James: Gridlock of Conflict

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 Open your Bibles to James chapter 4.

Something that’s fun when Jordan does this once a year is the thing that I have to do once a week. which is preparing a message and communicating. And so it’s always fun to talk to her just about the tips and tricks of preaching, uh, that I’m still trying to figure out. Cause if you think about it, it’s really hard to public speak.

First of all, second of all, it’s hard to public speak for 35 minutes. And some of you are like, that’s how long this is. Yes. Sorry to keep your attention for that long. They say the average person has the attention span shorter than a goldfish. So I’m encouraged, uh, cause goldfish have an attention span of eight seconds.

You have one of seven seconds. So I’ve already lost you. Uh, but one trick to grab attention is to grab a tension, a problem. And so communicators, what we’re supposed to do is we go to the text, we figure out the problem that bothers you, bothers me, bothers all of us. If you’ll notice, I try to spend some time convincing you this is a problem for your life.

That was really fun when we did the digital simplicity one, right? Cause they’re like, no, it’s not a problem. Yes, it’s a problem. It’s a problem for all of us. Okay. Right. And so we spend some time doing that and you make it so tense that you need to have the solution. And then what we do is we walk through the Bible.

We talk about what the solution is, and it’s always some form of surrender and obedience to King Jesus. And so week in and week out, point out a problem, show you how Jesus is the answer, and we walk through that thing together to see how Jesus is our Savior, our Rabbi, and our Lord. So this job isn’t hard at all.

It’s just real simple. Just find the problem and show that the solution is Jesus. But we do find ourselves in an interesting, really tense cultural moment, because I think it’s getting more and more impossible to bury your head in the sand. It’s getting really hard to act like there aren’t a lot of problems.

So in a sense, my job has gotten easier. I just got to point out the problem we all kind of feel anyways. I know my grandfather, he spent a lot of his ministry convincing people, no, I know it seems good, but there’s still a lot of issues in our culture and in our lives today. It’s just staring us right at the face exhibit a yesterday as I grieve to see the news, what is happening in Israel and all

the evil that and the injustice. Um, but what’s really hard now is not to point out the problem. That’s easy. But it’s to convince you that there is a solution. We’re in a really cynical age. We’re in an age where we know that there’s problems, but we don’t think anybody has the market on the truth and what the true answer is.

And what that produces is a huge sense of hopelessness. I was pouring concrete this week with my father, pray for me, although it wasn’t that hot out. So I’m thankful for that. But I just. could tell the cement driver pulled out and he was just really upset and you know, right when we started the job. So I talked to him for a little bit before we got going and his life was just in a mess and he started mentioning me all of these problems.

I immediately became a counselor. He didn’t even know I was a pastor, but I was pastoring in that moment and he said how there’s no respect. Those millennials are so disrespectful and I’m like, I’m a millennial, but yeah, you know, like I’ll respect you and agree. Um, he said he just drove away from his last client.

He’s like, I don’t. I left, like he didn’t get the concrete I was supposed to give him because I was so mad because he was so disrespectful and I said, yeah, you know, respect and honor is a huge thing we’re missing in culture today. And then he started talking about how there’s not enough meat in his freezer, how the world is about to end.

This is before the Israel thing, right? So maybe he saw something, but he was like, we don’t have enough food. Everything’s going to go haywire really, really soon. We’re on the verge of collapse and I’m like, dude, it’s getting hotter and hotter. Like, can we just start pouring this concrete? But also trying to be gracious, but also my dad’s like, what are you doing over there?

We have work to do. And then he shared something that was so sad. He mentioned how his co worker just last month, again, concrete truck driver. Sometimes they have to wake up at midnight to begin their day. One of the drivers committed suicide just by pulling off the side of the road in the middle of the night in the Indian Reservation and stood on the street and waited for somebody to run him over.

What is that? It’s hopelessness. That’s people knowing there’s a problem, but convinced that there is no solution. That’s what you and I maybe would call the gridlock of conflict. We have a gridlock in the Middle East, but we also in our own souls it seems, many of us have a gridlock ourselves. It’s obvious we have problems.

You don’t need a great public speaker to convince you of that. But do we have any legitimate solutions, both personal, And this past weekend, collectively, do we have solutions? And I, of course, would argue that we do. And I think James here is really helpful to point out the problem, the real problem, and then ushering us into the actual solution, which can be applied to any and all conflicts.

Let’s read that together. We’re in James chapter four. We’ve been. Plotting through the book of James for quite a while now. We’re going to continue to do so for four or five or six more weeks I think we just can’t get enough of this book. It always feels like every week It’s the exact thing we need in that moment.

And so because of Caleb we’re doing this for another seven weeks. Thanks He convinced me this week. Let’s slow down and keep looking at this text way to love the Bible Caleb good for you All right, verse 1 What is the source of wars and fights among you? Again, how chilling. This is the text we need.

Don’t they come from your passions, underline that word, we’re going to define that soon, that wage war within you. You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask. This feels like he kind of is shifting his attention to something else, but we’ll see how that actually all ties together.

You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulterous people. Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility towards God? So whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes the enemy of God. Or do you think it’s without reason the scripture says the spirit he made to dwell in us envies Intensely this envy is actually a righteous like a holy jealousy.

God has for us his people verse 6, but God gives greater grace Therefore he says and you’ll see this all throughout scripture. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble Therefore submit to God Resist the devil and he will flee from you Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded.

Double minded was a huge topic for us in our Simplicity series. Be miserable, and mourn, and weep. A message that probably doesn’t sell very well today, but this is actually the answer to hope. Be miserable, and So, let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. It reminds me of Ecclesiastes where it says it’s better to go to a funeral than a party.

Because why? Verse 10. Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will exalt you. Let’s pray for our time together. Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we just ask for wisdom as we approach this text and all humility. We ask you for humility, God. God, I want to be a part of something that you give towards. Amen. And I don’t want to be a part of anything that you oppose because we’re not going to win that battle.

And so God, I pray that we would see, give us eyes to see which ways we partake in this conflict ourselves. Help us see there is an enemy and that Jesus, you are our solution and we’re called to bow down to you. In Jesus name I pray. Everybody says amen. Amen. So James gets us out of this gridlock by actually pointing to the deeper problems behind all the problems.

And then of course pointing to the ultimate solution being King Jesus. So write this down. Our wars and fights stem from three enemies. The flesh, the world, and the devil. You actually see this reference all throughout scripture. Uh, the, the, the, I mentioned the desert fathers last week. If you remember some of those stories, right?

Like putting the rock in your mouth. Anybody try that this week? I told you to. I get it. Nobody listens. But, um, my dog did it again. So my dog is holier than you. Um, but, But the desert fathers would always talk about the three enemies of the soul is what they call it, which is the flesh, the world, and the devil.

And you’ll see it here in this text in verse one through three. He’s talking about these passions or other biblical texts would reference as flesh. And then he says, don’t be friends with the world in verses four through five. Then he talks about resisting the devil in verse seven. So in just in these 10 verses, we are seeing the enemy.

The flesh, the world, and the devil. And the key to understanding these 10 verses is to notice how all three constantly work together. They have a, to use a 10 word, symbiotic relationship. They feed off of each other. And I think one of the biggest errors we make in the modern age is we assume it’s just all the world.

And we don’t see our place that we play in. Or a lot of us, we don’t ever consider the devil doing some of these things because we don’t want to be seen as superstitious and strange. But the reality is, the scripture says your eyes will be open when you see it’s your flesh, yourself, and the world.

It’s like, uh, I got vehicles on my mind this week because I had to pay so much money for tires and brakes, and I’m still just sad about it. Uh, I waited too long. The brakes were like metal to metal, but let’s use this as an illustration. I knew something was wrong with my truck because it always is, right?

It would be as if my one solution is always change the oil. Sometimes, you need to change the oil, but sometimes you need to change the tires. Other times you need to change the brakes, right? There’s several problems that contribute together. And for some of us, we just look at one area and think, Oh, as long as my oil is good, my truck will run fine.

And we all know that’s not the case. We kind of treat that in the Christian life. When we see conflict, we think it’s always just the devil. Well, it can be you. It can be your flesh. John Mark Comer, whom I’m actually borrowing a lot from in this message today, is really helpful. He has this book called Live No Lies.

Uh, he has this quote that’s really helpful. He’s using it based off of Ephesians 2, John 8, Galatians 5, James 4, all sorts of things to summarize how these three enemies work together. Here’s the quote. He says the working theory of the devil’s strategy is this, deceitful ideas that play to disordered desires That are normalized in a sinful society.

Let me walk through that briefly. Deceitful ideas. This is the work of the devil. John 8. Jesus says the devil is the father of lies. Notice in Genesis 3. The devil, the serpent. How did he destroy mankind? How did he bring about destruction? He didn’t go to Adam and Eve with a stick. He came to Adam and Eve with an idea.

Did God really say? This is what the devil does. He destroys us with deceitful… Ideas. More on that in a couple weeks. Also, notice this next phrase, um, well, let’s look down at the last phrase. Normalize in a sinful society. This is what the biblical text would call the world. Uh, now, Jesus, uh, says, for God so loved the world, that’s cosmos.

But there’s also another way to reference the world. So sometimes the world just means everybody and it’s all good. Other times in the text, it mentions the same word world, but it also means just the sinful patterns that the culture, the arena by which sins become acceptable. We’re going to talk a lot about that next week, but just for now, there are, you’ll notice in today’s culture, there are certain sins.

that my great grandfather are just shocked by, right? Just things that are not only tolerated, but are now celebrated. At the same time, you look back at our history, where it seems like they were really righteous and did a lot of good things, but they also did a horrific thing of owning slaves. Right? So every culture has this, every generation has the world influencing us, influencing our minds and saying, you know what?

This sin is bad, but some of this, it’s normal. It’s not even bad anymore, it’s celebrated. You see that? That’s what the world does, or culture at large. It has sway over our identities and habits more than we know. But I want us to see here, deceitful ideas that play to disordered desires. That’s what we’re going to look at today, and these are in verses 1 3 of James chapter 4.

Another biblical word for this is the flesh. Now, we use this phrase a lot at our church, disordered desires. It comes from St. Augustine. Nerd out real quick. He’s a fourth century theologian who’s influenced a lot of Christians today. Most people say outside of the actual biblical texts like Paul and Jesus, the most influential person in the Christian faith outside of the people who actually wrote the Bible is St.

Augustine, and he had this wonderful understanding that there are a hierarchy to our desires. So we all have desires and God created us to have desires. The problem is when we put those desires in the wrong order. For example, I am called to love my wife. That is a desire that God honors. Unless I love my wife more than I love God.

What happens now? What happens is that I now look to my wife to supply and give me everything that only God can give me. And so as I idolize my spouse, eventually what happens? I demonize her because she can’t do what only God can do. You see that? It’s disordered desire. So the desire itself is not evil in and of itself, but when you have it in the wrong order, it becomes destructive to your soul and everybody around you.

Same thing as career. Right? Christians make it way too simplified. Oh, it’s not about work. No, work is a beautiful thing. God actually created work before the fall. Work. But, don’t love work more than God. Don’t love work more than church. Don’t love work more than family. Because if you do, disorder, dysfunction will breed in your life and destruction will come all around you.

You guys see that? So, this is our discussion, uh, the discussion of the flesh here is we have these cravings. Some of them are sinful because the order by which we prioritize them. Now, when we think about conflict, both in just interpersonal conflict and the globe at large, it is not typical for us in the modern age to think all the problems are because of me and my own desires and my own cravings.

G. K. Chesterton in the 1900s, he was asked to write an article about what is wrong with the world. And he sent them back one answer, one word, me. That is actually pretty foundational to the Christian faith. We start by saying, where have I, where have I gone wrong? I have sinful, I have a sinful nature. I have disordered desires that breeds about destruction to everybody around me.

So, you guys got that? Flesh, world, devil. Next week, world. Week after that, devil. Today, verse one through three, let’s talk more about the flesh. Let’s read James 4, one again. What is the source? What is the problem beneath all the problems of wars and fights among you? Don’t they come from your passions that wage war within you?

This is, what’s all, what’s the source? He says, first of all, it’s passions that wage war within you. So to be a human, and this is so key, is to have conflicting desires within your own life. It is possible as humans to have to, to desire two totally opposite things and want them at the very same time. I say this in all gentleness, to some degree, all of us are a bit schizophrenic.

Because we have different personalities, we have different desires, and they wage war against each other. That’s why the modern advice of follow your heart, do whatever makes you happy is just nonsense. Because which part of your heart, are you going to follow? Because for me, I want to run a marathon.

Somebody from our church this week is actually in Chicago running a marathon today. Amazing. She says she trained during the summer. to get ready for this. Bravo, right? I want to do that. So I heard her and said, I’m gonna run this week. Guess how often I ran this week? Zero. Anyways, I was like, so excited. I want to run a marathon, but also I want to have those Doritos with guys.

Listen, you get Doritos and then you get salsa, but then you have like cream cheese in the salsa. Come on. You dip that thing in there. It is heaven coming down to earth in a manifest way. It’s incredible, right? The same. I want to run a marathon and be in shape. And I want those Doritos with that amazing salsa.

And I can’t do both, right? We are schizophrenic. We want opposite things, and it brings about a lot of stress. Lately, for me, I’ve had a very, very poor relationship with caffeine. Um, I actually didn’t have a Monster, or any kind of energy drink or coffee till the age of 30. Yeah, I survived having baby, I, well, my wife had babies, but I was there, right?

I survived that whole era. I survived college without caffeine. I don’t know how now because the moment I had I was like You guys are jerks for never telling me these superpowers, right? And so I would have some and it was crazy and I’m going to blame you. Sermon prep is really hard for me. Like, you know, like it just takes a lot of time.

I want to make sure it’s right and accurate. And now on Thursday mornings I drink a monster and boom. You know, you got the Holy Spirit too, but you got the monster and like, I can write this sermon. Well, it went from Thursdays to every morning to morning and then the afternoon and I’m like stacking up this caffeine and maybe it’s because I didn’t, you know, I waited till I was 30.

I have like a lot of side effects. Like my body begins to shake. Anybody else? Like, it’s just like, you’re not feeling great about life. That’s me. Also, I get super depressed. I remember talking to one of my counselors. I was like, I’m like, I’ve never been this depressed. I have never been like, I, I was contemplating, I was under, I didn’t understand life.

And he’s like, have you had too much caffeine? I was like, Oh my gosh, that’s the problem. I just, I had three monsters in the span of 24 hours. That might be my problem. Right? So I’m realizing every day when I wake up, it’s probably the biggest battle. Do I start with coffee or water? Right? And then I go, okay, I won.

I got water. But now I need that monster because my wife puts 1, 500 of them in the fridge and so I need it in order to finish, but I know and every day is the choice because I want both. Am I going to be healthy, happy, but yet slow? Or am I going to be energetic, fast, super anxious? I’m anxious most days, right?

Because I want the caffeine. What do I say all this? Our desires are schizophrenic. They go against each other. And so when we say, just follow your heart. Yeah, but I also know I want things that are damaging to me. And that’s why as Christians, we must do the hard work of discerning the difference between pleasure and purpose.

Back to that word in verse one, it says, uh, wage the passions that wage war within you. But then also in verse three, it says you spend it on your pleasures. That word passion and pleasures is the same exact word. It is the Greek word. Which is where you and I would get hedonism, if you know that phrase. I know that’s also probably a 10 word if you’re from Queen Creek like me, you probably don’t know what that means.

But hedonism, it’s where you’re pursuing pleasure at all costs, right? This is the same word Jesus used when we use in our simplicity series in Mark 4, where he says, Some are choked out by the cares of the world and the riches and the pleasures of life. Jesus is saying there is a reality where we pursue our pleasure so much it chokes us out from the life that God designed us to live.

You realize how countercultural this is. We have been taught and trained. If you love it, do it. And yet it brings destruction. John Mark Comer yet again for the win. He says the wise recognize that pleasure is not the same thing as happiness. Pleasure is about dopamine. Happiness is about serotonin.

Pleasure is about the next hit to feel good in the moment. Happiness is about contentment over the long haul. A sense that my life is rich and satisfying as it is. Pleasure is about want. Happiness is about freedom from want. What is James doing here? I know that’s John Markomer, but he’s pointing out to James.

What is James saying here? Look, you think you want pleasure, but what you really desire is purpose. And so when these pleasures come, they’re not all they’re cracked up to be. This is turning out to be a dated reference, but anybody love Hunger Games when it come out? Remember Hunger Game days? Like, we’re, I was waiting for somebody to like do the, you know, what is that?

I’m like, right, the whistle, right, right. That was like the thing for like, you know, 10 months. And um, so Hunger Games, a lot of us think about. When we think about freedom, we think, okay, we’re, be afraid of District 12. If you remember District 12, that was where Katniss was from. There were slave laborers, right, they barely have enough food.

And so we’re all terrified, like, we don’t want to become District 12. But what’s really helpful about those movies, they milked it, so I think they made like four, right, just to make more money, even though it should have been three. That’s a whole discussion that you can have with somebody else. I don’t really care.

Um, but also District 1 is just as destructive. If you see it, remember they have just like, crate, they’re dressed up, they’re so elegant, they just have food just to make and then they throw it away. They have cake all the time. And it’s a great picture to show, in our culture we’re so afraid of District 12, and yet we don’t see the disaster that comes from District 1.

When we pursue any and all pleasure that is within us, it has the power to destroy us. But we don’t often have eyes to see that. And so the Christian has to discern the difference between pleasure and purpose. Or what he used, John Mark Comer, pleasure and actual genuine happiness. Write this down. If you want to experience peace, your cheaper desires must be killed so that your deeper desires may be fulfilled.

This is something really common that I give during, uh, what I need to more often, premarital counseling. It’s common for newlyweds to freak out because there is a moment when you first get married where you kind of think, maybe I should, I should have stayed single. Don’t raise your hand if you had that moment because I want you to have a pleasant lunch today.

But there are moments where you’re thinking, should I have signed up for this? And I want you to know that that’s actually really normal. Because that thought comes into our mind, and that’s okay because marriage takes work, it takes responsibility, you always lose when it comes to where you want to eat, all these things, right?

This is just marriage. It’s a beautiful gift, but sometimes it’s hard. Now, the culture says if you think it, that means it’s your authentic self and you better pursue it. The Bible says there’s a lot of things that may come up within you. And they’re not real, they’re not right. It’s deceptive ideas that play to our disorder desires, that are normalized in a sinful society.

That’s why divorce is so common, because it’s been normalized, right? And we have grace for those who have been divorced in this room. Please don’t hear me wrong. But what is my point? If you are somebody who’s struggling in your marriage, I’m here to tell you, it is a cheap desire to want to get out. I understand it’s a desire.

But deeper than that, Is your desire to be a faithful husband or faithful wife who fights through it and learns the joy of love as a choice, no longer just as a feeling. I think we could all agree to that. Deeper within us, yes, we’d like to budge and get out, but deeper than that, we would like to be the type of person who fights through it and gets rewards that are on the other side.

We have to have that discussion more often, these conflicts, a lot of us have conflicts because we experience, we feel this cheap desire, this desire for pleasure and want, and we think this must be true and so we fight to the end to get that thing and it leads to destruction. Sam Albury, he’s actually a Christian pastor who’s actually, uh, struggles with same sex attraction, but he’s chosen to be celibate, he has an incredible story, I highly reference all of his work all the time, but he puts it well.

He says the following, desires for things God has forbidden are a reflection of how sin has distorted me, not how God has made me. Just because you desired it doesn’t mean you have to go do it. But, that takes a lot of humility, doesn’t it? That takes a lot of restraint. That takes something that our culture thinks is now impossible.

If you feel it, you have to pursue it. And yet, James is saying that’s where all of your strife is coming from. Because you keep following it, because you think, because I felt it, I have to follow it. And that’s simply not true. Yes, I do think a lot of us have desires swirling within us that are equal in intensity.

In fact, usually sin feels more intense and usually in the moment you desire it more than anything else. And yet they’re not equally beneficial. There are some desires you have in your life that will benefit you tremendously. And there are some desires you have in your life that will bring destruction on your life tremendously.

We have to have that conversation more recalled to restrain from those cheap desires. To say no. I’m so excited, next year, I hope you’ll like it, you probably won’t. We’re talking about fasting. Don’t worry, it’s like six months or so, so don’t worry yet. But it’s this whole idea of restraining from what you want to get what you actually want.

And yet, a lot of us are in a moment, because of the devil’s deceitful ideas, we think that that is legalism, that it’s religion, and it’s not true. Here’s how I would put it best, write this down. We don’t restrain our desires to make ourselves more precious to God. We restrain our desires to make God more precious to us.

I found this works best in community. Admitting to each other, hey, here’s a desire I have. I don’t think it’s right. I don’t think it will lead to flourishing because the Bible says it won’t. And you lean on each other for strength. But why do we restrain? Well, partly because God says so, but also because God is love.

We can be fully assured if we go through this hard work of saying no to sin, it’s also having a yes to God and making, it’s not so that we become more lovable, it’s so that we can love him more. I’ll just read that line again. I think it’s worth tweeting. It’s really good, right? Restrain it, not to make ourselves more precious to God, but to make God more precious to us.

Let’s hurry. Verse two, what happens when we don’t? point those desires towards God, but to ourselves, this is what happens. Verse 2, You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. Notice this picture of discontentment. These desires that are never satisfied. The finish line keeps moving.

Q. C. S. Lewis, his famous line, If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world. Back to verse 2, you fight and wage war you do not have because you do not ask You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives so that you may spend it on your pleasures This ask again feels like it’s a weird turn at first glance James is simply saying these things you’re longing for you wouldn’t ask God for those things because you know, they’re wrong If you’re running after something that you would never pray for, it’s because you know deep down the scriptures, the Holy Spirit is prompting you.

This is not of God. It’s not going to be beneficial. So if you’re pursuing something you’re not willing to ask God for, maybe you shouldn’t pursue that thing in the first place. He’s showing our sense of pride. So if you agree with James that this is the source of our problems, at least one source, right?

We’re going to look at the other two in the next two weeks, is our flesh, is our own sinful inclinations, our own desires. What is our next step? What do we do? What is the answer to fighting the world, the flesh and the devil? And briefly, we’re going to look at this answer several times, but let’s just zero in today on verse six, but he gives greater grace.

Therefore, he says, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. The answer is to take steps towards humility. to surrender to Jesus. I’ll be brief here. Jonathan Edwards, he wrote a book on revival, and he tracks the ingredients. He had a huge revival in Northampton, Massachusetts between the years of 1740 and 1742, and he argues six markers of what led that revival, and all of them had to do with humility, and all of them had to do with, Obviously, the opposite, those who had pride would squelch the movement, but those with humility, it would spread.

He gave six markers. Because of time, I’m going to share with you three. One, he says, pride makes you more aware of other’s faults than you are of your own. Right? Because we hear this, you know, he humbles the proud, but gives grace to the humble. What does this mean? One sign of pride is you’re very aware of other people’s faults, but you’re not aware of your own.

Humility makes you far more aware of your own faults. Second marker, he says, pride leads you to have a disposition of disdain when speaking of others, faults and shortcomings. Maybe think that through with the Lord. Uh, is that kind of what you have? A disposition of disdain towards those who are not like you.

What humility does is it speaks of people’s faults with grief and with mercy. And again, points out their own. I’m going to jump down to just the last one. He says pride makes you unhappy and sorry for yourself. One of the biggest signs that you haven’t submitted to God and you are a slave to desire is you are filled with self pity.

It’s always, they didn’t say hi to me. They don’t love me, me, me, me, me. How come they didn’t think about me? People with joy are all constantly thinking about others, caring for those around them. Humility sees life as a grace. Quote, I deserve to be cast off, but only by God’s grace I am what I am. So I think that’s the call for us as we look at this conflict waging within us, waging around us.

We, as Christians, I think step one is to take the step of humility and recognize our own sinful flesh and leave it at the altar of Jesus. He gives grace to the humble, which means we admit when we’re broken. It means saying to God, not my will, but yours be done. It’s submitting to God’s ways over our ways.

It’s confessing our sin. It’s admitting our weakness. And here’s the thing. The good news of the gospel is the way up is down. We don’t come to God based off our good works. We don’t come to God because of the value we bring to the table. No, we come to God because God first came to us and we surrender to that.

My favorite hymn, nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling. I bring no other argument, I bring no other plea, but that Jesus died, and he died for me. And Jesus was broken on our behalf, so you and I can be made whole, but the crazy part about the gospel is for us to be whole, we have to come to him broken.

I think it’s part and parcel why we have communion, and the bread represents the breaking of bread. Because we also must be broken to partake in his life. We’re going to give ourselves an opportunity here in a moment during the first song. I encourage you to come forward and take the communion if you’re a follower of the way of Jesus.

If not, we ask you to abstain. But I really think here in this text, the invitation is quite clear. We need to come to Jesus with our brokenness, with our wickedness, with our wounds, with all the things that our flesh has brought us to. Not in condemnation, but in conviction because when we bring it to him, we bring up, we experience life and forgiveness and abundance.

And so what I want us to do, and I actually encourage you now just to kind of close your eyes. I want to lead us in a prayer. I read this prayer by Todd Loader this week in this book, Gorillas of Grace. I think it’s just so helpful for our moment, and I just want us to kind of have this corporate confession together.

So, as I say this prayer, I want you to kind of repeat after me in your mind, in your spirit. It can be in silence.

But let’s begin the prayer. Oh God, we are so fragile.

Our dreams get broken.

Our relationships get broken.

Our heart gets broken.

Our body gets broken.

What we, what can we believe

except that you will not despise a broken heart.

That old and broken people shall yet dream dreams.

That the lame shall leap for joy, the blind see, and the deaf hear. What can we believe except what Jesus taught? That only what is first broken, like bread, can be shared.

That only what is broken Is open to your entry.

That old wine skins must be ripped, open and replaced if the wine of new life is to expand.

Father God, we come to you broken today.

God, I find a lot of hope in that prayer that we have to first be broken in order to be shared that only when we are broken will you come in. So God, we just ask that this would be a holy moment for us. I know we have a lot of conflicts in this world. We have a lot of conflicts in our community, in our own family, in our own soul.

Jesus, I think according to your word, step one for us is just to admit our own brokenness, how fallible we are, how sinful we are, that God, we don’t bring anything to the table as if now we’re worthy. God, our worthiness comes from you. And you alone, and what you did on the cross on our behalf, how you have resurrected and promised us new life.

God, nothing in our hands we bring. Simply to you we cling.

Holy Spirit, give us this next few moments to allow our pride to be set aside, and just to be broken.

God, we confess our sins. We confess our bitterness. We confess our envy or jealousy. We confess our gossip. We confess what we’ve done with our eyes, how we’ve damaged those with our words.

We confess what we’ve done with our hands.

Forgive us, God.

Your scripture says that you humble those who are proud, but You give grace. You lift up those who lay low. Holy Spirit, convince our minds we have desires we need to repent of. We have a life we just need to finally recognize we are broken. And in that brokenness, you make us whole. Would you do that for us as a church today?

In Jesus name I pray.