Chris Hodges - Goodness
All right, who's glad to be in church today, anybody, anybody? Come on, how about you put your hands together and give Jesus some great praise, everybody? It's awesome! Oh, it's so good to be with you guys. You look amazing. Well, welcome to week number six of a nine-part series on the "Fruit of the Spirit," and I'll tell you more about that in just a second. As always, give me just a minute just to say hello to all of our other campuses or locations, our churches all across Alabama and in Georgia. God bless you guys today.
We're so glad that you're along for the ride. Of course, we are bringing this into 27 of Alabama's Department of Corrections facilities, and it's always a joy to be with the men and women there as well. There are people watching online live somewhere or maybe on demand later in the week. One more time, Grants Mill, say the biggest hello. Come on, everybody, everybody! It's awesome. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. We're in this series right now, one that we planned maybe a year or so out, knowing that we would be in this election season. Anybody notice we're in an election season? Y'all figured that out yet?
All right, I think some of you guys have. And we knew based on past, historically, on these seasons that meant tempers flare and attitudes flare. How many of y'all know we can disagree without being disrespectful? Isn't that right, everybody? And I don't know, it seems like we've lost some of that. So we thought, why don't we right in the middle of this very emotionally charged season, why don't we just talk about values and talk about what Jesus and the Bible talks about with the fruit of the Spirit, and I think it's been great. You guys enjoyed the series so far? I really have. And we've given you a couple of tools that where you can follow along.
Of course, we always have our app, the Highlands app, and if you wanna follow everything that's on my screen and then if it's in yellow and underlined, that's a place for you to fill in the blanks. You can actually do that and follow along with us, and it kinda makes it a bit more interactive. You can actually, there's a place for you to take extra notes and then email all these notes to yourself. I encourage you to do something like that. And then also, we've been giving out these little journals, where you can not only take notes in the service, but you can also journal throughout the week on that value and just ponder it even more and more, and learn, and just read other Scriptures that we have for you in the little journal.
You can get those on the way out. I believe with all my heart that it's important for Christians to live out their values. I really think it's important. I think honestly the proof of Christianity is the fact that we are a bunch of changed lives and we look like Jesus. Can I hear a good "amen," everybody, right? And that's why, honestly, too, even in this season of election, that's why our attitude needs to be different than most. And by the way, let me just pause for a second and say, be sure to vote. We don't tell you how to vote, but I unapologetically tell you to go ahead, men and women died to give us that freedom, and we ought to go ahead and cast our ballot, amen, everybody?
I read this week, it's kind of disturbing. I read this week that 32 million church going Christians are gonna sit it out. And so, listen to me, if we don't decide, the world will, all right, everybody? So, get out there and vote your values. Vote your faith. Vote what you believe in. And again, I won't tell you how. I'll just tell you that it's important that we do. But we need to, in the process of it all, live it out too. Live out values. Live out our faith. But I love fruit also because it kinda lets us know if your Christianity is right or not. So I don't have the right to judge you on whether you really are it or whether you're really a Christ follower.
The Bible says, "You'll know them by their fruit". So it kinda lets us know: if it's not looking like what the Bible says, well then you judge it for yourself. It's like a test to let us know: Is faith working in me? Is Christianity working inside of me? Well the answer is yes if you look like these verses, these fruit that we're gonna look at. So, you can test yourself in that. And the last reason I would say this is the reason why we're studying is that God has so much more he wants for us. Look at me, everybody. This isn't preacher talk. This is the truth. God wants you to have love in your heart. God wants you to have joy regardless of the circumstances. God wants you to have peace like a river. God wants all these things for us, and so that's why we're leaning into it and getting all that God has for us.
Our text comes from Galatians chapter 5, and it reads like this: "But the fruit of the Spirit," or the result of being full of the Spirit of God, "is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness," today, "goodness, faithfulness," next week, "gentleness, and self-control. And against such things there is no law". In other words, a law can't make you be like that. You can't have a rule book that says, "Okay, go be nice. Go look like all this". You have to become it. This isn't something that is on the external. That's what the Old Testament really is. It was external laws with nothing happening on people's hearts. In the New Testament, Jesus says, "You're gonna be born again".
I'm not gonna tell you to behave. I'm gonna change your heart and change your life, and you're gonna get this written on the inside of ya, and this is just gonna come out of you, right? So it's the new way, and we follow God and follow God's way, we have these fruit, not because it tells us to, it's because it's who we are, all right, everybody? And today, we are gonna talk about goodness. This one, I always felt like before we even started this series, would be one of the hardest to define. And then, how do you actually bear fruit where you're just good? It's such a broad term. So I really dug in very deeply.
In fact, when I'm studying for you, my job is to do the hard work for you guys, all right? I put hours and hours and hours. I hope it shows. I put hours and hours and hours into this and also to memorizing it as well. But the first thing that I do is I go to this verse, and I'll go look it up in the original language that we have from the original manuscripts. Anybody who tells you that the Bible has been diluted over 2,000 years with all the translations, they don't know what they're talking about because we're not translating based on the last translation. They always go all the way back to original manuscripts, to the first editions of the Bible, right? Which was written in the Greek language.
Okay, mostly, most of the New Testament is in Greek, and I actually took three semesters of Greek in Bible college and it's still Greek to me, y'all. Anyway, I'm just, you know I'm kidding. I know a little bit. I actually can read a little bit of the Greek New Testament, and I understand the words. And so that's what I did. I went and studied this word, and if you just look in the Greek definition, I didn't make this up, this is actually what the Greek definition of the word "goodness" is. It's uprightness of heart and life. I love so much about that line, I can't even tell you. I spent hours just pondering this little phrase, "uprightness of heart". You can't ever have a upright life until you have an upright heart.
This always begins in the heart. God wants to make your heart right, and then he can make your life right. But I fell in love with this word. That's why I underlined it, "uprightness". The devil comes along in life, and he knocks down a lot of things. And what goodness is is when God's been good to us and we start bearing the fruit of goodness, it's where he takes all the places it's been knocked down and he sets it right back up. He takes all the bad places and makes 'em good. He takes all the wrong places and makes 'em right. Right now, as I'm speaking, we have teams of people, I mean hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Church of the Highlands Dream Teamers, volunteers and our own staff team, that are down in Florida right now that are serving. We had yet another hurricane come through, and you are being represented right now, helping families with food and sawing trees off of houses.
Come on, put your hands together. They're probably watching right now, God bless you guys that are serving right now. And every time you give, you need to know that we immediately put it into action, and that's happening. You are well represented in North Carolina and in Florida. But one of the things they do is they have a lot of things that have gotten knocked over. If you ever look at, like, look at the effects of a hurricane. It's just a bunch of damage, and everything's on its side. And what we're doing in there, we're cutting it off and setting houses back up, lives back up, people back up, right? That's the word "goodness".
So it begs the question: if he wants me to bear the fruit of goodness, what does God need or want to make right in my life? By your own doing or by somebody else's doing, maybe it wasn't even your fault, but something went and got knocked over. Some place of your life, it's just bad. Maybe a bad marriage, maybe a bad family, maybe a bad health, maybe bad finances, maybe you're, I don't know what's not set up right. It's knocked over. Maybe it's your attitude, maybe it's your addictions, maybe it's your sin. Something's knocked over. You need to know that God wants to make it right, and that's actually where we get the word "righteousness".
Righteousness is a big fancy Bible word that literally means that when God gets involved in your life, he makes things right. Come on, say "amen" right there. This is huge. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 says, "God made him," Jesus, "who had no sin to take on your sin," all your mistakes, whether you did it or somebody else did it to you, all your sin, he took it on himself, paid for it, "so that in him we might become righteous," put right back up. And by the way, when you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, your spirit person, everything is made right immediately, like in a second.
This is not a process. This is a moment in time where you say, "Jesus, be the Lord of my life," and then you put your faith and your belief in him, immediately everything that you've ever done is washed away, cleansed, and paid for by the blood of Jesus, everybody. So that when you stand before God, you don't have to be good, you already good, everybody. God sees you as good. I'll show it to you in Scripture in Ephesians: "God saved you," not because you decided to be a good person, no, "He saved you by his grace". He gave you something you did not deserve. That's the definition. He gave that to you when you became a believer, when you just believed.
That's all you had to do, "And you can't take credit for this; it's a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for," your goodness, "the good things you've done," no. If we did that, then we would boast on our own religion and our goodness. This is not what we're talking about. So, there's a part of goodness that you can't earn. You don't have to do. You're already buried in it 'cause Jesus paid for it in by his blood. Come on, say "amen" right there. It's awesome, all right?
But then you say, "Well, Chris, then why do I have so many areas of my life that's still not good"? That's because that even though your sins are paid for and when God looks at you, he sees you as perfect, and you can step into his heaven perfectly clean and totally good, he wants you to go ahead and experience some of that goodness in your life here on earth as well. That's a different theology. There's salvation's a moment, but then there's what we call regeneration in theology, and it means now there's a transformation that's gonna take place.
Now, it won't determine my heaven or hell 'cause only Jesus took care of that. But this is gonna determine, watch this, my quality of life on earth and my usefulness on earth. So that's why, if you can read it that way, the same verse, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become righteous". So there's an instantaneous righteousness, but then, once you're saved and you're going to heaven, everything's paid for, now he's gonna take you on a process of what you might become, and that's what I wanna talk about today. 'Cause you can be a Christian going to heaven and still not have the fruit of goodness yet.
And so, I want to talk to you about how... then how do we... we're already good enough for heaven, but we need to get some goodness going on here on earth. We need to be made righteous. I actually looked up this word in the Greek. I did not write this definition. This comes from the Greek, actually, the Greek lexicon or dictionary, and it says, "And righteous is the state of a person," I love this line so much, I can't always stand it, "as they ought to be".
Let me say it in my language: as it could be. And I throw that out there almost like a carrot, like, thank God you're going to heaven, and Jesus paid it all, and none of your past and none of your things here on on earth will even be mentioned when you step before God. He'll only ask you, "Do you know Jesus"? That's it. But then he says, "And come on, let's let Jesus now change us to a life that could be, that ought to be; integrity". Wouldn't you love when people say your name, they say, "And that's a person of virtue, purity of life, righteousness, or rightness, correctness of thinking, feeling, and then acting".
This is goodness. This is righteousness, and this is what your faith journey should be all about. So we have no guilt or condemnation because Jesus already paid it all, and at the same time, we're not satisfied where we are because we know this, everybody, that God has more for me. And if you hear any message here at Highlands, that's what I want you to hear. I want you to hear that you can't earn your salvation. Jesus paid it all. He did it by the cross. Celebrate that, receive that, praise the Lord. Okay now, let's go on a journey. Let's now go on a journey. Sins are paid for. You're going to heaven.
Now, let's go on a journey and get all that God has for me. And that's why we wanted this to be such a hallmark of what Highlands was all about then we started the church, and we're thinking about what are we gonna call this new church? We sat in the living room with about 12, 13 people, and we said, "What do we wanna call this church"? And I kept saying, "God has more". I had this sinking feeling, especially here in the Southeast, where most people grew up in church, that there were people sitting in churches going, "Is this all there is"?
And I always believed that people know God has more for them, they inherently know that, and that why don't we take people on a journey? Why don't we take them to the heights of all that God has for them? Hence the name, Church of the Highlands. Some people say, "Y'all are Scottish"? No, that's not that highlands, everybody. God has more for you. He wants to take you to higher heights. And so, since the beginning of the church, we have been using language of steps, journey. "God has more". You've heard this since day one. And I have to tell you the story of a little diversion that was a great revelation. It really had a little diversion in this in the way we were saying it.
In 2011, I went to Israel for the first time, and it was, I was actually going there at a time when I was really not in a good place because I'd just buried my dad and I'd just buried Tammy's dad within a few months of each other, and I did both funerals. I shouldn't have done them. I actually should have sat on the front row and was ministered too, but I led both of those, and I was really just in a tired place. The church was about ten years old. I got invited to this trip, about 40 pastors, to Israel.
And I was going there, y'all, not to learn, and explore, and to see, and to take pictures, I was going there to experience. I wanted to step into these places where my Lord and Savior had stepped, and I wanted to feel, and I wanted to experience, and I wanted to worship, and I wanted to pray. I'll never forget going to the headwaters of the Jordan, way up north Israel where the Jordan River is simply a little stream fed by brooks, and it's kind of a jungle-ish almost looking place, nothing desert about it. It was beautiful.
And we were told by our tour guide that this is the very place where the psalmist David would have written the Psalm, "As the deer pants for the waters, so my soul longs for you," and I was such a dry and thirsty place personally. He said, "You can actually drink from this. This is pure water coming from a stream". And I went down there and got some water, put it to my face, thinking about that beautiful song, wept like a baby, as I was still grieving. I mean, God met me. Well, that was about the only feels I had on the trip though. Because this tour guide that I had, every time we went to a place and I was going, "Oh my goodness, here it is, here it is," he was one of these literalists who loved to tell you, "No, this is not where it happened. This is not where it happened".
So we went to the Jordan River, and there's people getting baptized, and, "Oh my goodness, this is the Jordan River"! And the tour guide said, "Yeah, but this is not where it happened". And then we went to the place of the Sermon on the Mount. It's just this traditional location where the Sermon on the Mount. He goes, "Oh no, no, he didn't preach that message here". I said, "Brother, stop it. I'm trying to have this moment". We ended up having kind of a hilarious and yet contentious relationship on this trip, 'cause I was wanting to have all these experiences, and he was trying to be so literal about everything.
And on the last day, we're gonna finish the trip. The last day, we're gonna start at the Mount of Olives, which is just a hillside on the eastern side of the Old City of Jerusalem. You may have seen it. If you've ever seen a picture of the Old City with the gold dome, this is where that picture is taken from. We're gonna start at the top of the Mount of Olives. We're gonna hike down a short couple hundred yards down the hill to the Garden of Gethsemane, the place where Jesus spent the last night before he went to the cross.
And so, we're gonna then come up through the eastern gate of the Old City, and then we're gonna walk what's called the Via Dolorosa, the final steps of Jesus to what he believed was the place where Golgotha was, where Calvary was, and that is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This is our final day. So we start the Mount of Olives, we hike down, and when we get to the Garden of Gethsemane, there's Communion set up, bread, cups. And so, as we started to partake, he goes, "And I want you to know, this is not how it happened on that Thursday night". Like, "Brother, don't mess with my Communion. I grew up Baptist. I know this part". He goes, "No, there wasn't bread and cups".
I was like, "Yes, there was". He goes, "No, there was bread and four cups". I'm like, "What"? He said, "Yeah, Jesus and his disciples were celebrating Passover," a Passover Seder. The word "seder" means order. There are 14 things you do in a Passover Seder, reading Scripture, singing songs, and there's not one cup and bread. There's four cups. I'd never heard this before.
And every four cups corresponds to a verse of Scripture that Jewish people had been reading thousands of years before Christ, comes out of Exodus chapter 6, the Jewish people called them the four "I wills". He says, "Therefore, I say to the Israelites: 'I am the LORD your God, and I'm gonna bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians,'" I'm gonna get you out of Egypt, "And then I'm gonna free you," the second "I will," "free you from being slaves to them. And then I'm gonna redeem you with an outstretched arm and mighty acts of judgment". Redeem means to put it back to its original intent. And then the fourth "I will": "I will take you as my people".
Once I do these three things in you personally, I'm gonna group you as a group of people so you can do something that matters with your life, and God's gonna show up in it. And I said, "Well, they have a name"? He goes, "They have a name". The first cup where I'm going to bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians is called the Cup of Sanctification. I'm gonna relocate you geographically. I'm having light bulbs go off of my head, 'cause I know this Old This is an Old Testament picture of a New Testament reality, and that's salvation. It's the moment where you can't earn it, where God just gets you out of the world and puts you in the kingdom of God, everybody.
But remember, it says, "Secondly, that once you're out of Egypt," he says, "I'll free you from being slaves to them," to which I thought, "Well, if I'm out of Egypt, how am I still a slave"? But how many of you know you can be out of Egypt and Egypt is still inside of you? And so that's why the second cup, this is not a Christian word, it's a Jewish word, is the Cup of Deliverance. And this is the place where this salvation happens in a moment, but then there's this process where we can spit out the fruit of goodness.
The cups go on. The third cup is called the Cup of Redemption. I'll redeem you, 'cause once I get you out of Egypt, get the Egypt out of you, now I'm gonna actually put you back to your original intent, help you find your redemptive calling, so that you can drink the Cup of Praise. Why is it called the Cup of Praise? Because they've had four cups of wine. No, that is not why, everybody. Hey, no, that's not why. The Cup of Praise means to live a life of fulfillment, why? Because I'm out of Egypt, Egypt's out of me, now I've found what I'm called to do, and now I'm doing it with a group of people, and God's showing up in the middle of it and making a difference.
Oh y'all, the light bulbs went off. I came back home and wrote a book called "Four Cups" that nobody bought. Nobody wanted. I was like, "It's a terrible, right"? I did my worst writing in that book. It was my best revelation and my worst writing ever. Nobody bought it. But I thought, you know what? This is such a revelation. We're gonna change all of our steps. We're gonna use cup language, cup language. Which cup are you in? I'm in cup two. I'm in cup three, you know, and that didn't work either. Nobody did it. Some of you that have been around a long time, you remember that. We thought this is such great.
Well, guess what? I had to explain Moses, and Passover, and Seders, and Exodus, and it just didn't work. I'm frustrated one day, and I show up in my office and ask my assistant, I said, "Help me put together a focus group of completely lost people who go to nobody's church. Tell them I'll pay them. I just need about six or eight people". I think we ended up with eight. I said, "Tell 'em I'll give them $100 for an hour of their time if they'll just help me come up with the language that they would have understood". Because this is what God wants for you, but nobody could understand that, and so, I explained it to 'em.
I said, "Listen to me, I'm not trying to proselyte you. I'm not trying to change you. I'm not asking you to believe any of this. I'm asking you just to let me tell you this story, and then you help me come up with language that you could have understood". And completely lost far from God people who went to nobody's church came up with this, the four phrases that we've been using since 2011, that there's this moment where you can know God and in that second, you are made perfectly good in God's sight, but he's not done yet. You can also find freedom. You can have goodness progressively happen in your life the more you know God so that you can discover your purpose and then do something with a group of people that actually makes a difference.
And then, all of a sudden, the whole thing took off. And I only bring that up to you just to retell that story 'cause it's such a fun story but also to tell you I'm inviting you not into just this. The goal of Christianity isn't just for you to be a believer and a Christian and know God and come on a Sunday once in a while. No, it's to do all that God has for you and especially this one, where you deal with your badness, your places where you're not free, where things are knocked over, and let God put them upright.
So while this one requires no works, watch this, this one takes a lot of work. In fact, Philippians says it this way. It's almost contradicting the not by works verses when it says, "Work it out". So this doesn't get you into heaven. This is after you're going to heaven. Work it out, "Continue to work it out. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling," why? "'Cause God's trying to work in you to give you both the will," that means the want to, the desire, "and to act," the power, "to fulfill goodness".
So how do you become good? You gotta work it out. I'm just gonna, I've just decided, I'm not gonna just like, "Well, God, you shoulda made me good when I got saved". No, no, no, you're good eternally speaking, but on earth, you're still a piece of work. You know what I'm sayin'? We need God. God's trying to work it out. We're trying to work out. Are y'all with "me," everybody?
So let me close with: Well then, if I was gonna work it out, and I hope you do, I hope I've convinced you to work it out, let's let goodness be born, if your bad stuff has not been made good yet and if your knocked over stuff hasn't been put upright yet, well then there's a few things that you need to know for that to happen, and the first is goodness happens in relationships, in relationships. So this is the one that'll probably surprise you the most, and that is: God doesn't make all the parts of your life good, just you and him, he uses godly people to help you. And that's why we know without a shadow of a doubt that real life change happens in the context of relationship.
You say, "Chris, are you sure"? I can prove it, that church and even my great preaching, come on everybody, my great preaching has changed nobody's life. You know why? 'Cause preaching doesn't change lives, preaching makes you want to change your life. You have to take another step and say, "You know what? I'm gonna work it out in relationships". I'll prove it. Name me the last ten sermons I preached. You can't. I can't, and I preached 'em. Come on, everybody, right? But name me ten people who've impacted your life, good or bad, you can. 'Cause your life has been shaped by your relationships. You are the sum total of your relationships, good or bad.
And that's why the Bible can say something so audacious as this: "That a mirror will reflect what your outer part looks like, but what you're really like are the relationships you've chosen to have," which is why we're not telling you to come to church, we're saying have a relationship with God. You wanna know how to have healthy relationships? I'm gonna give you four you need. You need God. You need to be in a relationship with the church. If you're an attender, praise God, I'm glad you're here. I'm inviting you, though, into church membership.
If you don't know what the Growth Track we talk about every month is, that's what it is. Step one is just a membership class, and I'm inviting you into membership. You need a place to belong. There are verses in the New Testament you cannot even do if you're not a committed member of a local church. God wants to put you in a family of believers while we're all collectively a part of the capital C church all across the globe. Are y'all listening to me, everybody? You also need to be a part of a Small Group. I don't care if your church is a hundred people or a hundred thousand people, you still need four or five people, six or ten people that you're close to who know your name and are praying for you every day.
And then you also need a relationship with a Team. Like, I'm inviting you to get out of the stands, get in the game, and watch how goodness pops out when you say, "You know what? I'm gonna join ushers. I'm gonna run a camera with the Production Team. I'm gonna get on a stage and be a part of the Worship Team. I'm gonna minister to children on the Children's Team. I'm gonna find me a team"! And we want that not only for the people who are on the receiving end of who you serve, it's gonna help goodness pop out in you, 'cause your life is shaped, 'cause people are gonna say, "Dude, you were little sharp there".
And if you don't have somebody calling you out once in a while, loving on you, working with you, praying for you, helping you out through your addictions and your habits, you're gonna stay right where you are. Your option is loneliness. This is your option. And there are some of you who I'm talking to right now, you have people all around you right now and you're a lonely person, and you know it. You don't even know if anybody does know your name, or cares about you, or prays for you every day. Solomon felt that way in Ecclesiastes when he said, "There was a man all alone;" and he's talking about himself, and he had all the money in the world and had way too many wives and concubines, "and there was still no end to his toil".
Like, he was miserable. There's some of you that are so miserable, and the only reason why you're miserable is you're trying to live life alone. And so what do we do? "Two are better than one". That's just the biblical principle. I'm inviting you into a relationship with God, a relationship with the church, relationship with a Small Group, and relationship with a team, and I will guarantee change. Goodness is gonna take place in your life. Here's the second one. Goodness pops out because of relationships. It also pops out through the quality and the value of honesty.
So, if you want bad things to be made good, knock down things to be made right, you're gonna have to talk about it with God and God's people. So if you can seal it, hide it, or try to work at it on your own, I'm speaking to some men in the room, they, "I got this"! No you ain't got this. And you need to know that your God is very attracted to the fact that you say, "I need help. I made a mistake, and I need some help". If you look at God, how he treated people, he doesn't treat 'em all the same. There are some he cut off, I mean, like, right away.
You think, "My goodness, God. That was pretty", and then others, he just, grace, grace, grace, gives them another chance, another chance. But if you look into the stories at the qualities of the two different types, one thought, "I got this myself," and the other says, "God, I need you". They were humble, not perfect. King David, what his quality and he was an adulterer, murderer. He had this ability, the second it happened, he'd run to his God and say, "I messed up God," and his heart was made right before God.
The beautiful repentance psalm, write it down, you oughta go read it and use it every time you need to repent, Psalm 51: "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love. Blot out my transgressions. My sin is ever before me". And then verse 6, he says, "Surely what you're really looking for is not perfection. Surely you desire truth in the inmost parts". What am I saying? I'm saying that God is attracted to honesty, not perfection. And every person who says, "God, I just messed up and I need you," goodness, take those flat places and set 'em right. I'm trying to tell you about a quality of God that I really want you to get close to.
You know, Tammy and I, of course, we have five kids, and I know that's a lot of kids. And we had most of these, we had three in Colorado Springs, two were born in Baton Rouge, and then we moved here. And right before we moved here, of course, we had our five little ones, and I came home from the church office at our home out in the countryside of Baton Rouge, that a home that we built. It wasn't a big house, but we built it. We were proud of it.
And I came home, and I'll never forget. I walked into our bedroom. I'm kinda tired, got my jacket on, and I'm getting ready to, you know, take my work clothes off and unbutton my jacket, and I was gonna throw it across this wooden footboard. We had a big old wooden headboard with spindles and then a wooden footboard with smaller, shorter spindles. And then when I threw my coat across the footboard, I noticed that one of the spindles is no longer the same size as the other one, and there are wood shavings on the floor beneath it and that one of the kids had obviously gotten a knife and decided for whatever reason that they would do some carving on my... I was so mad.
Blood's going to my face, and I kinda like Captain von Trapp, "Everybody get in here right now"! I just callered at everybody. "Yes sir, yes sir". They came in, you know, "Yes sir, yes sir". And they were lined up like the von Trapp kids, and I know who it is. I don't know why I called everybody. I know who it is. Come on, parents. You always know who it is. "It's David, y'all. It's David. I'm telling you, it's David". And so, they're all there, but I went, "Who's been whittling on my bed"? And Jonathan, the sweetest Hodges, to this day, he's the sweetest of all the Hodges, he went, "I did it, Daddy".
Well, I apologized to David. I said, "Jonathan, you did it"? And immediately I was disarmed because it only took him a second to say he was the one. And that's why I was trying to almost bite my cheeks not laughing now. I went from mad to like, "Seriously, brother"? 'Cause I'll never forget it. I just can still see him, "I did it, Daddy". You know, like. And I said, "Jonathan, why did you do that"? Come on, parents, y'all know the answer. "I don't know". "Now, son, that costs money," and he goes, "Yes, sir. Daddy, I'm so sorry". And there was something about his immediate confession and his just this, like, "All right". I never punished him, y'all. I never.
Your heavenly Father is no different. He's not expecting your perfection. He can make you good, but you're gonna have to be honest about it. And if you are, "If you just confess your sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive you your sins and purify you from unright", He just makes your knocked down places right. But the Bible doesn't leave it there. It also says, "To confess your sins to God's people and pray for each other," but it doesn't use the word "forgive," it used the word "healed". Now why is that? Because God will forgive you, but it probably won't ensure that you won't do it again.
If you wanna get healed so that you never do it again, you need an accountability partner. You need a Christian, help you. And so, the way we say it around here is: We go to God for forgiveness. But we go to God's people for healing. I'm just trying to help you get good and get gooder, okay? And you do it how you do it? You do it through relationships. If you really want the fruit of goodness, you're gonna have to get in relationships. Look at me, church, look at me. Your life can change, but not by yourself. It's gonna change when you have relationships. It's gonna change when you're honest and confess to God and to people, and then it's gonna happen through the work of the Holy Spirit.
See, the Holy Spirit's role is to teach you all this stuff but on the inside. Look what it says. God says, "I'll put a new heart in you and give you a new spirit; I'll remove from you your bad heart," the one that's all hard-hearted. It's got stories it could tell, "and I'll put inside of you a heart of flesh," that's tender and soft again, and when I do that, "my Spirit will come inside of you and it will move you to follow my decrees". Like, all of a sudden, you're gonna have this want to. "Okay, PC, how do I get that? I want that"!
There's three prayers I pray to the Holy Spirit every day. I wanna give 'em to you. You can pray 'em in 15 seconds. You oughta pray 'em every day this week and watch what happens. Just, watch what happens. "Holy Spirit, show me". Show me. "Hey, Holy Spirit, is there something in my life you don't like? Is there something knocked over I can't see? Is there something bad that needs to be good"? It's probably the only verse I pray every single day of my life. I don't pray everything every day, but I usually always pray, "Search me. Know me. Test me". "Is there something in my life that's offending you? Would you show me what that is, and lead me in the way of everlasting"?
I'm telling you, your life, I promise the fruit of goodness if you invite the work of the Holy Spirit to show you. And then, once you show me, change me. "Change me". I want to be transformed. I speak, and I'm not being disrespectful. I'm speaking to every Christian in this room and they're watching at another location. Watch this. And it's been a long time since the Holy Spirit's changed anything. No, the Bible tells us that by the Spirit to give us that freedom we've been talking about, he transforms us incrementally, "with an ever-increasing glory".
So if something hasn't changed for the good in a long time, then I would say that's a warning flag. Had a girl came up to me about a year ago, up in the front after the service, and she goes, "Pastor, Pastor, this is my first time and I loved it. I just have one question". I said, "What's that"? She goes, "If I keep coming back, are you gonna try to change me"? And I said, "Oh yes". "And change me," that is what the gospel means is that I didn't just get here and God forgave everything. No, I'm getting gooder and gooder and gooder and gooder. And then, "Holy Spirit, fill me". Are y'all getting anything out of this, everybody? Fill me, fill me. "Don't get drunk with wine," the Bible says, "but be filled with the Holy Spirit".
And what'll happen? I want to close in prayer. And that is the Holy Spirit will put a Holy Spirit in you. And pop, pop, pop, pop, goodness, righteousness, uprightness of heart in Jesus's name. And all God's people said a good amen. Let's pray. Be very still. So, won't you pray this? "Holy Spirit, what are you saying to me"? Just pray that simple prayer.
And Lord, I'm asking you, Lord, to help all of us in this room just reflect the Spirit and the fruit of goodness today.
If you're here today and you don't know God, or you feel convicted, or you're not sure if you're right with God, I just, I honestly, I can't think of a more important thing to do is that first cup, that first step. Just let Jesus forgive all your sins. Let him make a home for you in heaven so that you can stand before God made perfect in you. Say, "PC, how do I know if I need to do that"? He's knocking. If God is trying to get your attention right now and he's knocking, saying, "Hey, it's time, it's time, it's time to make this decision, it's time to really go all in with God, it's time," if that's you, you know who you are. How about today? How about today? In fact, right now, why don't you pray this prayer right there where you are? Just whisper it:
Jesus, I need you, I want you, and I'm asking you to forgive me. Today I repent, and I'm changing my mind, and I'm changing my direction to follow you. Be my Lord. Take the number one spot on the throne of my heart, because I believe you're the Son of God who rose from the dead, and I put my faith in you. Thank you for saving me, in your name I pray, amen.