Embracing Grace: The Journey of Brokenness and Faith

**God, happy Sunday everybody! How we doing? You guys are the few, the proud, the brave that came out in this cold weather. How many of you all wanted to snooze the alarm quite a bit more and keep up in your warm blankets? Anybody? That was totally me this morning.**

**If you're new here, my name is Troy. I'm the lead pastor of the Chapel KC. It's an honor that you are here. We're going to be closing up our series on the fear of God today. Hopefully, you guys have gotten something out of this. It's been a series that I've thoroughly enjoyed. I believe that when you open the word of God, it should challenge you, right? If it doesn't, then you're probably doing it wrong. This is one of those series that's pretty challenging, and it's been really good for me.**

**So, super, super thankful for our worship team. Can we give them a hand clap? Again, if you're new here, we have a vision here: it's to connect, grow, and serve. We also have values in this house that make up our culture. We're pretty biased; we think that our culture here is pretty awesome. Some pretty great people. One of our values here at the Chapel KC is honor, and so I want to honor some people.**

**Last night, we had Trunk Retreat. It actually ended up being Booth Retreat because of the rain. We brought it indoors, as you can see over here. We still have the Jurassic World setup. That would be Team Bailey right here that didn't tear theirs down. You know, it's always the pastors. I want to shout some people out. First of all, we didn't do a contest of who had the best setup, but I feel like if you want to argue with me, you can meet me after service. Cammy and Lawson straight slayed. They set up—if you walked out of here with ramen last night and fortune cookies, that's what I'm talking about. Dressed up like a cup of noodles. It was fantastic.**

**Some other ones: InFuego Youth, give them a hand clap! They filled up the sanctuary with a sweet-smelling aroma of popcorn. It was beautiful. Then we had Jurassic World. What else did we have? We had a barn with an actual chicken with no legs. Real talk, we did not sacrifice it, I promise you that isn't what we were about, but it did sound good—a chicken sandwich. Her name was Peggy. She lost her feet in a winter storm. I did not know that. Poor Peg. Who else had some really good ones? Yeah, Kim and Maria. Then we had Josh and Ashley had the football one where you could throw a football through for candy. There was Bluey. Donna, we had Under the Sea happening right next to Jurassic World. What was that? We had two Nightmare Before Christmas setups last night. Security straight holding down the fort. I love it.**

**It was a fun time. I legitimately, when we moved it inside, thought if it's just us and our booths and we just go around to each other's booths and get candy, it was a win. Because we moved inside, we didn't have signs outside, we didn't have nothing. What do we have? 130 came through, so it was about 170 total with all of our people here. Super big success! Can we give a hand clap to everybody? Honor you guys. Super fun. Man, it was a blast. I was exhausted last night, very tired because we had trivia going on and kids wanting to learn about dinosaurs. Of course, Bo is willing to do all of that.**

**So, we have some announcements real quick. Tag on to the ones we had here just a minute ago. InFuego tonight at 4 PM, right? 4 PM right here. Every Monday night, we have a men's Bible study. If you want to come and be a part of that, if you are a man, we would love for you to come. Sorry, Maria, you cannot come. And so you're our Tyler of our group now. We'll be meeting at the Starbucks on Johnson Drive. It's always super fun. It's laid-back; it is not formal at all. We do talk; we have engaging questions we want to talk about. We'll be in James chapter 3 on Monday night.**

**Most of the time, I think last Monday we spent 15 or 20 minutes just sharing our thoughts about Taylor Swift. So, we'll just kind of say it like that. It was engaging and fun. You say no one cares? No one cares. That's basically what we talked about. I just wanted to be nice just in case she ever listens to my message. She won't. Never know. That's what me and should have come as. I should have come out as a very miniature version of Travis Kelce, and she could have been Taylor Swift.**

**So, every Monday night, men's Bible study. November 9th, Crew Night. This is for the whole church, whether you serve here, want to serve here, or never even thought about serving. We want you to come out that night to find out what we're about. December 13th, we have our Chappies event already locked and loaded, ready to go. So, with that being said, we are ending our series last week talking about killing the titles. Every time I say that, I hear Chris Farley's voice in my head: "Kill Whitey!" If you've never seen Black Sheep, you don't know. Sorry, it's movie quotes.**

**I want to continue that because I had way too much when it comes to notes. I want you to turn to 2 Corinthians 10:12. I want to recap real quick, and then we'll kind of get into the rest of the content. We talked about last week a crucial aspect of following Jesus is getting rid of idols. If you don't know what an idol is, an idol is something or an image or an object of some kind that's created to represent God or to replace Him. It involves the act of showing deep devotion, reverence, adoration, and faithfulness to these substitutes. If you're honest with yourself, we all struggle in this area in some way, some form in your walk with Jesus. Something is going to pop up that is going to take your time, your attention, your worship, and if you're not careful, it will draw you away. So, we have to not only just avoid idols; we have to eliminate them, kill them, get rid of them from your life.**

**Paul said this in 1 Corinthians 10:14: "Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry." I don't know what came up on the screen. Oh, graphics. Now we're just pushing buttons back there. We talked about how one of the greatest idols that we'll have in our walk with Jesus, just as being humans, is comparison. We will struggle with this at some point. You will find that you compare yourselves to others. Now, I just want to be honest with you because I'm not going to be able to sit much. I had a lot of candy last night, and that sugar is still running through my veins. I'll confess I already had Skittles this morning. So, well, the kids downstairs have a lot of candy, so hold on, wait for it. There we go, we're good.**

**So, comparison is going to be one of those things that you're going to have to fight. In all honesty, as a pastor of a church early on, that was a struggle for me. You know, we launched with zero backing, zero money. No one's necessarily supporting us—Jesus, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. So, we had three in our corner. It was scary. It was like, will this even work? Will we even succeed? Early on, it was kind of like, man, will people even show up? Last night, Joey goes, "How many did you think?" I was like, "There's about 130, more than I thought." He goes, "Is that why you're always happy? Because you have like zero expectations?" I was like, "It is the key to life."**

**In the beginning, that's how it was. I would wait by the front door wondering if anyone would show up. If y'all remember the Turner days, if you were there, it was like a six-mile ride back into the woods to get to the building. You'd see like one car come over the hill and then down, and you're like, "Oh, there's one! There's one! We were having church today!" We'd start worship; there would be nobody in the auditorium because everyone that was in our church was serving. So, we had to wait for them to get away from the doors and checking kids in and all that. What was that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you guys. We couldn't afford a golf cart for you, so you had to walk.**

**I just remember those days. You get done, and we launched around the same time as a handful of other churches because I was kind of in that network of people. Man, I just remember getting done with church, and church was so great, and it was authentic, and it was real, and our people were fantastic. Jesus met us as He still does, and I'm so thankful that His Spirit's a part of what we do. I just remember getting done, and I would go home, and I would check social media, and these other churches that were launched around the same time we did, you know, "Oh, standing room only," and all this other stuff. I would just be like, "I have to shut this off." Because after a little while, I start thinking about how we're missing out or we missed it or how could it not—how is it that they have more than we do? Oh my gosh, they just got, you know, a place. Oh, they're only a year old, and they already have a space of their own. What are we doing? I must be terrible at my job. All these things. And here we are almost seven years later, and can I confess to you and let you know that a vast majority—we're talking a dozen churches, probably 10 of them now—have closed their doors, and yet here we are! Yes, golf clap! I just made a putt. You made it. Good job!**

**It's all because simply because our leadership chose not to compare. If you're not careful, it can not only rob you of your joy, but it'll kill your calling, it'll kill your purpose, it'll rob you of so much if you do not learn to kill the idol of comparison. 2 Corinthians 10:12 says, "Now that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves, but when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding." You don't understand what you're doing when you buy into idol worship in the area of comparison. I'll say it like this: I said it last week to end the message—comparison is the drunk driving of your calling. It is very easy to get intoxicated by what others are doing, what others are saying, how you measure up, how you compare. If you get into that, you will wreck, and you will die—not physically, but a slow internal death because you've given over your worship to the idol of comparison. You cannot do it. You have to keep your eyes on Jesus. He has to be the center of everything you do, the center of everything you see, the center of everything you think about. You have to keep your eyes on Jesus.**

**Every one of us is running a marathon, but the course is different for each one of us. The temptation is we tend to look at other people in our lives, whether we're going good or they're going good, and we tend to think, "Why? Why am I on an incline and they're not? Why is it that I am doing these things, and it seems to be the right thing to do, and they're not, and they're being blessed?" Scripture talks about this: don't pay attention to when wicked people succeed. Don't do it. I remember when me and Alicia, we got married. We were 20 years old—now 15 of it married. When we got married, we said we were going to wait three years before we decide if we're going to have a kid. Three years came, and we were like, "Let's go another three years." So, we went three years more, and we were like, "Let's wait another three years." About halfway through that third set of three years, we decided to have a kid.**

**Now, I will say this: my family is very fertile. I'm the only one that I know of in my family that hasn't had a kid as a teenager. I was the oldest, and I waited, but all the rest of my siblings and cousins and all that had kids as teenagers. So, I kind of knew the moment that we decided we were going to have kids was going to happen fairly quickly, and it did. Cameron's was way quick. The moment we decided, I'm pretty sure she was pregnant like three weeks later. She came in, she's like, "I'm pregnant," and I was like, "We didn't even get to practice! We're now in the game!" A little frustrated. Had a moment there. But oftentimes we compare. I just remember our first—we got pregnant. Twenty weeks in, I've told this story before. I give you the condensed version, which was we went in to find out the gender of the child. Twenty weeks, go in, no heartbeat. We miscarried. The next day, Alicia gives birth. Those next six weeks were probably the most brutal in my life, to be honest with you. I've almost died numerous times and had traumatic accidents and all sorts of things, and that was probably the hardest because it hurt not just me.**

**I just remember being on my face before God, going, "Now my sisters—listen, I love them. They've chosen different paths than I have—in and out of jail, drugs, lots of different stuff. So, love you guys if you're ever listening to my messages. Love you." But we chose different things, and I just remember thinking and pleading with God, "Why is it that I chose to follow you and want to plant a church?" Because this was in the beginning of us planting the church, and I'm trying to live my life in a righteous, pure way, and we go to have a kid, and he doesn't make it. But yet my sisters could care less about following you and pop kids out like a Pez dispenser. I remember those being my very words: "Why? Why?" What I realized over time was that I was comparing in my pain, wanting what I wanted in the moment to what somebody else was enjoying, and I was being robbed of this beautiful moment where me and my wife—we eventually got there, but could be healing together, growing together, following Jesus together. Didn't realize we would have a beautiful testimony come out of this.**

**But I'm just here to tell you, whether you want to have kids, don't want to have kids, whether you want to be a millionaire, don't want to be a millionaire, whether you want to be a doctor, don't want to be a doctor—whatever it is you want to do in your life, whatever you feel like God has called you to do, you cannot compare your journey to somebody else's, and you cannot compare somebody else's destination in the middle of your journey. You have to fight it. Because it will rob you. I remember when we planted this church, all I could think about was I convinced a lot of people to move here to help me plant this thing, and I have no idea if this is even going to work. We had zero money. Now, we ended up raising like $96,000, but the whole time I was stressing, "Will we have enough? When will we launch? How will we launch? Will we have people show up?" Just stressed. Then we launched, and a couple years in, I felt like God just tapped me on the shoulder and was like, "Hey, look where you're at." And I was like, "We're here! We're doing this thing! We have community! We have people that show up! We got new people coming all the time! Praise God!"**

**I felt like God just whispered in my ear and said, "You missed the beauty of the journey because you were focused on the destination." And how many of us are that way? We just want what we want, and when we don't get what we want, we compare. "God, you haven't given me what I wanted, so now I'm going to give my worship over to the idol of comparison." Don't do it! Don't do it! Keep your eyes on Jesus. He who began a good work in you is faithful to see it through to completion. That's His promise to you. That should be where your focus is. You and I have to understand that our journeys are different. The scenery for each of our journeys looks different, but we all are going to have obstacles in the way.**

**Like, we look at the richest people in the world, and we're like, "Man, it would be so nice to be able to go wherever you want, whenever you want, however you want, have my own jet, somebody else makes my bed for me, somebody else cooks my food for me." You look at that, and you're like, "Yeah, that sounds awesome! I'd be a season ticket holder to the Chiefs! I've had sweet right next to Taylor Swift! Hey, Tay Tay, watch football now!" Whether you want to or not. But as a philosopher once said, "The more money we come across, it's a proverb, the more problems we see." There are problems you don't even know about that come when you have that kind of money. And yeah, all you do is look at it and think it's fantastic, but could you imagine being the CEO of a massive company and thinking about how every decision you make impacts X amount of people? You just look at the fruit of it, and you go, "That would be fantastic," but you don't understand the weight that comes. Comparison will rob you. It will kill you. And yet God wants to do a unique work in each and every one of us. What He wants to do is establish the fear of God in our lives, which is to look at Him with awe and wonder and have a heart and a life that is geared towards worshiping Him—not things, not other people, and definitely not this world.**

**Comparing paralyzes your unique gifting and calling. We talked about that last week. James 3:16 says, "For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind." It's why you can't gossip. That's why you shouldn't gossip. That's why you shouldn't let jealousy take root. You shouldn't be driven by selfish ambition because in those moments, in those seasons, you will find there will be disorder in your life, and that evil takes place. That was my intro, recapping last week. Because if we will expose comparison in the idol that it is, we will—this is the first point for this week—expose the fake.**

**Expose the fake. Philippians 3:10 says this: Paul says that I may know Him in the power of His resurrection and may share in His suffering, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Verse 12 says, "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." What is Paul talking about? Paul's talking about this walk. We're never going to reach perfection. For so many of us who want to follow Jesus, one of the idols that we tend to stop and worship often is the idol of perfection. Perfection is a facade. Hear me, it is not real. It is not attainable because you are a fallen human being. Hear me, please. If you strive for perfection in your walk with Jesus in this life, it will lead you to be fake. Fake. No one likes fake.**

**You ever met somebody, and they just put it on? Like, they just put it on, like this big personality, this big, and you just walked away, and you had this feeling like, "I don't think that was really them." You ever met anybody like that? It's just fake. It just felt fake. If you got to know them, you would probably find that's not really who that person is. Just fake. I want you to write this down if you're taking notes: faking perfection leads to stunted growth. It is in your weakness you are made strong. Because if everything was up to you and you were able to do it, you'd have no need for God, right? You'd have no need for His power. You'd have no need for His grace. And that is the beautiful aspect of grace, is that it takes—in order for you to receive grace, it takes humility to admit you do not measure up. And if you do not get to a place in your walk with Jesus where you can say, "God, I need you. I'm a failure. I tend to miss it. I struggle. I need you." If you do not get to this point, then I venture to say you probably have not received the grace of God.**

**The church is not a place or a country club for perfect people. The church is a hospital for the broken. It is the bride of Christ where each of us come under the umbrella of Jesus, who is perfect and awesome and amazing, and we thank Him for shedding His blood on the cross for us, resurrecting from the dead to give us His position in the kingdom of God. We are seated in Christ at the right hand of the Father. Each one of us comes in with our brokenness, our baggage, our journeys, our inclines, our obstacles, and we come together, and we worship the perfect one as imperfect people. It says that that imperfect praise that goes up reaches the perfect God, and He looks down and says, "That's my people." It's not us coming in going, "Life's good, brother! Praise God! How you been? Blessed and highly favored!" Stop! You looked at something you shouldn't have looked at. You said something you shouldn't have said. You maybe had a rough week. Maybe you're in a season where everything is great, but you know in the back of your mind it ain't always going to be that way because your sump pump's going to break, your AC is going to go out in the middle of summer, your car is going to break down. Something's going to happen that's going to derail this euphoric, "Woo! Life is good!" But then we come to church, and we just complain all week, and we pray, and we get people, and we talk, and we work through it, and then we come to church—the one place where we should be like, "Dude, this week was do I look like it was a rough week? CU, are there bags under my eyes? Because I ain't got much sleep this week. It's been a tough one, and I'm struggling." This should be the place that you come, and you have those conversations. It should be the soft place to land, right? But instead, the enemy's got us convinced that we need to fake perfection.**

**Now, I'm not saying that you need to be the person who every time somebody asks you how are things going that you're like, "Do you want to sit down?" We're not therapists, okay? Don't look to us to be your therapist. But there should be a level of honesty and humility. Now, we all struggle in this area in some way, right? How many of you have had somebody come over to your house unannounced? Maybe you're working on your car, maybe you're moving something. They're like, "Hey, let me help you," and you're like, "No, I got it! Stop!" Accept it! Accept the help! If somebody's offering you help, accept it! Now, unfortunately, maybe they don't—you've seen them work on cars, and they're not very good. Just be like, "Hey, pull up a seat, and we'll just have a chitchat. I don't want you touching my vehicle, okay? Use wisdom! Use wisdom! I'm not going to get my seven-year-old to help me move a couch. It's not wise. He'll die."**

**But oftentimes, we fake perfection, and what we find is that over time, we look back and we go, "I haven't grown very much. I still get mad about the same silly little things. I still allow those things to control me. I still am a slave to this particular sin. I haven't grown very much." If you look back over your walk with Jesus and you don't see much growth, then you should check up on what your facade is. What do you got going on? What are you—is there something in your life you're faking? Are you faking perfection? Are you faking the growth? And I'm not talking about in front of people like, "Grow!" I'm talking about when you're alone and nobody is around. You know, there used to be a day when everyone had an opinion, and nobody heard it, and nobody cared. Now you can just say whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want. Oftentimes, what people type on a keyboard, they would never say in front of somebody's face because you would get punched right in your throat. But we fake oftentimes in society that we're strong. And so you say things over the internet that you wouldn't dare say in somebody's face. You and I in our walk with Jesus have to expose the fake. Deep down, what am I wanting out of this relationship with God? Am I wanting the—how many of y'all love when you come into worship, and you can just feel the presence of God? Like, you got the goose pimples, the goosebumps going on, the hair's raised? That's not God, by the way. That's your feelings. Now, not to say that His presence can't cause a reaction somehow in your body, but I'm here to say if that's all you think worship is, then you'll miss out on opportunities to meet with Jesus.**

**I'm here to say this: if you think—if all you want out of walking with Jesus is good vibes, good feelings, and everything to be perfect, you're not going to find it. You're going to spend your entire earthly walk trying to seek those things when that has never been the promise. It's never been what we do. We come into His courts with thanksgiving and praise. It doesn't mean that everything's good. It doesn't mean everything's going great. But you and I have to be honest in our walk with Jesus and say, "No matter what, whether I've reached perfection, whether I have a good thing going on or not, or whether life is fantastic or not, I'm still going to praise you, even in my brokenness, even in my hurt, even in my—when you convict me on the inside, like I'm still going to worship you." Because what I want out of this relationship more than anything, I don't want the good vibes. I don't want the good feelings. I don't want the goosebumps. I don't want the memorable moments of legs growing out and people rising from the dead. Jesus, what I want is you and you alone, and I want you to produce in me your character, your integrity. I want your spirit to shape me and mold me. That's what I want out of this. You and I have to expose the fake because some people don't go to church for the right reason.**

**When we first launched this church, we had a guy that will remain unnamed. Some of us in here know who said person was, and we love this person. If he ever comes back, he was deep in at the very beginning. He wanted to be a part of everything. He was gung-ho. Then two months go by, and we're like, "Where is he?" We didn't know where he went. He just stopped coming out of nowhere. We were like, "Have no idea." Jacob reached out to him, and then Jacob lets us know he was straight up honest. "Y'all didn't have enough single females in your church, so I went to a different one." I was like, "He's right; they're all married." So just do something. He wasn't in our church for the right reason. Look to your left, look to your right. Question everything you know, all right? Question everything you know. Some people go to church to rub shoulders with people for business opportunities. Some people go to scout out the land and see if it's flowing with milk and honey. Others go to church to tick the box to make themselves feel better. It's all fake. The reason we come to church is because the church is the bride of Christ, and we're coming to present our imperfect selves on a journey of sanctification, trying to be like Him more like Him every single day, saying, "Jesus, we need you." That's why we come to church. We don't come to church for us; we come to church for Him. Him alone. I don't read my Bible in the morning because I want to feel better about my life. I read my Bible in the morning because I want to know more about Him so that what doesn't line up to look like Him in my life begins to start to look like Him. Because I don't know what I don't know, so I go in hungry and thirsty for what He has to say. But often we read the Bible because we want to tick boxes, be smarter. We want to be the smartest person in the room, have knowledge about something. Knowledge does nothing else other than puff you up. But when you know Jesus, when you know this living Savior, there is nothing in you that wants to fake perfection. When you know Jesus, you want all of your imperfection laid at His feet. Like, when I read through the Gospels and I see stories like the woman caught in the act of adultery, do you ever just stop and think about that? Like, she was caught in the act. Chances are, knowing the times, they probably didn't put on clothes and come with us. It was probably like, "Snatch! Taking you out to the square! We're going to stone you to death!" So, you probably stand there either naked or half-naked, and they're like, "Let's kill her! That's what the law of Moses says! What do you say, Jesus?" She's there, imperfection in everything, her personal life laid out in front of everybody. She's physically exposed. And Jesus—some people think He's leaning down, writing in the sand, writing the sins of people and doing all these things. Well, my Bible says that Jesus was tempted in every way like I am, yet without sin. I'm not saying this is why, but maybe Jesus was leaning down, writing in the sand because temptation was there. Not saying He would have acted on it; He didn't have the ability to act on it. But He was tempted either way. He's writing in the sand, and He says, "You without sin cast the first stone." It says from the oldest to the youngest—because the oldest have wisdom, and they're like, "Yeah, he's right. I was peeping in somebody's window the other night." You know, there you go. Throw the stone. His name was Tom, by the way. Threw his stone down. The youngest are still like, "Stone her!" And they look around, and they're like, "We the only ones? All right, never mind. We're going to walk away now." And then it was just Jesus and that woman. And Jesus said this: woman exposed, private life physically exposed, all these things standing there. Notice the level of comfort that she didn't just run away in shame. Like, even in her darkest, most broken moment, the fakeness of her life was just exposed. Comfort to stand there in your most worst moment of your life to be there in the presence of Jesus. And Jesus says something simple and profound: "Where are your accusers?" She says, "There's no one here to condemn me." He said, "Neither do I condemn you." That's the grace. Your brokenness, when the fake is exposed, there's grace and the truth. Because grace and truth is what Jesus is about. The truth is when He said, "Go and sin no more." You and I have to expose the fake. Fake faith means you have no fear of God. If you're faking perfection or you're not going to church for the right reasons, you're going to church for chicks or dudes, and you're going for status or to feel better about your life, that means you have a fake faith. I'm just going to be honest with you. And all is not lost. Thank God for the grace of God, right? Dude, when I started first going to church—yes, I just said dude—when I first started going to church was when I was right around 17, 18 years old. My wife at the time was my girlfriend. I knew she was a Christian. I was the farthest thing from a Christian. My wife—I was in a locker room one time, and I knew my wife and her friends, all they all wanted to date me at that time. This is truth. This is not me talking 20 years later. This is truth. You can ask her. I said very specifically, "All these bees want me." My boys were like, "Yeah!" My wife, then girlfriend, comes up to me in the hallway a couple days later and says, "I have a friend who was in the locker room, heard you say—did you say it?" Let fight or flight. This is a life-altering moment. So, I looked her dead in the eye and I said, "Nope! I would never say something like that!" Five years later, we got married. Within a couple months, babe, I have something to confess. You remember when? Yeah, I said it. She goes, "I know." She still married me. It was fake. It was all fake. I wasn't going to church at that moment. I started going to church because I knew she was a Christian. I wasn't going to church for the right reasons. Let's be honest. I was going to church so that I could stay with my girlfriend because I knew if I didn't go to church, she wouldn't want to be with me. So, it started out there. I say that to say this: if your intentions for going to church are not pure and all about Jesus, you're not a lost cause because that's where I started. I was going for booty. I'm being honest. Like, I really—that's really the end goal as a 17-year-old kid. That was that, especially a heathen like myself. And then I don't know how to explain it. I don't know what happened. It was one night, one, two o'clock in the morning in a smoke-filled room, also known as my grandma's house, and I'm on the couch because that's where I was sleeping. And I was just sitting there, just thinking, thinking about life, thinking about where I was going, what I had, what I felt like I was going to do with my life. Just a deep moment, right? And then I don't know how to explain it other than a light bulb just bing! That moment I realized I'm a sinner who needs saving. And He who knew no sin became sin for me by dying on a cross. He took my position and gave me His. And I hit my knees that night, and I gave my life to Jesus. And from that point forward, every time I've walked into a church, it's with a heart to want to worship Him and to know Him. So, you can start in one place and end up in another. But I have to identify what is fake faith. What does it exactly mean? Acting—this is what it means—acting like Jesus is the center of your life and that you are perfect when in reality He is not a part of your life outside of Sunday. Fake faith. I'll close with this: how do you know you're walking in fake faith? When you act like Jesus is the center of your life and that your life is perfect or that you are perfect or that you got everything going and He's everything you're about when in reality He is not a part of your life outside of Sunday. We have to stop playing a part and actually be a part of what God is doing because it is not about perfection. If it was about perfection, there would be no way that I would be preaching the gospel ever. There would be no way any of us pastors, preachers, prophets, evangelists, teachers—none of us would be able to stand up and be qualified to teach about Scripture, teach about who God is because we would never measure up. It's never been about perfection. What it's been about is grace and the grace of God to say, "Hey, even though you're an enemy of mine, I still love you." And us answering in that response to say, "I only know what love is because you first loved me." And then we walk in, and we start to follow Jesus, and we start to learn things like, "Oh, I don't have to be perfect. It's not about perfection. It's about position." And that my position has been given by the blood of Jesus, meaning I don't have to do anything to earn this. I don't have to fake it like I got my life together. And that even when I mess up, I'm not disqualified. That nothing can separate me from Your love. You and I have to realize that we've got to embrace ourselves and our position because you need one to have the other. Hear me out: theology is about to be shattered. Following Jesus is not denying your humanity and then taking on some super spiritual deity position. In other words, when broken people walk through the door and they might be struggling with addictions of all sorts of things, we don't look down our nose and go, "Sinner! You suck at life!" But for far too long, Christians have just gone, "I'm saved, therefore I'm perfect. Everything's good. You don't measure up, you're out." No! You got to embrace you! You got to embrace the fact that you are not your Savior. You are not good enough to be with God. You are not good enough to walk with God. But it was the blood of Jesus that bought the position that you have and was given to you by grace. If you just accept the position and reject the humanity that you're still living, you will become a Pharisee. No one likes a Pharisee. Nobody likes somebody who takes rules and regulations and lords it over people when they themselves don't even measure up. Nobody wants religious zealots running around condemning others while they...**