Once and Done - Rich Hooper

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I'm thankful we don't have to grovel and crawl to the throne room of God and say, oh God, I know I'm not worthy to come before you. No, Jesus made it possible for us to come before the throne of God and we can come boldly before the throne of Jesus and we can lay those things down at His feet to leave them there and walk away and be changed. It's a lifestyle of repentance, a lifestyle of repentance, meaning we always have access to forgiveness, all we have to do is acknowledge that we are dependent on what Christ did on the cross to help us live differently. It is not a matter of performance. Let that set you free this morning. [00:52:36] (41 seconds)  #ComeBoldly Download clip

Hear me, Pentecostal church, it is not a matter of performance. You can't look good enough to please God. You can't sing loud enough. The only thing that pleases God is faith, belief in Him, hearing the word, doing the word, drawing closer to Him, loving Him, witnessing to those around you of the change that He has made in your life, but that doesn't make Him love you more and your sinfulness or the sins that you commit cannot make Him love you less. I'm thankful for that. God can't love me any more than He loves me right now, but He also can't love me any less than He loves me. It's not a matter of performance, it's a matter of the heart. [00:53:17] (54 seconds)  #FaithNotPerformance Download clip

You can look good to people and be cancerous on the inside. It's a matter of the heart. It's not even a matter of behavior modification, learning to do better things, it's not that. It's a matter of having heart surgery. It's a matter of allowing God to take those evil things out of your heart and when He takes those things out of you, your behavior changes, amen? You cannot change your behavior to change your heart. It's not like your body where if you start doing things differently, it makes your heart better, right? You exercise, you eat right, that will change the health of your heart. It's not like that within the spiritual world, your heart has to change before the outside can change. [00:54:16] (51 seconds)  #HeartSurgery Download clip

When you are justified, your spirit man is renewed. Okay, you are a spirit with a soul and a body. At justification, the evil spirit is banished from you and you now have a new spirit, that's that new nature. The Holy Spirit becomes your compass, your captain, your guide. In sanctification, your soul is being renewed, your mind is being renewed, your will and your emotions are all being renewed. What does that mean? That means you don't get as angry as you used to get because your emotions are being renewed. Your mind is being renewed, your way of thinking is being renewed, your way of sometimes that takes a little bit, right? [00:39:52] (43 seconds)  #RenewedSpirit Download clip

I believe you can shake, get up, shake off the dust, pick up where you go, where you are and move on. I believe that as a mature believer, we are not sinless, we just sin less and less. If you sin the same amount of times now as you did then, I do question whether you truly believed in your heart when you confessed with your mouth. Because when you are a Christian, you cannot sin and be okay with it. Think about that. When you're a true believer, you are more convicted about your sinfulness. But, if you're in the right church, and by the way, this is the right church, they're gonna teach you that when you sin, there is there therefore now no condemnation. [00:51:08] (45 seconds)  #ProgressNotPerfection Download clip

You're forgiven today. You are forgiven. Even if people don't forgive you yet, you're forgiven by God. And you can forgive yourself even before people forgive you. And I'm talking about people that you have actually hurt, people that you have intentionally hurt. Now that you've come to Christ and you ask for forgiveness, God forgives you, you can forgive yourself and give them time to forgive you. It may not come for a while, but that's the last thing that needs to happen is them forgiving you. In fact, we have to forgive others first whether they forgive us or not because if you don't forgive others, Scripture says you can't be forgiven of your sins. [00:55:24] (54 seconds)  #ForgivenAndFree Download clip

It was God making the point that there is no power in these sacrifices. Verse two says, if they could have provided perfect cleansing, the sacrifices would have stopped. Once you came and brought a sacrifice and the sacrifice was killed, then you could have gone, okay, now my sins are gone. But that wasn't the case, right? For the worshipers would have been purified once for all time. And I like this next part, once they bring these sacrifices, if they had provided perfect cleansing, their feelings of guilt would have disappeared. See, that's something the Law could never do was take away guilt. [00:20:06] (43 seconds)  #GraceNotSacrifice Download clip

That Christ came to make us new. When you are saved, Scripture says that you get a new nature. What does that mean? Well everything before you came to Christ that just was natural for you to do, those natural responses, the natural way of saying things, maybe your language needs to change, it's just natural for you to say things or just natural for you to do certain things. When you get saved, He gives you a new nature so things become how you respond becomes different and becomes more natural for you, to respond differently and to think differently and to talk and walk differently. [00:07:02] (38 seconds)  #MadeNew Download clip

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