Religion Was Killing My Spiritual Life

And I am Rene. I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church and I want to invite you to grab this. These are the message notes that are in your bulletins that I hope you got when you came in today as we continue our summer series light bulb moments. And as you're getting those out I want to invite you to be praying for our junior high pastor Jessica Bristol. Jessica just got to this orphanage in Zambia where she's going to be working for the next couple of weeks and then she's going to come back and preach one of these light bulb moments messages and my guess is she'll probably share with us a few of the stories that she went through over there in Zambia. So pray for her.

Also coming up next week in this series we've got probably the smartest person I know, Craig Barnes. He is the president of Princeton Seminary. He's gonna be giving the light bulb moment message and we have a guest worship leader Josh Fox. It's gonna be a great weekend. Do not miss it. We got a Josh Fox fan over here because it's awesome. It's gonna be fantastic. It's gonna be awesome.

Well today I want to talk about the most personal light bulb moment that I ever experienced in my life. It's very personal. It's very revealing but before I go there I want to tell you the true story of someone who came from a similar place and sadly did not appear to have the same light bulb moment that I was blessed with and I'm talking about the famous author Ernest Hemingway. How many of you've ever read any Hemingway stories? Just you know obviously an amazing writer but you might know that he prided himself on living outside of the normal moral code of society. Kind of flaunted conventional morality but not very many people even those very familiar with his books understand that he was raised in actually a very conservative Christian family.

His grandfather was a close friend of the legendary evangelist Dwight L Moody. His parents went to the very conservative Wheaton Bible College and yet when Ernest who you see there on the right of the picture was just a little boy sitting on his father's lap his dad would find reasons to criticize him. For example he would criticize him for saying things in a wrong way. Not saying the wrong things but saying the right things in a wrong way and he would immediately order him to get on his knees and beg God for forgiveness because he didn't use his words in the right way and then he would spank him right after he prayed and begged God for forgiveness and this repeated itself hundreds of times.

Now in response to that young Ernest tried so hard to be so good to obey every rule to please his father to please his mother. One time teenage Ernest Hemingway read every single word of the King James Version of the Bible in order to win a prize in Sunday school and earn his father's approval but his father told him he just should have done it faster. Also as a teenager he was his church youth group's program director and then the next year Ernest Hemingway was his church youth group's treasurer. I mean he served the Lord he memorized scripture he did the best he could and then his ultra conservative religious father took his own life and that's when Ernest began writing.

He actually began writing as therapy to ease the pain. He just kind of poured out his heart in his writing as a young man and to his own surprise he very quickly became actually very successful. Now did this earn him the approval of his mother? No she just repeatedly told him she was very disappointed with him for not going into the Lord's full-time service. In fact every year on his birthday he would get a card from his mother and every year his mother would write a note in his birthday card saying happy birthday Ernest but I just want to remind you I am so disappointed in you.

Is it any wonder Hemingway eventually rebelled? Rewriting the Lord's Prayer famously. Do you remember how he rewrote the Lord's Prayer in one of his books? Our Nada who art in Nada. Nada be your name. That's the sound of rebellion isn't it? Is it any wonder that he said my soul feels as empty as a vacuum tube? Is it any wonder that he became known for his crazy living clearly trying to find freedom from stifling religion by going as far as he could in the other direction? And then sadly is it any wonder that he ended his own life? You see bad religion can kill people and I know this personally because spiritually it was killing me.

Today I want to talk about the moment in my life that I discovered religion was killing my spiritual life. Now before I go into this in detail let me just say these lightbulb moments we are talking about are deeply personal. This is my story but I want you to consider the fact that maybe it's your story too. See I became a Christian when I was just a little kid about four years old. My dad had just died and my mom who was a brand-new Christian told me the story of the gospel and I thought it was the best story I'd ever heard. It's still the best story I've ever heard and I accepted Jesus into my heart and it was so sincere and at a child's level at the level that a four-year-old could understand and a four-year-old really can understand a lot about this I got the concept of grace.

Grace is the Christian teaching that we don't earn our salvation it's given to us completely as a gift of God and that makes a lot of sense to a four-year-old because a four-year-old can't do much for himself anyway. I knew I couldn't earn salvation I couldn't even get a drink of water for myself so it's like okay God's lavishing his love and his mercy and his grace on me purely as a gift and I remember just reveling in it. I remember having true worship experiences as a little kid singing my favorite song Jesus Loves Me. This I know for the Bible tells me so. How many of you remember that song from your own song? Man I loved singing that song right?

But then slowly things started to change and that childlike pure devotion to Jesus started to shift a little bit and my joy started to slowly leak and by the time I became a teenager most of my thoughts when I thought about my faith were not about Jesus and his love for me they were about me. They were about I'm not praying enough. I should be witnessing more sharing my faith. I should be reading the Bible more. Why aren't I serving other people more? Oh I should have talked to that person. I should have given that person a ride and I was filled with these thoughts of self condemnation and here is where it really gets weird.

This was all complicated by what they now call OCD obsessive compulsive disorder that emerged when I was a teenager. That's what the character monk had on that TV show right or what the character Jack Nicholson played had in that movie as good as it gets. Now in TV shows or movies it's kind of funny but in real life let me tell you it's maddening. I felt like I had to do all sorts of ritual behavior like touch my face ten times on one side and then ten times on that side or maybe turn the radio on again and off again like 50 times in a row before I allowed myself to listen to it all this kind of stuff and if I didn't do these rituals then something bad was going to happen.

Now this went on for years and finally in my 20s thank God I was able to overcome the OCD by and large but in many ways it just transferred from my emotional life to my physical life or my spiritual life rather and let me tell you religion is a perfect match for an OCD perfectionist. Like I would decide to pray a certain number of minutes every day like what I really think God wants me to do is to pray 37 minutes today and I would to the minute not 36, 37 and if I got distracted or something I tried to calculate the number of minutes I was distracted and add those on to the end because it had to be precisely 37 minutes or I would decide I had to read a certain number of verses every day certain number of verses from the Psalms for the Gospels from the epistles and I would precisely.

In fact precision became an obsession. I would even in the morning pass my hand over my clothes in my closet and beg God for his perfect guidance on what shirt was in his perfect will for me to wear that day and some of you are going okay I'm feeling a little bit uncomfortable right now that is pretty weird right but my guess is that some of you can relate exactly to what I'm talking about. Maybe you're not OCD exactly but your own spiritual perfectionism is draining you instead of refreshing you. When you don't pray right or read the Bible or serve right or do something for God the way you think you should you are crippled by guilt.

Now for me it just kept getting worse and the more I focused on my own performance the less joy I had in my heart and the less joy I had in my heart the more I figured it was probably because I wasn't performing good enough and so I would focus more on my performance but the more I was focusing on my performance the less joy the less joy the more I figured I needed to perform and it would just became this crazy crazy cycle and then I figured well of course the Lord is withholding his ultimate blessing from me because he's trying to lead me in the right direction and clearly what he wants from me is to give my all to him and I haven't given him my all yet because I'm not in the ministry and so what I really need to do is become a pastor and I became the most guilt oriented performance oriented pastor that I think you could ever meet constantly feeling like I was just a big failure and I ended up resenting the church I was pastoring.

This was the church I was pastoring up in Tahoe now why would I why would a pastor resent his own church well for not growing faster for not reaching out more diligently for not being more serious about their faith because I figured if the church grew it would validate my own performance as a pastor so man it was a mess and then one night one night my whole outlook began to change and I could say it was definitely the light bulb moment in my life I was 30 years old I was reading in bed Laurie was asleep next to me and I was studying for my upcoming sermon series of course I was readings for lazy people Robert sleeping rather as for lazy people you know good workers for God don't sleep you know they work as hard as they can and so I was studying I was reading and I was I had decided to preach through Galatians that's a book of the New Testament verse by verse and so there in the middle of the night I was reading through the book of Galatians to re-familiarize myself with it and I'd seen these words before but I read words that just went off like dynamite in my soul.

It was like they stepped off the page and just grabbed me by the throat and said hey Rene listen to this this is God calling I'm trying to rescue you from your life and it was this one verse that got through to me this is my light bulb moment verse Galatians 3:3 and I'd love for us all to read this together out loud let me hear you are you so foolish after beginning with the spirit are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort I read this and it was like what I thought this was written 2,000 years ago was this just written for me yesterday I mean it hit me right between the eyes and I remember saying out loud yes yes that is exactly what I'm doing my faith had started out focused on God on his spirit and what his spirit was producing in my life but it was wasn't focused on God anymore at all it was all focused on me and my effort and I was riveted.

I could not stop reading Galatians that night it felt like Paul had stepped out of the pages of the Bible right into my room and was sitting down on a stool next to me just having a conversation with me I flipped back to the first chapter again now that I kind of like understood what this book was about and I began to read some of the very first verses where Paul says in chapter 1 verse 6 I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel which is really no gospel at all because gospel means what shout it out what does gospel mean good news well it's not good news to hear that you've got to earn God's approval and blessing and I was distorting gospel that way.

He says evidently some people are trying to throw you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ that word translated pervert there is the same word that we get our term metamorphosis from Paul saying there are some false teachers who've slipped into their midst subtly morphing the message of grace and turning it from just God lavishes his grace on you and you rejoice in that and let that fact change you and they had turned it into what you could call Christ plus yeah sure it's great that you're saved by grace but now you've got to go back and start concentrating on your behavior and God's gonna bless you more if you behave more that's Christ plus teaching and it happens all the time.

One famous Christian speaker gets asked a lot to speak at churches all over the country and he said for one full year he told the churches where he spoke a different church almost every weekend he said you know I'll speak at your church but can you do something for me during one of the services like during the worship I'd love to take a peek into your Sunday school classes to see how your children are being taught and they said oh sure no problem and so he went all year long he went to all these different churches all over the country just to hear the Sunday school message to the little kids and he said my suspicions were confirmed he said it was so sad because almost every single church what the message amounted to was be a better boy be a better girl be better and he said the real sad thing is probably that's what the Christian message had morphed into for their parents to try harder what Craig Barnes calls the bad dog message you know why aren't you guys on the ball and that's what my message had morphed into for my own church as a pastor.

But Paul says in Galatians that the biggest enemy of grace is exactly that it's legalism legalism legalism hyper religiosity a Christ plus approach to the gospel kind of like this cartoon look at this and taking the details here for just a second it says Ivy Hill Church membership class right long lists of duties and obligations and theological vocabulary worship etiquette dress code unspoken expectations right and then the pastor says God may have already accepted you but our standards are just a little higher that is the message of the legalist adding man-made rules or expectations to the gospel complicating the simple message of grace but it happens so subtly and it kills you.

You know a lot of people go well what's wrong with that it's just gonna produce maybe people that are a little bit more religious no it kills you and in Galatians Paul fights against this so hard he says there's three negative effects of legalism in the lives of Christians jot these down on page two very quickly number one it drains your joy it drains your joy I remember reading this verse for the first time and literally talking back to my Bible Galatians 4:15 Paul says what has happened to all your joy and I remember the guy literally felt like Paul was saying this to me live and and I said out loud in the room I remember this like it was yesterday I said I don't know I don't know it's gone what has happened to it and of course the whole book of Galatians is a description by Paul of how joy leaks away when we leave a simple and pure focus on grace and we start focusing on performance-oriented religion.

I remember the next morning I went to my office of the church and I just grabbed the scrap piece of paper and I jotted down a little chart just now that the scales have fallen off my eyes of how this happens to Christians well we put that chart kind of prettified it up a little bit for you on page four of your notes the graceless spiral this is the way I think it happens for most of us how our joy leaks away look at it starting in the upper left hand corner before your conversion pre conversion your focus of course is more or less on yourself right your own efforts your goals your ambitions probably you know what people think about you and so on but you're focused on yourself then at your conversion you encounter God and maybe for the first time you hear that God loves you and chooses you the Bible says God shows you to be his before the creation of the world that means before you could do anything before you could do anything good or before you could do anything bad he just chooses to lavish his grace on you and for the first time in your life you sense what it's like to receive truly unconditional love and you reveled with it.

I remember swimming in it like swimming in a cool pool on a hot day and you could wipe the grin off your face because you were ravished taken up your imagination was captured by the love of God expressed through Jesus Christ's work on the cross for you and you were just you know awestruck by this whole thing but then often Christians slip into what I call light legalism like maybe you changed the way you dressed a little bit to match the Christians that you were hanging out with. Now I don't mean you became more modestly dressed of course that's appropriate but I mean you even like changed your styles and stuff in a subtle way to just kind of like gain their acceptance or maybe you changed your haircut in a way you weren't even realizing you were doing it to to perform to seek approval and because your focus was on yourself and your own behavior and not just on Jesus your joy started to slip away and you began to wonder where is that joy I had in Christ my heart's growing a little bit cold and so you worked harder and slipped further into heavy legalism.

And I don't just mean traditional legalism I mean anything that in Latin is called a quid pro quo relationship with God have you heard that term before quid pro quo literally just means this for that right it's like it's a trade relationship if I do this for you then you're gonna do this for me spiritually like if I pray just right then he will make my life go better if I witness more then he will like me more if I go into the ministry then God will really bless me quid pro quo I sacrifice this to get that and it's so easy to let your religion slip into this.

I was reading one of my favorite little books called children's letters to God again the other day this filled with children's actual letters to God I love these but one of the kids writes this dear God I wrote you before do you remember well I did what I promised but you did not send me the horse yet what about it Lewis that is a classic quid pro quo relationship right there I did what I promised where's my but maybe you've prayed the same prayer to God God I did what I promised where's my happy marriage God I did what I promised where's my lucrative career God I did what I promised and so where's that great job you did not send me the horse yet quid pro quo.

Now in contrast to that look at this letter dear God count me in your friend Herbie isn't that cute no this for that I'm just giving myself to you God you can tell it just comes from a place of love that's grace now back to the chart you started this quid pro quo thinking and you thought maybe if I just give up this one more thing fill in the blank maybe if I give up smoking or tame my temper or go into the ministry or whatever I'll feel that joy again and of course it didn't happen because you're focused on yourself not on God and his grace and here's where the road splits many people involved in that heavy legalism stay in church and become either busy Christians who substitute busyness for joy they're not feeling joy anymore but at least they're always serving in some capacity right doing some good doesn't the Bible talk about this in Revelation 2 where Jesus says to the church at Ephesus you guys do a lot of great stuff but you've fallen from your first love the busy Christians or they turn into dry Christians who substitute knowledge for a real relationship with God.

Yeah they're not joyful or don't feel vital in their relationship with God but they treat their Bible like a textbook and they're always learning more and so if they're not growing at least they're growing in knowledge right doesn't Jesus address this when he says to the Pharisees you know the scriptures backwards and forwards but your hearts are far from me so there's busy Christians and dry Christians but the really sad ones are the grim Christians and the grim Christians substitute a feeling of conviction for real joy they hope that every sermon every talk they hear cuts them to the quick they're constantly under a cloud of conviction and they're glad because at least if they're feeling condemned they're feeling something and so they seek out teachers who are going to make them feel that spark of condemnation because it feels like maybe it's something it feels like primitively that might be like real Christianity but that's just pushing them further away from a simple and pure devotion to Christ.

And by the way guess what line of work these three types often go into you find this in one person a busy dry grim Christian guess what line of work they often go into pastors yeah pastors who desperately yell at their churches to grow and get more serious about your faith start witnessing more because they pastors hope to gain approval from God through their own churches performance. Now these are the ones who stay in church like I did on the other hand many at that fork in the road many people leave the church burned out and the thing is they really believe it when they say I tried it and it did not work for me and they're totally right they tried it performance oriented legalism and it did not work because it never does work.

And see here's the thing sometimes people will say to me well you can't talk about grace all the time there has to be a balance between grace and works a balance between grace and and and and rules and stuff because if you only teach grace people will fall into sin guess what you'll fall into sin anyway you fall into sin if you're under legalism the difference is under grace you can be honest about it under legalism you hide it because it looks like oh well but now I'm not obeying the rules and so under grace when you fall you can actually make progress and change under legalism if you keep falling a lot of people just leave the church because it's like it's too embarrassing to say that I've I'm actually sitting because apparently all those people aren't so there I was as a busy dry grim Christian that night reading Galatians 3:3 and just going this is what it means this is how my joy leaked away and this is what Paul means later on in Galatians 5 when he says you have fallen away from grace.

I'll never forget that night when I read this verse and I realized something I never saw before the phrase fallen away from grace I'd always heard it used to describe a sinner right that fallen you know woman or man fallen away from God's grace actually here Paul is using this phrase to describe hyper religious people you've fallen from grace from a simple focus on grace and become alienated from Christ by your own religiosity see on the cross Jesus paid for all my sin completely and so I can stop crucifying myself because living like that just drains your joy and Paul says legalism also leads to slavery happened to me in my Christianity my religious performance became as enslaving to me as my OCD and this is why Paul says remember you're no longer servants but sons.

Think of the difference between a servant and a son a servants always worried about his performance right because he could get fired or punished a son is relaxed he's not worried because he knows he has the love of his father Paul says you're not slaves you're children so Galatians 4:8 how is it that you're turning back to those weak and miserable principles do you want to be enslaved by them all over again and he says in this ringing declaration it is for freedom that Christ has set us free stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

And again I'll never forget what just blew my mind it was yeah it was I've never had a night before since where we're just the whole Bible just suddenly fell into place it was like a mobile hanging in a room that had been all all like messed up and tied into knots and suddenly just went and became balanced and I suddenly it dawned on me what the Bible was all about it was all about grace.

I remember I had been the past read this verse thinking the Paul was talking about sin don't let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery to sin and obviously sin does lead to horrible slavery addictions and compulsions horrible horrible terrible stuff but that's not what he's talking about here here he's talking about the slavery of religious legalism and something else he tells the Galatians anytime you find slavery you find people who are very eager to be slave masters and you find abusive leaders that are very happy to go oh yeah yeah let me tell you what rules to follow because they love to get little followers and this is the third thing Paul says to the Galatians that it promotes abusive leadership.

You know every cult is legalistic everyone cults don't preach grace every cult started out as kind of a legalistic version of your standard Christianity and and people there are always people who love to enforce the rules I don't know if you remember this ad but this is kind of a funny great example of legalism watch the screen okay so it's 3708 paper plastic plastic that's the magic word green police you picked the wrong day to mess with the ecosystem plastic boy battery battery let's go take the house Put the rind down. Sure. That's a compost infertion. Oh did you install these bulbs? Tragedy strikes tonight where a man has just been arrested for possession of an incandescent light bulb what do you guys think about plastic bottles now the water setting is at 105 you got a TVI here clean diesel you're good to go sir afternoon officers back to those styrofoam cups you're drinking from yeah tell me please step out of the car put them on the hood.

I love that don't you love that commercial but it's such a great example because like we talked about last weekend God did put us here on the planet to take care of it but there will always be legalists who love to police and enforce good behavior and use coercion instead of real transformation and cooperation pulses these people are zealous to win you over but for no good what they want is for you to be zealous for them legalist leaders love to get little followers little disciples and so here's the real question if legalism is out then how do I grow right because God does want us to be holy he doesn't want us to be sinners he does want us to grow and progress so if it's not by religious rules then how do I grow?

Well look at these verses from Galatians and see if you can pick up Paul's meaning you have been called to live in freedom and now here for the first time in Galatians he starts talking about sin but don't use your freedom to indulge your sinful nature why would you eat garbage if somebody's giving you a feast instead use your freedom to serve one another in love let the Holy Spirit guide your lives the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and so on so it's about the spirit growing something inside you.

Let's talk about growing things for just a minute when I was in fourth grade the teacher gave us all little white cups and she had us each plant a bean seed down inside the soil to see how things grow anybody here ever had that experience when you were a kid right it's all it's a universal experience well I remember when I was in fourth grade it seemed like it went on for about a year it was probably only about a week or so but it seemed like was on it and I looked at that styrofoam cup that was sitting in the windowsill at home and nothing was happening and so I dug up the bean seed to see what was happening with my seed nothing I put it back and I watered it next day I dug it up again this time I saw a little sprout of something coming out so I thought well that's pretty good so I put it back in again later that same day I wanted to see the progress and so I pulled it out again tugged on the root a little bit put it back now I was obsessed with checking the progress of my seed and so I pulled out again and again and again and again end results what do you think happened yeah I was the only kid in fourth grade who couldn't grow a bean.

Listen when it comes to your spiritual growth maybe some of you need to stop trying so hard to make something happen do you see what I'm saying stop being so introspective stop digging up the bean all the time to see what's growing instead relax plant good seeds in time you will see the crop that's what Paul gets to in Galatians the one who sows to please his sinful nature from that nature will reap destruction the one who sows to please the Spirit from the Spirit will reap eternal life he's saying just be careful what you plant because whatever captures your imagination captures you inevitably the seed grows into a plant so plant the right seeds water them and let them grow see again it's not like well you preach grace and then you got to preach a lot of other things for people to really get to holiness grace is the only way to get to holiness.

You plant those seeds you say what are you talking about plant seeds well read the Bible pray enjoy God's creation meditate serve you say wait a minute those are the exact things that you said that you were doing when you were obsessed with your performance pray read the Bible serve meditation yeah the exact same things but now I was approaching them in a totally different way it's like being assigned textbook reading in school how many of you ever got assigned something to read in textbook right everybody you know what it's like when your teacher assigns you to read a chapter as a textbook and it's just sheer drudgery like it's all you can do to drag yourself through two paragraphs in a day it's horrible.

Now how many of you've ever read anything for pleasure in your life like a book like a hobbit or Lord of the Rings is right those books you could get through a whole book in a night what's the difference one is something that people told you you have to do another one is something that you're reading for pleasure because you just love the story guess what I discovered I love the story that's being told in the Bible and now when I pick up God's Word it's not a textbook anymore that I've been assigned it's something I'm reading that's the greatest story I've ever heard.

I circled around and come right back to where I started as a small child now I really want to make this practical some of you're going I just need some help a few years ago I wrote a book called the grace immersion and we have a few copies of it left it's available in the lobby right now even better we've put the entire content of grace immersion online on a website grace immersion comm every word of the book is on there for free and there's extra videos devotionals and so on that are on there for free I want to really encourage you but this is resonating with you striking a chord for you go to grace immersion comm and just let the seeds of grace be planted in your soul.

And now let me close with this one more show of hands anybody here ever see any of the versions of Les Mis in your lives anybody all right anybody see the one that last came out last year the big musical Les Mis I think is one of the best pieces of art about grace that I've ever seen in my life as you know it starts when Jean Valjean an ex-con is released from prison in the book it says he has forgotten how to feel he only had shame in his heart the only world he knew was the world of the law an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and then he is caught assaulting a kindly priest and stealing from him but when he's arrested the priest shows him grace forgives him sets him free and says with this act of grace I have given you a fresh start I have bought your soul and at first Jean Valjean can't believe it but this moment of grace becomes his own light bulb moment.

Watch the screen Yet why did I allow this man to touch my soul and teach me love he treated me like any other he gave me his trust he called me brother my life he claims for God above can such things be for I had come to hate the world this world that always hated me take an eye for an eye turn your heart into stone this is all I have lived for this is all I have now I would have been a man without a word from him and I'd be back beneath the lash upon the rack instead he offers me my freedom I feel my shame inside me like a knife he told me that I have a soul Is there another way to go? I am reaching but I fall and the night is closing in as I stare into the void the whirlpool of my sins escape now from that world from the world of Jean Valjean Jean Valjean is nothing now and the story must begin.

Powerful scene I remember that night I don't know if you remember this Laurie I remember waking you up and saying you won't believe this you won't believe this listen to this just seeing you over there just brings back all these memories but I remember saying to her it's like I've been seeing like I've been living in black and white and now I'm seeing in technicolor it's like I've been living in a dream and like I'm awake now do you remember what I told you I said it's like I'm born again again when you realize the old man is gone it's dead why climb back into his clothes again the clothes of legalism and self-effort instead revel in the grace of God that is the only thing that changes you from the inside out that's really the bottom line there in your notes when I soak in God's grace to me the spirit produces change from the inside out the seed begins to sprout and a new life can begin in you too.

Heavenly father I just pray that any Christians who feel dry and grim and busy would be able to relax in the God of grace and just rejoice that they are sons and daughters and not slaves and God I know that there are also those who've been a little reluctant about becoming followers of Jesus maybe because they weren't sure they could measure up and so God I pray that there's just people all over this room right now praying just God free me free me from the chains of performance-oriented religion free me from the burden of my guilt and shame and let me run free in the grace made possible because Jesus Christ paid the entire price for my sin on the cross and then rose again that's the best story ever God I don't understand it all but as much as I understand I love what I'm hearing and so I just give myself to you all of myself for you to grow by your power for you to make into the creature you designed me to be and God I offer myself to you in Jesus name amen.