New Heart Part 1

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Church of the Bible. It is great to be here again, great to see everyone and just happy to be here and worship God and hear Him in his word today. So, announcements this Wednesday for those who are coming to Bibles, who come to Wednesday, I'm unknown if we're going to have it yet because I know I'm going to be at the car shop in St. George, so I will keep you all posted. If we do have it, I will be in my car, just so you know.

But I'll keep you posted on whether or not we're going to have that this week. As far as Friday goes, those in Cedar, there will be no church this week or next week, and I'll let you know about the one prior. I will be driving to Alabama. I'm leaving Thursday morning like 01:00 A.m., so there will be no church. However, I do invite everyone from Cedar to join us on our Wednesday night Zoom Studies while I'm gone, if you would like to.

So that's what's going to be going on that way for announcements. Not a lot going on locally as I will be gone. So I think that really covers it for announcements. Then let's go ahead and pray and then we're going to go to worship. And I do encourage everyone to sing along.

I sing along. I've been paying attention and I don't get to see most of you who are on Zoom, but I've been paying attention in all my physical services and I've been noticing that people aren't. And I just want to remind people that there is great power in worshipping God. And there's great power not just listening to the music, but worshipping with Your voice to God. He wants us to do that.

And I know in this setting we're all kind of separate and we can't hear each other, which is probably good because it sounds I love when everyone sings, but with Zoom and whatnot. But nonetheless, I'm getting sidetracked. So getting back to it, even alone, there is great power in worshiping God. So let's all worship God today and open our ears to his spirit, what he has to say. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you that we could be here today. Lord, we thank you for Your goodness and providing all of this technology you have provided to us to be able to do what we are doing. And Father, we thank you for Your faithfulness and being a provider and being a healer and bringing us moisture and doing all that you do. And we just glorify you now and we pray, Lord, as we go into service that you would remove from our minds anything that would be distracting us. Lord, turn our hearts and our minds, our attention fully toward you as we go to worship and study.

And would you open our ears and open our hearts to what Your spirit has to say and teach us today in Jesus name we pray amen. Amen.

As for me and my house will serve you, Lord. Lifting holy hands and worship.

We will not bow down to the gods of men. We will worship. The God lives right you are holy, holy. There is no one else like you. You are holy, holy.

There is no one else like you. Ask for me and my house we will serve you, Lord. Lifting holy hands and worship. We will not bow down to the gods of men. We will worship.

The god will be a thrown you are holy, holy. There's no one else like you. You are holy, holy. There is no one else like you. There is no one left like you.

Love.

There is no one left.

You stay whom you will serve come on choose to stay whom you will serve. But as for me and my house we will serve you, Lord. We will serve you, Lord. Oh, yeah. We will not bow through the gospel, men we will not bow through the gospel men will worship the golf is right.

We will not fight I don't shut up.

Holy. There is no one else like you holy. There is no one else like you.

We will not bow down to the gods of men. We will worship the God of its drive.

He's our rescuer, he's our rescuer. We are free from simple forever. Oh, how sweet it's now. Oh how great about rescue words there is good news for the captive, good news for the shame. There is good news for the work who walked away.

There is good news for the doubter the one religion failed. For the good Lord has come. Sink and save. He's our lifting bird he's our resistance we are we broken forever. Know how sweet it sounds?

Rest for those who strive oh, the good lord is the way the truth is alive he's our rescue word he's our rescue word we are fleeting, forevermore fearless. Come to the foot of Calvary.

There is redemption for every.

The battle rage is on that storm in temperatures roar we cannot win this fight.

Inside our rebel hearts we're laid holy ground you. Made a way for peace laying your body down you took a rightful place how? I can tell you the cross lift did high lift it high we lift the cross lift it high lift it high we lift the cross we lift the cross did high we lift the cross lift as we begin a miniseries I mentioned in a video I did earlier today. We kind of got sidetracked from Job and we are working our way back into Job. But right now it's heavy on my heart to continue that pause and start a miniseries on repentance.

And one thing that hopefully you all have noticed is most of worship today centered around repentance. And as that last song said, raising our white flag right we are surrendering, we are done. And that's part of part of repentance is rendering your will to gods. So those who have their Bibles with them, turn with me, please, to Ezekiel 18. We'll be reading chapters verses 30 through 32 when we get there.

And this is an appeal of God through the prophet Ezekiel to Judah. Let's read his appeal. In Ezekiel 18, verses 30 to 32, he says, Therefore, I will judge you, house of Israel. Each one according to his ways, declares the Lord Yahweh, repent and turn around from all your transgression, and that will not be as a stumbleum walk of iniquity to you. Throw away from yourselves all of your transgressions that you committed, and make for yourselves a new heart and new spirit.

And so why will you die, house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of the dying, declares the Lord Yahweh. And so repent and live. This is a very pointed scripture, and God, through Ezekiel is pleading, begging for the repentance of his people.

And I'm incapable right now of getting my Bible to turn 1. Second, I'm sorry, I'm trying to turn to my next scripture. My Bible froze.

All right, I got there. Sorry, guys. The downfall of using electric Bibles and tablets and stuff. So again, I apologize. So he's pleading, he's begging with Israel to repent and turn around, or else they shall die.

So this is pointed.

There's not many options given to the people by the Lord here. There's a fork in the road, and you must choose one fork or the other. On the one fork, you can repent and you shall live. And on the other fork, you shall continue in your transgression as a stumbling block of iniquity, and you shall die. And God is in his pleading with the people here, he is not simply ordering them to do something, but he is rather discussing with them.

He's trying to persuade them. And look how he persuades them. He says, Throw away all of your transgressions and make for yourself a new heart and a new spirit. He says, for why will you die? So in God's pleading, he is attempting to persuade them to reason with them.

Why should you die if all the graces of God is not good enough to repent? Let's ask ourselves the question, why would we want to die?

And God, he goes further. Not only does he ask us why should we die, he says, I have no pleasure in the death of the dying, so repent. So I want to establish a few facts here as we begin this miniseries. It'll only be a couple of weeks. So this miniseries and this message, the first fact is that we must repent.

We all have iniquity, we all have sin that we must repent of and cast away. In my version here, it says, throw away from yourselves, right? So we need to take our transgressions, our sins, those things that we have committed to our minds and our hearts, and we must throw them away. Romans 620 sorry. Romans 323 tells us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

So when God is speaking through his prophet here to Israel, he is not just speaking to Israel, he is speaking to all people. This is just as much applicable to you and I as it was to those in the time of Ezekiel. The second fact that we need to establish here is that if we do not repent from our transgressions, that we shall die.

Now, this death is not the physical immortal death, for those who repent and don't repent alike shall die a physical and spiritual death. This is not a spiritual death. For all people prior to repentance are already spiritually dead. But this is a eternal death. This is death eternally, or in other words, separated from God, you will be eternally driven away from Him.

Fact number three that we need to establish is we all need a new heart and a new spirit. I find this interesting though, that God tells us here, he says, make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. And we'll talk about that in detail as we get going, because that stood out to me, especially in light of the scriptures where God says, I will give you a new heart when God says, I will replace your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Here the command is to make ourselves a new heart. Or discuss that.

And the fourth fact that I want to establish here is that God has no pleasure in the death of the dying. He does not want us to die in eternal death. He has no pleasure in it, and he is not glorified by it. I know many people who think God is a bad guy just because people go to hell, as if he gets pleasure from it. But he has declared that this to him has has no pleasure in it, that all people who die eternally break the heart of God.

He mourns for that repent, he says, and turn around from all your transgression. I find this as I've been studying for this and as I've been getting ready for it and examining myself, every time I talk about repentance, whether it's in the Bible study or one on one with someone or in a broadcast message such as this, I feel the need to examine myself every time. And as I prepared for tonight and found myself examining myself and repent and make your toss away my transgression and make for yourself a new heart and a new spirit, I came to a realization that perhaps we're not fully understanding repentance the way that we need to here. In a couple of weeks, we'll go through the Prodigal Son, and many of you have recently gone through that with me in a one on one or in a small group setting when I go through the Prodigal Son and talk about repentance, through that story and what it shows. And one thing I've been driving home lately to those working with me on repentance is repentance is not simply turning around.

That's what I have traditionally taught in the last few years of my ministry, that it's to turn around, but it's more than that. It is to be persuaded, persuaded beyond all doubt, all question that what you are doing is wrong, and to be persuaded to a point of action. So not just persuade a mentally where I may ascent to what I'm doing is wrong, but so persuaded that it moves me into an action of casting away my transgressions, tossing them away from me. I have a quote as I was preparing this that I wanted to read. Because all too often I know Christians.

I've been the Christian who has a stubborn sin right. In your life that you battle with or you say you're battling with, it seems like forever, for years. Whether it's addictions or other transgressions that we just struggle with and we don't cast them off, right? It's too hard. We say, I am so weak in the flesh.

And it is true that we are. We are weak in the flesh. For Jesus has said that apart from him in John chapter 15, apart from him, you can accomplish nothing. However, it's all so often that it has nothing to do with being weak in our flesh and apart from Jesus as much as a decision that we have made, which is to the point of Ezekiel here. So let me read this quote to you.

It's from I forgot to cite who the quote is from, so I'm going to read a quote and just know it's not mine. It's from the 1870s, though the guy is long dead, but it's not mine. He says Sinners often complain that they are so influenced by motives that they cannot resist iniquity. They often excuse their sins by pleading that the temptation was too strong for them. I'm going to break for a second.

This is on par with what I have just said. It's on par with what we have witnessed that sinners all too often excuse their sins. I am so weak in my flesh, the temptation was so strong I had no choice.

Listen to the rebuke of this preacher sinner. Why is it that you are so easily influenced by motives as to complain that you cannot resist them? That you are too weak to resist the influence of sin, that you are strong enough to resist the world of motives that come rolling upon you like a wave of fire to do right and obey your maker?

I must admit I have never considered the issue from this perspective, for we are quick to complain about our weakness when it comes to giving into sin. But have you ever considered that if you are so weak to give into sin like that after giving your life to Jesus, you must be a fairly strong person. You are at least strong willed enough to resist everything of God calling upon you to do right and obey Him. That requires strength. And so Ezekiel pleads.

He says to throw away from yourselves all of your transgressions that you committed and make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.

We talked about the week after Thanksgiving, we talked about what is a heart. And we went in depth to discover the wickedness of the human heart. And we had determined that the human heart and belief is what it's your will.

It is your will. Now, we know that a new heart can only come from God. But can God do to you what you will not will Him to do?

I don't think so. I do not think that God can do to you what you will not will Him to do. So if you will not allow for God to give you a new heart, you should not have a new heart. But you will continue in your iniquity. And the Bible tells us that the human heart, the natural heart, is at ennity with God.

In our natural hearts, we are enemies with God, and we are fighting a war. And so for us to throw away from ourselves our transgressions and make for ourselves a new heart, this is something that we are committed to do. This is something that God cannot do for us, but we must take action and do. And in here, Ezekiel does not use heart in the same way in which it's normally used when God gives us a new heart. And here I want to translate what Ezekiel is saying.

We are to throw away our transgressions and change our motives.

Every transgression, every center of the law is motivated by what? By self will.

All sins that we commit, whether it is lying, whether it's sexual, whether it's theft, whether it's drug addictions, all transgressions of the law are always motivated by self will. They are all motivated by what we want that make us feel good, that elevate us, even if it's contrary to the will of God. In fact, so many people in church are not in church for the glory of Gabba or in church for their own ends, for their own means, and to serve their own self will. The problem with the human heart and with our transgressions is we all have a NITLE. We we sung You Are Holy Today by Joshua, Aaron and the Bridge of the Song.

We will not bow down to the gods of men.

Who are the gods of men?

Certainly the plethora of the Egyptian gods or gods of man and the Greek gods, right? Bell, from the time of Elijah, was a god of man. But the most common god of man that we encounter from the creation of men till now is ourselves.

All sin is motivated by selfinterest and thus the man's own happiness has been his idol.

We seek after that which frequently gives us temporary joy and we must continue to seek after it. And our minds are flesh become so consumed with it that we become our own idols. And we may not see ourselves as idols. We may not worship ourselves in the sense of seeing and praise and worship and glory to our own selves, but we are chasing after our own self interest. And so a change of heart to give ourselves a new heart, as Ezekiel discusses here, means to change the control and preference of our mind.

Right now our minds are controlled by the lust of the flesh, by what drives us, what motivates us, what gives us a high and happiness. And we need to change our control and preference of the mind from what I want to the glory of God.

It requires a paradigm shift. Not well, this makes me happy and so I shall do it, but this makes God unhappy and so I shall not do it. Rather than this endless pursuit of glorifying myself and building up my self interest, it is a pursuit to the glory of God and his Kingdom.

I wish I was smart enough to draw this out before church on a graphic to put it up for everyone. Many of you have seen the two kingdoms that I've been drawing out. Those of you have my church business card. It's on the back and it may be helpful if you look at it right now. But there are two kingdoms.

There's the Kingdom of Darkness and there's the Kingdom of God. I'm going to tell you something about the Kingdom of Darkness. All men from the time of Adam till now are born into the Kingdom of Darkness. Our controlling preference we prefer Satan to be in charge. Why do we prefer him to be in charge?

It's a great question. As I look at the world falling apart around me, I scratch my head at the thought of people preferring Satan to be in charge. But it is simple. It really is. We want him to be in charge because he is a liar.

And the greatest lie that he tells is that you can be your own king. He tells us you are your own God. You are your own king. You do what you want to do to make you happy. All right, think about this from the perspective of Adam and Eve.

I'm going to turn to Genesis, chapter three. When the Satan when the serpent in the form of Satan encounters even the garden, he says to her, did God indeed say you shall not eat from any tree in the garden? And the woman said, from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat but from the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. God said you should not eat from it, nor shall you touch it lest he die. Now, I've talked about in the past, even recently I've talked about the issue.

Here was Eve not being fully aware of the command of God. And that is an issue for another day. What I want you to see, though from this is the serpent replies you shall not surely die. For God knows that on the day you both eat from it, then your eyes will be open and you both shall be like God's knowing good and evil. Do you see what Satan did there?

Satan still did not tempt them with the fruit. The fruit was never the object of temptation. Satan used first the method of doubt in the word of God. He was not familiar with it. But look at what he appealed to.

Satan never appealed to the fruit. He never appealed to how tasty it is. He never appealed to how good it looks. He appealed to their self will. For before Adam and Eve had partaken of their fruit, their governing preference was God.

They sought to glorify God, they sought to worship God, they sought to be with God. But the serpent appealed to their sense of self will.

You know, God is over here, but you can be like God's. You can know this. You will not only know good, but also evil. Your eyes will be opened. He appealed to them as if God were somehow trying to hold back from them a precious gift.

And so at the fall of man, at the fall of Adam, adam had then begun to choose his own self interest over the interest of God. Adam stopped bowing to the crown of Jesus and he put the crown on his own head. And Jesus tells not Jesus. Sorry. Satan tells us that we can be our own gods and so we serve our own self interest.

We learn from young ages to serve our own self interest. We learn that as babies that when we cry a certain way, even if we have no other needs, mom or dad is going to come pick us up. We learn, as we get a little bit older to pester our parents into giving us what we want. We then learn to be crafty and serve our own self will. And children are great at it.

One small example just from my own life as a kid who loved ice cream, who would ask if I could have ice cream and I would be told that I could have a bowl of ice cream. How many of you already know where I'm going with this because children are crafty. I got my bowl of ice cream smashed down so that every little air pocket was pressed out and I can maximize the amount of ice cream I fit into that bowl.

I learned from a young age how to serve my own self will. As to all men.

And so Ezekiel, he tells us to make for ourselves a new heart. Not that we can replace the corrupt human heart that is only an act of God, but that we shall choose to preference God as our governing authority over our own interest and submit to Him.

As we discussed before, god cannot do to us what we will not will Him to do. While God can give us a new heart, he will not give us a new heart if we are unwilling. And so we come to the root of the issue. We're going to talk about fake repentance and real repentance here before I want to give you Christ's definition of the heart as it relates to the sermon today. Look at Matthew 1519 with me, Jesus says that from the heart come evil plans, murder, adultery, sexual immortality, theft, false witness and abusive speech.

The Bible here speaks of the heart as a fountain from which flow moral affections and actions of the soul. The apostle James, the brother of Jesus, he talks about the heart as the the thought life, right? We conceive sin in our minds and we give birth to sin. So a simplified version of what Ezekiel wants is for us to consecrate our thoughts from selfinterest to God interest.

All right, so what does false repentance look like?

I'm going to draw an example again from myself.

Not that I want to broadcast this to the world, but I'm going to because it's a great example when you have a sin that you commit over and over and over again and you also repent of it over and over and over again, but you find yourself doing again what's going on? Have you repented of that sin? Have you been so persuaded of your wrongdoing to cause a change of action? Normally it's temporary, right? And so I have found myself recently with one particular issue where I started saying, well, I can do nothing absent of Jesus Christ, so if he wills it out of me, it will be out of me.

Is that true repentance?

I would say no. Right?

That is an illusion of repentance in which you continue to wear the crown that Jesus wants you to take off and submit under his. For we are to commit to ourselves or make for ourselves a new heart, to change our thoughts, to commit to be persuaded that Lord Jesus, I know that this is offensive in Your sight and I am willing to submit to you and no longer do it because it offends you. But Lord Jesus, give me your power.

For the Lord Jesus will not whip out of me anything I do not will Him to whip out of me, right? For if I want to hold on to an issue, I will hold on to it for as long as I so desire. But if I want to submit to Jesus in true repentance, then Jesus will take from me through his power. John 15 he says, Abide in me, and my word in you, and you will bear fruits.

So through the power of Jesus, but through willing submission, right not through if he wants it out of me, it'll be gone, but through willing obedience, a willful submission to the crown and rule and authority of Jesus Christ, that Lord Jesus, this is wrong. And so I cast it away. And now by Your grace give me strength to walk in that. And as we abide in Him, he so shall do it. And I pick on me, because it's easy to pick on myself without offending somebody else.

But I will say it's all too often that I find almost all of us have something we hold on to, where we continue to wear our own crown. And we do not cast away the iniquity from us because in some way it gratifies us. Whatever that thing is, it's different for all of us. We all have something. We all are holding on to something and we may hide it from ourselves, as did I.

If he wants it gone through abide and it will be right. Some of us don't even realize we're holding on to it. But we all have something. And Ezekiel is pleading with us. God is pleading with us through Ezekiel.

He says to make for yourself a new heart.

Right? Willingly choose this day to submit to God. Willingly choose this day to abandon what is wrong, what is offensive in the sight of God.

And how does this happen? Well, we must be persuaded into change, right? True repentance comes through persuasion. And now Jesus tells us, he says no man can come to the Father unless he comes through me. He also says that no man can come to me unless the Father draws him nearer.

I would venture to say that you cannot even think about repentance unless the Father was beginning to pierce your heart.

And so persuasion begins with the truth of God. Jesus says, I am the Way and the truth. And that truth of God begins to penetrate into our beings, to plant a seed. And as that penetrates into us, we must be persuaded. Somebody says here, I'm going to read another quote.

The objector would say, is it not true if only a full and sufficiently impressive knowledge of truth is all that is necessary to subdue the sinner? That he only needs to know the true character of God, to love it, and that his enmity against God arises out of his false notions of Him, right? So truth is all that we need, the penetrating truth of God. Everybody would be saved already. But again, we are talking about here our governing preference, right?

Do we choose tell our Satan to be the ruler of the world because he says, we can wear our own crown? Or do we choose to remove it and submit to the. Will of God. And that right there determines whether or not we move forward in repentance. Kay because the idea that simply and sufficiently knowing the truth of God is enough to overcome is false.

It's false because it's not the character of God that the sinner hates. The sinner doesn't hate the character of God. What's the character he's loving? He's merciful, compassionate, graceful. Does he have anger and wrath?

Yes. He also has those. It's not the character of God that he hates.

He hates God for what he is.

He hates God for what he is, right? Because God's character is benevolent and the sinner's character is selfishness. It's not these attributes of God that the sinner hates.

It is the benevolence of God, the holiness, the righteousness, right there, because it is not self serving.

So we must be persuaded. It begins with truth, right? And it is the pressing of God's truth upon the sinner's consideration that induces him to turn to repentance.

But every sinner knows, whether they claim to be an atheist or not. Every sinner knows that he must die, that he is a sinner, and that God is right and he is wrong. In fact, every sinner knows that there is heaven and hell.

In Romans, chapter one, paul tells us exactly what has happened here.

He tells us in Verse 18 that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all impeach and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth and unrighteousness, because what can be known of God is evident among them. What can be known of God is available to everyone from the very creation of the world by his invisible attributes. And it says that though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give things. Instead, it says, they exchange the glory of the immortal God with the likeness of an image of mortal human beings. So we must be persuaded and persuaded of what?

We must be persuaded that it is beneficial to follow God. We must be persuaded, not that he exists, but we must be persuaded to take off our own crown. Right? For those who have been reading the parable of the Prodigal Son, at what point was he persuaded that to repent, to return to the Father, was the way to go? At the point at which there was famine and he had hired himself out and he could not get food, and he was laying there in the mud pit, dying of hunger, starving to death, and he remembered that the Father's servants had it better than he did.

So we must be persuaded. Well, let me give you a reason to be persuaded right now, as we close.

He says in verse 31, why will you die? Why will you die? Romans 623 says that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, the wages of sin is death.

For we have all gone astray Isaiah says, all like sheep have gone astray. We are all sinners, and we all have a death sentence. But God has said, I have no pleasure in the death of the dying. So repent and live, though we cannot do it on our own. God has made away.

He is made away, for he has no pleasure in the death of his creation. He does not take joy in it, and it breaks his heart. And so he is made away and he says, repent and live.

I have one more verse for you. It's. Romans twelve, verse one. Paul tells us I exhort you, brothers, through the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is your reasonable service. I'm going to plead with everyone, as Ezekiel has.

Make for yourself a new heart, right? It is not simply enough to wait for God to change you, because God cannot change your mind. God cannot make a choice for you. Now God will plead with you. He will reason with you.

He will try and persuade you. But he will never force you to remove your crown and follow Jesus, at least in this life. The Bible tells us that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. But for now, where it matters, right, that judgment, that next life it's too late. He will not force you to submit.

And if you out of the willingness of your own heart, submit to Jesus. God will give you a new heart. He will sanctify you. He will as you walk with Him day after day, he will make it easier and easier for you. But it comes out of your own willingness, your willingness to make for yourself a new heart, to remove your crown and submit to Jesus.

And it begins with admitting that you are a sinner. We are sinners. We have transgressions and iniquities and there are many. And all we can do about it, there's very little all we can do about it is acknowledge it and change our minds, acknowledge that they are wrong and forsake them. Romans Six says that we know our old selves and our sin to the cross, so that's all we can do with it is choose to do that and believe that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh.

That he lived here about 2000 years ago, perfectly, and he died upon the cross for your sins. And that he rose again the third day, and that he gave victory to us over sin and death. Right? That that is sufficient enough. That though we have all these transgressions, that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, if we would only submit to Him, is enough that we may live and not die, and then confess Him as our Lord, as our God and our King.

When we confess Him, we take our crowns off and we throw them to the floor and we submit to Jesus. And if you are willing to do that today, if you can be persuaded today to no longer serve yourself will, but to serve the glory and kingdom of God, jesus says that he will do it for you freely. And I'm going to give you that opportunity right now. Next week, we're going to look at how to get a new heart. This week, we looked at the fact that we are commanded to, that we need to.

Next week, we're going to look at how we do it. In the meantime, if you are ready to do it, I encourage you, don't wait till next week. Tomorrow is not promised to any of us, so do not wait until next week to do it, but do it today. Acknowledge Jesus today and your sin today. And if you have done this, please, if you're watching anywhere else other than zoom or in person, reach out to us and let us know so that we can come beside you and walk with you in this new life.

And if you're ready to do it, we're going to do it now in our closing prayer. Please repeat it after me. Father, I admit that I am a sinner and that I can't say myself. And Lord, I I know right, not just mentally, that my transgressions are wrong, but I know it and it's overwhelming, and I must turn from it, Father. And Lord, I know that my heart has been to serve myself, my own self will, my own self interest to my own means and glory.

And I know that you can man me in Ezekiel 18 here, Lord, to have a new heart, right, instead of one that serves my own self interest, a heart that serves you. And I, Lord, right now, am deciding to follow you. I will follow you. I will serve you, Lord, and I ask you to help me to do so, to strengthen me as I walk with you, Lord. Will you walk with me and help me to do that?

And I confess You, Lord Jesus, as my King, to whom I submit to Your authority and to whom I remove my own crown. And I ask you for this free and precious gift in the name of Jesus Christ, and that the Father may be glorified. And, Father, we pray now, Lord, that you will search out our hearts, each one of us, Lord, for those hidden things that we are holding on to, Lord, that we can cast them away from us, and that we can, as Paul has urged us to do, submit our bodies to you as a living sacrifice. And we just seek to glorify You, God, in Your kingdom and Your interest, Lord, and we love you and praise you in Jesus beautiful name. Amen.