Sermon on the Mount: Yes, No, Oaths, Vows & God's Never Failing Word

All right friends, you are welcome to take a seat, gather where you are, good morning. As a man, I said my name is Emily Jamison. If we haven't had the privilege of meeting, I hail from here in Gig Harbor. I have four sons, little flat house at home. I always make that joke. I know it's getting old, but I do. They are 18, down to 10, and it is one of my greatest joys to be their mom. So I do want to acknowledge Happy Mother's Day to all the women and the sons and the daughters and the father, everyone. We've all been raised by someone. And Mother's Day, I just want to acknowledge the complexity of this day. It is a complicated one sometimes, because there are many of us who are celebrating and grateful. My own mom is in the room. I love you more and appreciate more ever, more than ever now. And my mom's in this room. And for some of us, we've lost moms. And for some of us, we've lost children. And for some of us, we have hopes that are not yet realized. And Mother's Day can bring a lot of different emotions. And I find myself in actually many of those camps on this day too. So I just want to acknowledge that this day holds a lot. And I just so appreciate that we get to be the gathered body family of God. And for many of us, we've experienced the gift of not just our own moms, but many other mothering presences. I have friends who don't actually have their own children, and yet they have the most unbelievable mothering hearts I've ever encountered. And so I just am so grateful for the way that God designed the mother's heart. And that He is the first and foremost one that actually models that to us, that you and I will be nurtured until the end of time by a very good God. And so that being said, while this is not a Mother's Day sermon, we are actually marching through the sermon on the Mount. And if this is if you're just popping in today or haven't been here for a while, and we are going through the sermon on the Mount. And so the particular passage that we are in doesn't necessarily lend itself to a Mother's Day sermon and yet it somewhat does. We're going to talk about mom guilt that we all have because if you have a mom, you've been in the midst of guilt and if you have ever had guilt. I mean, we just have guilt and we have issues with living out our word. And I want to say that I'm actually delivering the sermon as a mom, as someone who has glorious intentions that sometimes fall short. And as a mom who loves Jesus with her whole heart and so desires for my family, my family to be formed in the likeness of Jesus and also who literally this week failed on the very thing that I'm going to be proposing to you. So I show up here in process. This word has delayed me. And so I come up here not having figured out by any means, but with an invitation for all of us to submit ourselves to the goodness of God who is so faithful and who offers new mercies every morning because we need them every morning. I mean, not right. So let's dive in. So we are in the midst of the sermon on the Mount today. We are in Matthew 5, Matthew 5, 33 to 37. So let me just read the scripture. And you have heard that it was said to those of old, "You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn, but I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven for it is the throne of God or by the earth for it is his footstool or by Jerusalem for it is the city of the great king and do not take an oath by your head for you cannot make one hair white or black." I mean, we do have hair dyed, but you know what I'm talking about. But what you say be simply yes or no, anything more than this comes from evil. In the voice translation, it's fascinating to me because he says, "Any impulse," he says, "dudududu." You need not swear an oath. Any impulse to do so is of evil, any impulse. Simply let your yes be yes and your no be known. So here we are in the midst of the sermon on the Mount. Jesus is preaching of the most famous sermon ever delivered on a hillside, surrounded by people who are hungry, not just belly hungry, but hungry for something different than the religion of the day was offering them. And he is turning the entire moral order upside down. He starts by saying that the people who have real blessing are those who are poor, meek, who are mourning, who are grieving. And he then begins to call his followers salt and light of the world. And then he takes the law deeper and he shows that anger is the root of murder, that lust is the root of adultery, that divorce harms the vulnerable, and that oath-swearing becomes unnecessary for someone who's heart is fully honest. The pattern is clear. Jesus is not just raising the standard of behavior. He's moving the focus from outward actions to an interior posture, the condition of the heart. God's invitation is always to go inward. It's not just about our doing, but about our being. And he lands on this, let your yes be yes and your no be no. And I can only imagine that Jesus on that hillside in that moment, in the midst of this longer sermon, pauses. It seems so simple, right? Let your yes be yes and your no be no. In fact, I was like, how am I going to build a whole sermon on that? Isn't it pretty clear? Let's do what you say you're going to do. But how difficult is it for us to say what we mean and to mean what we say? Have you ever had someone say, oh my gosh, do you like this song? You're like, yeah, no, you don't. Oh, do you want to go get lunch straight? No. Yeah, no, you don't. How often do we say things in order to please or to appease? How often do we promise something that we don't follow through on? Is just merely because life is full. I mean, I'm a period of menopausal woman with ADHD. Let me tell you, there are things that just fall through the cracks right now. I was sitting next to my friend and I couldn't remember her name the other day. Okay? So there are some things that just by mistake we miss. I'm not talking about those little mistakes. I'm talking about the things that we vow because we're trying to please or in the moment a swage, some sort of guilt that we owe someone something, but that we actually don't have the capacity to follow through on. And our impact is that we begin to erode our relationships because people slowly but surely realize that we can't trust one another. And we've all learned how to say things that we don't mean, haven't we? In the effort to be polite. And I'm not saying that there are not moments that we need to say yes to something we don't want to do. I don't want to do that, but yes, I'll do it anyway. There are some things that we do in this life that we just are obligated to do. I'm talking about speaking out of one side of our mouth while we actually are thinking something entirely different. Well, let me make this clear because this is interesting at the beginning of this passage, the Bible project actually makes an important distinction with noting. So vows, they say basically don't vow and don't make oaths. What is the difference? A vow is actually something made with God. So this is sort of vertical where we vow to God, if I do this, then will you da da da da right? If I do this thing, then will you just protect me or save me? We make these vows to God. And then oaths are actually horizontal. These are oaths that we make to other people. And what had happened in this day is that people had begun to sort of swear by things, right? They're like, I swear on the temple that I will give you your donkey back, whatever, I don't know. But there was actually, there was a hierarchy of oaths. You could swear on the temple or you could swear on Jerusalem or you could swear on your own head. And the hierarchy actually gave room for loopholes. I mean, I didn't swear on the temple that I would actually give it back to you so. And all of a sudden people were not following through with what they said they would do. Have you ever felt this way? I mean, it wasn't a big deal. I didn't actually promise it. We don't let our word just simply hold weight. Jesus looks at all of this and he says, you've missed the point entirely. The very fact that you need an oath to be believed means that something has already broken down. The oath exists because the simple word is not enough anymore. And the simple word is not enough because we've learned all of us to say what we don't fully mean. But here's what Jesus is really after. He's not just correcting a cultural habit. He's describing a kind of person. A person whose insides and outsides are so aligned, whose words and their life are so integrated that an oath would almost be an insult because everyone who knows them already knows when they say it, they mean it. Do you know people like this? When they say it, they met my husband. It is such a gift to me that I can trust what he says, what he says he means. I don't always like it. And that's kind of the point. But he follows through with the things he says he's going to do. He's a man of such faithfulness and integrity. It's such a gift in our marriage. It's something that I've actually really had to wrestle with. I'm a woman who actually essentially shipwrecked her own life because I plagiarized a paper in college because I was so afraid of failure that I felt like I needed to bend myself to make myself a little bit better so that people would love me and not find out that I'm actually not as great as they think I am. It was a season in my life where God got a hold of my heart and said, you will not be a liar. And thankfully by the grace of God uprooted that spirit of deceit and me, that fear of man. But even though it was uprooted, there's remnants in moments. I've wanted just to bend the truth a little bit to make myself look better or to promise something because I want to make you feel good. But then I forget that I've said it. And it's an area in my life that has brought great conviction and sorrow. that the grace of God brings hope and transformation all the time. And so before we go further, I wanna give you a moment. My hope today is not just to transfer some information to you so that you know better or something you already know. Gosh, we should say what we mean. But my great hope is to actually give you an encounter with the living God, that this would be like a three-way conversation so that you can encounter the Lord so that the light of the Spirit can illuminate things in you and you can actually experience transformation. Because the only way that we change is to bring things into the light of God, the God who loves you the most and knows you the best. Who's not surprised by anything that is actually beckoning you to come, "Hey, let's look at this together. "Come, let's reason together." It says in Scripture. And Jeremiah, it says, "Call to me and I will answer you "and I will tell you great and insurczable things "you do not know." That's not just some prophetic future. This is who you are becoming and how to walk forward with God in a way that you actually become more aligned in the way that you were designed to be. And so I'm gonna invite you to take a moment, take a big deep breath, my friends. Drop your shoulders, yep, they've been up in your ears, haven't they? Close your eyes if you're able, that's comfortable. And just ask the Spirit to be present with you right now, not just in your mind, but in your whole body. And just ask God gently, is there a place in my life right now where my words and my actions are not matching? Just notice, don't fix, no shame. Just be honest before God and name it in your own heart, is there a place in my life where my words and my actions are not matching? And just hold that gently, we're gonna keep coming back to this place and I trust that God is gonna do some work in us. To understand why this matters so deeply, you're welcome to open your eyes. I mean, you don't have to look at me, it's fine, but might be uncomfortable to sit there. To understand why this matters so deeply, we have to actually go back much further than the sermon on the Mount, back to the beginning. So when Moses encounters God in the burning bush, he asks him his name. He needs to know the name that will be carried to an enslaved people to understand who sent this man, who sent him. And God does not answer with an adjective. He doesn't say, I am powerful or I am merciful, he could say so many things, but he doesn't say any of those things. In fact, what he says is, I am who I am. I mean, that's a power move. I am who I am. Can you imagine if you walk in a room, so I'm like, "Hey, who are you? What do you do for a living?" I am who I am. It's like intriguing, tell me more. You know, I am who I am. Here is the God of the universe. The most, it's the most integrated statement in all of scripture. There is no gap between God's being and His doing. There's no distance between His words and His action. Think about it in Genesis. He says, let there be light and light comes. His word literally materializes into being. It's why God cannot lie. This is mind bending to me. That there is nothing that He can do or say that doesn't actually just come into existence. There is no gap between His word and His creation, His word. This is why God cannot lie. It is the greatest gift to us in all, in our relationship with God. He cannot lie. He will not fail you. When He says, I will never leave you or forsake you, He means it. When He says, if you go to the depths of the heights, I am there. You try to hide from God. He's like, whoops, still here. I mean, He's omnipresent. He can't help it. He is always there. It is such a gift that there is nowhere we can go from His presence. The greatest lie of the enemy is that you are alone. You are alone and nobody understands you. And you will not change. And the greatest gift of God is He says, I have never left you. I will always be with you. I have hope for you. I will restore you. He will make good. He is faithful to His promises. God is not trying. He simply is fully, completely without contradiction. And then John opens his gospel with one of the most stunning declarations ever written. John, one, one-- and one 14, it says this-- in the beginning was the word, logos. In the beginning was the word. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. God in a bod. God in a bod. You do not have to look any further than the person of Jesus to discover who God is. Jesus is not just someone who speaks truth. He is the very word of God, the logos, the full coherent, unbreakable expression of who God is. Divine, logic, and love made visible and proximate. God came near. For centuries, people were trying to grasp, grapple with, understand, who is this God? And he put on flesh and moved into the neighborhood, it says in the message, so that we could see Him and experience Him. There's zero gap between what Jesus says and what He does, zero distance between His identity and His action. And He's the one in whose image we were made. Here's why this matters so much. If we go back all the way to Genesis 1,26, you have Father, Son, and Spirit, the Trinity. And they're like, oh, we have a plan. And they've created all these glorious things. They've created a habitable space for people to live inside of. And then they say this, let us make mankind an hour image, an hour image. You and I were created in the image of God, which means that we are made to echo that same coherence that He carries, to reflect, however imperfectly, the integrated nature of God Himself, which means that living with integrity, letting your yes be yes, is not merely immoral achievement. This is not just about being good, and not messing up. This is not just about good character. It's about living and according to your design, functioning the way we were built to function. The Hebrew word for this is Shalom. You may have heard that before. It's often translated as peace. But in fact, it means so much more completeness, wholeness. It's where every part of you mind, body, spirit, relationships, words, actions are all in alignment with each other and with God. It's the flourishing that you were made for. Shalom is what it feels like when who you are, what you say, and what you do are all the same thing. They're all the same thing. And when we're not living there, when our words and our life don't match, our whole self knows it. Do you know what I'm talking about? When you say something and then you don't do it, or you actually are in disagreement with yourself, have you ever said something in right after? I've been like, I don't really agree with myself what I just said. I was just trying that opinion on for size evidently. There's something in us that just knows when we're off. And so I want to give you a moment, another moment, just with the Lord. And so I just invite you again, take a big deep breath. Allow yourself to be still. And God, we just thank you that you are in our midst, that the kindness of the spirit will enlighten us, illuminate things inside of us so that we can bring them before you. And so just ask the spirit to show you, honestly, first, where in my life do I feel the most shalom right now? The most integrated, the most like myself. Notice what environments are you in when you're like, just settled in your own skin. What people give you the freedom to just be yourself fully and thoroughly. Where do you experience shalom in your own being? Just take note. And now on the flip side, ask the Lord to show you, God, where do I feel the most fragmented, the most divided against myself. Just notice, again, no fixing, just naming before God. One of my bending or shifting inside of myself, one of my out of alignment, over-promising. Notice. And as you name these things before God, understand that what this is, this is confession. Confession is merely telling the truth in the presence of God. And the word and scripture, homologueo, to say the same as God actually comes with this nuance of relief. Isn't it relieving? Just be like, yeah, here's where I'm just out of alignment. To name that thing, it actually brings relief. And in the presence of God, what he brings is hope. Because he's like, yeah, I know. I'm aware. Now that we've examined it, and now we can go a new way. It's the gift of God in the midst of confession. I don't know if you grew up in an environment where confession was like, sorry, sorry, sorry. I did bad. And hide and run away. That's not confession as defined by the God who loves us. His invitation has come name it before me in the light of my presence. And let me show you a new way. It comes with hope. OK, here's where this gets fascinating. Are you guys ready? So I'm totally a nerd. And I love neuroscience and biology. and all sorts of things. And so I want us to see, and I think God gets really delighted by this, right? Where we have theology in the scripture, and then he's like, have added friends, figure out all the science and neuroscience, and people are getting to discover these things that have actually, well, been presented thousands of years ago. So scientists have caught up with scripture as what scripture has always said. So psychologists have a term for what happens when your words and your life do not match. They call it cognitive dissonance. You heard this term probably before, cognitive dissonance. When it happens, your brain does not treat it as a minor inconvenience. It actually registers it as a threat. So your body releases cortisol. It's the same stress hormone that fires when you're in physical danger. A part of your brain called the anterior singulate cortex actually fires at lights up, and it keeps firing until the conflict is resolved. So when you say one thing and do another, when you mean one thing and say something else, there's this disintegration that happens, and your body is firing and saying, resolve this, resolve this, resolve this. It does not like to be in disintegration. You were neurologically wired for alignment by the God of the universe. And your body will tell you when you're living outside of it. The low grade anxiety that many of us carry, some of it, is the accumulated weight of unkept words. Has that ever occurred to you? Promises that are quietly abandoned? Yeses that were really babies? Vows that we've let die in the space between intention and follow-through? And here's what the research shows about what we instinctively do to try and make the dissonance stop, because the brain will do almost anything to solve the tension, right? We rationalize, explain it away, right? We minimize, not that big a deal. It's fine. I told her I like burgers, but I don't really, but it's fine. It's not a big deal. It's okay. We blame shift. I mean, if he hadn't done this, and I wouldn't have said that, and then, right? Their fault. Anyone ever done that? Good. Three of us. Fantastic. And what else? What else? We avoid. How many of you were avoiders? I just won't really address this. Talk about it. I won't go back. Kind of maybe avoid that conversation, that person. If you were promised something, you didn't follow through. We felt really bad. And so then suddenly, you just didn't talk to that person for a while. Anyone? Yeah? I hear some giggles. And then, you know, the next question is, "Is it a confession?" Also, laughter is confession. Like, "Yeah, me too. Me too." Okay. The neuroscience and the theology describe the same human problem from two entirely different angles. The brain will do almost anything to reduce the dissonance, except the one thing that actually heals it, to tell the truth. To tell the truth. God has actually given us the antidote, which is to name, to bring it before him. Think about Socrates who came hundreds of years, even before Jesus. And he says, "The unexamined life is not worth living. The gift that you and I have is that we get to bring the light of God." This is what David talks about in the Psalms. God searched me and know me, essentially bring the light of God in me, and reveal any way in me that does not lead to everlasting. What an invitation. God searched me and know me, because I want to live aligned. I want to live joyful. I want to live free. God's invitation was never merely to correct your theology or to improve our character. It was always a whole life invitation, mind, body, and spirit, into alignment with who he made you to be. Shalom. Peace in our bodies. It's not just an emotion. When Paul talks about a peace that transcends understanding, he's not just talking about an emotion. He's talking and describing about what integration feels like. When your nervous system, your relationships, and your soul are all oriented in the same direction. How incredible is that? The restlessness when we feel that we feel when we're living out of alignment. It's not condemnation. Sometimes it's literally just the image of God in us, refusing us to let the gap go unnoticed. It's not to be avoided. That discomfort is a homing signal, saying, "Come back to me." It's God's invitation to come back to Him. What if every uncomfortable emotion that we experience is, in fact, an invitation to God to come back into alignment with Him? God, I feel a little bit insecure. I feel a little unsteady. What is it that you want me to know about that? Where am I out of alignment? Is there anything I need to own or make right? And then we come back into alignment with God. What if we're not meant to avoid those uncomfortable emotions, but allow them to be God's invitation to us to abide, to stay close, to let Him reorient us so that we can live in Shalom with ourselves, with Him and with others? It all comes back to Deuteronomy. Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Give it all to Him. And then love others as you love yourself. It actually starts with our relationship with God. Secondarily, it's how we live in alignment in our own being. And that is what allows us to love others well. To love yourself is simply to come into alignment and agreement with what God says about you. He adores you. He delights and he likes you. He wants you to live free and with joy and energy and out of overflow for the people that are around you. Finish this sentence for yourself. The area of my life where I feel the most internal static right now is blank. If you're really brave, turn to someone next to you and just name it. Don't explain it, just name it. If you're courageous, just name that place. This is the place where I want Shalom is essentially what you're saying. Is it in your work, your relationships, a particular relationship, inside of yourself, what is that thing? Okay, you have ten seconds, not long. Name it for someone around you. Courage, friends, courage. This is communal confession. This is what God actually invited us to. And relief comes when you can just name it because do you know what that means? There's hope there. There's hope there. God has an invitation for you. So I didn't want you just to be the only ones that got to do this. So I'm going to actually tell you a little story. And I did ask my son permission if I could tell this story. But I debated whether to share this. I'm just going to tell you where I failed miserably in this one this week. And the area that I really want to grow, and this is actually with my own sons, because we're running around doing all the things and I'll say, "Yes, I'll grab this and I'll do this for you." And oftentimes I cannot have enough margin to even remember what I've promised or I get distracted by the next thing and the people that I love the most oftentimes are suffering because my intention is not matching my impact. And so I actually was given this great idea by a friend who's here today. "Hey, you should ask, you know, maybe your husband, your sons, or whatever, you know, what is one thing I can do today that will make your life easier or better?" And so I was like, "What a great question." So I fire off a quick text to my oldest son Tucker, who is fantastic and amazing. And I respect him so deeply and he is someone that he does what he says he will do. He will say no to things I'd really like him to do that make me mad and then he'll do them anyway. He's like an under-promise over-deliver kid and I respect him so greatly and he can frustrate me sometimes. My goodness, he actually really follows through with what he says. So I offer, "What can I do for you?" He texts me right back, "Mom, that would be so great. Thanks. I'm going to be home about 45 minutes, can you have some food for me?" It's like the one thing left I can do for my 18 year old son is to make him food. He's pretty much owning the rest of his life. No problem. So I'm excited about this. Fire him back. Hey, how about that shepherd's pie that's in the fridge? They even made it. It was great. And don't your response to no problem. 45 minutes goes by. He's not quite home. Doing some other things. Get a text from a young woman that I mentor. "Hey, can we go on that walk that we talked about?" "Absolutely. Great. I can be there in 15 minutes." She shows up. "I walk out the door and to be so intentional and present with her, I leave my phone at home." In the wake of that, I'm sure Tucker starts texting me or calling me at some point in time. "Hey, sorry I'm running a little later. Do you want me to just grab something?" I'm clearly not answering. I get home about an hour later to a text from my son. "Thanks for asking me how you can make my day easier and then not doing it. Next time please don't offer." He was not wrong. He was not wrong. My heart sunk in my chest. "Oh, why didn't I just like make the food and let it be cold?" "I remember thinking in the moment. Oh, I don't want to make it and then it'll be cold and then he'll be frustrated." "Do what you said you were going to do." It's his issue if he's going to be home late in the food's cold. That's fine, but do what you said you were going to do. And somewhere in the gap of my intentions and a few other things going on and saying yes to someone else, I essentially inadvertently said no to my own son, the one who I actually want to grow in trust with the most. Failed. I'm like, "I'm freaking, teaching is sermon on Sunday about holding fast your word and playing your guest be yes and your no be no." That was just one of many. I would guess that you have been Tucker. You have been on the difficult side of someone vowing, promising you something. Maybe it was your own mom, I don't know. Someone falling short on their commitment to you. And I also imagine you probably been me. You intended to do something and you didn't follow through and you noticed that there was a slow erosion in some relationships because you didn't follow through with what you said. I think the greatest gift that's ever been given to you is that you're going to be a I've never been given to me as a counselor of mine. He was like 80. And she gave me this story with her own son when she was 75, I think, and he might have been 56. I don't know if they just were right. And she looked at me and she said, you know, Emily, it's never too late to make a repair attempt. It's never too late to make a repair attempt. We will fail. We will mess up. And yet the question is, will you repair? Tucker and I were thankfully able to repair. He was super gracious. I made him food. But I think I want to say this to the moms particularly in the room, but really to all of us. Motherhood especially is not a performance that you are passing or failing. I can't tell you how many times I'm like, I'm failing at this. It's a relationship that you are in. With all of the complexity, the misses, the repair, the grace that entails, and the fact that we are here still showing up, still asking what we can do better, matters more than we know. And I think for those of you that have been on the difficult side of relationships to know that, to repair, to forgive, and to keep going in a world where we are pretty broken and we need God's mercy the new every morning is the greatest gift. And only with Jesus is that possible. And so I want to invite you to let the spirit bring to mind someone right now. Again, not for shame or guilt or anything, but just to show you, is there someone in your life who has experienced the gap between your intention and your follow through? Maybe you just ask God, who has experienced my absence more than my presence in this season? What yes did I give them that I have not lived out? And just simply hold their name gently before God. And ask the Lord, God, is there any invitation that you have for me? Is there any invitation that you have for me? Take note. And this is an invitation to alignment just this morning. I was like, I'm not gonna ask them to do something. I'm not gonna do, I asked the Lord. And remember that crystal mentally, well I told her I had a birthday gift for her two months ago. It was still in my room. I wrapped it this morning and I will give it to her today. I don't know if crystal's here, I'm outing her. But if she's not, she's gonna get a gift today. The Lord was like, do not let that linger any longer. Proverbs, it's like a cloud that promises rain, that has no rain. That is very disappointing for a farmer, okay? Not that we are farmers or in an agricultural society, but that's it. We often promise that we don't follow through life happens and then I felt embarrassed and I just didn't give it because it lasted too long. Well, today we're coming into alignment. Okay, so why do we do this? We're gonna shut it down here in just a second. You guys ready for this? Why do we do this? 'Cause this is the big question. We all know that we need to live as our word, but why? What gets in the way? And what I want to present to you or propose to you is that typically it's guilt. Typically it's guilt and there's three kinds of guilt. Only one is your friend. So first there is true guilt and we might call this conviction. It's actually a gift from the spirit. It is specific. It points to a real action that says, that was not right. Come back, make it right. The spirit speaks to us. Come back, let's make it right. It's what we just talked about. It's informative, it leads somewhere, toward confession, toward repair, toward restoration. And so when you feel it, pay attention to it. That is love doing its corrective work. The second though is condemnation. Condemnation. So when we mess up, this is why we don't change. This is why we don't change. Because the voice of the enemy has a counterfeit to conviction. That same thing, what I've been listening to a long time, you didn't give her the gift, that's stupid. Don't do anything about it. You never change. You never follow through. You're not enough. Any of those lies ever resonated in your heart and mind? That you're not enoughness. It's just this general sense, the condemnation comes where it's you've done something wrong, but the invitation is to go hide. And you're never gonna change. And so we shut down and we don't make a repair. We avoid. The third kind of guilt though is false guilt. And I think it's, well, let me rewind. It's very important for us to understand. Romans 8.1. It says there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So we have to understand that conviction and condemnation are two very different things. Same route, you've done something wrong. Guilt, a good emotion that God gave us. Otherwise we'd all be psychopaths, okay? But then that guilt either turns toward hope with Jesus, connection and repair, or the enemy gets a hold of it and it leads us to isolation, condemnation shut down. And we avoid. Does that make sense? And far too often we listen to the emilys, well, not emilys voice, I am not saying. The enemy's voice, I mean, I'm not perfect, but I'm not em, okay. So, but the enemy's voice and we go astray, right? So we need to tune in to the Lord's voice, that invitation, yes, there's something to repair. Okay, but the third is this. And this is I think where a lot of us fall prey to and we don't realize there's false guilt. False guilt does not point to anything specific it just hums. It says, you are not enough, you've not done enough. You should be doing more. It is chronic and diffuse and it never resolves because there's nothing to confess. There's no specificity to it. You cannot repent your way out of it, you cannot outwork it, you cannot say enough yeses to make it quiet. It's a math problem that never solves. How many of you feel that just humming sense that it's just never enough? At work, at home, just never enough. And so we say yes and we're constantly trying to drive and maybe manipulate the way that other people see us because we're trying to live in alignment and we don't know how. And this is where it connects directly to what Jesus is addressing. Many of us cannot say no because we've never felt like enough. Every yes becomes a secret attempt to finally become enough, to earn our place, to quiet that hum that says you should be doing more. And so we over promise. We say yes to things we know in our gut, we can't deliver. We agree with people that we don't actually agree with. It feels like relief in the moment, but it actually costs us. We take on more than we have margin to give and we make commitments from a place of deficit rather than abundance. And the real kicker is we begin to lose trust with ourselves. I don't follow through with my promises to me. And when I lose trust with myself, when I don't really trust me to say the thing that's true, then I begin to wonder if you're really saying what you think is true. And it breaks down in all relationships. And so the invitation to alignment is so beautiful because God is inviting us to come to Him to be loved deeply, to be restored, to recognize that our identity and our worth was settled on the cross. You are worth Jesus to God. He gave His whole life for you. You are so deeply loved. And when we begin to live from love rather than for love, it changes everything. When our nose become very purposeful, we say no to things in order to protect our yeses, our life shifts. When we recognize that every yes actually demands a no, it's a no to something else, then it's really important. But we need to take the margin in our lives to recognize. For me, I've started doing a daily walk typically with no inputs, just evaluating my life. God, is there anywhere that I am sort of missing it right now? I need margin. So I'm saying no to certain things to create space to be with God, so that I'm doing the things that He's asked me to do and I can follow through with them. If I don't have the margin to hear from God, how am I supposed to walk out the things that He's invited me to do? So our no is so important. I have been a yes girl my whole life. It like pains me sometimes to say no to things, to good things. But we've come to a point where we want to say yes to God things. And this is where we get to live in alignment with ourselves and with others. We are designed to live from love and not for love. OK, we're going to close here. There's a beautiful phrase that was offered actually by-- I'm blanking out on his name, you guys. We're going to find it really quickly. Augustine, there it is, Augustine. And it's solvitor ambu-londo. It means it is solved by walking. It is solved by walking. And I was actually walking with a couple of friends this week. And both of them gave me stories that were really significant about this very topic. But the final thing that I just want to invite you to, because I actually just realized I have no idea when the sermon is supposed to be ending. So we may be done now. Are we supposed to be done? What time? I don't know. Are you ready to worship? Why don't you come on up here? OK. [LAUGHTER] Hey, we're all real people here. I'm trying to live in alignment. But I realized I never promised when I'd be done. So I'm actually not out of alignment. OK, so we're going to have just some keys. And we're just going to give you a moment to be with the Lord. And I think the gift in this is you have a moment right now to actually allow God to love you, to forgive you for the places where if you experience any guilt right now of feeling out of alignment in your life. For saying yes to something that you should have said no to. For not saying enough knows to protect your yeses. That you get to have a moment and just say, God, would you, as you've revealed things already today, would you show me what it looks like to walk with you, to walk out forgiveness? First and foremost, for me, if there are people in your life that you realize you are holding something against because they have not followed through on their voucher. to you. Maybe it was parents that didn't follow through on their vows to each other in your presence. Where you have realized that you are carrying some pain or wounding in this area of people being people of their word. Then you have an opportunity right now to release that to God. To trust that He is the one that actually forgives every debt. People are bankrupt to give you back what you need and deserve. Unfortunately, they are bankrupt. And yet God says He is the one that restores every debt. He restores every debt. And forgiveness is not a one time thing. Step by step by step each day working it out with the Lord. Offering that person to Him again. Offering that area of your life that you went alignment with Him again day by day by day. And over time you look back and you are like, "Wow, I am not who I was." The kindness of God and the mercies that are new every morning have kept me, have changed me. And it was not by my willpower, but by the love and the power of the living God. And so let us pray together God. We just thank you for this morning. God, I thank you that you are the most integrated being to have ever existed. That there is no gap between you saying and you are doing. That you are for us and with us. But you will never leave us or forsake us. You are father and friend and Savior and King. Counselor, debt, forgive her. And so friends just ask the Lord, is there anyone in my life that I need to forgive? That I need to release just literally unhook from my life so I can walk free? It might be you. Where do you need to forgive yourself and release yourself? The Lord has already released you. And offer yourself then. It might be someone else bring that person to mind and just usher them to God, just hand them off. And as you usher them to God, just ask him, God, what is it that you want to restore? What will you give me in exchange? And finally, God, what is your invitation to me? To live in Shalom? What is one yes that I might make this week or one now? That I am actually overjoyed and hopeful to follow through all. So that I might build trust with you with myself, with others. What is your one invitation? And let God animate your imagination. What would it look like? What will you say? What will you do or not do? God would you empower us by your spirit to be people of our Word, to be people of the Word. Thank you that we belong to you and that your spirit resides in us and you are our ever present to help. We love you and worship you and bring that in Jesus' name.