Mike Bickle emphasizes the critical distinction between grace and mercy, explaining that justice is receiving what we deserve, while mercy prevents us from receiving the bad we deserve, and grace provides us with the good we do not deserve. He warns against the prevalent false grace message that offers salvation without true repentance, stressing that genuine faith must be accompanied by a sincere heart of repentance. Bickle illustrates that true repentance involves admitting sin, taking responsibility, and treating sin seriously, while also highlighting that God's grace is available to those who humbly seek Him. He encourages believers to strive for a deeper relationship with God, understanding that effort is necessary to receive more grace, and that spiritual immaturity should not be confused with rebellion.

Continue on the theme that we've been looking at the last couple weeks. Discerning truth and error about the grace of God. Father, we ask you in the name of Jesus for living understanding on this very significant and important subject. We thank you for it in Jesus name. Amen. A little bit of review as always and then we'll go into some new material. Roman numeral one, the difference between grace and mercy. Justice is getting what we deserve. And what you don't want is justice. Sometimes in our relationships with one another, somebody says, that's not fair. And just hope the Holy Spirit doesn't worship. Do you want to operate on what is fair from now on? No, no, I meant it's not fair that he treats me that way, but it's, I don't want to do that with me and you. I just want to do it with him and me. You don't want justice. You don't want to get what you deserve. You don't want to demand that of people as well. That's both positive and negative. Meaning negatively, we don't get the bad things we deserve, but neither do we get the good things we deserve. Because if we only receive the empowering that we deserve, our empowering would be way less than it is now, even at the heart level. So mercy grants us the forgiveness so we don't get the bad things we deserve. And grace gives us the good things, the impartation of the positive, the strength and the power of God. Because if we were going to deserve to operate in healing or any of the gifts of the Holy Spirit or any grace of God, we would have to be a hundred percent obedient, a hundred percent of the time to deserve any of the power of God. So don't even think before God you're operating on the deserved basis. And the reason I'm saying that is that I talk to people and they get real downcast. They've had a real bad week and they go, oh man, and they get into this, I don't deserve mode, which is normal, but it exposes that when they were in a good mood, they had kind of an unspoken confidence. They did deserve it. If you feel down and out, when you don't deserve it in a bad mood, it really does mean that you haven't really put words to it, but you kind of think when things are going well, it's because you did deserve it. And so when you're in a downside, let that expose the air. When you're in a good mood, we never reserve it. It's all deserve it. It's all been given as a free gift of God, the forgiveness, as well as the empowering, the sense of his presence. Paragraph C, say again, it's necessary to have a sincere heart attitude of repentance to receive the grace of God. Now, the last three weeks, we've been really focused on the false grace message that is so prevalent in the body of Christ for those that are visiting. And I don't want to go into that because I've spent three weeks on it. I want to go to some new material tonight, but I want to say this again, that the false grace message that is so prevalent in the body of Christ, where people are offered salvation without repenting, they're offered the thing to come down forward and to the altar and pray a prayer, Jesus, forgive me, I want salvation, you're free. And you don't get salvation based on a prayer like that. That's very common today, and it's kind of startling for some people, but that's not biblical. We actually have to repent, we have to give our heart to the Lord and all of our brokenness and weakness. I mean, the way we give ourselves is very weak, and it's very flawed, but it's still the Lord requires that we give ourself to him in repentance, we have to change our attitude. We have to turn from something negative and turn to something positive. That's the Lord himself. We turn from sin, we turn to God, both sides of repentance, both sides of turning are a critical part of saving faith. Paragraph D, again from last week, repentance is not a form of works righteousness that earns us salvation. And the illustration I've been using is the idea that a murderer, if they stood before a court of justice, the murderer would say, I changed my attitude, therefore why shouldn't I be set free from the penalty of my crimes? That murderer would still have a sentence of judgment on them, even though they changed their attitudes. There's no court in the world that if you change your attitude, your crime goes away. It's not any sense of earning salvation, the fact that God requires us to change our attitude. Paragraph E, true faith is always, always accompanied by repentance. True faith is always accompanied by repentance. It says in 1 John chapter 2 verse 3, by this, this is the way we know that we know God. This is the way that we know that we're born again. We know that we have a salvation. If we keep his commandments, that's how we know that we know God. Now, does it mean that you keep his commandments a hundred percent? That's not what it's talking about, because then nobody would be saved. But what it's saying in the context of the New Testament, it's saying that we are seeking to obey God with all of our heart. That's what it's talking about. It's talking about a posture of heart, not an attainment. It's not saying if you hit the hundred percent level of obedience, you know that you know you're, you know that you know God. That's not what John's saying. He's saying the heart that's crying out to obey God, the heart that's really seeking to obey God, failing, yes, but seeking sincerely. It's that heartbeat inside of us that the Holy Spirit has worked in us. That is part of the evidence that we're born again. Let's read it again. By this, we know that we know him. If we keep his commandments, the person who says, I know God, but he isn't set on keeping God's commandments, that man or that woman is a liar. The truth is not in them. I want to say it clear, the person who does not set their heart to obey the Lord, fail, yes, that's what we're going to get at tonight, as to what happens when we fail, which is very relevant for all of us. And the grace of God and the mercy of God covers us in our failure, but the sincere commitment is there. And so much of the evangelism, or that which is being presented as evangelism today in the church, is opposite in spirit to this. It's an easy believism, and it's not genuine. It's not the people aren't getting saved. It's not a true presentation of the gospel. Paragraph F. Let's look. Let's see what sincere repentance looks like. Number one, a person that sincerely repents, they admit their sin. They don't explain it away. They don't rationalize it. The most natural thing for us to do when we sin is to explain it away as not being sin. We're born experts at this, every one of us. But when something touches our, when the Holy Spirit touches our heart, and we sin, and we go, I am sinning. I just sinned. And we call sin, sin. That's an evidence of sincere repentance, to call sin, sin. Don't explain it away. Don't rationalize it as, well, it's not really sin, because other people do this. And well, I mean, there's nothing in the Bible that really requires, and we try to figure out a way to call what we're doing, not sin when it's sinful. But when we admit it, that's an evidence of sincere repentance. Number two, we take responsibility for it. We don't blame, blame shifted to others. We don't try to make others responsible. So the guy goes, okay, I am bitter. I admit it. I'm sinning, but he made me bitter. My parents did, or, or the, the situation in life, the relationship that's broken. That's why I'm bitter. The way they treated me in my marriage, in the, in the job, at the church, they did it to me. So that person admits their sin, but they blame shift the responsibility to somebody else. Now, you know, great, great, great, great grandfather, Adam was the first one to do that. The Lord says, Adam, you did it. He says, it's the woman you gave me. He literally, he was blame shifting. He meant it. He goes, she made me do it. Not a good answer. Adam, he looked at her and said, man, what's this? What do you mean? I'm sure she didn't appreciate that. Number three is that we take our sin serious, meaning we're not casual about it. So we've admitted it. We've taken responsibility for it, but that's not enough. We have to take it serious, which meaning, which means we declare war on it. We, we treat it as an enemy, as a great enemy in our soul. We take steps to change that behavior. We may not follow through on those steps. Matter of fact, there's many times we don't fall through a hundred percent, but we were planning on a new way. We, we began to, uh, set our mind into motion. I mean, to, uh, think of ways, uh, where we're going to walk this out differently. And when we get there, we find out that our heart is weak, uh, many times, but we've been planning for real how to obey God in that situation. It's sincere. We takes a sin serious. We make plans to do it differently in the next time we're in that situation. So that's my definition of sincere repentance, because a lot of people ask me, well, how do I know if I'm sincere? What if I'm deceived about being sincere? And they just kind of go around in a spiral downhill circle. And I go, if you're doing these things, you're sincere. Paragraph G, which is a startling to some people, but it's really must be, uh, you must understand it. You must, you must, uh, declare this whenever the situation, uh, requires it. The Lord does refuse to forgive people who ask it. Asking for forgiveness is what mostly the modern gospel has said. The Bible says God gives forgiveness based upon Jesus's work on the cross and our response of faith and repentance. There's nowhere where it says just ask. And that's all that happens. That's a modern invention of the last years. And I mean, people are startled. I've said this over the years that I go, just because you ask forgiveness, doesn't mean you're forgiven. What do you mean? The guy in TV said I would be, I go, I don't care what the guy on TV said. You have to repent. I go, well, no, wait, where does it say that in the Bible? Well, I'm glad you asked. Jesus addresses this problem. This is a very, very serious problem, particularly in this, in this, uh, generation and this hour of church history. He said in Matthew seven, many will say to me on that day, many, not a few. I mean, millions and millions will say to Jesus, I prophesied, I healed the sick. I did many things. And Jesus will say, I never knew you. He's not saying I knew you and you backslid. You never, ever were born again. It never, ever took place. And there'll be active in ministry for long periods of time. And they're not even born again. They got familiar with Bible language. They bought into the religious rhetoric of the day, but they never actually repented. They even said the religious rhetoric, but they never repented. Many will say to me on that day, top of page two, receiving God's grace. And again, grace, as I said, the last couple of weeks is a general term. The word grace can be understood two different ways in the new Testament. The first way that grace is understood is a general term, which encompasses all of God's goodness and everything, every sub component of grace in his kindness, his provision for us. And then grace is used in a second sense, which means empowering. And so in some ways you can use grace in the secondary sense. It's one of the sub units of the general category of grace, but often in the Bible, when the grace of God is talked about, it's talking about the secondary element of grace, the grace that it gives power to the human heart. It's an empowering. That's what the, the word grace is referring to. Second Corinthians six, one Paul said, I, we plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain. The grace of God can be received in vain, which means the Lord offers it to us. The Lord even warms our heart to it and we say yes to it. We actually receive it in the sense of in its initial stages. We go, yes, this is what I'm about, but we don't follow through. It doesn't produce fruit in our life. And that is called receiving it in vain. Our hearts are stirred with the early, you know, the beginning warmings of grace like, wow, yes, I want to obey you. I want to do this. I want to be forgiven. I want to go all the way with you, but it doesn't follow through. There's not follow through. And again, I'm not talking about a hundred percent follow through. I'm talking about a sincere heart cry that says, yes, I want to be yours. God, I really want to follow through. The sincere heart cry is what I'm referring to. When the heart cry is there, the follow through will come in time. We'll actually obey outwardly in the areas we set our heart in. Typically we cry out for the Lord. I mean, in agreement, well, I'll take a step back before that. What happens is the Lord convicts us. That's stage one. We're convicted by the word of God. And if we're like most people, at first we say no to that conviction. We figure out a way where it doesn't mean what God means it to mean to us. We come up with a way out, and we figure out a way where we can keep doing what we're doing, even though the word of God testifies against us. That's called conviction. But there's a time when conviction breaks through, and we go, okay, it's wrong. I got to change. And then the second thing is the heart cry. The cry of the heart, I want to obey. The setting of the heart to obey. And then the third thing that happens later is the fullness of obedience in our life, in that area. Or significant obedience. Let's say it that way. I don't know that we ever do fullness, but substantial obedience comes later. So stage one, again, the Spirit of God convicts us. We hear the word of God. Stage two, we agree with the word of God and say we purpose in our heart to do it. And stage three, we grow and we have eventually have substantial obedience in our outward character. I mean, the walking out of it. And so when our heart is saying yes, but we haven't yet walked out the substantial obedience, we don't have the follow through 100%. We're still sincere in the Lord's eyes. So in this desire to establish us in grace, the strange thing about messages like this is that sometimes the very people who you're not aiming for are the one that take it the most serious, the most diligent. I don't think I'm saved. They come to the altar. What do you mean you're not saved? Of course you're saved. You've been walking with God hard for years. But maybe I'm not according to what you said on page two, paragraph C. Maybe I'm not. No, no. And then the other guy who you wish would be a little bit nervous, man, he's as confident as could be. If you've got a heart cry that says no one's looking, it's the cry of your heart, Lord, I want to obey you. Thought, word, and deed. All that's every category right there. I really want to obey you in as much as you will give me light. And the Holy Spirit gives us light in stages. That's an important principle. He gives us light in stages. It's the slide under the microscope that we talked about last week. We look at the slide and it looks like, you know, there's dirt. We clean off the glass slide and now we think, hey, it's all clean. We look at it, we move it from 10 power to 100 power, and that slide looks very dirty again. We clean it all off and use the chemicals, it's clean, then we pop it up to 100 power, 100-fold power, and now the slide looks dirtier again. Meaning the Holy Spirit gives us progressive stages of light, and with the light comes the responsibility to respond to it. So a guy says, am I ever fully obedient? I go, well, in the absolute sense of God's blazing holiness, our obedience, our best obedience falls very short in the sense compared to God's absolute holiness. In the relative sense, we obey God according to the light that he gives us. And when we obey a certain measure of light, he gives us more light. That's why it's true, the testimony of some of the fervent believers through history, the older they became in the Lord, the more clear they became about the defilement of their heart. Though outwardly or to others, their lives were seemed impeccable, but they had more revelation in their 80s than they ever had in their 50s or their 20s. Because the power on the microscope gets turned up to a thousand power, 10,000, 100,000, you see more light the more you walk in the light. And that's just the gift of God. It's just because there's, with greater light, not only is there greater responsibility, but there's also greater freedom in our spirit when we have light, and there's greater experience of God with light. It's not, you know, one guy says, well, hey, I don't want more light because then I'm more responsible. But you're more free, and you're more fascinated, and you encounter God more. That goes along with it too. But it is true, more light brings more responsibility. So when we're talking about obeying God with all of your heart, we're always talking about according to the measure of the light that you have. That's what we're always, it's important that you have that in place, lest those really sincere ones are imagining the highest standards imaginable that the Holy Spirit hasn't even touched their hearts on. They read a biography, and they try to walk in somebody else's light, and they just, I can't do it, and they get so condemned. I've seen that over the years. And in the very desire to stir us up to fervency, I don't want to throw people back with misunderstanding to where they actually lose ground because they see themselves as a, you know, a hopeless hypocrite. There's no way I'm obedient according to that standard. Okay, paragraph C. Personal discipline and personal effort is one way, it's not the only way, but it's necessary, it's one of the necessary ways that God ordained for us to posture our heart to receive more grace. People, again, as we've said, have this idea that if it takes effort, it can't be grace. No. Effort is what postures you to receive more grace that actually gives you more insight and more power to exert more effort. Effort is critical. Now, grace in the sense of the mercy dimension of grace, if it's forgiveness, you can't, there's no effort you can offer God that would earn you forgiveness. The effort does not earn us God's love. The effort does not earn us God's power. Remember, if you were earning God's power, you'd have to be a hundred percent obedient a hundred percent of the time. So there's no element of earning. Effort positions our heart so we can receive more from God. It takes effort to do that. It does not happen automatically. It's the analogy of the, uh, the farmer in the field. If the farmer doesn't put effort out, the field is not going to have crops. It's going to have weeds and it's going to be in ruin. If the, if the farmer does not put effort out God's power with the sun and the life-giving principle that's in the seed, all of that won't get him anywhere. God's supernatural life dimension will not work if he doesn't do his effort and he has to sow the field. He has to pull the weeds. He has to water it and, and several other things as well. Meaning effort is not opposite of grace. Now in terms of forgiving, trying to earn forgiveness, it is. But in terms of positioning our cold hearts in front of God's bonfire so that our hearts warm up, you, we have to put effort in. The Bible from Genesis to Revelation is very earnest over and over again that effort or discipline is critical in terms of bringing ourself into the place to receive more from God. That bringing of ourself into his presence does not constitute earning anything. So the passage that I'm using purposefully is Luke 13 verse 24. I call it the S word striving. You can't say striving in the body of Christ today. But I'm going to say it because Jesus says it. He said strive not to get forgiven. No, you don't strive to get forgiven. Strive to enter the narrow gate. Exert effort to enter into the fullness of salvation. In the context he's talking about salvation and some people read the context and they reduce it to only the first stage of salvation, which is being forgiven. Salvation is more than being forgiven. Salvation has is involves not just the present tense of being, I mean the past tense, our salvation has three tenses. In the past we're forgiven, we're justified. In the present tense, we're sanctified. That's called holiness. In the future tense, it's glorification. That's the resurrection. And when Jesus talks about salvation in Luke 13, he's not only talking about the first stage of salvation, which is being forgiven for our sins. He's talking about the full experience of salvation. He goes strive to enter in. Exert some effort. It's worthy. My relationship with you is worthy of effort. Now you talk to a, you know, a couple that's in love and they're about to get married. They fully understand that it takes effort in the relationship to grow closer. Everybody knows that it's a very normal thing for one to say to the other, you know, you need to put some effort into this relationship. And it's the same way with the Lord. We're not earning anything. We're just, we're, it's our interior attitudes are changed and we're, we're filling our heart with things that God says, says from his word. And it requires effort in order for the relationship to be strengthened, which is the sanctification part of our salvation. It's the present tense part. Paragraph D it talks about in James four, verse six, it says, God gives more grace. Now he's not talking about forgiveness here. He's not, he's talking about power and insight, power on the heart as well as the hands ministry as well. And inside he's talking about new desires on the heart and new insight into holiness. God gives more grace. We, when we're saved, we receive grace and our sins are forgiven, but there's more grace to receive throughout our Christian life. And he tells us how we can get it. God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the person that responds in humility and humility isn't only admitting that we're wrong or we're in need. Humility certainly involves admitting we're wrong and admitting we're in need. That's what the beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. They are admitting they're in need and they have to have more humility certainly involves that. But the whole fasted lifestyle, fasting and prayer and giving are all statements of humility. Because we're giving our strength into God's hands and we're trusting him to touch us in the, uh, we'll call it the fasted lifestyle is a statement of humility. Only weak people pray. Strong people don't need to pray. Only weak people pray. Only weak people fast. Only people that say, I don't have enough to make it without throwing myself into God in a more aggressive way. That is a significant statement of humility between you and the Lord. He's saying, so you don't think you can make it like you're doing. You can't enter into all that I have for you. So I can't, I want to do it your way, fasting and praying and giving money, giving serving is a significant statement of humility. And the Lord says, I give more grace when my people are humble. Verse nine, verse eight. He's saying the same thing in other language, draw near and I will draw near. Now, obviously the Lord stirred us up to even have the insight to draw near the Lord's on the front of the equation. He stirs us up first. He initiates it. So the Lord's moving and we don't get it. He's stirring us. We don't get it. He's stirring us. We don't get it. One day we get it. We say, we're going to respond. And then the Lord responds to our response on the other side of the equation. And some will say, Hey, I began to seek the Lord. And then, uh, the Lord answered me and the Lord says that's true, but that's only part two and three of the equation. I stirred you first, then you sought me. And then I answered you. And so we understand the Lord is on both sides of our seeking. He stirs us to seek. And then he responds to our seeking. He has great pleasure in it. If we draw near to God, verse eight, we experience more of God and there's no element of earning it in it. We don't draw near. We don't experience as much. It's absolutely a fact of the Bible. It's a fact of the grace of God. Verse 10, if you humble yourself and it's not just the admission that you're in need or the mission that you're wrong. Like I said a minute ago, it's the whole lifestyle of humility serving. When you serve another person, you are humbling yourself. When you do something inconvenient for the right reasons, not just to get attention in the eyes of men, but you actually are serving as in the Lord's sight, the Lord sees that and he will lift you up. It doesn't necessarily, it doesn't mean he'll make you rich and famous in this age. That's not what it means. He might make some of you rich and famous in this age. He does that occasionally, but what he will do is he will lift up your heart in the experience. And then in the age to come, he'll lift you up. These principles are eternal, but he will lift you up internally in this age for sure, where you will experience more of God. Your soul will be exalted in God. You'll experience greater things of his spirit if you humble yourself. And so the effort is required. The response to God's initiative, God initiates. He stirs us. We respond and he responds to our response. So God is smiling. He began the process and he ended the process and we're in the middle Roman numeral three, standing strong in grace or yielding to legalism. We could call this discipline or legalism, which is it? The age old question, paragraph a, the outward activities of legalism and the outward activities of spiritual grace empowered discipline can look exactly the same. It's the attitude of the heart that distinguishes if it's legalism or if it's seeking God in his grace. The person that is legalistic is fasting and praying the Pharisees and the person that is legal that is filled with grace is fasting and praying Paul, the apostle one's doing it with the attitude of the heart to earn God's favor, to get God's attention. God, you're up there somewhere. You don't pay attention to me. If I work harder, will you please smile there? It's somebody it's, it's the person that goes to the prayer room so that God will finally smile on them and give them favor. That's legalism. But the answer to legalism isn't to stop going to the prayer room. It's to change the attitude. It's to change the reason why you go to the prayer room. That's how you shift from legalism to spirit led discipline. You change your attitude. You don't stop praying. You pray with a different motive and a different attitude. So many I've watched over the years, they said, I don't want to get into legalism. So what they get into is, uh, they just do nothing. They just is nothing ism is what they go. They go from legalism to nothing ism just made up another word. It's my gift. It says in the end of paragraph, uh, a one operating in grace, empowered discipline. That's what we're talking about engages in discipline, not out of the desire to earn favor, but out of the confidence and gratitude. It's already been given freely in Christ Jesus. It's the man or the woman that I'm just using the prayer room. There's a hundred different ways to, uh, analogies of this or, or, uh, applications of this, but it's going to the prayer room. And again, use any illustration you want because he likes us in our weakness and our brokenness because he desires us when he shouldn't. I want to go there. I want to feel more of it. I want to position myself to drink more from your hand. Oh God, not to get you to like me because you do like me. I want to feel more of what you're feeling towards me. I'm not trying to get you to feel towards me in a positive way. I'm wanting to receive it and to experience and to feel more of it. So we're bringing our cold heart in front of the bonfire and that frozen heart begins to fall out. I use the analogy of the, you know, like a five pound frozen hamburger. You bring it in front of the fire and over time it becomes tender and over time, our hearts become tender and sitting in front of the fire doesn't earn anything. It's the power of the fire that tenderizes that hamburger. It's not the, it's not the sitting of the hamburger in the right place. That's not what earns it. That's not it. The power isn't the, where the hamburger sitting, the power is in the flame. The power is in God, but he says, I'm not going to force myself on you. If you don't posture yourself before me, then that's you get to choose that. And I will honor your choices because as this is a relationship, but if you want more of me, posture yourself and you will feel more of my supernatural fire over time. Well, here's the verse. I mean, not the verse, the paragraph, paragraph B with the three tenses of salvation, we're saved by grace. When somebody says we're saved by grace, not by works. That's right. But when we're saved by grace, it's not just the past tense justification, which means being born again or forgiven. And more than that, of course, it's also the present tense. We're just as much saved by grace in the present tense, which means our life gets cleaned up by grace. It's not that we become saved one day in the sense that we understand the initial salvation. We're born again. We pray the sinner's prayer. We mean it. We repented. We're born again. We don't go from grace now to some other system. We're still under grace. The way we get cleaned up on the inside is by the same grace that forgave us, but we've got to expose our heart to it. So what happens? I've done this in my own life over the years and I've watched many others do it over the years as well. It's that we get saved by grace, but then we want to live by law. We're saved. Thank you, God, for the grace thing. Now, I'm now going to relate to you on the basis of how good I'm doing. I'm not going to relate to you on the basis of what you did in Jesus or how much you like me. According to your word, I'm going to relate to you on the basis of how good my last month has been or my last week. And a lot of people, I'll tell some guy, you know, say, hey, you know, help in the prayer line. Oh no, man, I've had a really bad three days. Which translates, if I have a good three days, I'm worthy to be in the prayer line. But under further investigation, there's no three days that are good enough to earn you the power to heal the sick. It's flawed thinking. I have had some of my most dynamic experiences in God. Of course, the Lord was just making an exclamation point. He was just making a point out of it when I just, Lord, not now! And he's blown me away with his kindness and using me or visiting me in the week where he really shouldn't. I wouldn't have visited me if I was the Lord that week. Let the reader understand. But beloved, our best obedience is tainted and impure. He doesn't visit us because we're good. And I don't do prayer and fasting to get him to like me. I do prayer and fasting because he does like me and I want to feel the power of it. And when we have a horrible week, the Lord can still visit us for a horrible month in power and in favor. It's amazing. I remember a story. I want to give all the details of the story because it's too long. I've told it a few times. It takes a long time. But I remember it was about 15 years ago. We were having one of our conferences down in the auditorium, I mean, down at the municipal auditorium. And I remember going home that night because normally I stayed in the hotel down there at a conference. Maybe about 5,000 people were there that summer. And I drove home and stayed at home. And I remember mentioning to my wife, I said, did you turn the alarm off? She said, yes, absolutely, yes. I got the alarm. I go, good, because I got to get up early tomorrow and get before the Lord and get my heart. Well, it ends up that she forgot to or something happened. Who knows? And so now it's like eight o'clock in the morning and I'm on, I'm supposed to be there at maybe 815 and I'm supposed to lead the meeting starting at nine. And so I'm here and I got to get downtown and I'm not happy. We did one of those. You said, I said, they said, we said, which are all always futile. And so I did bad. I won't go into the details. They just bore you anyway, trust me. No, tell me, tell me. So then I go out to get in my car to drive down there. And it's, it's now past nine o'clock, whatever. I don't remember the exact time, but I know it's already, uh, 15 minutes after the meeting started. Maybe we woke up at five. I don't remember, but it was real late. And so there's this guy sitting on my front porch. Who's who's in the church who was under a form of discipline in the church for something. So he decided he didn't, he doesn't even care about the conference going on. He knocks on my door because he wants to contest, you know, these mean old elders were not nice to me. And I said, you know, this isn't really the best time for me. He goes, well, it's never a good time for you. So he starts really, uh, being energized. And so, uh, he says, where are you? I gotta go. He goes, where are you going? I said, I'm going down the conference. He goes, oh, he goes, can I have a ride? Well, okay. So all the way down at the, at the, we're driving down there and I asked, cause I don't have a thought of what I'm going to preach. There's 5,000 people there. So I asked my wife, I said, would you like to kind of talk to him for a little while while we're driving? We got about 25 minutes to get down there. Well, for some reason, she decides not to can't imagine why I can't imagine what I did to promote that. You just have to guess. So she does that. So the guy is really angry at me. I'm not happy with my wife. She's not happy with me. I'm not happy with the guy in the back. He's not happy with me. It's really bad for 25 minutes. So now it's remember it's middle of August. It's about 105 degrees. It is so hot outside. It's like the worst day. Now it's 10 o'clock traffic jam, of course, on the highway, of course. So the place is full. So which means I parked 500 yards away because all the spots are filled and it's super hot. So I'm walking through, which is, I understand this, but it's, it's kind of, uh, you know, whatever the 10 people that stopped me on the way and said, this must be God. I want, I asked the Lord to let me talk to you. And I'm going, Oh, so every about 20 step burning, hot sweat, you know, it's now it's about 10, 15 and each person, they don't understand that it's just not the right time, but they were convinced it's God. That's why I said, I go, no, I'm just walking from my car. You know, everything's not God. It's just like, I'm running late. It isn't God. Trust me. Well, I got stopped eight or 10 times getting from there to there for by strangers. So, you know, you can't like, you know, tell them your story. I get up on the platform. Now it's 10 30 meeting started. Nice. Let's be there at nine. The guy says to me on the platform, where have you been? You said we were supposed to be here at nine. He's really upset. And he hands me the mic and walks off the stage and nobody's on the stage. The singers were, I sit down, they're just going on and on. I don't have one thought in my mind. What I'm going to do. All I know is I've been exceedingly fleshly for about two straight hours. Now I took the microphone. I didn't have a thought in my brain. Don't try this on purpose. And I just started talking. I remember I just, I had no thoughts. I said, let's go to song of Solomon. I can come up with something and some of Solomon, you know, so I started in song of Solomon one five, I am dark, but lovely. And I started describing it. I decided to preach myself out of this dilemma, forget the 5,000 people. I had to get myself into the grace of God halfway into it. This probably only happened three times in 30 years of preaching halfway into it. The spirit of the Lord breaks in and weeping begins all over the congregation. I never finished the message and people come up and they're wailing and everybody, I mean, not everybody, but a significant number in the room are crying and weeping a spirit conviction. And after the meeting, the guy said, one of our leaders, this is the best meeting I've ever been into. So then there's another guy said, Hey, you were not here at nine o'clock. So there, we have a bunch of young people from Korea. They flew over. They would like to meet with you. And I just said, yes, because I didn't know what your afternoon was. And so right after the meeting, I walk right in and these they're all about 20, these young Koreans, they go, pastor Bickel, the bad accent Harry, how do you prepare for the meeting this morning? And I said, I promise you, you don't really want to know. They go, yes, they all got their pins out. I go, trust me. They go, no, the glory of God touched us. How do you prepare for a meeting like this? Okay. Paragraph C You're not going to believe this. I actually told them through a translator. I'm sure they must've missed a few things. The room must've been a hundred of them. I can't remember that. Actually, it was just a good full room of people of, uh, and they, they were shocked. They were disillusioned and shocked. And I go, no, no, no. Do the math. This is good news. This will work for you too. This is how God runs the universe with people like us. I said, don't be disillusioned. Do the math. This will work for your life. I can tell you 10 stories, not as dramatic as that, but where the Lord did something unusual in a public meeting, not as, as, as unusual as that, but definitely unusual. And I had the most horrible three to five days before that meeting. And I began to understand over the years that we don't relate to God based on how good we've been doing the last three to five days or the last week, couple of weeks, because when you're doing really good, it's still really flawed and really weak. We just don't see it because we're young in the spirit, but God's heart is steadfast. And it's the way that we receive grace, not just a minister. It's the way we receive grace to relate to God. It's all the same thing. Paragraph C, we don't need to bargain with God after sinning. And after we've repented, the repenting is critical. The sincere repenting and the claiming of Jesus's righteousness. We don't need to bargain with God after that grace gives us confidence that God enjoys us. And I just, I I'm putting the, the, the phrase after we stumbled out to repent, I always mean after we repent, that we, we have every reason to, to understand that God is forgiven. I mean, that God is actually enjoying us even in our weakness, even before we've grown out of the thing we stumbled in. I mean, before our character is even different, we set our heart against it and God's enjoyment is towards us. Now, some people abuse this message and they, around IHOP, we've said it for years. God loves me. I like to say the word enjoys. God enjoys us even in our weakness. And some don't have the idea of after I repent, they don't put that element. God loves you whether you repent or not. But God has a different emotion besides loving you. He actually enjoys you while you're growing. He doesn't just enjoy you after you grow. He enjoys you every step of the way when our hearts are sincere before him. He enjoys us. Let's go to page three. Spiritual immaturity is not the same thing as rebellion. Spiritual immaturity is not the same as being rebellious. It's like legalism and discipline. They can have the same external look but be totally different at the heart level. Rebellion and immaturity look the same sometimes. Sometimes an immature believer who's totally sincere for God is doing the same thing that a rebellious person is doing, just by outwardly. But the heart is very different. It's just like legalism and discipline, spirit-led discipline or spirit-empowered discipline. God's looking at the heart. Rebellion is a heart response that persistently says no to God. No, I don't want to do it. I'm not going to do it. Rebellion has no immediate plans to obey. They're thinking of ways to sin more. All of us, or certainly most of us in this room, know what it means to sin and then immediately plan to obey in that area we've sinned. Now we also know what it means not to follow through in the obedience entirely. But then when we don't follow through, we actually re-sign up to war against that area of sin and we recommit and make plans to obey. That is sincerity. And the Lord enjoys you each step of the way with your sincerity. It's a beautiful thing to understand this because when you understand it, you run to him instead of from him in your weakness. Paragraph B, the spiritually immature, which is all of us. And you get the man or the woman says, I'm not spiritually mature. Well, then by what standard are you measuring? If you're measuring it by, you know, the person, a couple of people in the room, okay, maybe you're not. But if you're measuring it by the mandate to be perfect, even as your heavenly father's perfect, well, I tell you that, that qualifies me for immaturity right there. The spiritually immature sincerely seek to obey Jesus in every area of their life that the Holy Spirit shines light on. That's key because there's areas of your life. The Holy Spirit is not speaking to you about right now. And you don't even think about obeying that or it's not even, it doesn't cross our mind until the spirit touches us. There's areas about our speech. There's areas about the way we spend time. There's areas about the way we posture our heart towards others. There's all kinds of inward areas. The spirit is only talking a little bit to us, but as the years unfold, he'll talk more and more and more. And it's only years later that you begin to understand how much he wasn't saying to you in the early years when you thought, man, I have it all. The repentance we have is sincere, even when it's weak and flawed. Our sincere repentance, here's how we express sincere repentance. We quickly renew our war against the area we send in. We send, we quickly renew our war against it. We set our heart against it. I mean that very moment. No, this is not where I'm going. I know I just went there a minute ago. This is not where I'm going. And it's sincere and it's, it's dear to God. Sincere repentance is not the same thing as sinless perfection. And some groups that are really into holiness confuse sincere repentance with the attainment of victory. Beloved, we are sincere long before we attain victory in our, in our, in our character in a substantial way. The Holy Spirit convicts us, that's number one. We make the decision in sincerity, that's number two. And then we, we get more and more attainment in our character of obedience, number three. But we're convicted. I mean, we're repenting long before there's full mature fruit in that area of our life. And the point I'm saying is that the point, reason this is critical is that God doesn't just begin to enjoy us when we attain victory. He enjoys us each step of the way. And this is as much a part of the grace message as the, as the, as the earnest cry to repent. See, I'm not interested in just lifting the standard of we have to be sincere without repentance. It's not real. I also want to lift the standard that God has provided a way for us. And he's, his heart is burning with love for us. I want to lift the standard on both sides, but I don't want to lift one standard without the others. What I have seen sometimes over the years that I hop is some lift the standard of what Jesus did on the cross and God's heart for us, but they don't lift the standard of the need to repent and to give themselves fully to it. So it's an, it's not, it's not a true message. And I've seen others lift the standard of holiness, but they don't lift the standard of God's graciousness and God's tenderness taught to us in the process. And that's, that's not a true message either. Both of them have to be lifted together. Paragraph C. I might have the worship team just get ready and come up in just a moment here. God does not confuse our spiritual immaturity with rebellion. He does not confuse immaturity with rebellion. We confuse it in our own life and then we get condemned or we confuse it in the life of somebody else. And then we judge them in an inappropriate way. We call them false. When the truth is they're just in there, they're just immature. We look at them and go, they're just, they're not even real. And the Lord would whisper, yes, they are real. They are sincere. They're just not mature. So we end up in judgmentalism. If we do this towards others, we can't see the level of their sincerity. And we write them off as rebellious. That is a disastrous judgment, especially I've seen over the years. If leaders do that to young people in a church, they don't have to be young people. It could be anybody. If they misread this and call somebody rebellious, which in truth, they are just immature. That is a disastrous negative impact on their spirit. But the same is true in the evaluation of our own lives. When we are immature, we are not, that doesn't mean we're rebellious because the Lord judges rebellion and the Lord draws with tenderness that which is immature or those who are immature. He is tender towards the immature and he has judgment to the persistent rebellion. Very different response. It's critical that we get this right. I've used the same analogy for years. In the Old Testament, they distinguish between the clean and the unclean animals according to the Old Testament ritual laws because they would offer them to the Lord. And the swine or the pigs were unclean and the sheep were clean. And my point is this, both the pigs and the swine, they're the same, both the pigs and the sheep, both of them get their feet stuck in the mud. So the rancher might go out to his ranch and he sees two animals stuck in the mud. Now the pigs, you get them out of the mud, you look one way, they dive right back in the mud. They're looking for mud holes. You get them free from a mud hole, they start, you know, searching the internet for the next mud hole. But the sheep, their feet are stuck in the mud and the sheep are kicking and trying to get out, but they can't get out. And the shepherd frees them. They're not trying to get back in the mud. They will get in the mud again, but they don't like the mud. They don't feel comfortable in the mud. It's not what they're after. And there's many people, they are sheep, but they feel like swine or they're being ridden off as swine. The truth is, they're in the mud, it's true, but they don't want to stay in the mud. They're trying to get out of it. Paragraph D. We're just going to do D and E and end with that, just for the worship team's sake. I mean, so they can get ready here. No, no, no, not the subject matter for them. If you wouldn't have left, I wouldn't have got it. I meant so they can get ready. That was purely accidental. Okay. Struggling in weakness, catch this, paragraph D. Struggling in weakness is not the same thing as being a hopeless hypocrite. Our weak love, I love this, our weak love is not false love because it's weak love. Weak love for Jesus is still true. It's just weak. It's not false. A hypocrite, we have that, we've heard it said that a hypocrite says one thing and does another thing. That's not exactly the best definition of a hypocrite. A person who says one thing and does another thing. All of us say one thing and do another thing. All of us say love the Lord your God with all your heart, and we don't do it fully. So it didn't, and by that definition, everybody that aspires to anything, if they come up short, they're a hypocrite. That's not really what, that's not what a hypocrite is. A hypocrite is somebody who says one thing, but they don't seek it at the heart level. They don't seek to do it. You are not a hypocrite because you, you, you proclaim love God and you come up short. As long as in your heart, you're trying to love God with all of your heart. That's what you're aiming for. You're striving for that in the Luke 13 24 sense. So here's the question. It's the issue of our identity with God, because you're a genuine lover of God. You are a genuine lover of God, even while you're struggling. And the question is this, I hope the answer is obvious. Are you a slave of sin who struggles to love God? Or are you a lover of God who is struggling with sin? And maybe you think, well, what? Sounds like the same thing. No. The way that you view yourself, are you mostly a slave of sin that is occasionally struggling to love God? Is your core identity somebody that's defiant towards God, that God is disconnected, that God does not have a relationship with, and occasionally you struggle to, to do some right things? Or at the core of your being, are you a lover of God? This is who I am. This is what I want to do. This is what my life's about. But you still struggle with sin. And the vast majority of you in this room, you are lovers of God who are struggling with sin. You're not mostly slaves to sin, who occasionally give a little bit of effort to love God. It's very opposite. You are genuine lovers of God. Your love is immature. You struggle with sin, but that's the core reality. That's the dream of your heart, is to be a lover of God. That's, that's what you're living for. Amen. Let's have the worship team come up now. That was a, that was an accident. If they wouldn't have laughed, I wouldn't even have got it. So now I just blamed it on you. Let me see, page one, take responsibility for. Let's stand. For more free downloads from Mike Bickle, please visit MikeBickle.com.