- Hey, this is Pastor John Ryan Cantu from PNEUMA Church in Houston, Texas.

Thank you for listening to the message today.

I hope that it blesses you and all those that you share it with.

God bless you.

Amen, amen.

You can find your seat.

Don't take a seat yet.

Just remain standing for a second.

We're gonna go to the word, amen.

I hope that you got all those announcements.

And if you already forgot, go to our website.

There's no reason for you to not know what's going on in the church.

We have so many avenues for you to always know what's going on.

So please get connected.

And I do wanna again, make a very special request that everybody comes to Pastor's Day, okay?

It's a combined service.

And I know some of y'all stay home on those combined services.

So I don't want y'all to stay home, all right?

Is that cool?

Can you respect that?

Can you honor the one request your pastor's given you?

Like just be here for the combined service and be on time.

And then if you see somebody in your seat, don't fight 'em because we've had that before.

Hey, that's my seat, you know?

(laughs) My tia, bro, my tia mole, my tia mole, bro, from Spanish.

She's hardcore, bro.

She's like, "You're in my seat, son.

"I get here at nine, you get here at 11."

So we won't have that, all right?

Except if she's my tia mole, don't mess with her, bro. (congregation laughs) I also do wanna invite you to prayer this Saturday.

Every single time, every single week before the first Saturday of the month, I always forget to announce it.

I would love to see you at 7 a.m. bright and early Saturday morning just to pray with us.

There's no agenda.

We just pray for an hour and then we go eat, all right?

It's a good time.

So I invite you to come and be a part of that.

And also just continue to keep Josh and Andrea, the family, in your prayers.

Earlier this week, Josh's mom had a heart attack in Hawaii while she was vacationing, and they had to go take that trip.

It's a big trip.

It's not cheap and all that stuff, but praise God, she's doing better.

God is still holding on to her.

So please pray, pray, pray, pray.

I know that they've been so encouraged by all of the prayer support in the church and people just reaching out.

So don't stop doing that, all right?

If you say a prayer later on today, slit that in there.

Just remember them, amen?

Amen.

We're gonna go to the Word.

We're gonna go to Romans chapter six, and we're gonna read two verses, Romans 6, 12 through 13.

If you have it, say, "I have it."

Amen, if you don't have it yet, hurry up.

Romans 6, 12 and 13, do we have it?

Amen, if you don't have it, I have it up here on the screen.

It says, "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.

Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness."

Let's go to God in prayer.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for this Word that you've spoken over your servant, Lord.

I pray, Father God, that as I have received it, Lord, that your Spirit would deliver it, Father God, and your people would receive it today, my God, with conviction, Lord, and power.

Father, Holy Spirit, I pray that you would be on my lips, my God, and that you would be on our minds and our hearts this morning to receive everything that you wanna do, Father God.

Bring conviction, bring healing, bring freedom.

In Jesus' name, amen, amen.

You can be seated.

I entitled the sermon this morning, Body, Mind, and Heart, Body, Mind, and Heart.

Last week, if you weren't here for our men's conference, we had a question that came up in our panel that I really wanted, I wish we had more time to get into, and it relates to a topic that's really been pressing on my spirit, and so I thought that we could go a little bit deeper in that today.

If you have young kids in the room, you might wanna just shut their ears for a second.

I don't want you to have to explain anything before you're ready, but the question had to do with lust, and specifically a certain type of lust that men, many men, and some women also deal with, struggle with, and the question was, how do I overcome pornography?

We're just going there today.

And I'm not gonna deal with that question.

I know we should.

I know that we should probably talk more about addiction, and if you're struggling with any type of addiction, the best thing that you can do is reach out to somebody that you can trust, who's gonna walk with you to your healing, somebody that you know is not gonna judge you, but see you with compassion.

But my prayer today is that at the very least, with what we'll talk about, you'll begin to understand the spiritual process of overcoming any type of sin.

How many of us know that we are called to be overcomers because of Him, because of Jesus?

Now, I wanna begin by stating the obvious, and this was also mentioned in the panel.

On your own, you cannot overcome sin.

On my own, I cannot overcome any type of sin.

If I could, I wouldn't need a Savior.

We wouldn't need Jesus.

We wouldn't need the perfect sacrifice if we could just do it on our own.

So get out of your head this morning.

Stop telling yourself that I can do it by myself because you cannot.

And God, knowing that man was depraved and hopeless because we were headed straight to death, sent His Son to be the perfect sacrifice to bring us back into communion with the Father.

And thank God for His grace, because if not for it, we'd all be dead.

We'd all be dead.

Not one person in this room has never sinned.

Some of us have sinned this week.

Some of us sinned this morning.

Some of you have sinned on your way to church. (congregation laughing) And so first we have to recognize that when we don't have Jesus, we are filled with sin.

We live in sin.

I don't care how good of a person you think you are.

I don't care how charitable you are.

I don't care how loving of a person you are.

Without Jesus, you live in sin.

And the next step is to realize that those of us who do have Jesus, which I hope is most of us in the room, I hope it's all of you, but I know maybe it's not everybody, but for most of us who have Jesus, we also know that sometimes we still fall into sin.

And so the point I wanna make is that we all fall short of the glory of God, and we will always fall short of the glory of God, and thank God for His grace.

Now there's a question that the Apostle Paul addresses in chapter six.

He opens up with this question.

He says, "Are we to continue in sin "so that grace may abound?

"Should we just keep on sinning for grace sake?

"Because it's so impossible to be perfect, "and since we have grace anyway, "should I just not fold to sin "and depend on the grace of God?"

Far too many Christians get to a point of frustration in their sin.

We've all been there.

We're so frustrated.

You get fed up with all your shortcomings, and you're always falling short of the glory of God because as a Christian, you want to do well by God.

You want to please God, but there's a struggle that you've not yet been able to completely kill, or there's a temptation that's always knocking at your door, and you hate it.

And so you get to a point where the frustration becomes almost too much, and we say, "Man, sin is too hard to overcome."

I've had these conversations with people before where they say, "Pastor, it's too much.

"It's too hard to overcome, "because sin is natural to the flesh, "and I'm a person of the flesh.

"I can't separate myself from what is natural."

Some people just say, "I can't help it.

"I can't help my lustful eyes.

"I can't help being attracted to what I'm attracted to."

And for some people, it's being attracted to the member of the same sex.

"I can't help my addictions.

"I can't help my need for alcohol.

"I can't help my urge to gossip.

"I can't help overeating and being a glutton.

"I can't help it.

"So maybe I should just be okay "and accept this sin as a part of who I am."

How many of people have dealt with that temptation of just being satisfied with the sin that you struggle with?

"I'll always have lustful eyes, "so I might as well stop fighting it.

"I'll always be this way, "so I might as well stop fighting it."

I know there are Christians who have battled with a certain type of sin, a very specific spirit.

And maybe you've won some battles, but you've lost many others.

And it's always a struggle.

And you just get tired of fighting this spiritual war.

Listen, we are always going to battle against a ruthless enemy.

The devil is ruthless.

And he's got all kinds of spirits and all kinds of places.

And he's not gonna leave you alone until you leave this world.

And so the reality is you might always struggle with the thing that you've struggled with.

It may always be a temptation.

But Jesus says, "In this world, you will have many struggles.

"But take heart, I have overcome the world."

Now, why do we care about what some other man overcame?

Well, it's because that man now lives inside every single person who calls upon the name of Jesus, right?

We have died to sin and we have resurrected with Christ.

So if he overcame, that means that I have the power to overcome.

Why?

Because he lives in me.

And so Paul asks the question in the very next verse, right?

So this is after he asked, "Should we just keep on sinning "so that grace may abound?"

He says, "How can we who died to sin still live in it?

"How can we who are no longer in sin still live in it?"

See, when you said yes to Christ, you became a member of the kingdom, right?

Say, "Amen."

This is why we call you brothers and sisters, because we're all spiritual siblings with all one Father in heaven.

And so the one who lives in you is greater than the one who lives in the world.

He's greater than your addiction.

He's greater than your struggle.

He's greater than your depression.

So you now live in righteousness.

You don't live in sin anymore.

I don't know how many of y'all believe that, 'cause it don't really sound like y'all do this morning.

You don't live in that sin anymore.

You don't live in that filth anymore.

You don't live in that place where God called you out of.

Now you live in righteousness.

And so every time you mess up, or every time you relapse, or you lose control, or you lose your temper, you fall into some type of sin, the devil wants you to think that you are in the same spot as when Jesus found you.

You're the same person.

You're the same person.

You just go to church now.

You're just a sinner in church.

You know what that makes you?

A hypocrite.

You don't belong here.

And so when you believe that lie, it gets easier to let go of God and live in that sin.

Once again, let me tell you, man of God, woman of God, because that's what you are.

If Christ lives in you, you now live in righteousness.

Don't let the devil tell you that you're a resident of the world when you are a citizen of heaven.

Just 'cause he gotta live in the hood doesn't mean you gotta live in the hood.

I'm a child of God.

I dwell in the righteousness of God.

I dwell in the presence of God, and you have to believe that.

You have to believe that the grace that covers you is stronger than what you battle with.

Or maybe you're saying, "Well, that sounds good, Pastor, "but how come I battle with sin "even though I live in righteousness?"

That's because even though you don't live in sin, sometimes you visit sin.

And the danger is that if you visit sin too often, you might decide to spend the night.

Woo, come on.

And if you spend the night, night's turned into days, days turned into weeks, and before you know it, you wake up one day and you realize you haven't been home in a long time.

It's been a long time since I listened to a worship song.

It's been a long time since I got on my knees and said a prayer.

It's been a long time since I opened up the Word of God and had a conversation with God.

And now you're not living in righteousness anymore.

Now you're sleeping again with the enemy.

And that conviction, that voice of the Holy Spirit gets fainter and fainter and fainter the more you stay away from Him.

This is why I tell people all the time, the worst, listen to me, the worst thing you can do after you stumble into sin is to not get back up.

That is the worst and the stupidest thing you can do.

Because if you stay down, you're gonna get comfortable.

Yes, it would have been better for you to just flee the temptation like Joseph did, but the next best thing after you fall into sin is to flee the sin.

Don't stay there again.

And you better believe you're gonna come back to God with your head down and shame, saying, "God, I did it again.

"I'm here again.

"It's the same thing again.

"I've tried so many times to give it to you.

"I can't do it."

But when you come to God with a humble and a repentant heart, God will always have His arms open because the Father will always welcome back a prodigal. (congregation applauding) So the worst thing you can do is to stay down when you fall down because sin is literally separation from God.

And so when you decide to stay in your sin, you decide to remain separated from God.

But if you get up and you run back to the Lord, the Bible says we have a holy mediator.

The Bible says in 1 John 2, "But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father."

Jesus Christ, the righteous.

You don't live in sin anymore.

You don't live there anymore.

You gotta tell yourself that this morning.

Tell yourself that out loud.

Sin is not my home. - Sin is not my home. - And so when you mess up, because you're gonna mess up, when you fall into temptation, when you run back to that drink, when you open up that laptop again, when you do all the things that you're fighting against and you try not to do it, you have to tell your spirit, sin is not my home.

Because if you don't tell yourself that, the enemy will convince you that it is.

Pastor Danny this morning spoke about being a child of God, our identity.

Once we come to God, our identity is that of a child of God.

God took you out of that sin.

Yeah, you still mess up sometimes.

Yes, you're still ugly with some things.

But you are a child of God.

You are ugly child.

It's okay. (congregation laughing) It's okay.

Some people have ugly children, but their mama still loves them.

Precious children.

Yeah.

You're a child of God.

You're a child of God.

And I wanted to talk about that just for a moment, just to lay the foundation for the rest of this message and encourage the people in the room who are battling some type of chronic sin to not stop fighting.

Don't stop fighting.

As believers, we know that Jesus defeated sin, right?

Something that we could not do on our own.

But at the same time, we also know that we're called to not sin anymore.

We're called to stay away from the sin that can possibly destroy us.

Don't take grace for granted.

Don't take grace as a license to sin, right?

It's not a license to sin.

Paul is making a case for living righteously because we now live in righteousness.

But how do we do that?

How do we stay away from sin?

I think if anybody had that question locked down, I mean, we'd all be doing it.

How do we say no to the things that tempt us and that have given us so many problems before?

Because all people, all people, everybody in this room battle with some type of sin.

And you know how sometimes we like to judge people by the type of sin that they deal with?

God says, "All y'all dirty."

"All y'all filthy."

Your temptation might not be going to the club, might not be pornography, it might not be alcohol, it might not be drugs.

I remember one time my cousin, he asked me to hold a blunt that he was smoking.

Sorry, mom, you didn't know.

He asked me to hold a blunt and then he went into the house to go grab something.

So I was left by myself with this blunt for like three minutes.

Nobody else, no adults around.

I could have easily just took a, what do they call it, a hit, okay.

I could have just took a hit.

But I didn't.

Then my cousin comes back, he's like, "So what'd you think?"

I'm like, "About what?"

He was like, "You seriously didn't, "you didn't take a hit?"

I said, "No, man."

Because that's never been my thing.

That's never been my struggle.

It's not really, I'm not playing with fire.

I don't, oh, this is nasty.

I held it like this, this is gross.

So my struggle might not be your struggle, your struggle might not be my struggle, but we all battle with something.

And I might not know about it, but the enemy knows about it.

And so I wanna give you something, I wanna give you something practical, but at the same time spiritual.

So in the text we read, Paul is exhorting the Romans to present their members as instruments for righteousness.

So the Greek word for members literally means body parts.

Paul is saying, offer your body parts as instruments for righteousness.

That's kind of weird.

'Cause we don't often think about the body in terms of holiness because it's corrupt.

Our body is our flesh, flesh is evil.

It just wants to feel good even if it's not healthy.

It just wants pleasure even if it's not holy.

We've done so much damage to the image of our physical nature in terms of how we think of it, that we just, we try to pray our way out of the things that we struggle with in our body.

In other words, we try to overcome in our mind without factoring in what we allow our body to come across.

That makes sense.

You can't overcome a lustful mind if you're always giving your eyes over to seduction.

You can't overcome depression when you're always surrounding yourself with people that are speaking so negatively and they don't edify your spirit.

We can't overcome spiritual things when we aren't first submitting our body to the Lord.

Back in the day, Melissa and I, we liked to watch horror movies back in the day before Jesus.

I'm still with Jesus a little bit, but I'm not here to talk about scary movies, but I'll tell you that my wife, she was always scared after watching horror movies.

And we had youth pastors back in the day, kids listen to your youth pastors 'cause they know things, but one day we're having a conversation with them and the youth pastor said, "Well, maybe you're always in fear because you're consuming fear through your eyes."

Layla told us the other day she wanted to watch like this scary movie and I was like, "Girl, you're already a scared cat." (congregation laughing) You don't defeat spiritual things by giving your body to it.

What you allow into your body has the power to create a spirit that gets comfortable.

Think about it, think about it.

What you constantly allow into your body eventually flows into your mind.

So you know, I'll tell you what, man, I love sushi.

Side track real quick, I love sushi.

Many of y'all know that I got this bomb place right by the house, y'all been there before.

It's amazing, y'all know it's bombed too.

And when that place opened up, I would go there once a week and it's expensive, it's not cheap.

And I'd go there once a week because I would just, I would eat it.

And then eventually I started to think about it.

I would crave it and I would text Melissa, I got sushi on my mind.

I send her all the sushi emoticons.

And eventually I was like, this is kind of getting weird.

Maybe I need to scale it back to once a month or something.

But you know, people who struggle with pornography, you've allowed something into your mind through your eyes.

And so now it sits in your mind.

And sometimes you can't stop thinking about it.

The images just sit there in your mind, causing you to desire it.

Some people can't stop thinking about how alcohol makes them feel because you've allowed it into your body so many times.

Now it sits in your mind.

Now you think about it.

It's this temporary escape from reality that makes your body feel good and relaxed.

Now I want you to hear me.

What you give your body to will flow into your mind.

And if it stays in your mind for too long, it eventually becomes a desire that makes its way into your heart.

So what you allow through your body makes its way into your mind, affecting your mindset, making you daydream about it, making you dream at night about it, distracting you during the day.

And then it makes its way into your heart.

And now it's something that you constantly desire.

All because you gave your body to it. - Right. - So this is why Paul says in Philippians 4, 8, "Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's anything excellent, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about those things."

But you cannot have a pure heart without having a pure mind.

And you can't have a pure mind if you don't have a pure body.

Therefore, Paul says, "Present your members as instruments for righteousness."

Man of God, when you see a good looking woman walk by, AKA my wife, because she's the only good looking woman in the world.

Thank you.

Whenever you see a good, someone that is attractive to you, you have to tell yourself, your eyes are for the Lord, your eyes are for the Lord, your eyes are for the Lord.

Remember that, remember that.

If I gotta give you like this ugly little dance image, like, your eyes are for the Lord, your eyes are for the Lord, I want you to ingrain that in your mind.

I'm serious.

Now, when you see a good looking woman, you're gonna think, Pastor Ryan, your eyes are for the Lord, your eyes are for the Lord.

Because they are.

Your eyes belong to the glory of God.

Don't give it into that sin because then it's gonna make its way into your mind and then your heart, you're gonna desire it.

My eyes are for the Lord.

For those of you working on your temper.

And you just wanna go off on somebody because that's what you would have done before Christ.

Now, that tongue belongs to God.

My tongue is for God, the tongue is for the Lord.

And I know that it's not gonna be easy, these things aren't easy.

They're not easy, that's why Jesus was so hardcore about it.

He said, if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.

You're gonna be a cripple, but you'll be a holy cripple.

What unholiness are your hands touching that is causing you to think about and desire sin?

He says, if it's your foot, cut it off.

Some of y'all are going into the wrong places into the long hours of the night.

Cut off that foot, you don't belong there.

You don't belong around certain people, cut it off.

He says, if it's your eye that causes you to stumble, pluck it out.

Now, before we start creating more handicap spots in our church. (congregation laughing) We're not talking about literal, don't literally cut off body parts, but we are talking about cutting things off from your body that might allow you to desire sinful things.

You wanna be holy, I wanna be holy.

I'm a child of God, I desire to be holy because my God in heaven is holy.

You know what?

He actually asked me to be perfect.

It's like that hardcore, because perfection will make you shoot for the stars.

Because it's like something that we can't even achieve.

So if it's perfection, that means I always, every single day, have to do my best to at least be good enough. (congregation laughing) Treat your body, your hands, your feet, your eyes, your mouth as a temple.

Have respect for the temple, your physical body, and then you'll have a mind like Christ.

And then you'll have a clean and pure heart that belongs to the Lord.

But it all begins with the body.

I want you to go with me real quick to Matthew 26.

I wanna break something down.

You still with me? - [Congregation] Yes. - Matthew 26, we're gonna read just a little bit, 36 through 41.

Matthew 26, 36 through 41.

This is the night of Jesus' arrest when he went to pray and some of his most loyal disciples went with him.

It says this, it says, "Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane.

And he said to his disciples, 'Sit here while I go over there and pray.'

And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled.

Then he said to them, 'My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.

Remain here and watch with me.'

And going a little farther, he began, he fell on his face and prayed, saying, 'My father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not as I will, but as he will.'

And he came to his disciples and found them sleeping.

And he said to Peter, 'So could you not watch with me one hour?'"

Watch what verse 41 says, "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.

The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak."

Why was Jesus so adamant of his disciples staying awake?

It wasn't for no reason.

See, Jesus in this moment of human weakness, I love this passage because it's perhaps the place that we see the humanness of Jesus so clearly paired with the perfection of his deity all in the same place.

He's not praying for anyone other than himself.

I want you to get this.

If you haven't paid attention, pay attention now.

Jesus is praying for himself.

He's not praying for the disciples, he's praying for himself.

Because his flesh is weak.

He doesn't want to endure what he's about to endure.

So he says, "Father, if there would be another way, take this cup from me."

But he's praying with the spirit so that he may have the strength to surrender his body to the father's will.

And so Matthew makes note of this event where Jesus is praying, he comes back to find the disciples sleeping.

Three times this happens.

But this is not just for historic purposes.

Matthew has a reason for really including this and he's trying to drive a point.

Matthew is demonstrating the consequences of not submitting your flesh to the Lord.

So Jesus comes back, he finds his most loyal, most zealous disciples and they're sleeping.

Think about it.

On the most troublesome night of his life, he comes back and they're sleeping.

The hardcore disciples.

Right before this passage, we can read it, it's 35.

Peter says to Jesus, "Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you."

And all the disciples said the same.

So Jesus knows what temptation is about to befall the disciples.

All of them will flee because they're afraid.

Judas is gonna betray him and Peter is gonna deny him three times.

That's what's coming to the disciples.

The devil is about to throw some shade, some temptation your way.

Maybe Jesus is even feeling it too.

He felt it before in the wilderness, he was tempted by the devil.

What would it have looked like if Jesus would have fallen asleep that night?

What would have happened if Jesus didn't first consciously submit the weakness of his body to the will of God?

So Jesus says these words to them that I so badly want you to hear and understand today.

He says, "The spirit is willing, the flesh is weak."

This is not just a fortune cooking saying.

This isn't just Jesus just pausing and giving them a lesson on wisdom, no.

Jesus is experiencing this very thing in this very moment.

The spirit is willing.

The spirit wants to do the will of God.

I know you wanna please me.

I know you wanna give me your best.

You keep dreaming about it.

You keep talking about it.

You keep getting saved every Sunday.

You keep surrendering your spirit and worshiping in spirit.

But unless you submit that weak body that just wants to stay in bed on a Sunday morning, that just wants to have a moment of pleasure, that just wants to be lazy, you will enter into temptation and whatever the spirit wanted, the spirit will not get because your body is weak.

Jesus wasn't rebuking the disciples because they weren't praying for him.

Jesus was like, "I got me, I got me."

The disciples needed to pray for themselves because they were over here talking the big game, but they weren't preparing their spirit for it.

They're gonna fall and they're gonna run away and then they're gonna betray Jesus.

They're gonna flee.

They're gonna deny Jesus.

Listen, I can pray for you for things that I can't control.

My prayer will do nothing for the things that you can control.

Like I can pray that God wake you up to come to church.

I can pray that God sends you reminders that you come to church.

I can pray that God would let you know that you are loved by him.

I can pray all of these things.

I can't pray that you get yourself up out of church, out of bed to come to church.

I can't pray that prayer.

You have to do that.

You have to decide to submit your body to the Lord.

And so, I mean, I can, when you come up to the altars and when we lay hands, I'm believing with you on things that neither of us can control.

But if it's like, "Pastor, can you just pray for me "that I would stop being lazy?"

Before that's a spiritual thing, that's a body thing.

Get your butt up in the morning.

Because what the body does comes into the mind, comes into the heart.

Two things that I want you to get real quick from this whole message.

I'm gonna have the worship team come up already.

At the start of the message, I said I wanted you to walk out of here today with the process of overcoming any type of sin and temptation.

Number one is this.

First, you have to pray.

Someone say pray. - Pray. - You thought it was gonna be something crazy, revelationary.

No, no, it's very simple.

You have to pray.

And not just pray at the temptation, because by then it's too late.

Okay?

You walk in where you shouldn't walk in.

You go into the bedroom of Potiphar's wife and you get under the covers and you see her naked.

Don't you start praying now.

You already messed up, bro.

Don't pray at the temptation.

That's what a lot of us do.

We pray when it's too late.

We hardly ever pray for covering, for protection, for blood of Jesus, for Lord, lead me not into temptation.

You need to pray before temptation even knocks at your door.

And you have to constantly pray.

You know, prayer requires also more than just your spirit.

It requires your body.

It requires you to stay awake.

It requires you to get up really early and give some time to God out of the busyness of your day.

So the very fact that you're praying is already a win for your body.

But when you pray, you gotta pray constantly.

And because when you pray constantly, what you're doing is you're fixing your mind on God.

And when you are constantly thinking about God and you're constantly thinking about godly things, well, then he's gonna begin to put his desires in your heart, right?

Body, mind, heart.

And when you pray, pray for that body.

Pray for that body.

Lord, lead me not into temptation.

Help me not to go there.

Help me not to say that.

Help me not to look over there.

Help me not to touch that.

Pray over your body.

The second thing is to actually submit the body.

So now it's more than just praying about it, it's actually doing it.

Jesus wasn't praying to the Father on the cross, God, get me off of this thing.

No, what was he doing?

He was submitting his body there on the cross for our sake.

And so when those temptations come your way, church, remember that your members are instruments for righteousness.

My eyes have a new purpose.

You gotta tell yourself that.

My ears have a new purpose.

My ears are not gonna entertain negativity, gossip.

My eyes will not look at things that do not edify my spirit because my eyes belong to the Lord.

I will not take my eyes off of the Lord.

My feet will not go there.

My hands will only touch what is holy.

Why?

Because no longer am I a slave to sin.

I don't live with my captors anymore.

I live with the one who set me free from my captors.

Paul says, we were buried with him by baptism into death and order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father.

We too might walk in the newness of life.

And then look at verse six.

He says, we know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin for one who has died has been set free from sin.

Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

And to bring it back, let not sin therefore reign in your body to make you obey its passions.

Don't present your members as a sin, as an instrument for unrighteousness, but present yourself to God as you have been brought from death to life.

I don't know who this is for.

I think it's for all of us.

Honor God with your body.

Some of us have failed to give God the tongue. (soft music) Some of us have failed to give God our hands, our feet, our eyes.

But the only way to overcome is to give yourself wholly to the Lord.

I want you to stand with me.

Holy God, let me pray over you, church. (soft music) My God, I pray that this morning you would remind your people that we are children of the living God, called to righteousness, called to holiness, Lord.

I pray, Father God, that you would remind us daily by your spirit, that even though we stumble, my God, we don't live in that sin anymore.

I pray, my God, that we would have the strength to get up, to walk towards you, to fix our eyes on you, to praise you with holy lips, my God, and holy hands, my God.

I pray that this church would be pure, Father, after your heart, my Lord.

I pray that we would be people of your will, Father God.

I pray that we would submit our bodies.

I pray that we would submit our spirits to you, Jesus.

We give it to you.

I wanna make a call this morning to anybody who wants to make a commitment.

Maybe you've made it many times before, but there's something different about today.

Maybe there's something that you need to give to God.

And maybe it's not just, God, I just, I wanna stop doing what I'm doing.

God, I wanna stop the pornography.

God, I wanna stop the alcoholism.

God, I wanna stop the gossip.

Maybe you need to intentionally give your members to the Lord this morning.

So I wanna make a general call.

If you know that you need to give God your eyes, if you know that you need to give God your tongue, your hands, your feet, whatever that might be today, I want you to come forward and I want you to have a real moment with the Holy Father who will take those things from you.

I'm just gonna make the call once.

If that's you this morning, I want you to come and present your body to the Holy God.

Prayer team, can you help me?

If there's anybody in need of prayer this morning, we also wanna pray with you.

If you need prayer for any specific purpose, we're here to pray with you.

But come forward, come forward if that's you, if that's you, if that's you, just have a moment with God.

God, I give you this, I give you this.

I give you my eyes, God, I give you my feet, Lord.

May they go where you want them to go.

May I touch what you want me to touch, my God, and abstain from the things that you are calling me to abstain from in Jesus' mighty name because I wanna be holy, I wanna be perfect, Father God, because you are good and you are perfect and you are holy, Father, you deserve the best. - Thanks for listening.

If you'd like some more information on PNEUMA Church, visit us on our website at mypneumachurch.org.

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Thanks again and God bless. (gentle music)