How to Really Change

Well, if you don't mind this morning, I'm just going to start the message by going deep. All right? Right? No frivolous, you know, intro stuff. I just want to plunge right in. I've got a great theological book on my bookshelf in my office. Some of you might have heard of it if you're into theology. It's called Frog and Toad Together. Have you heard this book? All right. So this is one of my favorite stories. "Frog, frog!" cried Toad. "Taste these cookies that I have made." Frog ate one of the cookies. "These are the best cookies I've ever eaten," said Frog. Frog and Toad ate many cookies. One after another. "You know," crowed, said Frog with his mouth full. "I think we should stop eating. We will soon be sick." "You are right," said Toad. "Let's eat one last cookie, and then we will stop." So Frog and Toad ate one last cookie. There were many cookies left in the bowl. "Frog," said Toad. "Let us eat one very last cookie, and then we will stop." Frog and Toad ate one very last cookie. "We must stop eating," cried Toad. "As he ate another." "Yes," said Frog. "Reaching for a cookie. We need willpower." "What is willpower?" asked Toad. "Willpower is trying hard not to do something you really want to do," said Frog. "You mean like trying not to eat these cookies?" asked Toad. "Right," said Frog. "So, Frog put the cookies in a box. There! Now we will not eat any more cookies." "But we can open the box," said Toad. "That's true," said Frog. "So Frog tied some string around the box. There! Now we will not eat any more cookies." "But we can cut the string and open the box," said Toad. "That is true," said Frog. "So Frog got a ladder, and he put the box up high on a shelf. There!" said Frog. "Now we will not eat any more cookies. But we can climb the ladder and take down the box from the shelf, and cut the string and open the box," said Toad. "That's true," said Frog. "So Frog climbed the ladder, took down the box from the shelf, cut the string, opened the box, took the box outside, and shouted in a loud voice, 'Hey birds, here are cookies!' And birds came from everywhere. They picked up all the cookies and flew away. "Now we have no more cookies to eat," said Toad. "Sadly not even one." "Yes," said Frog, "but we have lots and lots of willpower." "You may keep it all," Frog said Toad. "I'm going home to bake a cake. Don't you love that story?"

Quick show of hands, how many of you have ever discovered at some point in your life, with some issue in your life, that willpower alone is not enough? Has anybody ever made this discovery, right? All right, I'm not going to ask for a show of hands on this next question. But how many of you have ever been in despair over some issue in your life that you have tried and tried and tried and tried to change? And you've despaired thinking, "Will I ever get any better? Will I ever make any progress?" Well, that is what the passage of the Bible that we look at today is all about. Grab your message notes. "Free" is the title of our series going verse by verse through the book of Galatians. And in the section we're looking at this morning, the author, the Apostle Paul, talks about how to really change. And I truly believe that what we talk about today will absolutely be life-altering for some of you who are here in this room today.

And I want to start by just giving you a little bit of a review in case you're joining us for the first time. Maybe you visited on Easter, you're back for this. And if you're watching us online, we have an average online congregation every week of about 2,300 people that join us for these videos. I would really encourage you to watch or listen to all the rest of the messages in this series. It's all free, available at TLC.org. Okay, this whole book of the Bible, the book of Galatians, is about how the temple model of religion does not work. I want to make something clear. I am not saying that, you know, some other denomination has the temple model, and we don't have the temple model here. The temple model thinking, legalistic thinking, can creep into any church, any denomination, any congregation. And in fact, that's what happened to the Galatian church. Paul sees it creeping into this Christian church, these new baby Christians, and he's writing this letter as a warning saying, "No, no, no, you're slipping right back into this way of thinking about religion that is not the way God wants to relate to us."

The temple model is all about a system of do's and don'ts. A system of rules. A system that says, "These are the things you've got to check off to get to God." And an unintended consequence of that is that it leads to self-absorption. Because whether you're focused on yourself to indulge your own desires, or you focus on yourself to try really hard to be good by your own willpower, you're really still just thinking about yourself. And what happens in the temple model is you get exhausted from constant efforts at self-improvement. I mean, you're just tired of trying to be better all the time, and so you lapse back into self-indulgence. You're like, "Forget it!" And you just want to just please yourself all the time. And then you get sick of that because that's destructive, and that kind of burns you out. So you go, "I don't know what other option is, but to try to get self-control back in religion again under the temple model." So you try really hard to change through self-control and through willpower. Then that doesn't work, and you get exhausted. So you go back into self-indulgence, and some of you left religion at some point in your spiritual development. Because you saw the cycle for what it was, and you said, "It doesn't work. I'm just bouncing back and forth between over-self-control and over-self-indulgence. How can I escape this self-focused cycle?"

Well, the only way to escape it is the grace model, that Jesus Christ is at the very center of. Why? Because it's not about a system. It's about a Savior who paid the debt of sin because He loves you. And if you really get that, really accept it, that God loves you infinitely, unconditionally, eternally, that there's nothing you can do to make God love you more. No brownie points you can earn to kind of get to the next level. And there's nothing you can do to make God love you less. His love is unconditional and absolutely eternal. That leads to wonderful self-forgetfulness instead of self-absorption, as your attention shifts from yourself and your behavior and your sins and your struggles to Him. Because you love Him because He first loved you, and you just love this person who loves you. The grace model is less about following rules and more about falling in love. And what happens is you start changing. You start giving. You start loving. Because you start to become like this person who loves you. Christian change is not about kind of big box, temple model, institutional system religion. Christian life change is about internal, organic, relational change that comes through knowing personally the Savior who loves you.

So that's what Paul's been covering so far in the book of Galatians. And if you're thinking, you're probably responding like some of the Galatians probably did, and Paul anticipates this. They go, "Well, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute!" If you're telling people that they don't have to live in the temple model anymore with its system of do's and don'ts and its motivation that there's fear that God is going to curse you and there's fear that if you don't do the right things, God's not going to bless you and you might not go to heaven. If people don't have that fear hanging over them, then what's going to keep them from just going crazy? Then how are they going to become holy? How are they going to be really godly if they're not living under the temple system with its fear motivations? And that's what Paul talks about in this next section. He says, "Let me explain to you how grace actually leads to a deeper, a longer-lasting, a more internally motivated change than the temple model ever could." And here's where he starts this section. It's one of the most famous passages of the Bible, Galatians 5:17. Paul says, "The sinful nature wants to do evil," which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other so that you're not free to carry out your good intentions.

Now, doesn't this sound like a recap of Romans 7? If you know that chapter of the Bible, Paul says it's like there's these two...it's almost like he's describing a "jekyll and hide," fighting, the struggle within him, and everybody can relate to this. So how do you overcome it? Verse 19, Paul goes on, "The works of the flesh..." Now, remember that phrase, "The works of the flesh." That just means when you follow your old, sinful desires are very clear, they're obvious, impure thoughts, sexual immorality, lustful pleasure, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and all other kinds of sin. Now, some of you see this list, and what you're thinking right now is, "You just described my uncle," or something like that, right? Be careful here, because this list is not in the Bible to give you a handy judgment tool, right, to look at other people. This is here so you can look at you, and so I can look at me. And nobody's looking at this list going, "Yeah, I can see every one of those things in me," but everybody's got two or three things in there that they struggle with. And you're going, "Yeah, that's what it looks like when I try to be the power controlling my life. It just gets ugly." And this is just a statement of the problem, but what I want to focus on is the good news, the solution in Galatians 5:22–23. I'm going to put the verses on the screen, and let's read these verses out loud together. Let me hear you. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law."

I want to give you hope today, because when Paul uses the phrase, "the fruit of the Spirit," he's evoking the imagery of orchards, of plants, of farmers, of botanical growth. And the problem is that in those days they were a lot closer to this kind of imagery. They walked past fig trees, for example, like this all the time, and they saw fruit on trees. And so they kind of instantly got what Paul was going for in this analogy, right? But we're a little bit removed from this, most of us are, unless you're a farmer. And so what I want to do is to dig into this a little bit, and to focus on just two things today, the organic nature of Christian change and the organic process of Christian change. And you and I need to understand this, because I think this will help you not be in despair, that you'll never change, not be in despair, that there's this thing, this sin, this attitude, this character defect, that's got its claws in you, and you're never going to be able to alter it. I want to give you hope about that today.

First, understand the organic nature of Christian change. Paul deliberately uses the term "fruit" to describe how this happens. I love how Tim Keller explains this, and I've shared this with some of you before, so important. Christian change is first gradual. Jot this down. It's gradual. Fruit grows really gradually, right? It's not like there's an orange tree and there's an orange all of a sudden. It grows so gradual that you really can't see botanical growth actually happening, right? And that's true of any kind of growth in life. So what does that mean? Practically, you have to be patient. You don't always see dramatic change. He's using the analogy of fruit. Fruit trees have seasons, like right now in springtime, where there's dramatic change. But other times in winter, you see very little change at all. And your growth in love or joy or patience or self-control is like that. It's mysterious. It's seasonal. It's gradual. It's hard to see it happening in the moment. You know, one of the things that's hard when you hear testimonies, "I've been changed through the grace of God." You have to be careful because those people giving testimonies have changed, and they can see it now. They can look back and they can measure it. But you, when you're in the middle of it, you don't feel like you're changing.

Look, anybody remember getting measured on the side of the door frame of your house when you were a little kid? Anybody? Show of hands. Anybody ever experienced this when you were kid? You loved it, right? Why? You didn't feel like you were ever going to grow up. Do you remember that when you were in second grade? "I'm never going to grow up." But then you got measured, and you could see, "Wow, in the last year, I really grew." And it's the same exact thing for you spiritually, but you get measured by being tested. You know, has this ever happened to you? Something happens to you and you think, "Wow, a year ago, I never would have been that patient in that situation." You don't feel like you're getting more patient just sitting there. You have to be tested. That's how you're measured. And then second, spiritual growth is inevitable. If you have the Spirit of God inside of you, you will get stronger. You will get more patient. You will become more gentle. You know, there's an old story of a man who just denied the resurrection. He said, "My tomb will never be opened ever." And so he put big slabs of concrete over his tomb that he thought nobody could ever violate. But a tiny little seed fell into a little crack in the concrete. And eventually, what happened? You look at that little seed and that several-ton concrete slab, and you think at first, "Well, no contest. The concrete is obviously going to crush that tiny little seed." But actually, no contest. The tree will win. The seed will grow. And an oak tree grew up and split the granite tomb.

Now, here's why this can give you hope. Listen, think of the things you see in your life as immovable slabs that are weighing you down. Maybe your bitterness. Maybe your insecurity. Maybe your lack of self-control in some area. Maybe your self-doubts. Those things will be split and rolled off by his spirit growing gradually and inevitably inside of you. In fact, let me just kind of do a little audience poll here. So be very honest, all right? Let me ask you the question first. How many of you would honestly say, "Well, you're just talking about, 'I've seen it to be true in my life.' Jesus comes in and changes hearts, and then out of heart change comes life change. I have seen myself grow in some of the fruit of the spirit aspects in my life." How many of you would say that that's happened for you? Raise your hands. Now, leave your hands up and look around. This brings you hope, how great that is. Thank you. Now, some of you, in fact, are shocked you're even here in church, right? You're going, "What happened? I didn't ever even want to go to church or pray or serve Jesus. That was not ever in my thinking, and now that's what makes me excited. That's what makes me happy." How many of you relate to that? You're surprised you're even in church, right? What happened? You fell in love, and the little seed of God's love got into your heart and started to break through. Now, if you never grow, you need to ask yourself some hard questions. So ask yourself, "Am I growing?" Better yet, ask your friends and family, you know, "Am I growing? What are you seeing me?" Because if you're undiplomatic, if you're abrasive, if you're resentful, if you're always getting your feelings hurt all the time and you never change, you have to ask, "Why?" Now, more on that later, but that brings me to the third thing. Spiritual growth is internal. It's internal. Now, please don't miss this because think back on that list. What grows? What's the fruit of the Spirit? Is charisma on that list? No. Is leadership ability on that list? No. Is the power to persuade people to believe in Jesus on that list? No. And yet, those are often the ways that we gauge the maturity of our spiritual leaders, but those are not part of the fruit of the Spirit. Those are gifts. Those are skills. Those are talents. But a lot of people confuse the gifts of the Spirit with the fruit of the Spirit. And I'm just going to repeat that again because this is so important. A lot of people confuse the gifts of the Spirit with the fruit of the Spirit. But it's possible to be abundantly gifted and talented and skilled, but not show the fruit of the Spirit. And this is how people get wounded in churches. They follow people who are skilled and who have charisma and who have evangelistic and preaching skills, but they're not gentle. And they're not loving. And they're not patient and kind. And so people get injured. This is why Jesus talks about false teachers and says, "By their what? You shall know them? By their gifts you shall know them? By their talent you shall know them? By their skill you shall know them? By their leadership ability? No. By their what? Fruit." It is possible to be an immensely talented, gifted speaker and leader and have zero fruit of the Spirit. And you know in your life it is possible to grow your business. It's possible to grow your family. It's possible to be successful and not have the fruit of the Spirit, not grow yourself. And so we need to ask, I mean honestly I'm speaking to myself, we pastors especially need to ask, "People's lives may be changed through me. I may have outward signs of success, but is my life, is my character being changed?" It's internal.

And then I can't think of a better term than the one Tim Keller uses here. Spiritual growth is symmetrical. It's symmetrical. Some of you are going, "I have no idea what you're talking about here." Let me explain this. Paul says the fruit singular of the Spirit is several things. He does not say the fruit plural. It's one fruit that has a lot of characteristics. It's like foodies talk about when they taste a food. It's got a lot of undertones and it's got a lot of textures and it's got a lot of tastes. The taste flavor profile or whatever they talk about, right? And Paul's saying it's one fruit with a complex flavor profile. All of these things are one. Look at the graphic that's there in your notes. It's one fruit with all of these characteristics. Now, before you tune your page, listen, this is very important because some of us can be very self-controlled, but not very joyful and not very gentle and not very loving because most of us, just by natural temperament, just by our personality, have like one or two of the things on this list already, right? And for example, there's a kind of self-control that comes out of just absolutely willpower and it's your natural temperament, maybe through a little bit of arrogance, you know, but you're not very loving. Or some of you are very loving and you have zero self-control. You're so loving and sweet and gentle, but it's a function of your personality. You're just kind of a sweet person, but you indulge too much, you eat too much, you drink too much and you're a loving guy who is destroying your family and yourself. And so you get the idea. There's a connection. They all go together. And when love and joy and peace and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control all work together, that's supernatural. That can only come through the Spirit.

So how do you get there? Well, that's page two. The organic process of Christian change. This is one of the least understood parts of the Christian life because it is so mysterious. Yet it is so simple. I mean, I stand before you today as a man who I was a Christian for most of my life. I was a pastor before I really understood this at all. So what's the process? Paul says those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Now, I used to read this crucified the flesh and I thought that meant just try really hard to stop. Is that what it means? Let's explore it. This is past tense. Have crucified the flesh. Have crucified. In other words, it's done, right? Your flesh has been crucified. Your sins are dead with Christ on the cross for real. In other words, your debt for those sins was paid forever. So you don't have to obsess on them or feel guilty about them or overanalyze them. You and God are OK. There is now no condemnation for you in Christ. Your sins have been crucified on the cross with Christ. You reckon that part of your life as dead and move on from the dead past because there's now new life for you.

But you know, this is where Christians start to get messed up because if you're like me, you so easily, just like the Galatians, slip from grace, which is so beautiful, so simple, no condemnation in Christ by His grace, and you slip back into temple model thinking. If you have ever thought to yourself, "Oh, I've sinned. I've sinned. Look at that sin. Why do I sin like that? I better go to church and I better pray and I better study the Bible more to kind of make up for that sin and to get God to like me again and to keep God from like giving me bad luck or something and I got to get more good karma and if I don't do more good things and bad things, then I might not go to heaven." That's temple model thinking. There is now no condemnation for you in Christ Jesus, so stop dwelling on your sins. Move on. Paul says, "Consider it dead." Now, does that mean you'll never sin again? Of course not. Some of the old ruts that you were in remain like those old wagon wheel ruts from the days of the gold rush that you can still see back up in the gold country. It's easy to kind of fall back into the old ruts, but you're driving a new car with new capabilities. You have new life in the spirit, so don't obsess on what's dead with Christ on the cross. Move on from the dead past and dwell on the living spirit. Focus on life, not death.

And now here is the key verse, this next verse to living the consistent Christian life. Here it is. Here's the point Paul's been working to for all of Galatians. Here's the big reveal. Are you ready for this? All right, here it is. Verse 25, "Since we live by the spirit, let us keep in step with the spirit." So there it is. Okay, so some of you are going, "What does this mean? What is this all about?" If this is such the key to living the Christian life, well, Paul uses a lot of similar phrases in all of his letters to kind of stand for the same thing. "Live by the spirit. Keep in step with the spirit. Be filled with the spirit. Walk in the spirit." Phrases like that. Okay, so what does this mean? How do I do this? Well, annoyingly, for you and for me, especially if you tend to be a temple model legalist like I am in my own personality, Paul does not ever give you a checklist. He never says, "And here's how to walk in the spirit daily." Number one, number two, number three. Now he gives some hints scattered throughout all of his epistles, but his lists are never the same. He always says things like this and then leaves it a little bit vague on purpose. Now why do you think he does that? Why doesn't he say, "And here's how to keep in step with the spirit. Read the Bible, worship, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Because the checklist would just become another form of legalism. It wouldn't really be internally motivated. You'd be like, "Okay, what's the checklist?" Number one, sing worship music. "Okay, praise the name of Jesus. Okay, check. Okay, number two, read the word. Okay, I'm just going to open the Bible randomly, find a passage, show your festering sores to the Levitical priests. That was weird. Okay, but check. All right, what's next? Give to the poor. Here's five bucks, a person on the corner. Okay, how am I doing God? How am I doing God? Do you like me better now? Am I getting good karma, God? And now your focus is on you again instead of him and his love. And so Paul can't give us a checklist anywhere, but through all of his letters, he gives little hints, little examples of what keeping in step with the Spirit looks like. And so let's look at some of the clues.

Here's one clue. The verb translated "keep in step" is in the original Greek, a verb tense that means daily and continually. Your old self, your sins have been crucified with Christ past tense, but daily, continually live by the Spirit. This means step by step, one day at a time. Live in the Spirit. Now some of you, if you think about it, know what it means like to live in the Spirit. Some people call it serenity. Some people call it the peace that passes all understanding, those moments that you've experienced unexpectedly in a redwood forest when you just suddenly feel connected to the Lord, or I sensed it, honestly, during worship. This weekend and last weekend during Easter and then during Good Friday, it was powerful just being lost in the love of God and his sacrifice for us. So Paul's saying that there's a way to daily be in that place. So how can I intentionally get there on a daily basis? Well, Paul says other hints in his letters, things like, "Whatever is excellent or praiseworthy, think on these things." This is hard in our culture because they want to feed you whatever is crazy and sensationalistic and fear-based all the time, and all the news and all the entertainment. But Paul's saying whatever is excellent, praiseworthy, pure, noble, right? Now, he does not say whatever is religious and excellent or praiseworthy. Whatever is excellent or praiseworthy. You know, a great inspirational book, a beautiful sunset, a child smile, a senior citizen's smile. You know, there's so many things, beautiful poetry, there's so many things that can be excellent or praiseworthy. A beautiful athletic competition, you know, seeing the beauty of the physical body that God has made in athletics. There's all kinds of things that can inspire you, and Paul's saying, "You think about those things." He also says things like, "Be filled with the Spirit as you sing and make music in your heart." He says things like, "Always give thanks to God the Father for everything." He says things like, "Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly." Which, by the way, just look at this for a second. Isn't that a much better way to talk about Scripture than, "Read your Bible? Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly." So, what have we seen? Gratitude, meditation on Scripture, singing, you know, worship music to God. These are all ways to get into that mindset. We said it's more like falling in love than following rules, and that's true, but even love needs to be nourished, right? You need to spend time with the one you love, and that's how you keep in step daily with the Spirit.

Jesus talked about this, too, in John 15:5. Let's read this verse together. Let me hear you. Jesus said, "I am the vine, and you are the branches. If you abide in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing." "Abide." That just means hang out with Him. Be aware of His presence in your life always. Be with Him, and here's why. Have you noticed you become like whoever you hang out with without even trying? You just naturally become like whoever you hang out with all the time. And just kind of a humor break here, but it does make the point. I showed some of you this before, an article in Atlantic magazine in October 2013. This isn't a joke. The headline, "Why You Look Like Your Dog," behind the phenomenon of pet owner resemblance. The article says, "The phenomenon has been amply documented. Researchers around the world have repeatedly found that strangers can match photos of dogs with photos of their owners at a rate well above chance." And the article says they have all kinds of theories. They don't know why for sure, but they know for a fact. It's true. And they have photo after photo. Look at these. Illustrating the phenomenon. These are not photoshopped. I mean dogs and their masters just look alike. Somehow we become like whoever we hang out with. Some of you are going, "Okay, I know what my dog looks like. What's that say about me right now? Okay, now focus, focus." Think of that phenomenon as we talk about this verse and what it means to abide with Jesus. As you hang out with Him, you start to increasingly just look like Him. You say, "Well, what are you talking about? Let's look back at our key verse here, this description of the fruit of the Spirit." Really? Look at this. That's a description of Jesus, isn't it? And what happens is you get joy when you allow yourself to abide with Him and meditate on the beauty of what He has done for you. And as you let your imagination just be captured, you get peace by hearing Him say, "I will be with you always to the very end of the age," and knowing that you can trust His words. You grow in forgiveness by hearing Him say on the cross, "Father, forgive them while they're spitting on Him and insulting Him and torturing Him." And how do you get humbleness and gentleness and self-control? You see Him humbly giving His life for you because He loves you.

Notice Paul does not say, "The works of the flesh," remember that phrase I asked you to remember? He doesn't say, "The works of the flesh and the works of the Spirit." He says, "The works of the flesh and contrasts it with the fruit of the Spirit." Because the fruit of the Spirit is not a work. The fruit of the Spirit is not something that you can do. It's only something you can open yourself up to, like an orchard opens itself up to the hand of the farmer. Does that make sense? Now this is what it means to live the Christian life, and you can unfold implications of this for the rest of your life. That's what it means to live in grace. That's why we do what we do. That's why we do worship music and why we do preaching and why we do service projects. Not because those are things on the checklist that you've got to do to get brownie points with God. That's temple model thinking. These are things we do to get our imagination captured by the one who loves you so, so much.

Let me close with this. There's a Greek myth about beings called the Sirens, and the Sirens were beautiful maidens who lived on sharp rocks that sunk ships. And the way the Sirens would sink ships, they were beautiful but they were evil. And they would sing their siren song, and it was so beautiful, and they were so lovely, that sailors would just steer the ships right toward them. That's so beautiful, like moths to a flame, and they would wreck their ships. Well, one Greek hero comes along named Ulysses, and he decides, "We're going to sail past those rocks." And so he pours wax into the ears of all of his sailors, but he still wants to hear the siren song. And so he asks them, he says, "Time me with the strongest ropes that you have to the mast, because I want to hear the song, but I want to survive it." And so they sail past the rocks, and he starts screaming to his sailors, "Cut the ropes, cut the ropes! Steer the ship toward the rocks! Cut the ropes and let me swim toward the rocks! The siren song's so attractive he can't stand it!" Well, the sailors can't hear it, so they sail past it, and Ulysses survives hearing the siren song, but it drives him crazy. And the rest of his life, he's haunted by that so bad, he just wants to go back. It obsesses him. But there was another Greek hero named Orpheus, and in the Greek myths, Orpheus has been gifted by the gods with the gift of music. Just an amazing musician. And he decides, "I think I got a better plan." And he tells his sailors, "Sail past the sirens," and when the sirens start to sing their song, "Ooh, the sailors start steering there." And Orpheus says, "Guys, listen to this." And he takes out his lyre, and he starts playing the strings and singing a song. And it is so beautiful that the sailors don't want to listen to the siren song anymore, because it seems ugly in comparison. And they just want to listen to Orpheus's song, and he guides them right through the rocks.

Well, when it comes to trying to change, you've really got two options. You've got the Ulysses option, and religion, under the temple model, will give you all the ropes you could ever use to tie yourself to the mast, to try to restrict yourself. But the siren song will always haunt you. It'll never leave your brain. Or there's the Orpheus option, and that's the option proposed by Jesus Christ, because His grace gives you the better song. And as you realize what He's done for you, you're drawn to that as you let your imagination be captured by it, daily, continually. Now, I'm going to give you a chance to do that right now. Adrian and the band are going to come back, and they're just going to play a response song. And I'm going to invite you to just sit and let the music wash over you. Sing with Adrian and the band, if you'd like to, of course. But I want you to ask yourself a couple of questions during this response time. And the first question I want you to ask is this. Am I growing? Am I growing? Am I bearing fruit? And if you're not, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions. And the first is, well, am I a Christian? Just because you were baptized as a baby, don't assume you're a Christian. In fact, just because you came forward at an altar call at a camp somewhere, don't assume you're a Christian. Just because your Baptist grandma promised you a cookie, if you would invite Jesus into your heart, don't assume you're a Christian. Have you said, "Lord, I can't do this. I need You. Come, help, save me." Now, maybe you have committed your life to Christ, but ask yourself this question. Am I abiding daily? Let's pray.

Lord, we just say, "Come and be the gardener in our hearts." We want the peace and the love and the self-control and the gentleness that comes from just being with You, putting down roots, admitting, "I don't have the strength in me. I don't have the answers. I don't have the wisdom, but I want to be filled with You. I want to be used of You." Come in and change me, change me as a church, and we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.