Heavenly Father, I thank you for the instruction you gave us in your word. about freedom from sin and how to fight the battle that we're engaged in. We know that you promised to sanctify us, and yet that sanctification process does not finish in this life, and we've grown under the weight of our own sin, especially certain sins, Lord, that really, really trip us up. And yet you've given us guidance on how to handle that. And so I pray, Father, I pray for each person here. I assume, Lord, that people are here because they're either stuck in an enslaving sin or they are probably close to someone who is. Maybe they just want training, but most likely they know someone, a family member, a friend. And Lord, these enslaving sins are just so devastating to us. They cause so much pain. They destroy families. They bring us to despair. They cause us to doubt your word sometimes, Lord, because we seem to try everything and nothing works. And I think that there are some here, no doubt, who really have tried everything. been wrestling with this for years and years and years and everything they've tried so far hasn't really helped. And this class could be another one of those things that just didn't help. It will be, unless you grant us favor, Lord. Unless you, by your Spirit, move in us and grant sanctifying power Grace that will transform us. We look to you alone, Lord. There's no methods that can do this work. So please, answer this prayer, grant this request, because we ask it in the name of your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Okay. People who have never been in bondage to a particular enslaving sin, don't get it. They don't understand what it's like. They think it's just like any other temptation that you face. They think it's just a matter of you're enticed by temptation, you cave in, end of story. That's just all there is to it, just like anything else. And so those people are mystified as to why you would keep doing this thing that's causing so much trouble and consternation in your life. Why not just quit? I mean, if you were really serious about it, you'd quit. People that think that way fail to understand the concept of enslavement. Titus 2.3 says, likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way that they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine. And the word translated addicted there is the word, it's a word that comes from the normal Greek word for slave. Doulas, it means to be enslaved, to be in bondage, not free. That's what the word means. Proverbs 5.22 says, the evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him, trap him. The cords of his sin hold him fast. He's tied up. Ecclesiastes 7.26, I find more bitter than death a woman who is a snare, whose heart is a trap, whose hands are chains. The man who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner, she will ensnare. A snare, a trap, imprisoned, tied up, chains, handcuffed, all of this terminology points to a situation where you can't just say, oh, I think I'll just walk away into freedom. It's more than that. It's more than that. Now, if you're a Christian, you've been set free in Christ, right? Freedom from sin, isn't that true? We have freedom in Christ from sin. So when you're enslaved, and yet scripture talks about Christians being enslaved to sin, so when you're enslaved to a particular sin as a Christian, it's a voluntary enslavement. We're not like unbelievers. It's a voluntary enslavement, but it's a real enslavement nonetheless. You really are trapped. In 2 Peter, it says a man is a slave to whatever mastered him. 2 Peter 2. You give yourself over to something and you become enslaved by it. So it's a real enslavement. And many of you are here because you know exactly what I'm talking about. You know you're enslaved because you've tried to stop and Didn't succeed, right? You've tried to change your behavior and it didn't work. You've tried to get out of the clutches of this thing and it failed. And this particular thing in your life might be causing all kinds of harm, costing you a lot of money, harming you physically, fouling up relationships, costing you joy, hope. misery, heartache, guilt, self-loathing. You try everything you can imagine to stop and you just go right back to it like a dog returning to his vomit and you're just like pulling your hair out, you know? Like, why do I keep... what is wrong with me? Why do I keep doing this thing that I hate so much in my life? And it caused me so much trouble, I keep doing it. I mean, there might be times you find when you're really hooked, you find yourself doing it even if you don't really want to. It doesn't even bring you any pleasure in your doing it. You're sitting there putting food in your mouth that doesn't even taste good. And you're not even hungry, and it's not even satisfying in it. You're doing it. You're just still eating. You're sitting in front of a computer screen for hours until your neck is sore looking at pornography. You can't stop. You're sick of it and you can't stop. People engage in masturbation until it's painful and they keep going. Buying things you know you don't need, you know it's going to cause a conflict in your marriage, you know it's going to put you in debt, you just buy it anyway. And these are different from the regular temptations of life. It's enslavement. It really is enslavement. But on the other hand, it's not total enslavement. It's not absolute enslavement. In the world, we'll take this enslavement idea and go to the extremes of saying it's total lifetime enslavement. If you go to AA or any of the 12-step groups, including the Christianized version, which is Celebrate Recovery, the very first principle in the 12 steps, the first step is admit you are totally powerless over your addiction. Totally powerless. They say it's a disease you will have until you die. You can be an alcoholic, you can go 20 years without taking a sip, and you're still just as much an alcoholic as any other time. You can never break free. Best you can hope for is to just mitigate the behavior to some degree to where it doesn't foul up your life. The problem with that is that Paul wrote to the Corinthians and he talked about all kinds of enslaving sins, sexual sins, drunkenness and all these these enslaving sins. And in first Corinthians 6 11 said and that is what some of you were. Were. Past tense. But you were washed and you were sanctified and the implication is now you are no longer these things. It's possible to have an enslaving sin and then come to a point where it's in the past. It's in the past. That's our hope. through Christ we can break free from the bonds of enslaving sin. It can be done. It can be done. And this class is all about how to do that. Now, let's talk about a definition. There's a lot of debate in the psychological world about the definition of addiction. The world has a really hard time defining it because the trend these days in the world is to try to define everything in terms of physiological, physical chemicals and all that kind of stuff. And that doesn't work because they can define some addictions that way and then other addictions they don't function the same way. Alcohol, there's chemicals, gambling, you're not putting any chemicals in your body. They have a hard time finding a definition that works for all of them. I'm not going to go through all the debate about all the technical definitions. I'll just give you what I think is the biblical definition. And that is, if we use the biblical terminology, it's not that hard. If we use the term enslavement, then it's pretty obvious what the definition is. How do you know if you're enslaved by a sin? Well, very simple. An enslaving sin is this. Here's the definition. It's when a person keeps deciding to do something that he wishes he wouldn't. I just think it's that simple. When you keep deciding you'd do something that you wish you wouldn't. That can apply to heroin, that can apply to biting your fingernails. It's when you're hooked. And I get that from Galatians 5.17. Galatians 5.17 says, Spirit, what is contrary to the flesh. In fact, go ahead and open your Bible. Hopefully you have your Bible. Bring your Bibles to these sessions, because we'll be using them. And I'd like you to see this for yourself. So go ahead and open to Galatians 5. We'll be in Galatians 5 a fair amount tonight. So Galatians 5, verse 17. It's talking about this conflict between the flesh and the spirit. It says your flesh desires what's contrary to the spirit, spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other so that you do not do what you want. You do not do what you want. That's where I get my definition for addiction or enslaving sin. This is Galatians 5.17. You don't do what you want because of this war that's going on inside you. You've got a behavior that you want to quit, want to change, and you attempt to do so, and it doesn't work. You're enslaved. And so it's any behavior that if you try to quit it, you're likely to fail. Now, let me explain the purpose of this class, what we're going to try and do in this class. If five different people came up to me and they all had the exact same addiction, say it's alcohol. They're all hooked on alcohol. They're all getting drunk. And five people come to me for counsel. I would not counsel them the same. Probably not even any two of them would get the same counsel. Every person is different. Every kind of enslavement is different. You can have two different guys, both hooked on alcohol. They both get drunk, say, four times a week, but for very different reasons. They have different appetites of the soul. They have different life circumstances. They have different backgrounds, very different motivations for why they get drunk. They have different idols in their hearts that need to be dealt with in different ways. And so there's not a one-size-fits-all counsel for enslaving sins or addictions. But on the other hand, there are some principles that do apply across the board, the same for everyone. no matter what your situation is and no matter what it is that you're hooked on. So if I counsel someone with an eating disorder and someone else is a compulsive gambler, I might give some very different counsel to those two people, but the first several sessions of the counseling are going to be exactly the same. It's going to be the material in this class. The purpose of this class is not to give you all the counsel that you're going to need for overcoming an enslaving sin. The purpose of this class is to give you the basic, fundamental, foundational principles that you're going to need to overcome any enslaving sin that apply the same across the board to any kind of enslaving sin. So you can think of this class as being like the first five or six sessions of a counseling case. By the end of this class, if you're struggling with enslaving sin, by the end of this class, if you're serious about doing the exercises that I'm going to assign each week, you can expect to make tremendous progress in just five or six weeks. Tremendous progress towards freedom. Many of you, six weeks from now, will have greater freedom, considerably greater freedom in this area where you struggle than you've had for years and years. Just five or six weeks. But that's not going to be the end of the process for you. In order to have lasting victory, you're going to have to get some individualized help, most likely. Now, some people are exceptions to this, but most likely you'll still need some individualized help. And so what we'll do is we'll talk about the general principles in this setting, in a group setting, but after that you're going to need a mentor. who will help you apply these principles in your specific situation and help you overcome the unique obstacles that you face in your particular life and situation that are different from what other people are facing. Because you've got your own unique stuff. So please don't think of this class as the entire process. It's not. It's just the first portion of the process. All right, so let's just jump right in. Let me give you the causes of addiction. What causes an enslaving sin? I would say three things. I think there's three basic things that cause enslaving sin. When somebody gets addicted to something, whether it be a behavior or a substance, it's because that person lacks three things. They're missing three things in their life. Number one, power from God. Number two, fulfillment in God. And number three, fear of God. So let's go through those. Power from God. You can't say no to this temptation because you just don't have the spiritual power to successfully fight against it. You're lacking spiritual power. So that's one thing you're missing. Number two, fulfillment in God. The way a sin enslaves you And this is true of any kind of enslaving sin. The way a sin enslaves you is by promising fulfillment to your soul, some kind of fulfillment that your soul craves. It promises to fulfill your craving for pleasure, or for comfort, or for security, or for rest, or relief, or control maybe, or any number of different cravings that you have. This thing that you're addicted to is promising to fulfill that. But scripture describes our relationship with God as being like a marriage, right? And just as a wife is to look to her husband alone to fulfill all her sexual desires, so we are to look to God alone to fulfill all of our cravings of our soul for comfort and pleasure and fulfillment and relief and security and all the rest. Your soul Your soul is the part of you that has appetites. Your soul will drive you. drive you to fulfill those appetites. God built you with insatiable appetites. Appetites that must be fulfilled. And you'll be driven to fulfill them. So if they're not being fulfilled by God, you will try to fulfill them some other way. You will. You just will not be able to. You might hold off for a little while, but your soul will win and you'll cave in and run. Your soul will run hard after whatever it thinks will fulfill those cravings. Whatever your soul thinks will make it happy, whatever your soul thinks will fulfill those cravings, you'll find yourself running after that no matter how hard you try to stop and put on the brakes. So people who are addicted, people who are enslaved to a sin, are lacking fulfillment in God in a particular area, for a particular appetite. They might have fulfillment from God in a lot of other areas for a lot of their appetites, but in one particular appetite, they're not getting that fulfilled from God. And so their soul's running after something else. Number three, fear of God. If you're engaging in some addictive sin, it's because you're not afraid to do that in God's sight, right? You're just not afraid to do that in front of God. You might be afraid to do it in front of other people. Someone else walks in the room, boom, you hide it, you know, but you're not afraid to do it in front of God, and so you're missing fear of God. So that might sound kind of simplistic. In my experience, I've come up with lots of complex things that didn't help. And when I go back to the scriptures, these are the three things that just keep coming up. And these are the three things that I find actually help people. These are the things we're missing when we get enslaved to a sin. Fear, fulfillment, and power. Okay? Now, some of you might not be lacking all three of those. You might be great in two of them, and you're just missing one. You can be doing great with fearing God, and you might have lots of power, but you're missing fulfillment. Or you've got plenty of fulfillment from God, and you've got plenty of power, but you're missing the fear, or whatever. You've got to have all three. In order to get victory, you're going to have to have all three, if you want victory long-term. So this class is just going to be real simple. How to get fear of God, how to get fulfillment from God, and how to get power from God. Then we're done. That's what this class is going to be. Now, before we jump into the first one, which is power, and that's what I'd like to cover tonight. I'm going to try to wrap up a little early tonight so that we don't get the supposed blizzard that's supposedly coming. Anyway, before we get to that, I want to just say one thing about how this will work. Because I said a minute ago that you can expect great progress over the next five or six weeks in your struggle if, anybody remember the if? If you're serious about doing the exercises. Let's talk about the exercise, because that's a big if. It's a really, really big if. Nobody is going to get victory over anything by just learning the principles. You're not going to get victory by sitting in this class. 1 Timothy 4 says, train yourselves to be godly. Train. Now training, what do you think of when you think of a personal trainer? That word is used in athletic settings. Working out. It's what you do. uh, in between events to get strong. So, so if you want bigger muscles, you could go to every bodybuilding seminar there is. Um, and you could read all the books on bodybuilding and you can get a PhD in physiology. You could become the world's foremost expert on bodybuilding. If you don't actually lift some weights, it's not going to happen. Your muscles will be just as small as ever. What would happen if you read every book in the world on martial arts? Would you be able to fight? No. Not if you don't do the exercises. Not if you don't actually train. And you know that. You know you can read a book on losing weight and you don't lose any weight by the end of the book. You've got to do what it says. So spiritual growth is the same way. It's not going to happen just through learning. Learning is crucial because you've got to know what to do, but it's only so that you know what exercises will actually bring about the godliness. Every week I'm going to assign exercises. And those are what will do the work. And I've found over the years of counseling, the people that get really serious about these exercises, they have amazing results. The people that don't, they're apathetic about the exercises, they kind of do the easy ones, they're hit and miss. Some of them, they come back next week, what did you do? Did you do the exercises? Well, I did some, I didn't really do that one. Those people generally don't make much progress. The people who don't do the exercise at all never make any progress. So I can't stress this strongly enough. You must, must, must do the exercises each week. Now, this particular session tonight, most of this class is going to be geared specifically towards enslaving sins, like habits. Now, some people emailed me, they said, well, I've got a struggle with anger, or I've got a struggle with this sin or that sin, and it wouldn't be the ones we typically put in the category of a habit or an addiction. But I didn't email them back and tell them not to come tonight, because tonight, these principles will apply for any kind of struggle with sin. So, and, Just so you know, I do want to do some more of these classes on other specific things. So like, maybe after, in January or February, do another one of these classes on anger, or anxiety, or depression, or something like that. So we'll hopefully do some more of these, but this one's on enslaving sins. So let's get started on the very first one, how to get power from God. So you're already in Galatians 5.16, or Galatians 5. If you want to know how to get power, spiritual power, so that you can have victory in your battle against sin, and you want to know what the Bible says about that, I can summarize what you need to do in one word. Walk. Walk. Look at Galatians 5.16. Walk by the Spirit and you will not, you will not, You will not gratify the desires of the flesh. I mean, that's an amazing promise, right? Gratifying the desires of the flesh, that's talking about, is that talking about enslaving sin? I mean, is that what he has in mind here? Yes, it is, because look at the next verse, verse 17. For the flesh desires what's contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit is contrary to the flesh. They're in conflict with each other so that you do not do what you want, right? That's where we got our definition for enslaving sins. When you don't, you want to quit and you can't. You want to quit, it's not working. You try to stop and it doesn't, you end up deciding to do the sin even after you've decided to stop. Why does that happen? Why do we decide, I'm going to quit this, I'm going to change this, and then we go back to doing it? Why? Because the Holy Spirit is making you desire holiness, and that's why you decide to quit, and your flesh is making you desire the sin, and that's why you decide to go back, and the influence of the flesh is winning. It's winning. So how can I turn the table so that the influence of the Holy Spirit is winning and is greater than the influence of the flesh? The answer to that is right there in verse 16. Walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Spirit will win. The Spirit's influence will be greater if you do this, if you walk by the Spirit. So that's the solution. That's how you get spiritual power from God. That's how you fight against sin. Problem is, that's a metaphor, right? So what does the metaphor mean? Walk by the Spirit. It's not literal walking, right? So what does it mean? How do you subject yourself to the influence of the Holy Spirit in a greater way than you're already doing? Well, the more of the influence of the Holy Spirit you have in your life, the more you're going to find the fruit of the Spirit in your life. And part of the fruit of the Spirit is self-control, right? Through the Spirit, look down at verse 22, Galatians 5, 22. Through the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. So if I want more self-control in my life, I need more influence from the Holy Spirit producing that fruit. And so if you study the New Testament and find out how do we get influence from the Holy Spirit, what you're gonna find is three main ways that the Holy Spirit exerts influence on his people. First, through prayer. Prayer, that's that first blank in your outline. Now in our study that we've been doing in the sermons on prayer, we've seen that the Holy Spirit helps us pray, right? Romans 8, 26, 27, teaches the Spirit works in our hearts and moves in our hearts to bring about willing that matches God's will, so that when God looks into our hearts, He sees His own will in our will. So, that happens when we don't know what to pray. The Holy Spirit steps in and helps. So, twice in the New Testament, we're told, pray in the Spirit. Pray in the Spirit. So, if you want to subject yourself to the influence of the Holy Spirit, prayer is a big way that that needs to happen. I'm not going to do a big study of prayer tonight because we were doing that in sermons for the last two months. So I don't think we need to do that. If you haven't been around for all those sermons, then you might want to look that up. James 5, 13 through 18 on foodforyoursoul.net and listen to it, especially the first two. The first two, in verses 13, if you listen to part one and part two, they're titled, Personal Communion with God, in James 5, 13, parts one and two, and that'll give you some fundamentals on prayer. From there, To improve your prayer life, you can get together with a mentor and somebody who's spiritually mature and just see if they can help you figure out what's the next step for you in your personal prayer life. And when I say next step, don't get discouraged about prayer. In fact, don't get discouraged about anything in the Christian life. We get so discouraged because we're not perfect on it, you know. I preach these things, you know, from James or wherever, and I say, this is the standard, this is what God wants, and people walk away, it's like, man, that's just, I can never get there by tomorrow. And they get discouraged. And we need to understand, God's concerned with, not so much with perfection, but with direction, right? He's concerned about the direction. Are you moving toward these things? And as long as you're moving toward these things, God is pleased with that, right? You have a baby, you don't expect him to be adult the next day. You're glad if he can eventually take a step, you know? Then you're all happy. Even though he's wobbly and tips over, you're all happy. And then after a while, you're happy about the next thing. And that's the way God is when we grow. He just wants you to make progress and grow. So you don't have to figure this all out overnight. Just figure out what's the next step for you. Right now, you're right here in your prayer life. You want to get up to here. What's here look like for you? What's the next step? What do you need to do? Don't come up with unrealistic things, you know, vows that you know you're not going to be able to keep up with. Just find what the next step is. And for most people, the next step is usually to carve out some consistent, focused, uninterrupted, undistracted time alone with the Lord each day. For most people. Most Christians have, they have the quick interactions with God all through the day. That's just so natural. And that's wonderful. That's wonderful, that's beautiful, that's good. But very often we struggle to set aside time every day when we're just completely focused on God and nothing else. If you never do that, then maybe the next step for you is just to shoot for twice a week, 10 minutes. Just shoot for that. See if you can move from zero to that. That's progress. That'll be good for you. That'll help you. Maybe you're already doing that or more and the next step for you is five times a week, 20 minutes, whatever. Maybe you're already consistent with time and you do it every day and you do it for a long time every day but you find that your prayers aren't very good. good quality, they're not very satisfying. You walk away not really having communed with God and so the next step for you is to deepen the quality of your communion with God. Whatever, just find someone who's a good mentor who can help you and think through, what is the next step for me? Just be real honest about where you're at right now and then what's the next step? If you don't have any idea, again, find a mentor. But although I think most of us already have an idea, don't we? We already know what would improve our prayer life, what would make it better. If we just sat down for half an hour and thought it through, we would be clear, pretty clear, about what the next step is for us. Most people, I think, are there. The problem is getting it done. Actually doing it. Sitting down with a pen and paper and a calendar, and making a plan. That's what we just never seem to get around to doing. You know, important stuff in life gets a plan, doesn't it? If you're going to remodel your kitchen, You probably don't do that on the fly. You're probably going to sit down at the beginning and you're going to sketch out a plan. If you want to have your dream vacation, you're going to plan it out. If you want to figure out a way to get your son to soccer practice and your daughter to dance and still make your chiropractor appointment on Thursdays You sit down, you make a plan, right? Whatever's important in your life gets a plan. If you wanna move to the next level, take the next step in your prayer life, you're gonna have to sit down, figure out what are my goals, what are the hindrances to those goals, what changes need to be made, and when is the ideal time of day, and what steps do I need to take to make this happen, and get it on paper. I guarantee you, just sitting there thinking, oh man, I've got to get serious about my prayer life. It's not going to work. It's not going to do anything. It's not going to do anything. I've got to make a plan. So if you want to break free from the bondage of enslaving sin, take the next step in deepening your prayer life so that you can have greater influence from the Holy Spirit. Okay, that's under prayer. Next, scripture. This is the second primary way that the Holy Spirit exerts influence. Remember, what we're trying to do is subject ourselves more to the Holy Spirit's influence. And He exerts His influence through the sword of the what? Spirit, right? The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, Ephesians 6. So the Holy Spirit, He inspired the scriptures. And then what does he do? He enlightens us and enables us to receive, understand, and receive, and accept, and be receptive to the truths of the Spirit. That's ministry of the Holy Spirit. So the only thing that has enough power to give you victory over sin, the only thing that has enough power to change your heart is grace, right? And grace comes when the truths of the word of God are absorbed into your heart. You've got to have grace, so you're going to need the Word of God. Step one of absorbing God's Word into your heart is to read it. So open it up and read it, or listen to it. Sometimes people ask me, does it count if I just listen? Because I don't read very well, but I put the Bible on CD or something. Yeah, that counts. It's like most believers throughout the centuries didn't own a Bible. The Bible's really meant to be heard, so hearing the word is great. But one way or another, it's absolutely essential that you expose yourself to the Word of God through daily reading or listening. You've got to have that every day. A soldier who's never going to have success in fighting the battle if he starves himself. You know, we can get all technical about trying to diagnose all kinds of spiritual problems and it comes out sometimes it's just a matter of, okay, you're starving yourself. You know? It's like if someone goes into the doctor and is like, Doc, I just feel weak and I don't have any energy and I can't sleep. Well, are you eating food? No, I haven't had any food for weeks, you know, but I don't know. I don't think that's it. I need a scan. I need some kind of, you know, medicine. What's he going to tell you? Go eat a sandwich and then come back and then see if you're still sick. I'm not going to do a scan until you go eat a sandwich. And that's the way a lot of counseling is. You just got to go eat a sandwich. So expose yourself to God's Word on a daily basis. Read it, listen to it. Secondly, memorize it. Memorize it. According to Joshua 1.8, I don't think this is optional. According to Joshua 1.8, the key to obeying God's Word is to meditate on it when? Day and night. So it sounds to me like you've got two options. You can walk around like this 24 hours a day with your light on at night, or you can memorize. I don't know how else you're going to meditate day and night. You've got to commit it to memory. Now, I know you don't find it easy. Hardly anybody finds it easy to memorize scripture, but easy or hard, we have to find a way to do it because it's directly commanded. We found that in James 1.25. He said, look intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, not forgetting what you've heard, doing it now not forgetting we need to look intently and not forget what everybody agrees me that not forgetting equals remembering All right, so we're on the same page there. It requires remembering. And so if we put the Word of God into practice, if we're going to want to put it into practice, we've got to commit it to memory. We've got to commit it to memory. Some of the exercises that I assign each week in the godliness training will include memorization. They'll include all of these components. I'll give you some suggested passages each week to memorize. If you want freedom from enslaving sin, if you want freedom from any sin, I strongly urge that you not skip over that one. Because Psalm 119 says, I've hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. If you want to battle sin, you've got to hide his word in there. And sometimes you think, okay, well, I hide it in there. I hide the principles in there. Can't I just get the principles in there? Not the words, you know, I can't get it word for word, but what if I just got the basic idea and I hide that in my heart? Is that what David is talking about? I don't think so, because look, just a couple of verses later, in verse 13, he says, with my lips, I recount all the laws that come from your mouth. He's reciting them. He's saying them. He knew them by heart. Colossians 3.16 says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Dwell means to make it home in you, to live there. We are to see to it that the word of Christ takes up residence in our heart and lives there. John 15.7, Jesus told us to make sure his word remain or abide in you. His words, plural, same idea. Jesus' individual words are defined at permanent, ongoing, dwelling place inside our hearts. I think that's talking about word for word. Proverbs 7.1, my son, keep my words and store up my commands within you, within you, store them up. Keep my commands and you will live. Guard my teachings as the apple of your eye, bind them on your fingers, write them on the tablet of your heart. Write them down on your heart. And if you want an example, all you have to do is look at Jesus' example. Jesus memorized Scripture. He used it to fight against temptation. Three temptations in the wilderness, all three. How did he fight? Scripture. He quoted Scripture. He was memorizing the book of Deuteronomy. And he's quoting passages out of Deuteronomy in order to fight sin. And that's, why does the Son of God need to memorize Scripture? He's God. Everything he says is the Word of God just because he said it, right? Automatically. Why does he have to memorize Scripture? He's doing that for our example. If the Son of God needed to memorize Scripture to fight sin, certainly we need to do that. Now, if you want to go into depth on that, explore that topic in Scripture, I did a whole sermon on that in James 1.26, the passage on James 1.26, that sermon entitled, Intensive Stare. And I also did a clinic on Scripture memorization. It's also on foodforyoursoul.net, it's called Scripture Memorization Class. The elders got together and we came up with that title. But for now, let me just say this, the best tool I know of for scripture memorization is by far scripturetyper.com. I've been memorizing scripture all my life. I've memorized thousands of verses. I can tell you without hesitation, scripturetyper.com makes memorizing scripture ten times easier than any other method I have ever tried. Typer, yeah, scripturetyper. So it's an online thing, or you can get an app on your phone, and I do it on my computer. and you just learn the verse. It hides every other word at first, you know, and then every opposite words, and then you just, you do that a couple times, then you can type out the word. And you don't have to type it all out. You can just set it so you only touch the first letter of each word, and it puts the whole word there. So you can go really fast, and it's fun. I mean, it's just fun, and it makes it easy, and then it reminds you when it's time to review that verse, you know, you can set it to remind you however often you want. So, I've just found that very, very helpful, scripturetyper.com. Okay, so, if you wanna subject yourself to the power of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit's influence, you gotta read the Word, you gotta listen to the Word every day, you've got to memorize portions of it, and then a third thing, you gotta understand it. You gotta understand it. You could read the Bible cover to cover and memorize every single verse, and if you don't understand it, it's worthless. Or if you don't know how it applies to life, what good is it? Most of the time, when a Christian struggles to read his Bible, it's not because he has no appetite for the word of God. That's what I've found. What I've found is, now if somebody has no appetite for the Word of God, it's questionable whether that person can be saved. I mean, it's just unlikely that the person is saved. But typically what I've found is there's a lot of people, they don't read their Bible, but they they do have an appetite to understand the Bible. They want to know it. The reason they don't read it is because every time they try to read it, they don't understand what they're reading, or they understand it, but they don't know how to apply it, and it's not helpful for them. And so nothing is more boring than reading something you don't understand, right? Nothing is more boring than that. I can tell you after years of school, nothing's more boring than reading things you don't understand. And so it's important to understand. Now, if you start to understand it, if you're a believer and you read and you start seeing things and they start making sense and they start fitting together and they actually help you in your day-to-day life, you're going to get addicted to that. You're going to very quickly want to be in the Bible. You're going to want to be studying. It's not going to take a huge amount of self-discipline. It'll still take some, but it won't take near as much. So it's important to understand. Get a good study Bible, use commentaries, meditate, listen to sermons on that particular passage that you're studying, write an email to your pastor and ask him questions, whatever questions you got. I love getting those kind of emails. Those are so much fun for me. Do whatever you can do to understand this passage before you move on to the next passage. You need to understand two things. You need to understand what it means and what's the significance. How does it apply to my life? How can I put it into practice? So, if you read a passage of Scripture and then you move on to another passage of Scripture without figuring out those two things, it's not going to be satisfying. It's like putting a nut in your mouth and then spitting it out. and then put another nut in your mouth and spit it out before you ever get through the shell. And it's just like, that's not going to give you any nutrition. And it's not going to be very pleasurable. So strive to understand the Scriptures and read, listen, memorize, understand. And then one more, do it. Do it. Be a doer of the Word. Put it into practice. James says, if you listen to the Word, you don't do what it says. That's worthless. We need to be doers of the word. A really great practice that I've found is after you finish your morning devotions, write out this statement, today I will, fill in the blank. What are you gonna do today to put this thing that you just read in the Bible into practice? Today I will, boom. Because it's so easy for us to fall into being content with just stuffing more and more information into our brain. And like, wow, that's a new piece of information. That's awesome. And some of us, we get all excited about new pieces of information in the brain. And it's just really easy to, I started doing this, I was amazed how often I thought I had a great devotion, so then I'm like, today I will, And I just like, okay, I need to go back and think through, how am I going to put this into practice? Come up with a specific plan, how you're going to do it that day. One thing you'll notice when I give the godliness training exercises each week, there will always be a doing exercise. Don't skip over that one. All right, so, I told you there's three primary ways that the Holy Spirit exerts influence. He exerts influence through prayer. He exerts his influence through scripture. One more. He exerts his influence through the gifts of the Spirit. The reason they call the gifts of the Spirit are called spiritual gifts is because they come from the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, right? That's why they call them gifts of the Spirit. They are one of the main ways that the Holy Spirit dispenses grace Now remember, you're never gonna have any success against sin unless you get grace. You gotta have grace. Grace is the only thing that's gonna give you enough power. And the way to get grace is through, one major way to get grace is through the gifts of the Spirit. And Peter, remember, at the end of 1 Peter, he said that we're stewards of grace through our gifts. We become stewards of God's grace. We're dispensing grace. Everyone through their spiritual gifts is dispensing Grace, if you look around this room, all these people sitting here, just a bunch of grace dispensers. That's what these people are, grace dispensers. And that's what church is. It's a whole bunch of grace dispensers. And you need all that grace. You cannot get all of the grace that you need alone with your Bible in a prayer closet. You get some essential grace that you really have to have. You've got to have that kind of grace. But you're not going to get every kind of grace. See, grace is kind of like nutrition. You've got to have a variety of it. With nutrition, you can't just exist on protein. You need other stuff. You need vitamins. You need fats. You need some carbohydrates. You need some sugars. You need all these different forms of nutrition. There's just lots and lots of different things. You've got to have enough variety. If you're missing something, if your body's missing something, then you don't get any vitamin C, you end up with scurvy or whatever. You get these problems where you've got to have enough variety. Grace is the same way. You've got to have the grace that flows through somebody who has the gift of encouragement. You've got to have the grace that flows through this other guy who has the gift of helps. You've got to have the grace that flows through this guy who has the gift of teaching. You've got to have the grace that flows through her. She's got the gift of exhortation. You've got to have the gift of someone else that has the gift of giving. You've got to have all these forms of grace coming at you from all these directions. You need it all. You need it all. And so without fellowship, if you withdraw from the church, you're gonna find that you're gonna be malnourished in certain forms of grace. Even if you are in the word all day long and praying all day long, you don't have fellowship, you're gonna be malnourished in certain aspects of grace that you desperately need. So, So if you want power in your life, you gotta come to church and not just come to church, but be engaged enough in church to where you are receiving grace from people's spiritual gifts and dispensing grace from your own spiritual gift. That's important too, because grace flows from heaven to that person through you, through the ministry of your gift. So you gotta be serving in ministry. You gotta be serving, carrying out the one another's. to receive this grace, okay? All right, so those are the primary ways that the Holy Spirit exerts His influence, scripture, prayer, fellowship. No big surprise there. And so if you want to overcome sin, you've gotta have those three things, and they will put power, spiritual power, into your life to fight this battle. that'll enable you to walk by the Spirit. Now let's get back to walking, because I said a minute ago that it's a metaphor, and we've got to interpret the metaphor to know what it looks like, what does it mean, because there's a purpose for metaphors. Metaphors are supposed to make things easier to understand. So let's think it through. Why does Scripture use the figure of speech of walking? What is walking? How would you define walking? Isn't walking, would you agree with this, walking is when you take a series of steps to get from where you are to somewhere else, to wherever you're going. Okay, it's a series of steps, it's a sequence, and that's what life is. Life is a sequence of steps that get you from where you are right now to somewhere else, to wherever it is you're going to be in the future. So, every second that ticks off the clock, every day, is a step that you're taking in some direction. Every thought that goes through your mind, every word out of your mouth, every action you do is a step that's carrying you in some direction. So you're always walking. Every human being is constantly walking. Every waking hour of the day, every human being is spiritually walking somewhere. They're taking steps in some direction. And what we're called to do here is walk by the Spirit. As much as we possibly can, all of our thoughts, all of our words, all of our actions are to be done with an awareness of the presence of the Holy Spirit with us and an alertness to how He's guiding, what He wants us to do. If you do that, He will guide you down a path that leads, guess where, to victory and freedom from sin. As long as we stay on that path, Temptations won't have very much power at all. If you stray a few feet off the path, then temptation will have a little bit stronger pull. If you stray a hundred yards off the path, then temptation will have a really strong pull. And if you get a quarter mile off the path, then power of temptation will be absolutely overwhelming and you're going to fall every time. Satan generally doesn't start by hitting you with a big temptation while you're on the path. He knows it'll probably not work. Usually what Satan does instead is he just tries to get you to take a few steps off the path, and then a few more, and just move you a few degrees off. And he works in very, very subtle ways to get you far enough away from the power of the Holy Spirit to where you'll be susceptible, and then he hits you with the big temptation. Because he's got to get you weak first. That's why Scripture has so much to say. If you study Scripture about how to fight sin, how to have victory over sin, any sin, that's why Scripture has so much to say about alertness. That just comes up again and again, doesn't it? Be alert, be on your guard, devil's a roaring lion, watch out, look out, be alert. We need to be alert, spiritually alert, awake to reality, what's going on. We need to be alert to the presence of the Holy Spirit, We need to be alert to what He's guiding us to do, what He's guiding us to think. We need to be alert to His will, moment by moment. We need to be alert to what the enemy's up to. Matthew 26, 41, Jesus said to His disciples, watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. Spirit is willing, flesh is weak, so you better, you gotta watch. You gotta be alert. Otherwise, you're gonna fall to temptation. So all day long, we need to just be asking the question, what does the Holy Spirit want me to be doing right now? What does the Holy Spirit want me to be doing right now? That's a lot better question to ask yourself than the question, is this okay, what I'm doing? Is this sin, or is it okay for me to do this, or am I crossing the line into sin? It's better to ask, is this what the Holy Spirit wants? Because, If all you do is, I mean, instead of asking, have I crossed the line and violated some command in Scripture yet? Instead of asking that, just say, am I stepping in that direction? Or am I on the path that the Spirit wants me on? I can tell you there are many, many, many times in my life where I'll be doing or thinking something that I really wouldn't normally think of as sin. But when I ask myself the question, is this what the Holy Spirit wants right now? It's crystal clear the answer is no. No. There have been times, lots of times, when I've asked myself the question. If I ask myself the question, would it be a sin for me to turn on the TV right now? My answer would be, no, it's not a sin to turn on the TV. But when I ask it the other way, and I say, Do I really think that the Holy Spirit wants me to turn on the TV right now? Many times I've asked that question and it's just, there's absolutely no question. No. No. I know for sure that's not what the Spirit wants right now. Sometimes it's okay, but not right now. Not at this moment. It's late at night. I'm all alone. I'm in a context where I'm susceptible to temptation. There's no way the Holy Spirit would want me to turn it on right now. I ask it that way, and it just becomes clear in my mind very often. It's not always crystal clear, but very often it becomes clear that, no, no, this is not what the Spirit wants. He wouldn't want me to do that. He wouldn't want me to think about this. I mean, how hard is it? You're sitting there worrying and fretting about something you have no control over. Does the Holy Spirit want me to be thinking about this right now? Uh, no. It's not a big mystery half the time, you know, most of the time, what the Spirit wants. So, walk by the Spirit as much as possible, every action, every worry, every thought, stepping in the direction where the Spirit wants you to go. Asking, what is His will? Constant, hour-by-hour alertness to the fact that He's right here. He's right by you. His presence is right there. And I want to have this responsiveness to His guidance. This instant responsiveness to His guidance. That's walking by the Spirit. And Paul promises us, if you do that, you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. You're going to have victory. You're going to have tremendous victory if you do that. Now for me, it requires a lot of reminders. I mean, anything requires a lot of reminders from me, but especially that. So sometimes I'll actually write something on my hand from my morning devotions that I want to think about all day long, a bunch of times all through the day. Sometimes I'm having alarms going off. I'll tell my phone, remind me, you know. I'll sometimes put it on Facebook so that if somebody comments on it or likes it, then I get an alert. And every time I get one of those alerts, I'm going, oh, that's right. And I use that to remind me. Post-it notes. You know, we're driving here and I couldn't see the speedometer. I'm driving Tracy's car. I'm like, why can't I see this? What's this card? She's like, oh, that's my Bible verse. Got it in front of the speedometer. Oh, the tachometer. Oh, that's right. I couldn't see the beams were on. And she said, you got your beams on? I was like, I can't even see the blue light. OK. So anyway, all kinds of different strategies for reminding yourself. If I don't do those things, I'll go hours at a time without thinking about it at all. So I need constant reminders. All right. Any questions? Despite the fear of becoming another discernment illustration, The issue of prayer, I just want to ask something about that. Because I know that in the past, when I'm just entrenched in some sin, I get up in the mornings and I was begging God for victory that day. And it wouldn't come. Despite that earnest prayer, despite that desire, an hour later, there I was again. So I'm not quite sure what to say if I'm mentoring somebody or helping somebody out. And I'm telling them, well, one of the things, the means of grace that you need to do is prayer. They throw up their hands and say, well, I pray to God every day that nothing changes. So how do you sell it? Well, what I would say, and first of all, for all of those of you who thought that sermon illustration was about you, you can see that there was at least one other person that thinks it was about him. Alright, but anyway, the way that I would, what I would say to someone like that is, that would be a problem, what you just described to me would be a problem if prayer were the only thing required for victory. then you would have just disproved my whole thing right there because if prayer were the only thing required for victory and you prayed and you didn't have victory, well then it doesn't work. But prayer is only one of the things. And so you can do great in some of these areas but still be lacking in something else and still find yourself with failure. In fact, you can be doing great in every single area that I covered this whole evening. You can be doing great with scripture, prayer, and fellowship, be getting all that grace, have tons of strength and spiritual power, and yet still fail because there's a problem with fearing God or with finding satisfaction in God in a particular area for a particular appetite. So that's why this isn't the only session. If you do good in all those other areas, but you don't have the prayer piece, you'll probably still struggle. So, we're just gonna cover numerous different things. We put them all together, and then we're gonna, that's where we'll start to get lots of traction with getting victory. Okay? Okay, one more. Okay, yeah. Right, right. So if you've had that kind of upbringing and you ask, what does the Holy Spirit want me to do? Then you just have to be on your knees in front of the altar at church all day, every day. And obviously that's not what God wants. You would be violating some biblical principles if he did that. And so I think the solution to that is you need to come up with a good theology of recreation. and rest and all the other things. Because if I'm going to watch TV, I need to do it for the glory of God. If I'm going to play golf, I need to do it for the glory of God. I need to do everything I do for the sake of His glory. And if I can't figure out how hunting fits into glorifying God, then I can't go hunting. Thankfully, I have figured that out, and so I love hunting. Ecclesiastes is a helpful book for that. But I think to remind yourself, when you say, does the Holy Spirit want me to do this? No, He only wants me to pray and do nothing else. then go back to that theology of recreation and think through, why does God want us to rest? Why does God want us to take delight in Him through things in the creation? And how is that done? And just rehearse that in your mind so that you can, with a clear conscience, do those things and say, yeah, I think right now the Holy Spirit wants me to Take a break. And have some fun. And, you know, whatever. This is the only session I was going to do on the Scripture Prayer Fellowship and getting power from God. We're already done with that. I want to, the heart of this class is about the appetites. Because that's where we find a lot of that stuff. Where most people who are addicted, they think that the idol in their heart, I'll just give you a little preview for next time. They think the idol in their heart is the thing they're addicted to. We train counselors and they'll ask on the forum, what idols does this counselee have? And they'll say, alcohol. He's getting drunk three times a week, his idol is alcohol. No, his idol is not alcohol. His idol is whatever he's trying to get from the alcohol. And it might be a totally different idol for two different drunk guys. One guy, his idol is relief from his suffering. He's getting drunk because he wants to escape. And so the idol in his heart is relief. The other guy's getting drunk because he likes to party, you know, and the idol in his heart is fun. And the other guy's getting drunk because he's got pressure from his friends, and the idol in his heart is fear of man. He wants to be accepted by the crowd. You know, and these are totally different idols, and you address them totally different ways. And so we're going to do some work on that in this class, how to discover what is the idol in your heart. It's not food, it's not sex, it's not shopping, it's what you're trying to get from those things. Well, okay, do I really believe you can have total freedom from enslaving sin? I would say you can have freedom, the same kind of freedom that you have from other sins in your life. So, I'm reluctant to say total freedom because I don't want to imply that you can be perfect in any area in this side of heaven. But I do think that you can get to the point where you used to have a serious addiction and now it's not even a struggle. It's not even a struggle. Now, that's not guaranteed. Sometimes God will let you struggle with the same thing all the way through your life, and it'll be a battle. But that's not automatically true. There are some times when you can get to the point where it's not a struggle at all. And even if it's the kind of thing where it's still a struggle throughout your life, you can get to the point where you have consistent victory. You have mostly victory in that area. Okay, well, let me give you some exercises for this week. Ready for the stuff that will really do the work? First of all, with regard to prayer, and these are listed just in bullet points in your thing, but you might want to jot some notes. Prayer, pray for victory through the day, that kind of prayer that Bill was just talking about. That alone won't do it, but you've got to have that. So beseech God and beg Him to grant you victory. victory and freedom and do that every single time you pray all through the day. Just hammer on his door. Ask God to supply you with everything you need to gain victory in this process. He wants you to be like the persistent widow. He wants you to be like that important neighbor who came in the middle of the night, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, banging on the door until the guy finally gets out of bed. God says that's what he wants. Isaiah 62.7 says, give him no rest until he answers. Try and ask God to grant you victory over the sin at least a couple of times per hour all the way through the day. I mean, beseech him. When you pray, Do you pray that God will deliver you from that sin? That God will give you the wisdom to deal with the sin? What exactly are you praying for? Well, you can pray for a variety of things. You can pray, God, give me everything I need to have victory. If it has to be struggle and painful toil, but I have victory, fine. If it's temptation just disappears and it's easy for me now, Even better. But however you want to do it, Lord, I want to honor you with my life. I want to have holiness. I want to have purity. I want to have righteousness. I want to have self-control. I want you to be pleased with my life. Whatever it takes to get me there, Lord, do it. That's what I want. And so, I mean, that's the way I pray. And, you know, it's not going to be a huge, long, intensive theologically deep prayer if you're doing it a couple times every hour through the day, because you've got to do your job, right? You've got to live your life, and so it's going to be these one-sentence things. But a couple times per hour, all through the day, you know, if you could pray 30, 40, 50 times in a day, asking God, asking God, asking God, you need to have that kind of earnest, earnest prayer, okay? So do that this week. Pray for victory. Number two, write down the next step for your prayer life. What's the next step? Figure it out, pen and paper, calendar. How are you gonna improve your daily time alone with God? Write out the plan, bring that back with you next Monday to the class, your plan for what your next step is in your prayer life, okay? So figure out your next step. Write it down. Number three, with regard to scripture, read Galatians 5, 16 to 26, just that last half of Galatians 5. Read it slowly and carefully at least once a day. Just read through that at least once a day. So when we meet again next time, you'll have read through it at least six times. I won't ask you next time how many times you read it, but I might ask you how many days you read it, so don't wait until Sunday night and read it six times in a row. Each day, read through Galatians 5, 16, 26 slowly, carefully, prayerfully, thoughtfully. Number four, memorize Galatians 5, 16, word for word. Okay? Sign up for scripturetyper.com if you need to. Put it on your dashboard, but put it in front of the tack, not the speedometer. Whatever you do, put Galatians 5.16, and be able to quote that next week at the class, okay? Galatians 5.16. Number five. I've got a little article, a very short article, it's like a page and a half in your notes there, in your notes. It's called, You Can Say No to Porn. I realize not everybody's struggling with porn, so it's all right. This is an article by John Paper that the principles in this article apply across the board to any enslaving sin. It doesn't have to be pornography. So just take the word porn out, insert the word whatever it is you struggle with, whatever your enslaving sin is, and it'll work. Okay, so read that article. That's a transcript of about a 15-minute video by John Piper. If you want to just watch the video, the link is on the paper there, you can look it up. You can watch it, you can read it, but what I'd like you to do is underline four statements in that article that stand out to you, okay? Either something that you find helpful or something you have a question about or whatever. Four statements, not three statements, not five statements. Four statements, okay? Exactly four statements. Bring that next time with your underlined four things, okay? All right. Fellowship, number six, come to church and prayer group, okay? You're gonna need that. You're gonna need people praying for you. You're gonna need to be praying for others. You're gonna need that grace flowing into your life. Make sure you're here Sunday in the sermon and in prayer group, okay? Number seven, this is the doing one. Write down each time you change your behavior as a result of this particular thing. So we've got the two exercises for prayer. We've got one for Bible reading, one for memorization, one for understanding. That's the Piper article. And then now this doing exercise. If this stuff that we're talking about doesn't change your behavior, then we're getting nowhere, right? We're getting nowhere. So it's got to change your behavior. So for putting it into practice, the exercise, the godliness training exercise for this week is if you're striving to walk by the Spirit moment by moment, hour by hour, all through the day, what does the Spirit want me to do? Does He want me to think this, do this, whatever? There will be times, if you do that, there will be times when you normally would have done one thing and you decide to do something different. You normally would have thought about one thing and you say, I guess I better not think about it, I'll think about something else. And for no other reason than you're reminded of the presence of the Holy Spirit and that's why you're doing it different. That's going to happen. Each time that happens this week, jot it down. Jot it down. Write it on a piece of paper or speak it into your phone or whatever. Somehow get a record of it so that we can talk about it next week, okay? So, I'm not going to ask you to share anything embarrassing, you know, in front of the group or anything like that. But I might ask you how many things you have listed, just to get an idea of how many times your behavior got adjusted because you were walking by the Spirit. And you thought, oh, I'm going to do it a little different. I'm not going to do that. I normally would have thought this, now I'm going to think that. I'd like to see how many times that happens. So jot it down each time it happens. It doesn't have to be a huge long explanation or story or anything, just a reminder that it happened. All right, so seven. Exercises. You're going to be sore after this week because you're going from zero to seven, but that's all right. We'll get you whipped into shape and you'll be used to this in no time. But if you can do those seven things, again, remember, the people that take these exercises seriously are the ones that really, really have good results. And you want that, right? You want victory. You want victory. Okay? All right. I was going to divide up into groups for our last bit of the class and everything. But for one thing, I went over, and for another thing, I want to get you home as soon as I can since the supposed blizzard is coming. I don't know what the weather, it's Colorado weather, man. It's like 40 degrees and drizzling, and it's the blizzard of 2015. Yeah, anyway. Well, so, I'll let you go. We're done. We won't divide into small groups tonight, but here's what I wanted to do in the small groups is these discussion questions. There's two of them. I would like you to at least Maybe if your spouse is here, you can talk it over on the drive home or at least think about it tonight before you go to bed. But thinking these things through and putting this, what you learned today, into words. You know, when I have a counseling session with someone, a lot of times I'll just say, just what did you get from what I said? And they say it back to me. And a lot of times I find out, okay, I wasn't clear. But a lot of times you're just fine. But when they say it, when they just say it, it cements it in your brain a little better. Maybe if you're alone, you just drive home and talk to yourself. But if you say it, it helps. So if you do those discussion questions on your own, that'd be great. And the other thing is, I would love to have each one of you pair up with a mentor. Somebody who can help you walk through this stuff. If you would be willing to help someone, even if you're struggling yourself, but you would be willing to help someone else with their thing, like maybe, and what I mean by a mentor, you'd be willing to call them a couple times maybe this week and remind them about the homework, you know, the exercises. It's like, you want to do the exercises? Did you do them? Can I help you? You know, encourage them. How many of you would be willing to do that for someone else, to be a mentor? Okay, keep your hand really high, really, really high. Okay, look around. We won't match everybody up tonight, but look around at those hands and see if you can find someone to ask. If you're struggling with someone, see if you can ask one of those people. If you want a mentor, okay, you can put them down now. If you want a mentor and you don't know anybody, you're new, you're just embarrassed to ask or whatever, but you want a mentor, let me know and I can see if I can get you hooked up with somebody to be a good person for you, okay? All right. Okay, let me close in prayer and I'll let you go. Father, I thank you so much for this dear group of people and for all those who just raised their hands, Lord. That's so thrilling for me to see people, brothers and sisters, who are willing to help those of us who are struggling. And I know several weren't able to make it tonight, Lord. I pray for them. I think the mentors mostly made it and the ones who were struggling or had a tough time getting here. And I know that's what the the enemy would want, and I know that he'll do everything he can to keep them from hearing these things, but you're greater than the enemy, and so we pray for you, Lord, to bring those folks next time, have them listen to the video, watch the video, and please, let those who are struggling begin to find victory and start out with some hope. And even the rest of us, Lord, who are maybe not in any particular enslaving sin, but we're constantly in the battle for sin. These fundamentals that we went over tonight, Lord, we all want to make progress in these areas. So help us do that. We ask this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Thanks for coming everybody.