You're Not God's Employee. You're His Child. // Romans 8:12-17

Two-City Church across all of our campuses, it is good to be back. Guys, you, hey, you guys look great. You guys are looking more tan, okay, already. And guys, it is so good to be back. Now they say, by the way, if you just got here in the last two months, you're like, who is this guy, okay? One of the pastors here at Two-City Church, my name is Kyle, guys, and the church just gave me, if you don't know this, a generous two-month sabbatical, guys, and you know what they say, they say it's either out of sight, out of mind, or distance makes the heart grow fonder, guys. It was the second, I have missed you guys. Part of what I did is just thought about my life and my marriage and my family, and the last decade of this church, a pastor told me years ago that every pastor needs to have a little bit of a break, that every pastor needs to be recalled to his same church every five years. Isn't that interesting? It kind of makes sense, you change, I change, the city changes, my family changes, and I just want to say I am coming back more energized than ever, and I am so excited to be here, guys. I love it, I love it. So guys, and I love what I do, I love who I get to do it with, okay?

So that's just enough about the sabbatical. Guys, that video, okay, was all about adoption. You ever hear the story of the young girl who she's in the class and the teacher's trying to explain adoption? I don't know if this is a true story or not, but this is what I heard. And this young girl, elementary school, she raises her hand, she says, I'm adopted. Really? She says, well, tell me about that. She says, well, my mom says adoption is when the baby grows in your heart instead of your tummy. Guys, our church is all about adoption. I don't have a lot of time to talk to you about adoption today, Pastor Dave's gonna be up here to tell you all that we're doing, but the text today is gonna be about adoption, guys. Adoption is at the heart of the gospel, not just that God forgives us, but that he makes us family. What I'm gonna talk to you about just for one minute, okay, and then I'm gonna pray and we're gonna get into Romans 8, is I wanna talk to you about family in general, because what the church is, you know this, okay, across all of our campuses, the church is a family of families, okay? And I need to talk to you about something, like we have a, it's a good problem, okay? We're gonna call it a problem of progress, okay?

We have about 900 kids in our church, fifth grade and under. That's a small school district with better snacks here, okay, that's what we have. Look, okay, listen, if we're gonna just, you're gonna feel like you're, if you're from a Catholic background, you're about to feel like you're in Catholic church just for a minute, okay? Because I'm gonna ask everybody to stand if you have at least one kid, fifth grade or younger in our church, just stand up if you have at least one kid, fifth grade and younger, look around here. This is your fault, okay, these are these people's fault. Okay, sit down. Okay, so we have problems of progress, okay? Or as a friend of mine likes to say, new levels, new devils, okay, okay? Here's what this means. So we need to do two things because there's just a lot of kids. Number one, we need more space. So even on my sabbatical, Pastor Dave was talking to architects and what we're hoping to do, planning and praying on doing, is our staff is going to hopefully be able to give our offices to double the size of the kids' space. So that's where, yeah, you're excited. You're like, I don't have to do anything. Good job, staff. Okay, okay, that's the first one, we need more space.

The second one, you're not gonna like this one as much, I don't think, we need more servants. Yeah, yeah, the people in the kids ministry like that one. Guys, okay, listen, the largest group of unbelievers in our church is across the lobby or down the hall in your kids ministry. And some of you, guys, you have a, you fell off the serving bandwagon, it's time to get back in, okay? You're new to our church and you have a passion, you gotta go to our weekenders so you can get on our kids serving team, guys. This is an incredible opportunity. By the way, and this is to all the people who just stood and have like fifth grade and under kids, when you show up to pick up your kids, I hope every once in a while you show up with gift cards and thank yous and gratitude in your heart because we've got a whole group of people that are investing in the next generation. If you wanna be a part of that, text three nine, well, yeah, text kids to 39808 and we'll get you some more information. Also, finally, if you're able to, come to our 5 p.m. services. So here's the interesting thing, we have identical services. So we do the same thing at nine, 11, five, in here, we do the same thing in the kids ministry as well. So if you want some more space for your kids and you can help us free up some more space

as we're trying to figure out how to turn our offices into kids space, we'd appreciate that. With that said, let's pray and then we're gonna dive back into the book of Romans, let's pray. Lord, I wanna pray right now. We're gonna, at the end of the service, we're gonna see some families that are doing. in adoption and foster care, and we understand that adoption and foster care are costly and complex. They're costly emotionally, they're costly financially. It's costly. We know at the heart of the gospel, for you to adopt us, it costs you giving your own son. So would we build a culture of foster care and adoption where we care about the least and the last? Lord, would you help us as we have just an incredible stewardship of hundreds and hundreds of kids who need to hear about Jesus and be discipled. Would you help us to increase our space and increase our servants, maybe even for some to move to the five o'clock service here at our Winston campus. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, type two, turn two, Romans eight. We're picking right back up, okay? Do you know that John Calvin, when he was preaching, he went to prison for like a couple years, and when he got back, he just picked up in the same verse. Okay, I didn't go to prison, I was on sabbatical. It's a little different, okay?

But we're doing the same thing. Romans eight, verse 12. If you're joining us, welcome. Listen, if you're new across all of our campuses, what an incredible time to be new. We're halfway through the greatest letter, greatest book ever written, okay? If the Bible is a ring, Romans is the diamond sitting on it. And today we're gonna be in Romans chapter eight, verse 12. I wanna just remind us also, I know it's a long intro, but I've been gone, listen. Our theme for the year is centered in scent, okay? Now, we haven't talked about that a lot over the last two weeks or eight weeks. The pastors internally, externally, by the way, did a great job in the preach series. But it's kind of my job to recenter us on being centered in scent, right? Anchored on God's word, active in God's world. And if you kind of haven't been doing that, what a great time to refocus in, okay? We're in Romans eight, which is the most famous chapter of the most famous book in the Bible. And it's all about two things, security and the spirit. And today I'm gonna talk to you about the Holy Spirit. And here's what I want you to know, okay? If you take notes, okay? And I do wanna thank both of you out there who are taking notes, okay? If you take notes, I don't want you to just miss

the big idea here, okay? Listen, you should live your life, are you ready for this? The way Jesus lived his life. It's so interesting, everyone's talking about, I wanna live for Jesus. Well, that's great, how about you also live like Jesus? And Jesus lived his life empowered by the Holy Spirit. In the American evangelical 21st century church, everybody's talking about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and that's right. But I also want you to have a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is mentioned in Romans one through seven, only five times. The Holy Spirit is mentioned 21 times in the chapter we're in right now. I already preached this sermon right before I left on Romans eight, one through 11. I'm gonna spend four more weeks just in Romans eight. And today we're gonna see that when you have a relationship with the Holy Spirit, it changes you. Have you noticed this? Have you ever noticed when you get in a relationship with someone, it changes you? We call that marriage, okay? When you have kids, you're in a relationship with kids, it changes you. When you get your first roommate and you were used to living by yourself and now you have to share a room and you have to relate to this person, it changes you.

So I'm gonna show you four ways right from the text that being in a relationship with the Holy Spirit transforms and changes you. I'll just give them to you and then we'll talk to them. It makes you a debtor, okay? It makes you a soldier. It makes you a sheep and it makes you a son. That's the whole outline. First, it makes you a debtor. Look here, let's go to verse 12. Enough time, we need to be in the text. Here it is. So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors. You didn't wanna hear that, right? Some of you, your whole life is like, your whole desire in life is financial freedom. I don't ever wanna be in debt to anybody ever. Paul says, we are debtors. That's what the Holy Spirit does. We are debtors. He says this, not to the flesh. Notice, by the way, he's not gonna finish telling us who we are debtors to. It's implied. We're debtors to the Holy Spirit. We'll get there. He says, so then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, okay? Here's the first thing you need to do. You need to have a different mindset.

You know what your mindset is? Your mindset is your settled way of thinking about things. Everybody has a mindset. This is why, if there's somebody that you know real well, you know, like people, you know, your kids, your wife, your good friends, have you ever been like, I know what he's gonna say? That's how, you know, you're not a prophet, but how do you know what people are going to do? Well, because they have a character and they have a mindset. Here's what I want you to know today. You can change your mindset. I know it's so simple, but like, so I had this mentor, his name's Daniel Henderson. He's a, he helps pastors grow in prayer. And he was, He's just telling us a story one time. He goes, yeah, I'm with this guy, and we had a prayer night. And I invited this guy in our church to the prayer night, and he said to me, I'm not gonna come to the prayer night. He says, well, why aren't you gonna come to the prayer night? He goes, because the only reason I would come to the prayer night is because I'd want you to see me there, and I'd only be doing it to please you. And I love what he said. He goes, change your mindset. Why don't you just decide that's not why you're coming? Why, just because you had one mindset, just because you thought about something one way?

Let me tell you three unhealthy mindsets that are mindsets of the flesh. Are you ready? There's the victim mindset, okay? Look, I know, I have to put airbags around everything. There are real victims, obviously, okay? But some of you have the victim mindset. And by the way, particularly men, if you have a victim mindset, nobody will follow you. Men need to know this, okay? No, women do not want to follow a victim. Men do not want to follow a victim, okay? The victim mindset is, woe is me, the world is against me. And as soon as you go off to university, they teach you the oppressor, oppressed narrative, right? Here's a really simple way to understand everything that's ever happened. You're either the oppressor or you're the oppressed. And you should try to be the oppressed because there's a lot of virtue in being oppressed. Okay, that's the first mindset. The second, get rid of that mindset. You don't need that mindset, okay? By the power of the Holy Spirit, okay? You can say no to sin, yes to righteousness, and you don't have to say who you are, okay? The second mindset that is an unhealthy mindset is the consumeristic mindset. Somehow, guys, for some of you, can we be honest for a second?

Some of you, your whole life is one large Yelp review. Every interaction. Well, you know, and it's this back and forth mindset, right? Well, I texted last time, so it's their turn to text. Well, last time, I've forgiven three times. It's their turn to forgive. I always am initiating. They need to initiate. Because we live in such a consumeristic culture, we even relate to the church in relationships based solely on what we can get out of it. Or then, and this is the biggest one kind of with the mindset of the flesh, is an entitlement mindset. By the way, isn't that, here's what the entitlement mindset says. I deserve this. So my favorite restaurant in town is Putter's. We need more holes in the wall here in Winston. I know there's some down in, over in Davie and down in Lexington, but I'm at Putter's the other night. My family is out of town, so it's just, I love it, so I'm there. And I overhear a guy say to another guy, just casually, you know, I was kind of eavesdropping just a little bit, holding my breath so I could hear. And I hear him say, man, I'm gonna drink a ton tonight. It's been a hard week and I deserve it.

And then his friend goes, you do deserve it. And I thought, that is the entitlement mindset. Isn't that how you talk when you sin? Like when you're, to yourself, and if you have to confess it to somebody, don't you talk like, I had to. Like I just, I felt these desires and I had to do it. So Paul says, listen, this is interesting. Paul says that we are a debtor, not to the flesh, but to the spirit. Now here's what this means. You don't owe your sinful flesh anything. Here's what happens, okay. Here's the reason that we keep, some of us keep giving into the flesh, okay. It's called, I think it's called the sunk cost fallacy. You ever heard of this before? So it's like an investing idea, but it's like people have invested. It's like, why do people invest in bad things? Because they've been investing in them for so long already. To stop investing in them would be to admit that they've been wasting the last decade of their life. Some of you are resentful towards somebody, and you've been resentful for five years. And here's the problem. If you stopped being resentful, you'd have to admit to yourself that you've wasted five years being resentful. And that's too hard to do.

So you'd rather just stay resentful. Or here's what happens. You ever give into something? So then you said, I gave into it, so I might as well just give into it again. Over the sabbatical, I've been, one of my goals, okay, is I needed to do something kind of unique and spiritually intense for me. I was like, I'm gonna read the essential works of C.S. Lewis. So get ready for me to just quote him for the rest of the series now, okay? And so I'm rereading. mere Christianity, which I hadn't read for 20 years. In a mere Christianity, you know, there's like this section that was just so good because he's so good at categorizing what's going on. He goes, there's three types of people in the world. He said, there's the type of person who still thinks this world will satisfy them. You've met them, new house, new spouse, new job, new hobby. He says, there's those type of people. He goes, they tend to still, those tend to be younger people. He said, as you get older, what happens is people become cynical. You ever met that guy, the old guy screaming, get off my lawn, right? Here's what happens. They realize nothing in this world will satisfy them, and they become bitter.

He said, what the Christian can do is the Christian can be thankful, he can be the third type person, thankful for all the gifts that God has given him. But ultimately, realizing nothing on this earth will satisfy him because he wasn't made for this place, he was made for a different place, and he has desires that will only be for a little bit. The first one is that you are a debtor, okay, but you are a debtor to the Holy Spirit. Now, that doesn't mean we don't pay God, we'll get into this, we don't pay God back for our salvation. What it means is that you owe God a life of gratitude, a life of worship, and a life of obedience. Okay, so the first one is you're a debtor, probably spend the least amount of time on that one. Secondly, you are the Holy Spirit makes you a soldier. Let me show you this. So, turn here with me to verse 13. Here's what it says. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit, who is, by the way, the Spirit of life. So, if by the Spirit of life, you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live, okay? Or to quote the great John Owen, who is a Puritan, and this is worth me kind of saying really slowly, okay? This is such a famous statement. I think I've already said it in the book of Romans. Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you. One of my friends in college, he had a Bible. And, you know, back in the days when there were real Bibles

instead of on your iPads, okay, there's real Bibles. And people used to write notes in them when they would give you the Bible, and his grandmother gave him a Bible, and he showed it to me. And on the inside, it said, sin will keep you from this book, or this book will keep you from sin. Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you. Now, let me clarify. Okay, what Paul is not saying, because this whole chapter is on being secure in Christ. And, you know, verse 1 of chapter 8, there is now, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So here's what he's not saying. I just want to be very clear. He's not saying that self-denial is rewarded with eternal life. He's not saying that you earn your salvation, eternal life, way to heaven by putting sin to death. I agree with what John Stott, famous Christian pastor, author, commentator, says on this text. This verse is about your life here. Can you just admit, some of you, you are not living the abundant life? You're not putting sin to death. You're not walking in the Spirit. You're not enjoying God. And so here's what he says here. He says, what you're supposed to do, let me read it one more time. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. Okay, this is the mortification or the putting to death of sin.

Now, I want to talk about what putting sin to death is and is not. Because I'm going to talk to you right now, right? This always happens, right? So let's just do this together, okay? I mean, just by yourself, not aloud. What is the number one sin you still struggle with? Now, here's what I've found. If you're in a group of people, unless it's really small, usually all the same gender, and there's lots of relationship, and someone goes first to be vulnerable, nobody tells the truth. Everybody says things like, well, I just work too hard. Just pray for me. I care too much. That's this big sin in my life. My prayer life isn't where it should be. I'm not talking about any of those things. I'm talking about like the fake you's doing fine. I'm trying to talk to real you just for a second, okay? Real you is who I want to talk to just for a second. Say, okay, now let me talk to you from Scripture about how to deal with that. You have to put that sin to death. It's called mortification. Now, mortification is not managing sin. Part of what we have to do... Okay, they say the hardest part of prayer is getting your heart to where you really want to change. Because if we're honest, we don't want to put sin to death, we want to put it in a retirement home and occasionally visit it on the weekends. Right?

We don't want it to be dead, we want it to be quiet. We treat sin like a compassion child, we sponsor it monthly. Not that often, but we just...we water it, but not enough for it to grow real big, but enough for it to stay alive. So you've got to decide, I'm going to kill sin, okay? I'm not going to manage sin. I'm going to put it to death, I'm not going to slap it. But here's the second thing, mortification is not masochism. So it's not managing sin, it's not... Masochism is like, you know, Martin Luther, who I love, who I talk about all the time, that famous monk who started the Reformation. So he struggled with sin so much just before he was a Christian that he would punish himself. You could read crazy stuff. He actually wore out his mentor. His mentor was like, stop confessing sin to me. And he would go outside, this is what he would do in winter. He would go outside and he would sleep with no blankets to punish himself, Martin Luther. He would fast for long periods, not like cool health intermittent fasting. Like he would just, he would fast for long periods of time to punish himself. Fighting sin, putting sin to death is not about hurting your body, okay? It's not about punishing your body, it's about putting sin to death. But here's the third one. Mortification is not just masking sin, kind of pushing it

down, you know, repression. Because, you know, some people, right? This is what's going to happen, you know, you're going to... I think I told you this story before, I was talking to a guy at Duke, he came to my Bible study and he's like, I came to your Bible study because I'm completely addicted to pornography. And I said, have you ever talked to anybody about this? And he said, yeah, my dad, he told me it was normal. See, there's a whole group of people that if you say, I want to put something to death in your life, they're going to go, no, no, no, no, don't do that, that would be psychologically damaging to you. This is a normal, natural part of your life and you need to just, you do you, you be you. Listen, here's the thing, we're not trying to... When I say put sin to death, I'm not saying push it down, okay? We're not talking about what Freud called repression, okay? So I know Freud wasn't a Christian, okay? But Freud thought most mental illness, we've got tons of mental illness in our nation right now. Freud thought most mental illness was because people were pushing things down into their subconscious and never dealing with it. If you try to push sin into the basement of your life, let me tell you what it does, it starts lifting weights. When you put sin in the basement, it starts lifting weights, it comes up, it's been bench pressing 215 and it just explodes. Has that ever happened to you?

Like, I thought that was gone out of my life and then that weekend I... We have to put sin to death. How do we put sin to death by the Holy Spirit? We have to get to the root of sin, right? This is how you kill sin. And the root of sin, okay, is the lie you are believing. So you're like, I'm greedy or I'm a workaholic, right? Or I'm a total people pleaser to my boss, like, is the lie... Let me just give you a couple of common lies. If I had more money, I'd be happier. Even when I say that, some of you are like, that's true, what are you talking about? You have to deal with the lie and then bring Scripture to it. Or here's another one, this is a very common one for people. I married the wrong person. And you start getting on Instagram, right? We live in the first generation ever where you can go check on all of your exes from the past who might be in better shape than your spouse or make more money than... By the way, you're only seeing their filtered life. And you're like, yeah, I married the wrong person so it's okay for me to be emotionally connected to this other man or this other woman. How about this one? I can't be fully human if I'm not sexually active. Well, Jesus was fully human and he wasn't sexually active. There are lies that we believe that we have to get to the root of, which is... Here's what you need to do.

When you finally get to that lie, you need to not just listen to yourself, you need to preach the gospel to yourself. Have you ever noticed that you listen to yourself a lot? So this morning, I'm guessing there's some of you, and you got up and you were like, hit the snooze button. Who said that? You were listening to you. If you listen to yourself, you will always lose. Because you have, we're all, me too, okay? We all have sub-personalities, right? That show up in our lives, that they make arguments, right, they try to use logic, they try to use emotion. So here's what you need. You need many sermons for different struggles. Like, I challenge you, is there a sermon? Next time you're experiencing sexual temptation, is there a sermon that you could preach to yourself? You just go, you know what? Matthew 5, 8 says, blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. And God, I wanna be pure in heart, because I wanna see you. Is there, next time you're struggling in your marriage, you're like, no, I'm believing what the Bible says. The Bible says that he who finds a wife, finds a good thing and finds favor from the Lord. When you're struggling with contentment, because you're on Instagram watching about everybody's lake house.

And you go, wait, no, God will take care of me, by the way, that's the heart of contentment. We have to get to the root of it. We have to bring God's truth to it. We have to apply the gospel to it. And we have to cultivate gratitude in our hearts. Guys, we should be so unbelievably grateful. And I've told you this before, but if you, there is nothing that fights sin like a grateful heart. Next time you're alone, because that's usually when you will be tempted. And you're tempted to look at something or drink something or do something you shouldn't do. Just, if you can, try to do this for a moment. Get on your knees and start thanking God for every blessing in your life, whatever comes to your mind. It could be, we'll get here, it could be your adoption into God's family. It could be your eternal salvation, or it could be the reality that you get to take a hot shower. Have you ever thought about that? Nobody that you respect or admire from human history who lived more than 200 years ago ever got to take a hot shower. They didn't get to turn a knob and have endless amounts of hot water fall on them and then just go into a drain.

It's like, you need to find an incredible amount of things to be grateful for. Paul says, God has made you a debtor. God has made you a soldier, and there is no Christian pacifism when it comes to fighting sin. But here's a third one. God has made you a sheep. This is the one everybody knows. The Lord is my shepherd, right? Let me show you this. For all who are led, not driven, we'll talk about that. For all those who are led by the Spirit are sons of God. So everybody is led by something. Christians are supposed to be led by the Holy Spirit because we're sheep. Most people are led by the cultural moment. And you can prove this. If you just look back at fashions and fads and how we dress 20 or 30 years ago, you'll think, what was I thinking? Frosted tips and Janko jeans, right? And women with perms. It's like, and we're talking about, like, think about this. To me, you can see how easily we are led by our culture with one very simple way. The newest water bottle or cup. I'm old enough, okay, I'm 41. I'm old enough to remember when the Tervis tumbler was cool.

If you have one of those, it's not cool anymore, okay? But I remember when the Yeti, you're like, oh, I guess it's worth five times what everything else costs, right? And then it was the Stanley. And now it's the Oudoua, or Oudoua, or I don't even know what it's called. Okay, I don't have one. And it's a new, that's gonna be, you know what I'm saying? Here's what's interesting. There was this French psychologist who said, humans don't know what we want, so we watch what other people want, and then we want that. Like, no woman, from the deepest part of herself, wakes up and goes, I desire a Stanley Cup. He wants a Stanley Cup because her friend has a Stanley Cup, and she doesn't want any dupe, okay? She wants the real thing. We are led by our cultural moment. Here's another one. We are led by our feelings. By the way, most people, when they say they're led by the Holy Spirit, what's so interesting is they're led to do, you ready for this, what they already want to do. That's really convenient for you. You're led by the Holy Spirit to do what you already wanted to do, but now you can Christianize it and put God's name on it, which, by the way, is using God's name in vain. To use God's name in vain is to use God for your personal advantage.

We're led by our feelings, okay? I'm not even sure how helpful it is that feelings are real. Let me say a couple things. Feelings are real. They're a dashboard, not the driver's seat, okay? They can be a gauge, but they shouldn't be your guide, okay? Because think about it. You feel differently about the same thing a few hours different, right? A few hours later, you can feel... It's like, oh, your blood sugar dropped. You feel completely different about it. Oh, you didn't sleep or you didn't eat, so you feel completely different about something. I'm just not sure. Listen, I mean, I think we think way too much about how we feel about things. You're like, I don't know how I feel about that. That's exactly what I'm talking about. I don't know how I feel about Kyle talking about my feelings. Well, I mean, my grandfather, God bless him, my grandfather, I spent some time with my mom on the sabbatical and I was talking about her dad, you know. My grandfather was just a blue collar, worked in Cleveland, Ohio, carried the mail, was a postman, walking route all year long in Cleveland. It's like, I could not imagine having a conversation with my grandfather, how do you feel about your job as a post office worker? Well, it's not the easiest thing to post on Facebook.

He wouldn't think about that. He wouldn't even have a category for how does this job make me feel? Some of you in your marriage, you ask each other way too much how you each other feel. You weren't ready for that, were you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, what does that make you, I mean, how has that ever turned into something good? Has that conversation ever been helpful? No, because you said, I don't know, oh, I don't feel good about it. I wasn't thinking about it, but now I don't feel good about it. The third thing that we're led by is our algorithms, which are scary. You understand that you spend four to five hours, if you're an average person, on social media per day. So, I think it's four to five hours on your phone, two to three hours on social media, which means, here's what's scary about that, you spend more time on social media than with people you love. There's not one person in your life you spend more time with than you do with social media. And social media is a super smart machine that's studying you. You know how smart your phone is? You ever open up...sorry, Android users. You ever open up your iPhone and you're not looking at it and it doesn't work? You ever notice that?

And then you have to look at it and then it works? It's because your phone knows where your eyes are looking on the screen. It knows where you're looking at the picture. It knows where you pinch the screen to expand it. It calculates every time you liked and shared something or watched The Real twice. And so, guys, we are being led by the culture, which is basically invisible to us, by our feelings, which are internal, and then by this device, right, which is...and we're all unhappy, you know, because we can't make sourdough bread like she can or something like that, okay? And so, instead of being led by those things, the Bible says that we need to be led by the Holy Spirit. Now, what does that mean? So, here's how this works. God gives us an objective word in this objective spirit. You can't be led by the Holy Spirit if you don't know God's word. So, the Holy Spirit says, you know, love your wife... Sorry, the word of God says, love your wife, Ephesians 5, as Christ loved the church. And then you're reading that, the Holy Spirit says to you, and this is how you love your wife today. And that's how it gets real. Not just I'm reading a few verses and doing my Bible recap. It's like, no, no, no, what is the Bible saying and what is... It's objective, it says the same thing to all of us, okay? I can read it, it's in black and white, literally. But then what is the Holy Spirit saying to me?

Now, here's what it means to be led by the Holy Spirit. You have to want to be led by the Holy Spirit. You know that the Holy Spirit is a gentleman. The Holy Spirit doesn't shout, he persuades, he pursues. You can't lead somebody who doesn't want to be led, right? We call that parenting. You know that, right? There's always like, you can't lead somebody who doesn't want to be led. Some of you had employees like that before. So you have to have, okay, and here's, can I give you the heart that wants to be led by the Holy Spirit? The heart that wants to be led by the Holy Spirit says, I would like to do what you want me to do. That's a hard place to get your heart. I want to do what God wants me to do. So the Holy Spirit comes and he makes us a debtor, but to God, not to the flesh. He makes us a soldier so he tells us to put sin to death, okay? He makes us a sheep so that he can lead us. And finally, he makes us a son. Let me show you this. This is adoption. This is why we showed you the adoption video this day. Let me show you this. Here's what it says. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father, okay? So he ends with the primary identity of a Christian, which is a son or daughter of God. And he compares it, he says, are you a son or are you a slave? Guys, he's talking about...this whole thing's been about this, but he's talking about identity, which is something I find myself up here,

you know, there's certain themes, suffering, different things like that, that I'm like, I'm talking about this again. Identity is such a huge topic, okay? We know this, we know how obsessed we are with identity. Let me give you a new illustration for this. With genetic testing, so 23andMe, you know what that is? Some of you have done this. You've spit your saliva into a tube and sent it away. And it came back and you found out that seven generations ago, your second cousin was connected to a knight. And you're like, I knew I was royalty, right? I knew I should be living...honey, we should be living in a castle, right? You sent it away and now you know why cilantro tastes like soap to you. Good for you, okay? But guys, we are so obsessed with identity. And he basically says there's two identities, there's a slave and there's a son. By the way, slaves are driven, sons are led. I didn't even get into that, but, you know, the question is not just, are you led, but are you led instead of being driven? Well, he says that we're sons. And here's what he says here, let me show you this. He says, for you did not...I'll read it again. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you've received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry out, Abba, Father. So I've told you, chapter 8 is about security, chapter 8 is about the Holy Spirit. And he basically says, you don't have the spirit of fear. See, listen, the orphan spirit is a spirit of fear. And the orphan spirit is a spirit that doesn't cry out. So we've had some people in our church...lots of people in our church do adoption.

And we've had some people in our church do international adoption, okay? And we've had people in our church do international adoption of older children. And one of the things that you see in when you adopt a six-year-old from...I'm making all this up, just picking up something. Six-year-old from Africa is they get into your home and they hoard food under their bed. They live in an amazing home with parents that love them, but they still have the orphan spirit. One lady said, the most eerie thing about orphanages with lots of babies in third world countries, the eeriest thing is not the crying, it's the silence. Because there's a time where the baby just decides, I'm not going to cry anymore because no one's coming. He says, what you do as a son is you cry out. See, listen, when a baby is born, the first thing that it does is cry. And when a person is born again, the first thing that they do is cry, cry out. When they say, Jesus, save me, Jesus, forgive me, that's the sign that they've been born again and that they've cried out. By the way, this might be uncomfortable for some of you, but a relationship with God is amazing. emotional, it's passionate, it's experiential, it's intimate. See, it says that they cry out. Let me just read this to you one last time. By whom we cry, Abba, Father. Now, you've probably been told this, Abba is the word dad, okay? And in the Old Testament, we have no examples, zero examples of an individual person in the Old Testament addressing God as dad or father. There's a couple times where God calls himself a father to the nation of Israel or makes promises in the future about

being a father and to the children. But then Jesus shows up and he tells us, when you pray, pray our father. And then he models praying to God. Now, here's the...can I just talk to us for a second? The problem about saying you should pray to God and when you pray to God, you should say dad or father. The problem is the word father, when I say it, it has a face with it. The word dad has a face with it. I had a guy this week email me and sharing a couple of struggles over email that he's having and I'd never met this guy before. He may be listening, he may be here right now. And he said, I think of all these struggles are connected to my dad who was distant in my life and I'm trying to forgive him. You're going to have to deal, if you're going to understand God as dad, you're going to have to deal with your dad. Now, some of you have terrific dads, right? You're like, he is terrific, he was the best, he loved me and he invested in me and he prayed for me and I have a great relationship with him. So, some of you have a terrific dad, this is really easy. As soon as I say, God's like your dad, you're like, well, that makes sense. Some of you have had tragic dads. In other words, something terrible happened to your dad and he's no longer here. You know, we celebrated July 4th last week. Did you know that George Washington's dad died

when he was 10? So, I want to encourage you from Scripture and from the life of George Washington, you can actually have a bright future even if something terrible happened to your dad. But sometimes people don't want to get close to God because they're like, I don't want to get close to somebody because every time I get close to somebody, something bad happens to them. And other people, they just had a tolerable dad. You know, he did some good things, he did some bad things. Others had a terrible dad. Whether it was abuse or abandonment or something else, and I want to encourage you. We can't look to our earthly fathers. Now, some of us have great earthly fathers, what God's like. What we're told here is that the spirit of sonship, the spirit of adoption cries out to God. Now, look what it says. Let me show you this, verse 16. It says, the spirit himself bears witness with our spirits that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. So, it ends by saying, if you are a son, then you are an heir and you have an inheritance. Now, that's interesting because right now, in our nation, one of the conversation that wealth managers and investment bankers and financial advisors are having a conversation

about is going to be the greatest wealth transfer in all of human history. The boomers are dying. And over the next decade or so, they are going to, next two or three decades, all of the boomers will die and they will pass on $84 trillion, $84 trillion. Now, for some of you, that means lake houses. And for some of you, that means Beanie Baby Collections. And that timeshare your parents should have never bought, okay? But here's the thing about an inheritance. I don't know if you ever had this thought before. If you have a right relationship with the person, the inheritance, every time you get an inheritance, you lose. It's a lake house, dad's gone, mom's gone. Whatever you gain in the inheritance is always, always way less than what you lost to get it. And what he says is that's actually not how it works here. Here, we're all heirs. He doesn't even say heir, he says heirs. He says because basically, we all, if we're Christians, we all inherit. Now, how's that possible, right? Because if there's a wealthy family and it has two kids, we split it. But if they got 10 kids, then you just get, you get 10% instead of 50%. Well, here's the thing. What we get is God. And it hurts your brain, but because God's infinite,

you can't divide them. And so what we get in the gospel, our great inheritance, pretence is God. The reason forgiveness is so awesome, everybody wants to be forgiven, but the reason forgiveness is so awesome is because it gets sin out of the way so I can enjoy God. And the reason eternal life is such a great deal is not just because I want to live forever, but it's going to take me that long to know and love God. And a brand new body, and the older you get, the more you want that, a brand new body is all... Who doesn't want a brand new body? Well, the reason that Christians want a brand new body is I'm going to need all of my faculties working. I'm going to need to be the most vibrant, vigorous version of myself so I can enjoy God. But he ends with this. He says, provided we suffer with him. I want to end by talking to a few of you because you might be going right now through a season of suffering. And I want you to understand this, suffering is the birth mark of being part of God's family. I don't know if you're...by the way, the more people you love and the longer you live, the more you suffer. Some of you aren't suffering, but personally, you, you're not suffering, but you're connected to somebody you love that's suffering, so it's like the same. It's like, you know, if something happens to my kids, I'd rather it happen to me. I suffer worse if something happens to somebody I love.

Just let it happen to me instead. When you're suffering, here's what you're tempted to believe. You're tempted to believe this is punishment or this is pointless. Whenever you're suffering, you're like, you know what, you start getting to the ledger in your head, what did I do? I shouldn't eat so much seed oils back in the day, you know? You start thinking something like that, like, what did I do? Or you think it's pointless, there's no purpose. God says it's actually, this is how Jesus lived. Think about it. Jesus had to suffer before he was glorified. He needed the cross before he was glorified. Think about it. Jesus had to suffer before he was glorified. He needed the cross before he needed the crown. See, all the things that we are, Jesus was first. He was a debtor. Well, he didn't know anything, but in our place, he paid our debts. He was a soldier who fought Satan's sin and death. He was led to the cross for the joy that was set before him. He despised the shame enduring the cross. And he is the begotten son who welcomes us into the family as older brothers and sisters. So if you'll close your eyes, I want to give us a second to respond. The band's going to come forward. We're going to stand in a moment and sing. There was a lot I didn't get to, but some of you, some of you need to come forward this morning. You need to pray about something.

For some of you, I feel this, you need to stop thinking everybody else is in debt to you. And you need to come forward, and you need to say, you know what the problem with my marriage is? I've been acting like my husband owes me something all the time. The problem with my relationship with my kids is I think they owe me. I'm so worried about what everybody else owes me. I've not been worried about what I owe God, and that's messed up everything, and you need to come forward. There's others of you, like there's a sin in your life, and you've been managing it. And you're afraid, and that's okay, but you're going to come forward, and you're just going to make a commitment just for one sin in your life that you're going to put it to death. Maybe you need to come forward because you go, God, I don't even know what I'm believing that's making me do this. Would you reveal it to me? Others of you, you've got a big decision to make, and you want to be led by the Holy Spirit. Some of you, you're thinking about job changes. You're thinking about marriage. You're thinking about kids. You're thinking about retirement, or you know somebody, and they're thinking about something. You just need to pray for them, and still there are others who just need to cry out. You just need to come. There's some suffering in your life, and you're like, I'm not going to be the kid in the orphanage who stops crying because I think no one's coming.

I know my God hears me, and I know that I am suffering on my way to glory and on my way to an inheritance. Let's pray. Lord, across all of our campuses, we just pray for just a response culture. That's what we owe you. What we owe you is a life of worship, a life of responding, a life of obedience, a life of honor, and a life of gratitude. Would you do that in us? Would you do that through us? We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. You can stand. Come forward.