Once and Done - Rich Hooper

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. [00:51:29] (40 seconds)  #ComeBoldlyToGod

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 in the spiritual world, your heart has to change before the outside can change. [00:53:08] (51 seconds)  #HeartChangeFirst

Hear me, when you come to know Jesus Christ as your Savior and you are saved and then you sin, you do not undo the work of justification. In other words, you cannot go back and undo what God did of saving you from your past sins, the only sin you are guilty of is your current sins. Those are the only ones on your record until you ask for repentance and forgiveness and He washes those away. Does that make sense? So you're only held accountable to the sins that are not confessed. [00:36:03] (35 seconds)  #JustifiedForever

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 your 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. [00:52:09] (54 seconds)  #FaithNotPerformance

What does that mean? We are being separated from and pulled away from profane things and dedicated to God. Sometimes it takes a while for us to be separated from profane things. Profane thinking, profane language. Sometimes if we are the only one that's a Christian in our family, we are surrounded by, God love them, profane people. But here's the thing, you are no longer subject to that profanity when you're a believer. In other words, it doesn't have power over you anymore. Even if you come from a long line of alcoholics, you have it will define your propensity but it doesn't give you permission to stay an alcoholic. [00:32:52] (52 seconds)  #SetApartForGod

By that one offering of Jesus Christ offering Himself as the sacrifice, He forever made perfect those who are being made holy. In other words, He has provided the way of escape from sin and the way of entrance into heaven. There doesn't have to be anything else for that ability to be there. In other words, I don't have to do anything to try to open the doors of heaven so that we can go in. All I have to do is believe in my heart, confess with my mouth that Jesus Christ is my Lord and that's the eternity that God has given me and that's my entrance. Thankfully, yes, come on, that's amen. [00:28:13] (46 seconds)  #OneSacrificeOneWay

See, that's something the law could never do was take away guilt. In fact, when I look at law now that we're under grace, I look back and look at law and legalism, it enhances guilt because let's think about the law, now the 10 Commandments, that's the top 10, right? That's the ones that Jesus didn't come to abolish the 10 Commandments, He came to fulfill those and He even narrowed them down into two commandments, love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and love others as yourselves. The 10 commandments can be boiled down into those two, so Jesus made it very plain where the heart of God was. [00:19:36] (39 seconds)  #GraceNotGuilt

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. [00:50:01] (36 seconds)  #SinLessAndGrowing