How to Be a More Enjoyable Person | Matthew 7:1-6 | Pastor Blake Hardcastle

Are you as enjoyable to be around as Jesus died for you to be? Discover what "Judge not" really means and how to cultivate right judgment, self-awareness, and clear spiritual sight.

In this sermon, Pastor Blake Hardcastle walks through Matthew 7:1–6, examining one of the most widely quoted—and misunderstood—passages in the Bible. Unpack why Jesus isn't forbidding critical thinking or evaluation, but rather warning against hyper-critical, hypocritical, and fault-finding attitudes. Learn how to remove the "log" from your own eye, protect holy truths with discernment, and do the delicate, holy work of helping others grow in Christ.

In this episode, we cover:

• What "Judge Not" Really Means: Distinguishing between harmful hyper-criticism and healthy, biblical discernment.
• The Danger of Condemning Yourself: How hyper-critical attitudes push others away and alienate us from deep community.
• The Cartoon Version of You: Removing the "log" of self-righteousness from your own eye before addressing the "speck" in someone else's.
• Pearls Before Swine: Exercising right judgment and building trust before offering holy counsel.
• Holy Work & Clear Eyes: How developing self-awareness and compassion turns evaluation into delicate, redemptive soul work.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What do you mean this isn't mean judge not? It says judge not. If he meant don't ever judge at all, then verse 6 wouldn't make any sense. How are we supposed to know who these dogs and pigs are? Or if we go down later in chapter verse 15 wouldn't make any sense. There's a warning as false teachers. How are we supposed to evaluate who that is if we're never supposed to think? Never supposed to have some kind of judgment. So what he means is this critical thinking and then hyper-critical thinking, even though it's the one word, they are not even close to the same thing. One tears down, the other helps up. One uh is intended for harm. The other is intended for good. One always sees the worst in persons, always assumes the worst. The other always hopes for the best.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

This podcast is brought to you by Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people to know, enjoy, and glorify God. For more information about Grand Parkway, visit our website at grandparkway.org.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Man, let's pray together. We just confess what we've been singing, which you are worthy. And and we let us get a little window that this is how it ends, and we're gonna finally see how worthy you are. And we we sing and say these things, we mean them, but we have no idea. We have no idea. And so you let us know, look, some of you, some of us are pressed this week, we're not crushed, but we're pressed. Some of us got great news, and all in between. And you say that this is what it's all coursing to. You're letting us see this is the finish line, and we're not gonna be disappointed at all. We're gonna be finally, yes, this is what I was made and saved to experience. And so we thank you that we're not just guessing and trying and hoping blindly, but there is a sure and promised, secure future where the king on the throne finally gets his due. And we see you and experience you in all your radiance for all eternity. And so we just take a deep breath, Lord, and we we have a contented sigh. I'm longing for it. Strengthen us in these days until. Amen. Please be seated. I'm glad you're here. My name is Blake Hardcastle. I'm the equipping pastor at Grand Parkway. And normally what that means is uh we have these things called community groups, oversee those or new membership, other things. But every once in a while uh I get to stand up here and I get to be the one delivering the message, preaching. And this morning uh we have a text that uh basically what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at how to be a more enjoyable person. And before you think, oh, this is gonna be a nice little self-help talk, uh, it's gonna it's gonna hurt before it helps, let me say that way. And because some of us, and maybe many of us, are not as enjoyable as Jesus died and rose and saved you to be. Think about this way. If you're someone who, for the most part, I give someone the benefit of the doubt, or someone's got to prove themselves before I trust them. Or maybe you're someone who um everyone is either a crook or a clown until they prove otherwise. If that's how you're wired up, let me just give you a news flash in case you didn't know. You're not enjoyable. If you're a believer, you're not as enjoyable as Jesus died for you to be. Now, none of us is completed, none of us is fully assembled, all of us are still uh being matured in Christ, but some of us, or maybe many of us, we drift too quickly into judgmental, hypercritical, fault-finding thinking, and fault-finding saying. And the irony is we think we're trying to be helpful, and we're really, we're really just not that enjoyable. And so this morning, this is what a text is going to unpack for us is how to be a more enjoyable person. Let me read it. This is Matthew 7. If you're visiting today, what we typically do is we pick a book of the Bible and we kind of slow walk our way through it. Pick, you know, each passage has one main point, and so we just do expository preaching where we just go through what does this mean? How do we supposed to understand this? Now, what are we supposed to think, feel, and do because of that? And so today's text is Matthew 7. Judge not that you not be judged. For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck in your brother's eye, but don't notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me see this, take the speck out of your eye when there's a log in your own? You hypocrite. First, take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. Don't give the dogs what's holy, don't throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and a turn and attack you. This is a text that is pretty widely known, whether you're in the church or out of the church, and pretty widely misunderstood and misused. See, sometimes it's used like a like a pass. Wait, hold on a second. Now, hold on, what are you accusing me of? Let me get my pass here. You can't judge me. I uh nope, you can't say that. And so sometimes it's used where I want to keep doing what I'm doing, and you can't say anything about it. And the the irony is this is not what Jesus is saying. He's saying, judge rightly. Don't be hyper-critical and don't be hypocritical. Don't be overly uh uh critical, don't be under-critical. Be rightly evaluated. This is a couple weeks ago, we were in the chapter right above, in this end, it said, seek first the kingdom and his righteousness. And so now what Jesus is doing is, oh, here's an example what I mean by his righteousness. Here's an example I mean by you need to seek something different than you're experiencing. Now, what I mean by this, what do you mean this isn't mean judge not? It says judge not. If he meant don't ever judge at all, then verse 6 wouldn't make any sense. How are we supposed to know who these dogs and pigs are? Or if we go down later in chapter verse 15 wouldn't make any sense. There's a warning as false teachers. How are we supposed to evaluate who that is if we're never supposed to think? Never supposed to have some kind of judgment. So what he means is is this critical thinking and then hyper-critical thinking, even though it's one word, they are not even close to the same thing. One tears down, the other helps up. One uh is intended for harm. The other is intended for good. One always sees the worst in persons, always assumes the worst, the other always hopes for the best. So he's not saying don't exercise critical judgment, don't always accept what every people saw. This isn't a pass. Jesus doesn't take this pass. That's not what he's saying. What he is saying is uh stop obsessing over the small things. So this is the irony, is usually what we see and maybe sometimes what we say about someone else is relatively small. And we make it everything. It's relatively small and we make it a giant thing. He says irony is you have something very similar that's a giant thing. And you and you making it small, making theirs big. Uh how this happens is uh we we kind of hyper focus on something where uh where we think someone is in the wrong or doing wrong, and and then we don't have all the information. So we just we just insert with our imagination all the details, and that kind of we kind of build a case against them inside us that's this this this is how I feel right about judging hypercritical of someone. Let me give you an example. So years ago, our kids were little and we were visiting my mom, and so uh we were gonna meet her for lunch, and so we're at the hotel and hotel pool, and so you gotta wear little kids, you gotta wear them out. Any chance you get to wear them out, you gotta wear them out. So we go down the hotel pool, and it's you know, like 14 times the amount of chlorine, so it's in the air, and so you're kind of dizzy from that. And so we're in the pool splashing around, and um, and a couple of them are little, they got floaties on, and then there's another uh family, really, it's a dad, he's in the chair, and there's a kid who's a little older than our kids, he's in the pool, he has any floaties, he's moving around, he's kind of by himself, so he comes over by our kids and us, and he's uh he's splashing. Like, hey, hey, let's let's throw the football. He's not interested in throwing the football, he's interested in splashing, and he's a really good splasher. He like gets that little that little like first wave like right at the eyeballs. Like, I tell you it was 14 times a close. I mean, it was like, and so you know, I got little kids like stop splashing me, he's splashing me. And so I look over at the dad thinking, oh, he's gonna, you know, do some dad stuff. But he's not, he's got the newspaper up. Doesn't even like bend it down to like, oh, what's that noise over there? Puts the paper back up. And so I start, you know, thinking, this guy's terrible. This child protective services should come get this kid, or and uh and so I look at Jenny and she's like, maybe we should just go. Like it's you know, we so we go and we go to meet my mom for lunch, and we're in Gurney, Illinois, and so we're meeting her at the Cancer Treatment Center of America in Gurney, and she's having treatment in the morning, and so we you know go there and we get in the elevator, and someone says, Hey, hold the elevator, and guess who came in the elevator? Yeah, you know, it was this dad and his son. And so all the information I had put in my my case against him. You're a terrible dad. This kid's gonna grow up and be, you know, just a bully and terrible. And where's mom at? She's upstairs sleeping, she didn't even, you know, all the information I put in there were totally wrong because they were there the same reason we were there to see somebody's mom. And I felt about this big. Because I had taken some small problem and made it the greatest problem of the morning. So that's an example of hyper-critical. This is this is a violation, this is no disobedience to this text. It's what the Bible calls sin. And we have a great capacity for this kind of thing. This hypercritical. Uh anytime someone uh is different than us, thinks different, says different, wears different, chooses different, that's an opportunity, it's a target-rich environment for us to cast a uh uh overjudgment on them. To to uh to kind of like be on the edge of our seat to find fault with them. I'll give you another example. This is just a this is just a uh hypothetical. This probably never happened. Uh it could be that someone's at their mother in-law's house and and they're trying to be helpful after a meal and and load the dishwasher. And then you notice that after you put all the stuff in there, your mother-in-law comes and rearranges it. Because, I mean, apparently her dishwasher only cleans all dishes if it only sprays one certain way. There's not like just a cloud of water everywhere. And so the judgmental, it's kind of I'm looking to find fault, thought or words are man, you're really peculiar, particular, you really care about how this is loaded. Oh, is there some manual, you maybe get sarcastic and get a little playful? I didn't read the manual. Was there a quick start guide? Is there a certain, you know, are the plates the right side? Uh versus what Jesus is saying is right judgment is paying attention. Oh, wait a minute. I'm creating work for her. I'm not being helpful, I'm creating more work. And so right judgment would be saying, hey, is there a way that you like this loaded? I'd like to do that. You see how subtle this kind of judgmental, hyper fault finding versus let me see this thing for what it really is. See, here's the thing. Uh, what if you're not the standard? I'm just newsflash, you're not the standard. And so when we begin to think we are, you know, baseline, we are baseline normative. And everyone below or above or below the line of me is out of bounds somehow and needs to be corrected to get in line with the line of me. The line is Christ and His kingdom and his righteousness. And so there are things that are specks in people's eyes that need to be corrected and changed and addressed, but it's it's to get them to the line of him, not the line of you. That's not what. So he's saying you're not the standard. So we get judgmental. When things get outside our control, we tend to get judgmental. When things uh get outside our convenience, we tend to get judgmental. It's just almost an instant reaction. It taps into some very strong muscle we have. Here's a third thing of why you need to put away your judgmental heart. Is it he says, when you're judgmental, when you're not judging rightly, you're hypercritical, you're actually condemning yourself. It happens in two ways. First, you condemn yourself at others. This is verse 2. For with the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured against you. And so when we don't do or judge right, we condemn ourselves. And it works this way: the way we treat people is really the way we get treated back. And it's not karma, it's just how people are wired. Have you ever acted like a juvenile in relating to a teenager? What do you think you get back? I mean, someone has to be the adult in that relationship. And if you're the adult, it's you. In all your relationships, someone has to be the believer who's seeking the kingdom and his righteousness. If you're in Christ, that's you. See, the one way that this condemnation happens with others is when we're overly critical with someone, uh, they just use that measure against us. They just judge us and condemn us by backing away from us. They say I'm gonna I'm less interested. I I want a smaller portion of you. You're not that enjoyable. So I I want to enjoy less of you. And they just back away from you, create distance from you. This is one of the most common ways we experience the condemnation in this text. And so you might begin thinking in your head, is my list of friends, is this thing shrinking or is this increasing? Are my friendships getting fewer and fewer? Are there more people in the last couple years who've who've backed away from me, or are there people who've come closer to me? One of the main factors is how enjoyable you are. Are you a hypercritical person? See, you you don't have to be unthinking to be helpful. In fact, that is helpful. Whereas you're looking to find fault, they're just I'm just not interested in you being right in the standard and trying to accommodate me to you. See, people they don't like being around jerks, and there's all kinds of version of jerks. Some are a very uh kind of polished version, but the people don't like it, and and they don't have to know what's going on, they just know I want less of this. And so think about who has moved away from me. And and if some names come to mind, think about is there anything I can own in that response? Is there anything in their distancing from me that I can say, yeah, that's that's got my name on it? Yep, that's I I've I've been responsible for some of the bitterness in what this has tasted like for them. Another way we condemn ourselves and why we should uh get rid of this judgmental heart of ours is we condemn ourselves with God. So look at 2 Corinthians 5, have it behind us here. Um for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what's due for what he's done in the body, whether good or evil. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others, but what we are is known to God. And I hope it's known all to your conscience. Why'd you read us this? Two things. It's one thing it's plain to God. God sees perfectly how relate to other people. He sees it clearly. Uh, and then somehow he says that how you live in the body, what you think, what you feel, what you do, how you interact with others, this doesn't have a consequence for whether you're in heaven or not, but there is some consequence for what that's like for you, what that reward is like. And before you send me any emails about ask me along the podcast, what how because Jesus didn't say, and look, here's here's the rubric of grading where you can do a calculation and see how can I get a C in heaven? He's saying, How about you just avoid that entirely? How about you just heed the warning to seek my righteousness in all of your life and give up you being the standard? And let me be the standard. How about you just give that up? How about instead of trying to figure out what's the bare minimum required, bare minimum you want to get, how about you just get it all? And you just trust me and follow me. So we can't hide from him. It's plain to him. All right, second point, and we're gonna, these will go quicker. That was the juiciest one. Uh this is verse three and four. It's to see the cartoon version of you. It's this little thing about a blank in your eye and a speck in someone else's eye. This is this is Jesus being funny, is what he's doing. This isn't like, oh my gosh, listen, let me tell you what it's like. This is him kind of making a mental cartoon image where this couldn't possibly be reality, so it has to be some cartoon version. Let me read it again. Verses three and four. Why do you see the speck that's in your brother's eye, but do not notice a log in your own eye? Or how can you say, remember those things we we think and things we say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there's a log in your own eye. He's saying, how do you keep on using really strong language for them and really soft language for you? It's ridiculous when you do that. What are you talking about? Oh, it goes like this. They're a terrible parent. I'm doing the best I can. You see that difference? Oh, it's like this. Um, their vacation is way too extravagant. I've earned this. I really need this. What about uh they have health problems because they don't take care of themselves. Now I just have bad luck or bad genes. See how this can get so regular in how we view ourselves and view others, where I have I have hard language for them and soft language for me. Really, I'm what I what I'm saying is you got a plank in your eye, I only got a speck, and she's saying. You got it reversed. You got the big problem. They got the little problem. It's the cartoon version of you. See, self-righteousness will always try and find an angle. Always try and take what, okay, what I'm seeing, and let me shift what I'm seeing to if I if I bend my head this way and I squint one eye and shade this way. Oh now, yeah, now here's me and here's them. Here's me, here's them. I'm okay, they're in big trouble. But if we see it rightly, his righteousness, no, that's now I'm seeing myself more clearly. Self-righteousness will always try and make me the hero, always try and make me the victor. And so things like help me with your sawdust, we're not talking about optometry. It's things like let me help you parent, or let me help you dress, or let me help you budget, or let me help your anxiety, or fill in all the blanks. Whatever you are a mild expert in, or an expert, is temptation for let me, I have victory, let me bring you the victory. This and she's saying, You don't have what you think you have. And you're not ready to help the help they need. You're seeing rightly they need help, but you're in no position yet to give it, to offer it. Third point, don't be unthinking. This is verse 6. This is just things like, well, you're finally going to talk about that? Uh, don't give the dogs what's holy, don't throw your pearls before pigs lest they trample them underfoot and turn and attack you. So the beginning he says, don't judge lest you be judged, but don't be hypercritical. This is don't be uncritical at all. Don't go, you know what, you do you, I'll do me, it's whatever. No one can say anything about anybody. He said, No, that doesn't fly either. That's saying there's no standard at all. He said, nope, no, there's a standard. There's a clear standard. Jesus says, I'm the standard. And so this is not a case, this is not about animals, right? This is not about dogs and pigs. He's not been talking about animals. And the things he says, animals don't do. Like there was not a rash of people giving their pearls to pigs that didn't, that wasn't happening. There wasn't a thing if we give holy things to dogs. So he's, what is he doing here? He's he wants you to have this mind of this kind of feral wild pigs that just kind of tear up everything that's in front of them, or some like super, super mutt uh street dog that doesn't know any people, hates people, will bite or chew anything. Uh this isn't this is not your hypoallergenic doodle whatever you've got. Okay, this is don't think like, but I like dogs and I want it. It's not that. What he's saying is there's people that you don't have what's needed for them to receive what you have, what you've got to give them. Whatever right judgment you have, they're they can they're not ready to receive it. You need to use right judgment, is what he's saying here. I have a friend, Abdullah, who he is from a Muslim background. He became a believer, and shortly after him coming to faith, uh another friend of his who uh was a little farther ahead, Muslim background, said, You need to tell your family as soon as possible so you can start the clock. He's like, start the clock. Let's just start the clock. Is this in the Bible? I'm like, I have no idea what this, I don't know. Start the clock. He said, No, the clock is once you tell your family, if you wait until you know more, uh once you tell your family, the clock will start. And the clock is this kind of series and this cycle of them uh rejecting you, of them trying to guilt you, uh of them trying to disown you or threaten you, and and this will go on and on, and then eventually they'll run out of steam about three years. And then they might have ears to hear. And then you can give them what's holy, the gospel, and then you can give them pearls of wisdom, the truth. Then you can share with them what's happened to you. But until the clock starts and and and this is run out of them, they'll hear nothing. In fact, they'll they'll use it against you. They'll trample on it, they'll disgrace it. So Jesus is saying, don't be hypercritical and don't be lax and unthinking. You need to think rightly. So some of you don't get to experience all the holy work God has for you in helping people with specs that you see because they don't trust you yet. Maybe you've burned some bridges where they they can't hear you. And so, for some of you, I say to you, start the clock on a friendship that's been neglected, or start the clock on a child that has drifted farther from you. Start the clock on a marriage that's beginning to get frazzled. You should ask yourself, do I have enough trust built with this person where they're gonna let me near their speck? And if you do, then help away. And if you don't, the task is to, I need to gain and earn trust. I need to have a pattern of loving them where they want love from me, all the love I can give them. Fourth thing we see in the text. Right judgment has an order. Look at verse 5. He says, You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye. That's what's first. Then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. So there's an order to right judgment. The first thing is get clear eyes. We are supposed to help one another. Uh we often do see what's uh what's off or or out of, out of, it's below or below the line with Christ as the standard. We often see that. We're often supposed to help, but we're not able to help as long as we're blinded. And what we're blinded by is our own idols. We've talked about this on some regularity. It's essentially, how do I know what my idols are? It's what do I want more than I want to help this person? What do I want more than I want to love this person? You make it really bad. What do I want more than I want to love God by loving this person? That's how you can know what your idols are. It's what's become so important to me. Or the inverse, what do I fear I'll lose if I help this person or love this person? See, a lot of times I don't mind helping if it's convenient for me. Like, I don't mind helping if it's not that hard. Look, I don't mind doing anything you need on a Sunday. It will except on the Sundays I preach. I mean, you just enter whatever is the justification for there's a limit to me loving you. And Jesus says, your only limit to loving is the strength I give you. That's the only limit. The only limit is the life of the Spirit I let burst out of you. That's the only limit. It's not you. It was you let it be you, now you're you're disobeying this text. This is what our world uses this word. The Bible's been talking about for a long time: self-awareness. Do I know what I'm like? Do I do I see myself as I am? Do I know where I'm weak? And do I know where God has been making me strong? Do I see how I'm actually more similar to this person than dissimilar? So when you have thoughts of words of fault finding, ask yourself, where am I similar here? Where can I say these same things about myself? See, it seems like, you know, if I had their kids, I might act the same way they do. Or if I had their income, I might buy all the same stuff they bought. Or if I had their body, I might wear the same stuff they wear. I mean, I might not, but I think I know part of me'd want to. That I'm not that dissimilar. And whatever difference there is, I can't attribute it to me. And so are you aware of what you're really like? It's likely God has been putting people in your life for a long time that have in ways we don't always enjoy, kind of take in a little mirror and go, hey, take a look at yourself right now. Hey, look what that looks like. I'll give you an example. Um, now I'm not a uh uh I'm not a wife driving critical guy like Clyde said he was. That's not my sin to confess. Uh, because often uh I'm driving. But I've been on the road plenty of times, and I'd without even thinking, shift into uh driving evaluation officer. You know, I just I call out good and bad behavior, there's a whole lot more than bad than good, everything that's a danger to me, um uh citations that people should get. Uh and I think them before I say them. And then sometimes I'll hear this from the person sitting next to me. Uh it's it's something like this uh that's one of your least attractive behaviors. And and and uh the driving critic wants to turn into the um marriage critic. And something freezes me. I'm I'm not out of the loop yet, but I know okay, I that that stung, and I think it's right, and I don't know what to do, because I've I've I've just become consumed with something that's very small I see all around me. I've made massive. See, it's likely you have people, and maybe they've been looking at you this morning already, or bumping your arm, but you have people God is using to hold a mirror up to you. So the first thing is to get clear eyes. The second thing is to do holy work. That's the order. Get clear eyes and then do holy work. And so when you see yourself rightly, this is what happens: you become more compassionate, more tender, more long-suffering. Yeah, you're not lowering the standard, you've just stopped having you be the standard. And as Christ is adjusting you to him, you're helping adjust someone else to him. See, taking a speck from an eye, this is a pretty delicate thing. I I don't I don't let anybody near my eyes. If I get something in there, I don't even want to get near that thing. I just want it to go away. I want to blink for a couple seconds and be gone. This is not talking about optometry. This is talking about souls. And as delicate and as important as an eye is to the body, how much more so critical, delicate. Not mean wimpy, I mean holy is the soul of a person. See, when you're interacting with people, when you're finding faults or or not holding up the standard of Christ, you're interacting with a soul. This is holy work. And so you ask yourself, do I think this person uh I have these thoughts about or these words for? Do I address them as an act of holiness? This is what Christ is correcting us to do through this text. What you're doing is holy work. You first deal with your thing, get clear eyes, and then you do the holy work of helping them. So we can speak the truth in love, and in accordance with this text. It's holy work. It's needed to be done by people who've been set apart for holiness. And so we're almost done. In the New Testament, there's four main types of speech that's commanded amongst believers. It's teaching, correcting, encouraging, and consoling. And so teaching, this is some forging of instructing. This is what God says for us to believe, and this is how God says for us to behave. This is kind of the granularity, the the actual parts of when we sang before, lead on good shepherd. Yeah, lead me what to think, lead me what to do. This is needed teaching. Uh correcting, this is warning. Hey, change what you're doing. It's it's the word stop, don't. Encouraging is the inverse of that. It's like, don't stop. What you're doing, keep doing, and do more. And then consoling is some version of let me join you in your burden. This is the type of speaking we should do to one another. I'm just saying if you're around believers, if you're part of a community group, part of a Bible study, part of a friend group, uh here in the holes, and and none of this ever happens for you. Never any teaching, correcting, encouraging, consoling. What are you talking about? You see, the person where you see a spec in, they might need teaching, but you can't get to the spec until you do encouraging. Or they might need correcting, but you're not getting near this thing until you do consoling. So you should be thinking, who who needs one of these in my life right now? Which one of these four types of speaking does someone need from me? Or which of these do I need from someone? Or go for the trifecta. Which of these has someone been trying to do? And I've been, I don't want to hear that right now. I don't want to receive that right now. See, it's likely that you might need to hear one or more of these from the Holy Spirit. Or maybe you've been doing this already this morning. What do I need to leave here feeling? What do I need to leave here doing? So, what we like to do here at Grand Parkway is we want to preach the Bible and then we want to give ourselves some time to let it anchor down. We don't want to leave, and when we get out the doors, forget something. We want there to be something that sits with us. And so we're gonna pause and um we're gonna there's gonna be some questions that come on the screen. You don't have to do these, these can help you, but you may already have a conversation with the Holy Spirit going on. You already have something stirring and moving in you. Uh Clyde might come and play, might not. If it's silent, we'll let it be a holy silence. And so let's come before. Lord, we come before you and we ask you, Holy Spirit, what do you what's got my name on it? Well, what do you what do you want me to grab hold of and take with me? How do you want what I'm knowing to change? How do you want what I'm feeling to be different? How do you want what I'm doing to be different? Holy Spirit, brood on us now. Get what you want from this time this morning. Father, we're people who you uh, if if we're in Christ, if we believe uh you have made us with clean hands and pure hearts. That's what you say about us. May that be reality. We more and more experience fuller, fullness of the spirit. We begin to walk by the spirit, and the fruit of the spirit is in us. Where we're more enjoyable because we taste more like the kingdom. Apart from you, this is hopeless, but with you, it's a lock. It's a guarantee. As we we lift up our hands to say help, I'll receive it. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 40:09

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