what I hate, that I do. In other words, I know what right is, I know what I should be doing, but I can't find the strength to do it. If then I do what I will not to do, verse 16, I agree with the law that it is good, but now it's no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. Paul is now coming to the reality of understanding there's something inside of me that is more powerful than my deepest resolve to do good. I do want to do good, but there's another law in me. It's like the law of gravity. You know, you can go outside after today and throw a rock up in the air and say, it will not fall on my head. And you can really will it, but it probably will fall on your head if you're underneath it, because there's a law of gravity that's bringing it down no matter how much you try to make it into something else. It's no longer I, but sin that dwells in me, for I know, verse 18, that in me, that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells. We all want to bring something of virtue to God, don't we? When we come to the cross, we want to say, Lord, aren't you lucky to have a servant like me? I'm so generous and loving and kind and truthful. But everything that we do falls so grossly short of the glory of God that if we truly had the eyes to see it, we'd be able to say, as one of the prophets said, all of our works are like filthy rags in the sight of a holy God. Nothing dwells, for the will is present with me, verse 18, but how to perform that which is good I do not find. For the good I will to do, I do not do, but the evil I do not want to do, that I practice. Now, if I do what I will not to do, it's no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find that a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. I delight in the law of God according to the inward man, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity of the law of sin, which is in my members." In other words, there's a downward pull in my fabric as a human being, sewn in me in the Garden of Eden. There's something of unrighteousness in me that I am powerless to overcome in my own strength. And Paul comes to this conclusion. He says, Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? How will I ever get free? from the habitual behaviors, the things that I want to change and I can't change. And then finally he says in the first part of verse 25, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. In Galatians chapter three, verses 21 to 25, Paul makes the statement about the law. He says, is the law against the promises of God? No, certainly not. For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. But the scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. The law was our tutor. In the original King James, our schoolmaster, to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. In other words, the law taught us about our need of God. The intent of the law is to put us to death. The intent of the law is to get to Romans 7, 18, where Paul says, I know that in me, that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells. To get to the place where we're done. That's what the baptism of John was all about. I don't know if you knew that or not, but when John was baptizing, there's a stream of people, like John's baptism was a baptism of hopelessness, basically. It was a baptism of repentance, of trying to be good, trying to be God, trying to be godly in our own strength. And the people were streaming out of Jerusalem under the preaching of John. Even religious leaders came to John's baptism. And John looked at them and said, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee the wrath to come? In other words, you have the seed of the serpent in you. A serpent has no ears, in other words. So who warned you? Because a serpent can't hear, it's led by its own tongue. And that seed was in all of humanity that was trained to be godly in its own strength. I hope you're getting this because it's profound. You have to see this before you can see where I'm going with this message. And John says to the Pharisees, if you have been able to produce the fruit of godliness through human effort, produce it now. And if you can't, get ready to be cut down and thrown into the fire. You see, John, it was a challenge. He said, don't claim to be children of Abraham. Don't say, I'm children of the promise of God, this restorative promise of God's blessing in the earth through his people. Don't claim it, because that promise is supernatural. It's not achieved by human effort. John said, God from these stones can raise up children to Abraham. It's a supernatural thing that God does. So if you're claiming that you've been able to achieve it through human effort, then produce the fruit. And if you can't produce it, be prepared to be cut down and thrown into the fire. Can you imagine? How would you like that for a sermon today? So everybody's going into the water, and I consider it like a baptism of hopelessness. I can't do this. I'm dead. I tried. I failed. I can't do this. And you go down into John's baptism, but the beauty of John's baptism is when people went down into that water of repentance, of trying to be holy and human strength, when they come out, the immediate thing that John says, behold the Lamb of God. I love that. You see, you can't see the Lamb until you've come out of a place of human effort and trying to be holy in your own strength. You've just come to the end of yourself. I'm a dead man, God. I have no hope for the future. My promises are worthless. And when you finally see it, and you come out of that water, God says, as John said, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. I don't know about you, but I want to see the Lamb every day. I don't want to be looking in the mirror and looking for some virtue in myself because there is no virtue in me. For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. Behold this free gift of freedom from the power and penalty of sin. Oh, thank God. 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21, speaking of Jesus Christ, we heard it when Pastor Nick got up today. For he made him, that's Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Now, that would be blasphemy if it's not written in the Bible. Do you know what that says? In Christ, I am as clean and sinless as God. Phenomenal truth. Some people can hardly even make themselves to say it. I am the righteous, I am as clean as God is through Jesus Christ, his son. I am born again. Gospel of John again, chapter three. I hope I'm not going too fast for you today. Beginning at verse five, Jesus said to a religious leader in his time, most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born of water in the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. In other words, you've had a natural birth. Embryonic fluid, you've had a natural birth, and now you need a spiritual birth to enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. And so you ask me today, what exactly does that mean? That means the limitations of my first birth, which was a birth into sin, a natural birth, a sin-dominated life, are over. I'm a new creation. When I come to Christ, it's over. The limitations are gone. I am, as Christ was now, raised from the power of death and brought into the victorious life of Christ, who now, through the Holy Spirit, lives within me. I don't have today a concept about God. I do have concepts about Him, but I have the actual living God inside of my physical vessel. I am the temple of the Holy Spirit now. So are you. We are God's abiding place on the earth. We're not just an argument about God. We have the Godhead. We have the third person of the Godhead in these physical bodies. That's what being born again actually means. We're forgiven sin, brought back into relationship and brought to a place where the promise of God made to Abraham now is ours. That we're going to be multiplied, changed, transformed, blessed to the point where we become a blessing to everybody around us. So just to recap, I am righteous because of Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, I'm the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. Secondly, as Christ was raised from the dead, Paul says in Romans, by the power of the Spirit, the same Holy Spirit will quicken me and raise me out of the power of death and bring me into the power of the life that God has for me. And thirdly, I am and you are the temple, the dwelling place of God. I mean, if all we could do is meditate on that today, wouldn't that be enough? Like you walk out, you know, when you walk out of this room, you're not leaving God behind. He's going with you where you go. If you're a genuine believer, you have the Holy Spirit. You're, you know, I love it when, I don't love it, but when preachers would say, God is here. Well, of course he is. He came with me and he came with you. Of course, God is here. You know that statement it belies the lack of understanding as if God said in the cosmos we get together We go kumbaya and he just comes down. Oh God is here. No God came in with me and he goes out with me He came in with you and he goes out with you. I love it We're he's not he's not coming down to meet with us We're coming together to meet with each other and subsequently worship him because he's the one who's been carrying us He's redeemed us. He's kept us. He's changing us and Now it gets better. Now we're getting into the good stuff. In Ephesians chapter two, verses one to six, Paul tells us, I'm now seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And you, he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. I am and you are right now in Christ at the right hand of God. He is the head, we are the body. You cannot separate the head from the body. He sits in victory. and we sit in victory with Him. Thanks be to God. That's where we are this morning. Yes, we're here. I'm gonna talk about that in just a moment. But we are primarily and predominantly in Christ at the right hand of God, as righteous as God is, freely forgiven, freely received. We can't get any more received or forgiven than we are this morning. We are received by the Father as the Son Jesus Christ is received. We are His body now. He is the head. He sits at the right hand. We sit with Him in heavenly places. How do I understand this? How do I wrap my mind around this? The illustration that always comes to me is a runner who runs a race. You've seen races on television in the Olympics and they come and they get to the line and they do this at the line. They all do. They stretch their arms out and it's the head that crosses the line first. As soon as the head crosses the line, the body has also won the race. Even though the body is on the other side of the line, the body wins because the head has crossed the line. When Jesus Christ crossed the line into eternity and won the victory for us, we went with him. Go ahead and yell. Go ahead. Praise God. We went with him. Now Romans chapter eight, in verse 37 to 39, he says, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him. How are we more than conquerors? Well, the only way I can describe it is you go into a game and the score is already on the board before the game begins. Or let's say we're in a football match and we start in the end zone, the enemy's end zone that is. We start, we've already won, we're already there. We're more than conquerors through Christ who loved us. "'I am persuaded,' Paul said, "'neither death, nor life, nor angels, "'nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, "'nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, "'nor any other created thing shall be able "'to separate us from the love of God "'which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'" Hallelujah, hallelujah. Not only are we more than conquerors, we are secure in Christ. Romans 8.31. What shall we say then to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who should bring a charge against God's elect? It's God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? In other words, who can take me away from that position I'm in? Who can marginalize or maximize my failure? Yeah, we all struggle. We all fail, but God promises to lift us up. He promises to hold us. He said, you're in my Father's hand. No one can take you out of my Father's hand. By the grace of God, he makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us? I think I read that, but shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, for your sake we're killed all the day long. We're counted as sheep for the slaughter. Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. Now, under the old covenant, which was that which came before the cross, the law, People lived by making promises to God. So you went to their form of religious observance, you made a sacrifice, you were declared clean, then you made fresh and new promises to God. I promise, I promise to do this, I promise to be that, I promise. And we couldn't keep it, none of us could. I don't think there's anybody here that ever kept all their promises. We just couldn't do it. We couldn't be other than what we were. We wanted to be, as Paul says in Romans, but we couldn't. We tried, but we failed. But you see, the beauty of the new covenant is because we are now in Christ at the right hand of God. We don't live anymore by making promises to God. We now live by God's promises to us. You see, under the law, it was a covenant of works. You think you can be godly in your own strength, so let's see how, work your way back into favor. Do your best to be godly without God. And once we realize that we failed, now under the new covenant, after the cross, which means the New Testament, we live now. Listen to what Peter says in 2 Peter 1, verses two to four. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord. as his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceeding great and precious promises that through these you might become partakers of the divine nature or this new nature. If you're in Christ, you become a new creation. Having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. In other words, God's saying, you don't have to make promises to me anymore, because you can't keep them. But now, you're going to live through my promises to you. All I ask you to do is to believe the promises I make to you. Put one foot in front of the other, and when you fall, let me lift you up again, and we'll keep going on this journey together. Hallelujah. Now, I'm getting close to the end. In Philippians chapter three, verses 12 to 14, Paul says, not that I've already attained or am already perfected, but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus also has laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Now, I know there's some thinking today, okay, you said we're at the right hand of God. but I also live on planet Earth, you understand, you know what I mean? I love the fact that I'm received by God, I'm clean, I'm the righteousness of God, I'm the temple of the Holy Spirit, but I also live down on planet Earth with all my struggles and trials. The Puritan writers wrote about this. They actually understood this truth. As I said in the beginning, some of these truths were just lost in the flurry. They're not new, they're old. And in the flurry of religious activity, in our zeal to be exciting maybe in our church services, we kind of lost some of these truths. You see, I have a standing in God, at the right hand of God, in Christ. What's my standing? Fully received, fully cleansed, fully delivered, as righteous as God is in Christ Jesus. That's my standing, but my state is way down here. And that's what Paul's saying. I haven't really, I haven't attained to everything that God's called me to be, but the Holy Spirit being the third agent of the Godhead dwelling in me, all my life is lifting up my state in line with my standing. Does that make sense to you? So I've not attained, but I'm moving towards where I really am in Christ Jesus. So that's why the devil can't condemn me, because the cleanness I have doesn't come from my human effort, it comes from God, that's why. The Bible says that every tongue that rises against you in judgment, you have the right to condemn. God says, because my people have a cleanness that I gave to them. I declared them clean. So in order for the devil to get to you, my friend, he's got to go through Jesus to get to you. He wouldn't dare go any, it's like a fly going into one of those blue machines that just kind of zaps it. He wouldn't go anywhere near Jesus Christ to try to get to you or to me. Thank God. all my life. Paul says, I've not achieved it all, but I'm leaving behind what I need to leave behind. Not by human effort, but by faith, I'm leaving it behind. By faith, I'm going to be a different man. By faith, I'll be a better husband. By faith, I'll be the father that God wants me to be. Not by might, not by power, but by the Spirit of God and by the promises of God, I will be the man that God has called me to be. So I press towards the goal of this high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Hallelujah to the Lamb of God. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. This is who I am in Christ Jesus. Now I want to recap. I'm going to revisit this, okay? I think it should come up on the screen shortly. Number one, in Christ Jesus I am. Number two, in Christ Jesus I am. I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Come on now. Of God. That was God's gift to us. We don't declare ourselves that. God told us that. I declare you that you are as clean as I am through my son, Jesus Christ. Therefore, no voice can condemn you. And every tongue that rises against you in judgment, you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord. I have declared you clean because you put your faith and trust and confidence in my son. Next, in Jesus Christ I am. The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead will quicken my mortal body. I am brought to life. When He rose from the grave, I rose with Him. Hallelujah to the Lamb of God. When He ascended to the right hand of the Father, I ascended with Him. And I'm seated in Him at the right hand of God right now. Oh, hallelujah. Next, in Christ, I am the temple of the Holy Spirit. This is so well done. Thank you so much. Praise God. God dwells in me. I'm not just an argument about God. God dwells in me. One time I had a, I was teaching at Times Square Church, and I had a Muslim man come up to me, and he was infuriated. And he stood before me, he was so mad, his eyes were red, I still remember him, and he said, how dare you? How dare you say that Jesus Christ is the only way to eternal life? I said to him, Would you give me five minutes to tell you what Jesus Christ has done for me? And he said, yes. So in the next five minutes, I just shared what Christ has done in my life. And I looked at him, I said, now you tell me what Allah has done for you. He teared up and he said, thank you. And he walked away. And I just trust, see, we're not called to be an argument. I could stand and argue theology with that man for the next 25 hours and get nowhere with him. Leonard Ravenhill once told me, he said, a man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an argument. In Christ, what's the next one? I am heavenly places. Hallelujah. I think we adequately covered that one. In Christ, I am. Hallelujah is right. Praise God. I know the score. I read the book. I know the end of the story. I'm already in the end zone. I actually preached this to what he called promise keepers in the new stadium in Texas. And I said, guys, all we got to do, we're already in the end zone. All we got to do is spike the ball. and celebrate. You should have seen 40,000 men went to their feet and started shouting. It was amazing. It was better than the winning score of... I don't want to get into sports. I'm not sure of the terminology. In Christ I am. I'm sealed in the hand of God the Father. No one, who can take me out of God the Father's hand? No one. Nothing, powers, principalities, names, things, mountains, valleys, circumstances, floods, fires, trials, difficulties, accusations, nothing can take me out of the hand of God the Father. In Christ I live by? Faith. Not by making promises to God, but by God's promises to me. My part is believe God and just put one foot in front of the other. In Christ I have? I have an assured future. Praise be to God, more than a conqueror. I will live a victorious life. I will have the power to leave behind what needs to be left behind, and I will continuously move towards that which God, the fullness. I will never achieve it on this earth, folks, but I'll get closer and closer and closer and closer to what God wants me to be. Praise God. And lastly, in Christ, I am a son or a daughter of God. What a phenomenal thought. Now somebody's going to say to me today, well, what about sin then? Where does that fit in? Do I sin? Yes, you do, and I do. But sin, because of Christ, is not imputed to the New Testament believer. If it was, you'd be lost. You'd be saved at three, lost at four, saved at five, lost at six. You just hope that you'd be right back under the law again. Sin is not imputed to the honest New Testament believer. Somebody has said to me one time, do you believe in eternal security? I said, I do believe in eternal security for the eternal believer. I do believe for the person who's not playing games with God, not using this just for fire insurance, not trying to live so close to hell to see what they can get away with. It's a person with an honest heart that says, God, I want you. And the Lord looks at you and says, I want you too with all my heart. I have loved you with an everlasting love. And yes, you may fail, but I will not impute it. I took that upon myself, Jesus would say. I took your failings, I took your faults, I took your flaws, I took your struggles upon myself. As a legitimate believer, I'm not talking to game players. None of this applies to the game player, by the way. It applies to the legitimate believer. We're not called to walk on eggshells. We're not called to live under condemnation. Yes, we do fall. Yes, we do fail. Yes, we do stumble. But God says, I'll pick you up every time you fall. We will walk together. And the next time you'll walk farther before you stumble. Then you'll walk farther before you stumble. Then you won't stumble at all in that area of your life. I will give you the victory because you are more than a conqueror. In Romans chapter 6, there were some people that said, because Paul preached this, and they understood it, and they said, wow, if it's that good, let's go sin that grace may abound. And Paul said, God forbid, how could you even think like that? How could you think like that? How can that be in your thinking if you truly are a child of God? No, no, this truth that we find through the scriptures is not for somebody just to go out and just say, well, I'll live any way I want. No, it's not for that at all. Never was meant to be. It's for the genuine, honest, sincere. That's all that God requires. Just bring to me an honest heart. You don't have to bring to me your victories, but you can bring to me your defeats. You don't have to bring anything but an honest heart to me and I will redeem you. I will cleanse you. I will hold you. I will love you. I will confess you before my father till the day I bring you home. No wonder, if there's such a thing as a crown, when we get to heaven one day, oh God. If that thing can be taken off our heads, we'll be throwing them like frisbees at the throne of Christ. Thank God, I recognize I have nothing to do with any of this. I recognize it was none of me and all of you. I recognize, God, that my best efforts were just filthy rags, God. It was your blood, it was your cross, it was your Holy Spirit, it was your promises, it was your strength. It was all you. And there'll be a shout of glory in that moment. Oh God, there'll be a shout of glory. There'll be crowns flying through the air from everywhere, from every tribe, every kindred, every tongue, be flying to the throne of God. You alone are worthy. You alone are God. You alone are holy. You alone are victorious. You alone gave us the standing we had and have today. It's all you, Jesus. You alone gave us strength. You alone multiplied us. You alone, God, gave us a song to sing and a place to stand in this crooked world. You alone, God, picked me up when nobody else could or would. God, you alone, you alone, oh Jesus Christ, are my strength. You alone are my life. There's nobody But you, or as we sang earlier, nobody like you. Jesus, Jesus. You see, once we get this truth, like Ephesus, the church of Ephesus in Revelation, they got all wrapped up in works. They were testing and proving doctrine and they were doing good works and even more as time progressed, but they had lost this understanding. Jesus said, you've lost your first love. And if you don't come back to it, you'll lose your testimony. We'll be gone. You'll be just another working group of religionists. That's all you will be. You won't be a people that are rejoicing. You won't be a people that the victory of God exudes through. It'd be just more workers in the name of another God, just like every other religion in the earth. No, what marks us apart is the presence, the power, the relationship, the song, the testimony, the glory of God. So Father, I thank you, Lord. God, I thank you today. I thank you, Lord, for the knowledge of who we are in Christ. Now, Lord, would you seal it? Would you seal it, Lord, so we don't lose it? Would you seal it so we don't drop it on the floor on the way out of the chapel today? Would you seal it, Lord, so it becomes a reality in our lives, not just a passing thought or a passing shout of victory, God, that doesn't follow us into the rest of our day? Lord Jesus Christ, thank you, God. Thank you for this incredible victory. We're gonna sing a song here. I don't know what song you have in mind. And I'd like to give an altar call. Here's my altar call. I'm dead, I'm done, I wanna see Jesus. It's really simple. Maybe it's your whole life, maybe it's a little piece of your life, I don't know. I'm just done, I'm dead. I'm going into John's baptism because I wanna see Jesus. I'm gonna give up, I'm just gonna give up trying to change in this area of my life. God, you have to take over. I recognize that within me, in this area of my life is no good thing. So it's a simple altar call, I'm done. I just want to see Jesus. I want what I've heard today. I want that truth to be real to me. I want the truth to set me free. Didn't Jesus say, you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free. It's not a head knowledge, it's a heart embracing. No, the connotation is intimacy as in marriage. You shall know the truth. You shall take it to heart. You shall believe it. You shall love it. And it will set you free. We are to be a free people. We are a free people. By God's grace, let's stand together. And if that's you, I'd like the privilege of praying for you. Those who aren't will respond. I'm just done. Come on, just come. Please just come. Just join those that are coming. Don't be ashamed. Listen, we've all got struggles, trust me. Just the people who just say, I'm just done. God, I'm done. I'm done. And secondly, I'm just done not believing you. I'm not gonna let unbelief govern my life anymore. I'm not gonna let the devil try to tell me who I am. I'm not gonna let my own heart tell me who I am. God, you tell me who I am. And that's what I'm gonna believe. That's my value system now, I'm gonna believe that. And thank God there will be deliverances here. I'm talking about deliverances from wrong thinking. Didn't Jesus say, I came to open prison doors? I came to heal those that are bruised and hard. I came to set free those that are captive. How many people in God's kingdom are captive by wrong thinking about Jesus and about themselves? And because of it, they're captivated. No, Jesus said, I came to do these things. And so you're seeing it done right now. We don't need to shout. We can, but we don't need to. We don't need to dance, jump, shake, shimmy. We don't need to do anything. Just let him open the door. Hallelujah. Is there anybody else? And especially if you don't know Christ as Savior, would you come too as well? If you've never committed your life to Jesus Christ, you need to come, thank you. Praise God. Just want to give a moment. Think it through now. I want to see Jesus. I just want to see Jesus. Hallelujah. Father, thank you for the lives that you're touching right now. Lord, I believe God, I do, with all my heart, that the ministry you came to do, you're doing today. It's your word that's been spoken. It's your testimony that's been declared. And the things you've said about us, we have believed. And so God, I'm thanking you, Lord, that you are delivering right now. You are setting people free from just wrong thinking, from poor self images. God, we're so foolish that we're trying to present ourselves to you. Because we don't have anything to present to you. Nothing, nothing. We don't even have a bag lunch, nothing. God, it's all you. It's all you, it's only ever been you. And yet that's the way you wanted it. You didn't want us to bring our efforts to you. You want it to be everything to us. So Father, thank you for prison doors opening, blinded eyes seeing, wounded hearts being healed, captives being released, and the poor having the treasure of Christ open to them. Those of us who know that we don't have the strength to do this, God, thank you. God, thank you. God, thank you. In Jesus' name, as we sing this song, I would ask the elders, if an elder is at the altar, just stay there. But those who are not, would you come, pastors and elders, and just lay hands on these folks that are here? And we're gonna believe God for a special touch to come on each of their lives. Thank you, Lord.