Mike Bickle emphasizes the profound significance of Romans 3:21-31 as the legal foundation for understanding salvation and experiencing God's love. He explains that through a divine legal exchange, Jesus took on our guilt, allowing us to receive His righteousness and enjoy a relationship with God. Bickle stresses that God's love is not based on our actions but on His nature and the completed work of Christ, urging believers to embrace their identity as loved and accepted by God. He encourages the congregation to actively engage with these truths, using them to combat feelings of condemnation and insecurity in their spiritual lives.

I have a handout here that probably I won't get very far on like normal, but the idea is that you can study it on your own, and you can read through it, but we'll get a little bit of it. And the reason I'm looking at this is that these three verses, of these ten verses in Romans 3, I want you to identify them, to mark them in your mind as the clearest statement in the whole Bible, in terms of what our salvation, how our salvation happened. Let's put it that way. It's the clearest statement, Romans 3, 21 to 31. This is not a kind of just one of those passages. This is absolutely critical to understanding salvation. And the way that I would describe these ten verses is, it is the legal foundation of why we can experience the love of God. I want to say that again. It's the legal foundation. It's the legal framework as to why you and I can experience the love of God. Now what I mean by the legal framework or foundation, that it's what happened in the court of heaven, in that legal exchange between the Father and the Son. There was a legal exchange in the court of heaven between the Father and the Son. The Son, the innocent one, became guilty, so that you and I, the guilty ones, could become innocent. So the Son steps in our place, takes the judgment for us, and then offers His blood to the Father as our payment, our ransom, so you and I are free, and you and I get His righteousness. We receive it. It was a legal exchange that took place. Now that legal exchange in the throne of, in the courtroom of heaven, is the reason why we can be assured that we can experience the love of God from now to all of eternity. We can have the assurance that there is nothing that gets in the way of God's heart offering Himself fully to us, because of this legal exchange. Now when you read these 10 verses, because Paul is giving the legal framework of what happened in the courtroom of heaven, you might, you know, look at it, read it a few times, and not quite get it all. But I want to encourage you to work through that passage, and I've got, I broke down a few of the verses here in the handout. Again, we probably won't get to them all. Now, understanding this legal framework is, is essential. God gives us His love. There's two big reasons God gives us His love. Number one, it's based on His own personality. He's filled with love. God lets us experience His love, because He's a God of love. He's filled with love. It's based on His emotions of love. But that's not all. It's not enough that the God of love wants to give love to us, and us to experience it. He has to do it in the right way. God doesn't just overlook sin. He pays for it. And that's what Paul's going to develop here in Romans 3, that God didn't just say, you know what, I'm so loving, I'm just gonna forget the idea. They made a mess of things, and I'm just gonna overlook it and start from scratch. No. That the God of love, He's a hundred percent love, but He's also a hundred percent just. And God never suspends one attribute to exercise another. God never suspends His justice to show His love. He never suspends His love to show His justice. There's never a contradiction in His personality when He expresses Himself. So God has found a way to show perfect love and perfect justice with no contradiction. So you and I can be confident that God loves us, which I like to use the phrase, instead of God loves us, I like to use the phrase He enjoys us. And when I say that God enjoys us, what I mean is He loves us, but we have that practical feeling that He's smiling at us as people. He looks at our personhood as individuals, and He loves us as His children. He really does enjoy us. And so the reason we can have confidence that He loves us, i.e. enjoys us, is because He is a God of love, and He did the legal work that He's a God of justice, and He forgave us based upon a legal transaction that paid for our debt. Not just overlooked it, but actually paid for it. And because God is a just God, He never ever causes anyone to pay the same debt twice. Because Jesus paid our debt, if we had to pay for it, that would be injustice. God never has a debt paid for by one, and then charges the other with the same debt. Once the debt is paid for, it's paid for forever, and everyone is free that was related to that debt. And so God, He gives us His love, because He's loving, based on who He is, but also because of the legal transaction that happened between the Father and the Son. Now in Romans chapter 3, these 10 verses that I want you to become familiar with, one of the reasons why we're even looking at it now, because we've been looking at Romans 6, the last number of sessions, and Romans 6 is that famous chapter that describes how to walk free from addictions, free from fear, free from sin in our, in our personal, in our personal lives. And Romans 6 is what we've been looking at. But Romans 6, the description of what's involved in walking free from sin, is based on the knowledge of what happened in Romans 3. Meaning we'll never be able to walk in the freedom of Romans 6 without having the confidence that we are enjoyed by God that's described in Romans 3. Now when Romans 3 talks about this, this idea of, I mean, God's love, the terms that Paul uses, two of the very important terms that he uses, actually in Romans 3, 4, and 5, he uses them over, and over, and over in chapter Romans 3, 4, and 5. Because Romans 3, 4, and 5, they all go together. Because Romans 3, the passage we're looking at, these 10 verses, they introduce the, the theme of the righteousness of God. And then throughout chapter 4 and 5, Paul develops it. Now the two, the two words, or phrases that Paul uses the most is the word righteousness. We receive the righteousness of God, or justified. We have been justified. Now in a practical sense, in terms of our everyday life, they boil down to meaning the same thing. Now technically there are some subtle distinctions, but in terms of our everyday life, to receive the righteousness of God, or to be justified by God, practically in our everyday life means the same thing. Now those are the two main phrases that are used in these 10 critical verses, Romans 3, 21 to 31, the ones I really want you to identify and get a hold of. But they're also the two key phrases throughout all of Romans 3, 4, and 5, the entire three chapters. Now when we see the words, righteousness, the righteousness of God, or we have been justified, again they practically mean the same thing in terms of our living, our experience. What I want you to see when you see the words justified, or righteousness of God, I want you to put the words in there, loved by God. When it says, right here you can look at it in Romans 3, 21, that the righteousness of God, apart from the law, apart from earning it, has been revealed, has been made available to you and I. That's what it means. Romans 3, 21, a grand statement. The righteousness of God, apart from the law, meaning apart from earning it, is made available. It's been revealed. It's within reach for you to receive it. But instead of putting the word righteousness every time, put the love of God. It's now available without us earning it. Or you could put another word in there. The indwelling Spirit is now, apart from the law, apart from earning it, it's ours. It's been revealed. Or you can put the phrase, the word or phrase, the authority of Jesus. Because when Paul says righteousness, he's describing all the benefits that go along with receiving the righteousness of God. And those benefits are God enjoys us and loves us. The Spirit indwells us. We have the authority of Jesus's name. We are entrusted with authority. So when I read these passages, Romans 3, verse 21 to 31, when I say the righteousness of God is revealed, I put the love of God is revealed. I put that word love. Or the authority of God is revealed, apart from earning it. So I make it personal to me and I put those other words in so I can feel the power of it in a practical way for my everyday life. So I want to encourage you again, those three words or phrases, whenever you see righteousness of God, Romans 3 to 5, or this idea of being justified, put receiving the love of God or being enjoyed by God. Or being indwelt by the Holy Spirit. The ability to have communion with God in your inner man. You receive that without earning it. You were given this amazing ability to communicate with God by the indwelling Spirit without ever earning it. I mean this is a glorious thing. Now these ten verses, I would encourage you to use them. Many believers are technically familiar with these phrases, I mean these ten verses. Meaning, you could go to them and say, hey do you know Romans 3, 21 to 31? They might go, yeah that's that famous passage about righteousness. Yeah I've read it. I kind of understand it. But they don't ever use it. They don't activate it in their own life. It's not enough to underline it in your Bible and to kind of get excited occasionally. We need to draw on this in reality, time after time, day after day. That the righteousness of God, apart from earning it, is available to us. The indwelling Spirit, the authority to use the name of Jesus, is ours without earning it. Put your name and put those phrases in there and use them. There's a passage in Ephesians 6, verse 16, I'll just mention it to you, where Paul describes that the devil attacks us like flaming missiles. These flaming missiles from, from Satan's kingdom, they strike our heart or they strike our body, or they strike our relationships, or they strike our finances, they strike our ministry. These flaming missiles come to disrupt our life. But let's talk about the flaming missiles for a moment, just as they touch our emotions. Here's how it works. The enemy sends a demon to strike you. It's like a flaming missile. You don't see the demon, but you feel the power of it. And what you feel is a heightened negative emotion. Just kind of suddenly, randomly, or maybe somebody says something, but you, or some event happens, maybe it's connected to what somebody said or something happened, but you have this exaggerated emotion. I mean it's this heightened negative feeling of rejection, of despair, of depression, of just wanting to quit, just give up and give in. This heightened negative emotion. It's like, ah! And what most believers do is they just ride the storm out. They grit their teeth and they hang in there for a few hours or a few days until that emotion lifts. And then you talk to them and say, hey how was your day yesterday? Oh, I was in such a funk. It was weird. I don't know. I just got, my brain, you know, got messed up somehow. What happened is you were struck with a flaming missile. It's a demon. It really is true. And Paul said in Ephesians 6.16, you can quench these flaming missiles. You can stop them. You don't have to ride out a three-hour or three-day heightened negative emotional funk just to kind of let the storm blow over. We can actually take the Word of God. This is how you do it. By simply speaking the Word of God against these emotions, that flaming missile will be quenched. It says in the New King James, the other translation says you will extinguish that flaming missile, which means the negative emotion will dissipate. It will go away. Because it's not just bad information that somebody said something or somebody did something. It really is the combination of somebody saying or doing something, but a demon touching your emotion with a flaming missile. Now the reason I'm saying that is that we're using these ten verses. I want to point them out. These are some of the choice truths in the whole Word of God in ten verses, one after the other. Paul lays out this concept of the love of God again. He puts it in the legal language, but it boils down to receiving the love of God. That's what it means. And you, I want to encourage you to read over those ten verses many, many times. I mean I've poured over them many times over the years. But more than read over them, become familiar with them. Find the two or three phrases that you really kind of take hold of, and make them a part of your spiritual arsenal. Meaning, when the enemy comes and strikes your heart with these heightened negative emotions, instead of just bearing the storm where, I mean kind of riding out the storm, bearing this, say, it is written, say, the righteousness of God. Romans 3 21. It is written, the righteousness of God, without earning it, has been revealed, or has been made available, is another way to say that. So when the enemy comes against you with, you failed, you stumbled, you sinned, you repented of it. You don't like what you did, but you did it anyway. We've all experienced that many, many times. We repent of it. Our repentance is sincere. Our repentance is flawed. It's weak, but it's still sincere. I mean we really mean we don't want to do it. History says many times we do it again. But we really have set our heart against it, and we're not happy about it. We're not trying to find ways to do it again. We stumble in it, and it grieves us, and it's real. Then the enemy comes with this heightened emotion, this flaming missile of condemnation, and he tells us, you are a fake. You are disqualified. God is finished with you. You're not cut out for Christianity. You're never going to get victory. And you have this dreadful negative emotion. I am never going to get victory. God is never going to be happy with me. I can't make this thing work called Christianity. You know what? I think maybe it's just not for me. Beloved, that's a flaming missile. That's condemnation. There's a spirit behind condemnation. It's not just a negative feeling. Sometimes that's all it is. But many times there's a spirit working behind it to create a despair that makes it seem impossible for you to go forward. I mean, who wants to go forward? If you think, I got 20, 40, 50, 80 more years to go. Who knows? And God's going to be mad at me every single day for the next 50 years. Like, ah! What a horrible way to live. Beloved, that's a flaming missile. That's a spirit of condemnation touching your heart. And instead of riding out the storm and hoping it lifts in a few days, you know, until maybe you get kind of wake up one day you feel encouraged like, ah! I feel like I'm in a better mood today. Rather than riding the storm out, the better way to do it is speak the Word of God against that missile. Romans 321. It is written, the righteousness of God has been revealed. It's been made available. The righteousness of God is within reach in my life. I can receive it as a free gift. And it's without, it's apart from the works of the law, which means without anybody earning it, I can receive it. That's what we say. That's what's going on here. Now, we need to draw on these truths of Romans 3. We need to cultivate this thing called confidence in the love of God. I believe the most important truth in the Bible for our everyday life is to, is to have confidence that God likes us. And what I mean by that, He enjoys us, even in our weakness. If we can understand God's heart of love and the legal transaction that took place at the throne, if we can understand those two things, we can get confidence in our heart. Beloved, it will change our lives dramatically. A believer that has cultivated confidence in the love of God, that God enjoys them, even in their weakness, they live very, very differently than a believer who does not have this. Now over the 30 plus years of ministry I've been in, I have found most believers never ever get rooted in this idea that God enjoys them. And they maybe get it for a few weeks or a few months, but after some time it kind of lifts. They get distracted. They lose sight of it. The enemy keeps bombarding them when they fail with condemnation, and they lose sight of it, and they let go of it. But I want to tell you, this is absolutely critical for your life. To lay hold of this truth that God enjoys you, even in your weakness, because He's a God of love. He is the fountain of love. It's His personality, but it's more than that. He has done the legal work. There has been a transaction at the throne of God, at the court of heaven, in which your debt has been paid. And you have received the righteousness of God. The full righteousness of God has been given you as a gift. Whether you feel it or not, it's yours. And when God sees you, He looks at you with this garment of Jesus's righteousness on. And when He sees you, He looks at you in the same favor that He looks at His Son, that He looks at Jesus in His humanity. Now we know Jesus is fully God, but He's also fully man. And whatever favor Jesus has in His position before God as a man, that's the favor every one of us receive the day we're born again. Now we get a hold of that, and our spirit gets confident in love. You know, if you look at a thousand believers over the years, out of a thousand, probably five of them really get a hold of this, or ten. I mean, the numbers are so small in terms of my observation over the years. And hopefully the numbers are better than that. But it's only a small number that lay hold of this. Most people, they never ever stay with this. And they go on year after year. When they struggle, they go into that funk for a while. They run from God instead of running to God when they sin. When they sin, they go, ah! And they go hide until the negative emotion lifts. Then they come out of hiding and go, hi God, it's me! And they worship. Now when, if we feel dirty, we live dirty. If we feel clean in God's sight, beloved, we will live far cleaner if we feel clean in His sight. If we feel that He actually enjoys us, that He's actually smiling at us while we're growing, not just after we grow, while we grow, if we feel He enjoys us, we feel clean. We feel the righteousness of Christ has been given to us. I mean, we don't necessarily feel that, but we feel the emotion because we believe that. And when we sin, we repent. We can go right to Father. I mean, within the hour. First-class citizens stand before Him. Here I am. Your beloved. Your favorite one. Here I am. And we can feel that it's real. Now every believer is God's favorite one. It's true. Every believer can stand before God as His favorite one because God is eternal love. He says He loves us. He loves us in the same way He loves Jesus. Now that just seems inconceivable, John 17, 23. But it's true. And if He loves me as much as He loves Jesus, I guarantee you I'm His favorite one. But so are you. But when we sin, instead of groveling in the ground, on the dirt for a while, putting ourselves in this self-imposed, spiritual probation, so to speak. I mean, here's what happens typically. A person falls into sin, and they struggle, and they get confused by it, by what's happening. And they want to grovel in the dirt for a while. And, oh God, beat me up times ten. Make me pay. I want to show you how much pain I have. How much, how horrible this is. I'm not even going to ask you for favor. I'm just going to suffer for a while. So when you look at me, you will say, well, He really did suffer. I might as well let Him off the hook. Look how sincere He is, and how much He suffered. Now, just to save you up time, God doesn't look at it that way. That's what the devil's telling us. The devil wants us, in some self-imposed probation, to put ourselves in the penalty box. Until we kind of suffer a while, or we show that we're so sincere, then we get out of the penalty box. Then we can stand before Father, in confidence, as first-class citizens of the kingdom. Beloved, you can stand with confidence, as a first-class citizen, within the hour. I mean, literally the minute. I'll give you a minute to kind of get your head around. You just blew it. You're troubled. So I'll give you a few minutes to kind of get around that. But within the hour, you need to be standing there, in the confidence of a first-class citizen. I am your beloved. I am the one that you love. I have the gift of righteousness. You are the God of love. All the legal work has been done. I stand here with nothing between us. Beloved, there is nothing between you and the heart of God. Nothing. If there is, it's in our head. It's in our religious thinking. It's not in His mind. It's in our mind. If we repent of that sin, we declare war on it. I mean, even though we stumble again, but we really declare war on it. We mean it. Our repentance is sincere. It's weak. It's flawed. But it is sincere. Beloved, you can stand in the confidence that you're clean. The confidence He enjoys you. And then you run to God, instead of from God. And again, you feel clean, you'll live clean. You feel dirty before God, you'll live dirty because of despair. Like, why try? I am such a mess. I am in so much pain. I don't even want to try to do this. I'd rather just be just horrible and just be so bad, there's no chance that I'm gonna make it just to get the drama over. A lot of people feel that way. What happens is the enemy comes, and he confuses us as to what humility is. I can tell we're not gonna get very far on this handout, but that's for you to study on your own. The enemy comes, and he confuses us as to what humility is. What humility is, now this is tough. This is a tough definition of humility. Humility is freely receiving without being able to contribute anything. Now we kind of like that in theory, but in practice we don't really like that. Humility is to freely receive without being able to contribute anything that motivated God to love us. Now we would like it something like this. We'd like to sit at the table with God and say, God you're a lot more loving than I am, so let's do it this way. You get 90% of the credit for why you love me, but I would like to bring 10 measly percent to the relationship, and I would like to give you some reason why you're motivated to love me a little bit. That's mostly you, but I did bring a little bit of virtue into the relationship that made you go, wow, just 10%. You 90, me 10. You get the glory. I won't mention it to anybody, but I contributed a little bit to what motivated you to like me. And the Lord says, no. It's not true. I liked you when you hated me. I liked you when you had no interest in me at all. I couldn't enjoy you until you received it, but I did love you. God so loved the world. Then you received it, called born again. I began to enjoy you. You haven't done anything but say yes to the free gift. That's good, but from that day forward, could I bring a little bit to the relationship that contributes to what motivates you to love me? The answer is no. That pride, religious pride, wants to earn a little bit, contribute a little bit to why God is motivated. God is motivated to love us completely based on who He is and what His Son did. And when we settle that, it really does something powerful in our spirit. And as we're gonna, by the grace of God, lead these many young people, most of the people that are getting saved in this outreach in the next few weeks, these 12 different outreach events that we're participating in, most of them will be 12, 13, 14. And you're 20 years old. You're one of the old guys. They'll look at you and go, man, look at that old guy. That's what they're gonna think when they look at you. And so don't say, well, I'm just a little spiritual wimp, you know, I'm just an intern. No. You're old enough to be a spiritual mom and dad to a 12 year old. And so you're gonna start discipling them, even if you get two or three of them, even if it's unofficial. And so you're thinking, wow, I never thought of discipling somebody. Well, that's what we're doing right now. We're training you how to. The first thing you're going to do is show them from the Bible, Bible verses that prove to them that they could have confidence that God enjoys them. These little 12 year olds, they become confident that God enjoys them. It will do something in their spirit. Many of them, they're from all kinds of broken homes and relationships and situations. They've never had anyone who enjoyed them in a consistent way. This news will be shocking in a good way to them. It will be such good news. And the Lord's going to use you to convince them of it. But you'll never convince them of it more than you're convinced of it for your own life. So this is Discipleship 101. Now, the enemy comes and he wants to convince us. He wants to convince us that humility is groveling in the dirt, showing God how sincere we are and how much pain we have because of our failure. That is not humility. Humility is receiving the fullness of what he says, knowing you didn't contribute anything in terms of the motivation as to why God loves you. And it's just, you just take it a hundred percent to zero. You take it all. You enjoy it. He knows and you know it was a hundred percent to zero. And we say, thank you. I love being loved so perfectly. And the Lord is so satisfied if we will relate to him on that basis. So the enemy comes and he tells us, he convinces us, that our failure is stronger than the blood of Jesus. Now he doesn't say it just that way. But you do that one thing, even as a believer. And you think, I can't get over that. I mean this is, this wasn't bad. This was double, triple bad. I mean this isn't like that one guy who gave the testimony. It's way worse than that. And we get convinced that our sin is actually stronger than his blood. Now we don't actually think of it exactly in that language, but that's what it comes down to. We draw back, put ourselves in spiritual probation. We put ourselves in the penalty box for a few days, weeks, or months, to prove to God how sincere we are and how much we're suffering. On the point of despair, of giving up, and the Lord says, why don't you just come. Take my free and full forgiveness. Be a first-class citizen. Within the hour, push the lead on your sin. And know that you are the beloved of God. You are my favorite. And just have confidence with me right now. The guy goes, no, no, I really messed up. No, I'm gonna hold back. It is spiritual pride to assume you can redo a sin that's stronger than the blood of Jesus. The guy goes, I really messed up. And it feels so good to feel so bad to some people. It just feels so right. Somewhere we're evening the score. If we feel real bad, God will go, oh, since you feel so bad, that's not how God relates to us. Beloved, you can't do anything, any sin that's stronger than the blood of Jesus. If you will repent of it, the blood of Jesus will cover it. Not only does He cover it, it's out of the conversation between you and Him forever. Once He covers it, you know, a month later, Lord, you know that thing, just to bring it up one more time, just to tell you again, just in case, would you forgive me? He says, I don't want it in the conversation. I don't want it in the dialogue. What I want in the dialogue is how I feel about you and the way I see you. I know, but just in case, would you forgive me one more time? I don't want this in the conversation material with this, is what the Lord would say. Because if you're in this vein of conversation, the communication lines are so cluttered up with our religious thinking, trying to earn or grovel or show God how sincere we are. The communication lines are so cluttered, we can't hear what's on His heart to give us. And what's on His heart to give us is the communication of how He feels about us. And He wants us to feel what He feels and to be a part of this great flow of love between His heart and our heart. So, He says, there is no sin you can do that's stronger than the one. Just accept what I give you. Accept it. Accept what Romans 3, 21 to 31, which we're not going to look at tonight, but you do get the notes to read. Accept it. Don't try to negotiate with God. Don't try to sit at the table to, to somewhere contribute to the process of motivating God to enjoy you. You cannot motivate God to love you. His motivation is beyond you. It's outside of you. It's in Him. And when that settles in us, something powerful happens on the inside of us. But our religious pride doesn't like that, because most people don't think of themselves as having religious pride. If you ask almost anybody, they think, matter of fact, pride is one of those things that you never think you have when you have it. It's like deception. If you're deceived, it doesn't feel like deception. But pride is like that way. You don't perceive it when you have it. But religious pride is all through the body of Christ. It's wanting to relate to God on our terms, not on His terms, because we want to contribute to the motivation of why He has favor towards us. God says, I won't let you relate to me on your terms. And I won't let you contribute to what motivates me to love you, because you can't. It's impossible, because I loved you when you hated me. It's already a done deal. And my son paid the price for you. So what we want to do, we want to motivate God, because we haven't thought it all the way through, but somewhere in our thinking, God is, lacks a little bit of motivation for us. He looks at us. He's pretty motivated to love us, but not quite entirely motivated. Pretty motivated, but not a hundred percent. So we grovel, get on the ground, Oh God, please forgive me. I'll suffer. I won't ask anything hard. I'll just be miserable for a while. Maybe that will fill in the missing gap that will motivate Him. That is absolute confusion and foolishness. And the Lord says, I don't want that a part of our relationship. I want you to relate to me based on who I am and what my son did. Now, what the enemy also wants us to do, he wants us to relate to God on the basis of our spiritual victory. He wants us to relate to God on the basis of our spiritual victory. Meaning, okay God, you love us because you're loving, and you love us because of the legal transaction between you and Jesus on the cross, that was presented at the, at the court of heaven. You love us because you're loving, and because of the legal transaction. Okay, good. And the Lord says, that's it. Yeah, but the enemy wants us to get to relate to God based on our spiritual disciplines or our spiritual maturity of the last few weeks or months. So if we're doing good in our spiritual disciplines, then we feel better in our relationship with God. We feel more confident that He enjoys us. If we're doing bad in our spiritual disciplines, we put ourselves in the penalty box. We live in spiritual probation for a while, and the Lord says, no, I don't want you relating to me based on your spiritual disciplines. It's not how good you have been the last few weeks or few months. Now the spiritual disciplines, I'll just give you a few of them. You know what they are. I'll just give you Matthew 6. The bunch of them are, five main ones are laid out there. Serving, choosing godliness, prayer, fasting, blessing our enemies, reading the Word. Those things, those spiritual disciplines, that enrich our life before God. Now what happens is that the spiritual disciplines, they do not cause God to enjoy you more. They enable you to enjoy God more. It's very different. It's really different. Because people are real confused about grace and spiritual discipline and legalism. They get all mixed up. They get real fuzzy thinking about it. And I want to, I want to say this again. When you pray fast, give your money, choose godliness, bless your enemies, serve in secret with nobody seeing, you're doing it as an act of righteousness. That's all part of our spiritual disciplines. Now when we do spiritual disciplines, we embrace them, it doesn't cause God to wake up and go wow, in that case, I do love you. You know, you were right. I did lack a little motivation, but with your stellar virtue, I am now fully motivated. I know that's silly, but that's how we think. And so, when our spiritual disciplines are good, we feel confidence. When our spiritual disciplines are lacking, we kind of get over in the shadows and we kind of get out of God's way for a while, till we clean things up. I want to say this again. Spiritual disciplines, they do not cause God to enjoy us more. They position us to enjoy God more. They increase our ability. When I live in prayer and fasting and choosing righteousness, it positions myself before a fully motivated God. He's already fully motivated to love me. But it positions me to increase my ability to feel it more. It increases my ability to understand His Word more. It increases my ability to partner with Him. It increases my ability to see my emotions transformed. So spiritual disciplines are critical. But we have to understand them. The spiritual disciplines, they don't cause the grace of God to be given to you. They are a response to the grace of God that's already been given to you. I want to say that again. We live in prayer and fasting and giving and blessing our enemies and serving and these things, not to cause God to be motivated to love us, but because He already does. It's a response to grace, not the cause of grace. Now what some people do, because there's so much confusion in the body of Christ about spiritual disciplines, people put spiritual disciplines in contrast to the grace of God. So if you're really into grace, you have no discipline. No, no. It's not a contrast between you either pick one or the other. You have them both. It's an issue of having them in the right sequence in your thinking. It's not a matter of if you're really into grace, you don't do discipline, or if you're really into discipline, you're not into grace. No. That's completely a confused equation. What it is, spiritual disciplines, when you engage in them to try to motivate God to love you, that's legalism. If you're praying and fasting to motivate God, that's legalism. If you're praying and fasting because you know God's already motivated, then that is the disciplines of the grace of God. They are positioning you to increase more and more in your ability to experience His presence. So I don't pray and fast to motivate God. I pray and fast because He's already motivated. But I do pray and fast because I want to experience more. I want my emotions transformed more. I want to feel more. I want deeper partnership with His heart. I want to live in greater unity with Him. So I pray and fast to line up more, so I can feel more, because I know He's already so motivated to love me. So don't let anybody come and say, if you're really into grace, don't pray and fast. No. Again, that's complete confusion. You fast and pray as a response to grace, not as the cause to motivate God to give us grace. Now there's that one guy, there's plenty of them, they pray and fast to motivate God, to love them. That is legalism. But all prayer and fasting isn't done with that spirit. If you're doing it in that spirit to motivate God to love you, that is legalism. If you do it because you know He's already loves you, then that's called spiritual discipline. And it really matters that we embrace these. God enjoys us as His children. He enjoys us as His children based on who He is. He enjoys us as children based on who He is. But the fact that God enjoys us as children doesn't mean He agrees with every decision we make. See, God enjoys us as a person. He enjoys your personhood. He enjoys who you are as an individual, as His child. That doesn't mean He agrees with all your decisions. He can enjoy you without agreeing with everything you do. Because when God corrects us, that doesn't mean He rejects us. Now some people, they think enjoyment means agreement with everything we do. No, no. God disagrees with many things we do, but enjoys us as a person. Now there's a difference between God enjoying us as a person and entrusting more responsibility to us. Now He goes, I enjoy you perfectly, motivated by myself, because I'm a God of love, and I've done the legal transactions with my son. I fully enjoy you as my son, as my child. But because I don't agree with your decisions, I'm not going to entrust as much to you. And it's not because I don't love you. It's because if I give you more, it won't help the family. It will hurt the family, actually. It will hurt you and the family. So when we pray and fast, we're not earning more from God. We're positioning ourselves to receive, to experience more, so that we can get our emotions transformed, because we know that He loves us. And we distinguish between God enjoying us as His children, and God entrusting more to us, because He agrees with our decisions. I want to live with a full agreement. I want God to fully agree with my decisions. I don't want Him only to love me of His own motivations, because I'm His child. I want Him to actually agree with my decisions, and to entrust more to me, because my decisions are in agreement with Him. So He entrusts more to us, based on our decisions in agreement, but He loves us based on who He is and what His Son did. And so we don't—we can be secure that we're loved, but we're still—we're still eager to be transformed, and we're still eager to fast and pray and to get in the way of the kingdom, so we can experience more and feel more. Amen. That's Romans 3. You can read the notes on your own. Let's stand. Or, maybe we'll just do them next week. Who knows? You know, that's the good thing about Sunday. It comes every seven days. I always need another handout, so keep it in your Bible. Let's just open our heart before the Lord. I didn't give a warning to the worship team. I was ending. I just say, Amen, and we're done. Let's just quiet our heart for a minute. The Lord wants to establish some of you tonight in this confidence that you're a—you're a first-class citizen of the kingdom. Though your life is weak, you're still a first-class citizen. He wants you to feel. You are His beloved. He wants you to feel His pleasure towards you. He doesn't agree with all your decisions, but He really likes you. Again, it's like the example of a—maybe a man and a woman. They have 10 kids. They have a whole bunch of kids. They love all 10 kids the same. I mean, they really love them with the same intensity, but maybe they only entrust the family wealth to two or three of them, or one or two of them, because of the quality of the decision-making. Maybe these parents say, you know, we're not going to trust the family wealth to all of them because their decisions—we're not agreeing with them, but we do love them with the same intensity. And I love—I so love that God loves us with the same intensity, but I want more than that. I want to be entrusted with a responsibility in the kingdom to be a blessing to the family. I want to use God's resource to bless the family. And so we do want to press in and break through on those issues, but the point I'm really focused on right now is feeling the reality that we have that intensity of love. It's equal. It's all ours. It's equal. The way that he loves Jesus is the way he loves us. The intensity he feels towards Jesus, John 17 23, this is the way he feels towards us. It's true. And if you've repented of that thing yesterday, or the day before, or the day before, he says, don't keep bringing it up. I don't want it in the conversation with, I want to talk to you about other things. I like you. I'm—I really, really do like you. Quit trying to make me like you. Accept it. I like you. I really do. Oh God, if you'll just let me grow—and I won't ask for anything hard, and I'll just shut up, won't bother you. Stop! I like you. Let's talk about me liking you, not about you getting me to like you. Let's change the conversation. So some of you tonight, you're saying, I want to change this conversation. I don't want to talk to God to motivate him to like me. I'm going to accept it that he does. I'm going to buy it, because he's a God of love, and because of the legal transaction that Romans 3 describes. Anyone in the room tonight, you're saying, I think that's me. I think I need to—I need a real breakthrough on this issue in my life. I really need a breakthrough. I don't think I have it all clear, but it feels good what you're saying. I don't have it all, but yes, I want to feel like a first-class citizen, and I'll kind of sort it all out later, but I want to feel that. I'm willing to believe it, and I'm willing to stop trying to motivate God, and just accept the truth of who He is in His heart, and what He did on the cross. If that's you, and you would like prayer, I want to invite you to come forward. Just stand before the Lord. Maybe somebody you've not walked with the Lord for a few years. You're in the kingdom, but you haven't walked with the Lord, and maybe somebody brought you tonight. You say, you know what? If God will take me back and really like me, if this is real, hey, I'm in. Or maybe somebody in the room, you're saying, I don't even have a relationship with the Lord. Can I have it tonight? Yes, it's simple. It's not a complicated thing. You say, Jesus, forgive me for my sin. I want to live under your leadership. That's really what faith and repentance is. I want to live under your leadership. I give my life to live under your leadership. Forgive me. You can pray that simple prayer. Jesus will actually touch you tonight. It's for real. You could be in the kingdom tonight. Maybe somebody brought you here, and you're not even in the kingdom. This is yours if you want it. But most in the room, you love Jesus, but you're spending your energies trying to motivate Him to like you, and He would like you to change the conversation and accept that He likes you, because of who He is and what He did. A perfect God would come and take my place. The stars, they don't move you. The waves can't undo you. The mountains in this thunder cannot steal your heart. This God who is holy, perfect in beauty, awesome in glory, is ravished by my heart. Lord, I can't understand this miracle grace. How a perfect God can come and take my place. Lord, I can't understand this miracle grace. How a perfect God can come and take my place. Lord, we take our stand before you. The stars, they don't move you. The waves can't undo you. The mountains in this thunder cannot steal your heart. There we are, Lord. We believe your heart, Lord. We believe your word. This God who is holy, perfect in beauty, awesome in glory, is ravished by my heart. Lord, I can't understand this miracle grace. How a perfect God can come and take my place. Lord, we take our stand before you. The stars, they don't move you. The mountains in this thunder cannot steal your heart. There we are, Lord. We believe your heart. How a perfect God can come and take my place. Don't you say, I say, I am here. Somehow my weakness has overwhelmed you. Somehow my weakness is stealing away your heart. Somehow my weakness has overwhelmed you. Has stolen away your heart. Praise your power, Lord. Let your love come. I say yes, Lord. I resist even more. I'm gonna let you love me, Jesus. I'm gonna let you love me, Jesus. I'm gonna let you love me, Jesus. I'm gonna let you love me, Jesus. I say yes to your heart. Yes to your word. Yes to the cross of Jesus. The peace is in your word, in your cross. I receive it. I believe it. I trust you, Jesus. I receive it. I receive, I receive, I believe the word you speak. I will receive what you say. I say yes. I say yes to what you speak over me, Lord. I say yes to what you speak over me. I say yes to what you speak over me.