Not God

Grab your message notes that look like this as we continue our weekend summer series in the book of Daniel. Monday is the 4th of July and so today we're talking about the 4th of Daniel. Daniel chapter 4. Turn there if you have your Bibles with you. Now I've said this before to some of you but one of the most influential pastors in my life has been a guy named John Ortberg, the pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church up in Menlo Park on the peninsula.

And you know how once in a while you hear a message that just rivets you to your chair? Two years ago John preached a message on the chapter I'm in today, Daniel chapter 4, and it had me riveted and I want to give him credit for many of the overarching ideas in this message because he was the first one to show me how the theme in Daniel chapter 4 ties back in to the whole rest of the Bible. The theme in this chapter starts in Genesis chapter 1 and goes all the way to really the very last verse of the very last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, and the theme is about your identity, my identity, and God's identity in retrospect to that, in perspective.

And so the theme to this really can be summarized in two words and it's this, not God. That's the theme to Daniel chapter 4. Say those two words with me, not God. You are not God, I am not God. Does this come as news to anybody here this morning? A few years ago a man named Ernest Kurtz wrote a book that's become kind of the definitive history of Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12-step recovery movement and he gave it, I thought, a very intriguing title. It's called Not God.

And Kurtz said way down deep, every Alcoholics problem has been first claiming God-like powers, especially that of control. And he said that recovery, healing, sanity begins with a single realization, I am, say it with me, not God. I need help from a power greater than myself. And this I am God illusion is not unique to Alcoholics. In fact I looked this up this week, there is even a website called I am the center of the universe dot com where you can get I am the center of the universe t-shirts. I am the center of the universe mugs for your car. The yes I am the center of the universe bumper sticker. You can even get your kids started early with their very own I am the center of the universe onesie.

Okay, we all think I'm the center of the universe. The writer Anne Lamott once wrote, "The biggest difference between you and God is God doesn't think he's you." Right? And this is actually a major theological point in the Bible. Some of you know way back in the first book of the Bible in Genesis what lies behind the very first sin. Well the tempter comes to Eve and says, "When you eat of it the fruit your eyes will be opened and you will be what? Like God." And that has been the core temptation of human beings ever since.

The core human problem is not just ignorance or lack of awareness or a need for enlightenment or a need for information. The core human problem is really a toxic pride, a toxic self-centeredness and it poisons the way I deal with circumstances, it poisons my relationships, it poisons especially my relationship with God because I think I'm the center of it all. The world revolves around me and that means the most important discovery in life is I am what? Not God. Jot that down at the top of your notes. That's the most important discovery in life.

Like they say in recovery groups, the realization I am not God is the beginning of spiritual and moral sanity. And I want to make sure that you take this away if you take away nothing else. And so if you don't mind would you please turn to the person next to you on your right and on your left and say, "Hi my name is whatever your name is and I'm not God." Would you just take a moment or two to introduce yourselves and make that clear. Everybody got that down?

What's this have to do with Daniel chapter 4? Well Daniel chapter 4 is really the iconic story of a man who compared to all the other human beings seemed like a godlike character but he had to learn the hard way that even he was not like God. And it's a great story because you can see in the character development arc of the story so many of our stories. I think you'll be able to relate to this. You could see it divides into three acts like every good story and act one is all as well or so it seems.

The king, King Nebuchadnezzar thinks everything's real groovy. Verse 4, "I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at home in my palace contented and prosperous." Now prosperous is right. Let me show you just how prosperous King Nebuchadnezzar was. This is not a character just invented by a storyteller. He was an actual historical figure and try to get your heads around this data. Archaeologists have discovered a hundred and twenty six clay tablets that are just chronicles of the inscriptions that he put on all the buildings he built.

Are you following that? It took a hundred and twenty six pages of clay tablets just to record the inscriptions that he chiseled onto his buildings. That's a lot of buildings and his buildings were amazing. Think about this, if you look at a list of the seven wonders of the ancient world, what do you have? The pyramids of Giza, the temple of Artemis, the statue of Zeus at Olympia, the one everybody forgets, the mausoleum of Halicarnassus in Turkey, the colossus of Rhodes, the lighthouse of Alexandria, and the seventh was the one Nebuchadnezzar built, the hanging gardens of Babylon.

It was that beautiful, he was that powerful, he was that legendary, he was that much of an artist. He built one of the top seven most beautiful buildings ever. And so imagine him looking out from his palace. You know what he sees? Archaeologists know this. In fact they've uncovered part of it. These are the gates of Babylon. They're now in a museum in Berlin with one of his inscriptions on them and this was just part of a 20 mile long series of city walls that were around the city of Babylon. 20 miles in circumference.

They were double walls and the outer wall was wide enough for a chariot to be drawn four horses wide. There was literally nothing like it in the entire ancient world. In fact the ancient Greek historian Herodotus said, "In addition to its size, Babylon surpasses in splendor any city in the known world and Nebuchadnezzar built it." Now I want to ask you something. This is how the ancient elite saw it. Nebuchadnezzar built it. This is how Nebuchadnezzar saw it. I built it. But let me ask you this. Did Nebuchadnezzar actually build it? Did he take every brick and put it into place? Did he measure off where the gates were supposed to be? Did he mix all of the paint and so on to put on those walls? No.

Who built it? Slaves. That's right. That's how they did it in those days. Slaves built it. Probably tens of thousands of slaves built it. But this is how invisible they were to the ancient world. This is how little people cared about them. They weren't even mentioned. Nebuchadnezzar built it. The slaves were ciphers. They were zeroes. Nobody cared. Nebuchadnezzar built it. That's how Herodotus saw it. That's how Nebuchadnezzar saw it. That's how everybody saw it.

Let me give you a little picture of Nebuchadnezzar's worldview. I'm going to show you a couple of images that I think will help you understand. A little trip into his mind here. Do you remember that classic New Yorker magazine cover? A New Yorkers view of the world? Do you remember this? I love it because you got part of Manhattan very detailed there. And then an indistinct blur called New Jersey. And way off in the distance some mountains, LA, and a little mound called Japan. And that's it! We'll change Manhattan to Babylon. And this is his worldview. Nothing else matters. We are the center of the world. And I built it.

Another example to help you understand him. In his mind he really was the most interesting man in the world. He conquered every known army. He married all the beautiful girls. He had it all going on. He was contented and prosperous. It's all good. Except for one thing. There is one thing in Nebuchadnezzar's life that his control does not extend to. And it really bugs him. We have seen this already in the book of Daniel. What is it? His dream life. That's right. When he goes to sleep at night he cannot control what he dreams. And some of his dreams disturb him.

He has a dream one night. It's the dream of a tree that is the biggest tree on earth. Compared to this tree, all the other trees are just blades of grass. It's a glorious tree. And then this tree in his dream is cut down by somebody from heaven. But the stump is not rooted out. And eventually the tree shoots back up out of the stump end of dream. And the king wants to know, "What does this dream mean?" And again none of his advisors can tell him or will tell him. And so he asks Daniel and Daniel interprets.

And the first part sounds pretty good. Daniel says to him, "Your Majesty, you are that tree. You have become great and strong. Your greatness has grown until it reaches the sky and your dominion extends to distant parts of the earth." And that sounds about right to Nebuchadnezzar. That's right. I am the most amazing man in the world. And then Daniel says, "And King, you are that stump." What? He says, "Yeah, you will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes. Your kingdom will be restored to you when you acknowledge that what? Heaven rules." Say that with me again. "Heaven rules." Key phrase there that Nebuchadnezzar did not believe. He thought, "Nebuchadnezzar rules!" But Daniel is saying, "You've got to acknowledge heaven rules." In other words, you're not God.

Now I got a question for you. How many people do you think dared to say this to the king? Not many. But Daniel doesn't even stop there. This is an amazing story because Daniel goes on, you know, he's a prophet. And the role of a prophet is not just to say, "You're bad and God's gonna judge you." It's to give people hope and give them a road back to God. And so Daniel says, "Therefore, your majesty, be pleased to accept my advice." Don't you love that by the way? Be pleased to accept this. Very polite but very truthful. Let me politely say God is judging you.

And he says, "What you need to do is renounce your sins by doing what is right and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed." Remember the king was oppressing people to build all his stuff. It's interesting that that's the one sin that Daniel asks of Nebuchadnezzar to repent of. Apparently this is his big weakness. He says, "It may be that then your prosperity will continue." You see, this is not just about Nebuchadnezzar changing the name of the God he worships. Like, "Oh, whatever, I don't worship Nebuchadnezzar or Baal. I worship Jehovah." Right? And then just living his life the way he'd always lived it.

This is about him renouncing his sins. When a human being is serious about getting right with God, a painful part of that is coming to recognize the truth about me. I am not God. And not just because I don't live in heaven and I'm not infinite and invisible. I'm not God because I'm sinful. I'm not holy. And I need to not just worship God but renounce my sins. And God says this to every single one of us. The Bible says, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." But you know what? In my observation, most of the time we want to maybe worship God but not really renounce our sins.

We want to say, "Yeah, I'm a Christian," or, "Yeah, I follow God," but we want to take our sins with us. I think it's Chuck Swindoll who tells his great classic story. You got to try to picture this. He says, "Eidith, a mother of eight, was coming home from the neighbor's house one Saturday afternoon and things seemed too quiet as she walked into her house." Parents, you know what I'm talking about? Those times when you're going, "Things are quiet, too quiet." And so she peered through the screen door curiously of her own house. And she saw five of her youngest children huddled together concentrating on something.

As she crept closer to them, tried to discover the center of their attention, she could not believe her eyes because smack dab in the middle of the circle were five baby skunks. "Eidith screamed at the top of her voice, 'Quick children, run!' And each kid grabbed the skunk and ran." And that's exactly what we do. God says, "That's dangerous. Run!" And we grab our skunk and we run. We take our sins with us. My greed, my pride, my apathy, my judgment of others, sexual immorality, selfishness, deceit, gluttony, hypocrisy, whatever it is.

Like John Ortberg says, "These things get so deeply down into us that we just carry them around with us. We're so used to them, we don't even think they're there." But every once in a while maybe a friend like Daniel, somebody who knows you and somebody who cares, says, "You know what? You need to renounce your sins. That one specifically. It's unhealthy for you. It's toxic for your relationships. It's toxic for your relationship with God. You have to leave that behind." And what do we do? We usually do exactly what the king did. We go, "Thank you so much for your insight. Don't think you're right." And we do nothing.

And that leads us to act two, hitting bottom. Watch this, verse 29, "12 months later, as the king was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, he said, 'Is this not the great Babylon?' Here comes the misunderstanding again. 'I have built as the royal residence by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty.'" He has not changed a thing. It's still all about Nebuchadnezzar and how awesome I am, right? How many of you remember Joe Namath? Can I say a show of hands? Remember Joe Namath, the great quarterback? When he was at the top of the world a long time ago, he wrote a book with a great title.

It was called, "I Can't Wait Until Tomorrow Because I Get Better Looking Every Day." I'm pretty sure he meant it as a joke, but this was where Nebuchadnezzar's head is at. You know, "Oh me, oh me, how majestic is my name and all the earth." But did you notice how long God gave Nebuchadnezzar 12 months later? It says God waits 12 months and that means for 365 days. Every day, Nebuchadnezzar wakes up and chooses probably not even consciously every day, subconsciously, to push the warning out of his mind.

His friend Daniel did an intervention on him. "Nebuchadnezzar, you got to stop oppressing people. You got to realize you're not God." And he went, "Yeah, I'll think about that tomorrow, right? One day I'll turn to God, but not today. One day I will renounce my sins not yet. It's complicated." One day at a time until 365 days later, as he avoids eye contact with Daniel every time he walks down the hallway and so on, he finds himself here. His ego has grown to the point where he says it is all by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty.

And so the Bible says that God has to move to plan B. He tried warning the king and that is always God's first choice, right? It's like parents, their first choice is always reasoning with the kids, right? But does it always work? How many parents do we have here? Show of hands. How many parents? Okay, raise your hand if reasoning with your children always works in every occasion, right? It just doesn't. Is it always effective to say to a three-year-old, "I earnestly appeal to your better nature." Stop pulling your sister's hair or the consequences for you may be dire. No, that does not work.

Like they say, there's a phrase for people who believe you can raise kids by only appealing to reason. We call them people who don't have kids, right? That's the bottom line. You know, Dave Berry is the humorist. He says in one of his columns, "Sometimes people ask me, Dave, what is the key to parenthood? I always answer, lowering your standards." And it's so true. He says, "First kid, pacifier drops on the floor, you sterilize it in boiling water. Second kid, pacifier drops on the floor, you run it under some tap water. Third kid, you spit on it and wipe it on your sleeve, right? Lowering your standards."

And sometimes I think we secretly go, "I've got to be like God's five billionth kid." And maybe he's been worn down, you know. Maybe he's lowered his standards by now to my level and he doesn't care about the skunk I'm carrying around anymore. But God doesn't lower his standards. Holiness is always holiness. And when reason doesn't work with you, like a good parent, he will let you bear the consequences. He will let you hit bottom to learn your lesson.

It says, "Immediately what had been said about Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. He was driven away from people and ate grass like the ox. His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird." Now of course this doesn't mean he actually grew feathers. This is a poetic description but it's very accurate, isn't it? Look at this. Does this remind you of any other rich powerful guy ending up with long fingernails and long hair? Howard Hughes anybody, right? It happens to many people.

This verse is a poetic way of saying, "He went insane and he became homeless. The great man pictured on the country's coin who built the greatest palace in history, who built the Hanging Gardens. And think of this, he did it all on the backs of slaves because remember what one thing did Daniel ask him to do? Repent, renounce your sins, and be what? Kind of the oppressed and he didn't. And now guess what? He's one of them. Now he's one of the least of these. Now he's like a homeless guy that you would just walk right past. Turns out, not God.

And in case you're going, "Well this is just a Bible story, it could never happen." I remember when Margot Kidder, the glamorous movie star who played Lois Lane in the Superman movies, went missing. Do you remember this? And then in April 1996 she was found homeless, toothless, living in cast-off clothing. A movie star who made millions had spent it all and had become homeless. I looked this up and she said in an interview that I read just this week that it was a huge wake-up call for her. She said, "I could ignore the truth about myself no longer."

She had to hit bottom to realize that the king in the story had to hit bottom to realize it, but this isn't about Margot Kidder or the king. It's about you and me today. You don't have to hit bottom to realize it. I hope you don't. Because here's the thing, if you're paying attention between your friends warning, like Daniel warning the king, and the day you hit bottom, God is gracious. He's still good. He's still God. He's still loving. And he will give you little reality check moments. Little moments where he whispers to you, "You're not God." Do you know what I mean?

I was thinking about this when I read this story about Don Shula. He used to be the coach of the Miami Dolphins. Remember Shula? He was a two-time Super Bowl winner. I love the story. He said he was on vacation in a little town in New England, and he went to the movies one night with his wife, and there was just a small handful of people in this tiny theater, in this old downtown, in this little New England town. But when Shula and his wife walk in, the people all there stand up to their feet and they all applaud, "Yay!"

And Shula was secretly pleased, and he wanted to make sure this registered with his wife, and he said to her, "Gosh, honey, I guess there's no place in America where I'm not known." And the demand runs up to him and shakes hands and says, "We are just so glad to see you folks," because the manager said he wasn't going to start the movie till at least 10 people came in, and you're number nine and number ten! Not God. A little whisper. Not God.

Ever have those moments? I'll never forget. I was walking around the mall here in Capitola with my brother-in-law, Jim, my sister's husband, and he'd never visited us before, and we were walking around, and a lot of people were smiling at me in the mall thinking, "Oh, they must recognize me from church," and I was thinking to myself, just like Shula, "I hope this is registering with Jim, you know. Look at all the people smiling at me." I'm kind of going like this to people, "Hey, how's it going?" I'm thinking, "Jim's got to know how popular I am in Capitola! Yeah!"

People are smiling and I'm seeing other people kind of like look at me and smile, and as we walked to the car, I couldn't resist. I said, "Yeah, guess you noticed how in a small town, you know, just it's not just me, really. Everybody knows everybody," and he goes, "Yeah, I guess that's what it was," and then he reaches and pulls a big sticker from a shirt that I'd gotten the day before at Christmas that said, "Extra-large," all the way down it, and he said, "I guess you're just real popular, Mr. Extra-large." Not God, right? You get these little moments, and so what happens when I hear those little whispers? "Oh, I'm not God."

What happens when I hit bottom? What happens when things are spiraling out of control? What do I do? What does Nebuchadnezzar do? At the end of Act 2, he's a homeless guy, but that brings us to Act 3, restored to sanity. The turning point for Nebuchadnezzar comes in the 34th verse of the 4th chapter of Daniel, where he says, this is Nebuchadnezzar speaking here, it's amazing, at the end of that time, and we find out he was homeless for seven years, "I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven." And I hope you understand that when he says, "Raised my eyes toward heaven," he is not saying just, "I looked up to the sky."

He's saying his spiritual posture changed. He stopped looking inward, and he lifted his eyes toward God and said, "I'm shifting my focus to God. I'm shifting my allegiance to God. I'm looking at the center of the universe instead of in the mirror. You are God, I am not. God, not God." That's what's wrapped up in the phrase, "I raised my eyes toward heaven." And that's really all God's waiting for. God always responds to the heart turned toward him. Nebuchadnezzar says, "And my sanity was restored." Sanity. That means seeing things the way they really are, right? Not living in an illusion.

You hear people who've been through 12-step groups sometimes say, "My sanity was restored," right? That's right in the second step. And they're not saying they were diagnosed in every case as, you know, clinically insane, and then their sanity was restored. They're saying at a much deeper level, "I'm not illusioned anymore. I've been disillusioned in a good way. I'm seeing reality with clarity. Now I have sanity." And that's what God is waiting for to restore sanity in your life too. You know what is going on in this man's mind? Let me put it this way.

Ever heard of the Copernican Revolution? Before Copernicus came along in 1543, we Earthlings really did think we were the center of the universe. This is a Ptolemaic map of the solar system. Pre-Copernicus, you can see how the Sun is just another thing out there that revolves around the Earth. All the planets revolve around the Earth. We Earthlings are what the universe is all about. And then along came Copernicus. And he pointed to the Sun and said, "Actually, that's the center of the solar system, guys." And what happened? Do people say, "Well, that explains a lot of things that we've been wondering. That explains why the planets move weird in the sky. That explains what we have not understood about this." Now it all makes sense. Did they say that? No.

What'd they do? They said, "We're gonna ban your books." They said, "We're gonna ignore you." They said, "We're gonna throw you and your like-minded friend Galileo in prison." But he was right. He put us in our proper place. Well, the king here at the end of Daniel 4 is having his own little Copernican Revolution of the soul. A total reset. He goes, "Ah, I've been having it wrong. I am not the center of it all. I can see it all so clearly now. Unfortunately, just like the king, pre-realization, many of us have a view of the way the universe works a lot like this. I am at the center of it all.

But then God, in so many ways to us, says, "No, you're not the star of the show. You're not in charge. You are not number one." And guess what? Just like the people Copernicus talked to, and just like the king when Daniel talked to him, "We don't want to hear it. We shoot the messenger. We ignore it." Why did we do that? Because the ugly truth is way down deep in the core of my being. I want to be in the center of the universe, right? I want to be in charge. I want to be number one. I want the world to go the way I see best.

And I don't like it when I'm told that my default mode, wanting the weather and the traffic and the economy and my kids and my spouse and my cat, my church and my work and the whole world to suit my wishes, is not reality. But it's the truth. And suddenly Nebuchadnezzar sees the whole universe with such clarity, because now he's seeing reality. And listen to this hymn he writes to God's glory. This is really stunning. What do you think? This is a Babylonian king writing this. Look at how many times he says things here about the greatness of God. He says, "Then I praised the Most High," and it's not me, "I honored and glorified him who lives forever. His dominion is an eternal dominion. His kingdom endures from generation to generation.

All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing." Now he doesn't mean that the people don't matter to God. He's saying God is so big, so majestic, that even the king of Babylon is nothing. He's saying I'm no more important to God than the slaves of the homeless. He says, "I realize now, I'm putting myself in my proper place." And he says about God, "He does as he pleases, with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him, 'What have you done?'" You know what? This is such a key to serenity, letting God be God. As they say, "Resign as general manager of the universe, because that position is already filled." Right? And even Nebuchadnezzar had to do this.

He says, "Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right. And all his ways are just." And then he says, "With the tone of a man who knows, and those who walk in pride, he is able to humble." You know, he knew all about that. Well if that's the most important realization of life, then the most important question in life is, "How do I get right with God?" If the most important realization in life is, "I am NOT God," then the most important question is, "How do I get right with God? I'm not God. In fact, I'm extremely not God. I am alienated from God, separated from him. So how do I get right with him?"

Well you know there's another figure in the Bible. You can call him the anti-Nebuchadnezzar. The Bible says Jesus, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be held on to, but instead humbled himself, taking the very nature of a servant and being found in human likeness, even humbled himself unto death on a cross, the anti-Nebuchadnezzar. So that everyone who raises their eyes toward heaven and looks at that cross, that sacrifice of Christ, is saved not by their effort, but by what Jesus Christ did for them.

I love this next verse from the New Testament. Nebuchadnezzar was responding to this truth even though he didn't know it fully yet, and this can really serve as kind of the moral to the end of Daniel chapter 4. Let's read it all together. Let me hear you. "For it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not from yourselves it is the gift of God not by works so that no one can boast." So that no one can boast. You know this is a theme of the Bible because I cannot save myself. It's all by grace. God's power not my power. God not God.

And the Nebuchadnezzar story keeps getting repeated. Magazine article I read this week says, "Rock Bottom for baseball superstar Josh Hamilton came one night in the fall of 2005 when he woke up in a trailer surrounded by strangers." Now get this, he'd been a chiseled athlete. Six, four, 230 pounds good at everything. That night he was down to 180 drinking a bottle of whiskey a day, a day binging on crack and he had burned through every dollar of his four million dollar signing bonus. Four million dollars on drugs and alcohol. He was so bad that he was literally officially banned from baseball for four years. I mean talk about hitting bottom.

He had it all and lost it all. As a homeless person he drifted from Minnesota to California, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona. Well that night in 2005 he had a dream just like Nebuchadnezzar. In his dream a man in black who he knew represented evil kept knocking him down knocking him down knocking him down and in his dream he Josh Hamilton kept getting up thinking, "I'm the great Josh Hamilton. I'm the strongest man in baseball. I will defeat you." And effortlessly the man in black just kept knocking him down endlessly over and over and over and he woke up with a start and he reached for the Gideon Bible at the side of the bed that he found himself in and he cracked it open to James 4:7.

He didn't know the Bible, it just fell open to James 4:7 which reads, "So humble yourselves before God." And that night for the first time in his life he says, Hamilton began to pray and he said, "I was always good at everything. I thought I didn't need God but God I failed thinking that way. Now you do what you want to do with me but I surrender to you." He had his Nebuchadnezzar moment, he turned his eyes toward heaven and since then he's shown that while he's still not perfect Jesus is his Savior.

He's now once again an all-star outfielder for the Texas Rangers and he recently said that he had the same dream again. The man in black preparing to knock him down again and he got scared in his dream, "Oh no here it comes." And then he said an invisible power next to him in his dream, the power that he knew to be Jesus Christ kind of flexed his muscles and sent the man in black just running. Josh Hamilton discovered what Nebuchadnezzar discovered and why am I telling you his story? Because I want you to know there's hope.

I want you to know that there's power found in turning your life over to the only one who has true power when you turn your eyes toward heaven. And I want to give you a chance to do that right now. Would everybody just bow your heads and close your eyes? But I want you to peek at something. See the prayer at the end of your notes? It says the not-God prayer. I want to ask you if everybody would just bow your heads and close your eyes but peek at the prayer. And what I'm gonna do right now is I'm gonna pray this out loud and if you really mean it you can pray it silently in your heart, the not-God prayer.

I'm gonna say it out loud and maybe as a recommitment or maybe as a first-time commitment you can pray this. God I want to confess I am not God. I'm not infinite and I'm not holy. I'm a sinner. And so I lift my eyes to the King of all. I want to receive your love and your forgiveness as a gift of grace because of what Jesus did. I want to make Jesus my Lord and as best I can I will follow him for the rest of this life and then forever in the world to come.

And some of you might want to pray something like this, "Lord I prayed this prayer years ago but today I'm in trouble." And so I want to look to you as the sovereign Lord even over this tough situation. And now with everybody's head still bowed I want to invite you to do something to indicate that you prayed this prayer and meant it. I'm gonna invite you to literally do what Nebuchadnezzar did. I'm not even going to look up this is just something between you and God but would you be willing to just lift your eyes to heaven for a moment? If you prayed that prayer just look up to heaven for a moment not to me but to God as a way of saying, "Alright God I'm committing my life to you today. I'm surrendering to you. You are God I am NOT."

Just for a moment you lift your eyes up let him know God knows God sees just a moment between you and God. Thank you God that you're sovereign. Thank you that you save us even though we're powerless. Thank you for your grace which leads to true freedom and we pray all this in in Jesus' name, Amen.