There’s an interesting statement made in 1 John 3 that goes like this:  “If our conscience is clear, we can come to God with perfect assurance and trust.”

Two words that stand out there are conscience and perfect. If our conscience is clear (and whose is?) we can come to God with perfect assurance and trust. Maybe that’s the key, isn’t it – to learn to listen to our conscience, our inner voice; that part of us created in the image of God that allows us to be more than mere mortals.

I asked four questions this morning to help people get a sense of how much we live outside ourselves.  I asked:

1. Am I driven by the need to fix others?
2. Do I ignore my internal sensors, like my conscience?
3. Do I avoid disciplines aimed at long-term gains? Do I live on the basis of my emotions alone?
4. Do I assume I can go on this way indefinitely?

These are the ways in which we choose to live our lives on the outside of ourselves so we won’t have to face ourselves.  But until we face ourselves our conscience will never be clear and we will never attain the one thing we want more thank anything in life: perfect assurance and trust in God and His love, grace, and His promises.

Today we talked about learning to listen to our lives: to our motives, to our emotions, to our relationships around us, and to our inner voice – our spirit.

If you are a person overcome by hurry, worry, and speed; if you’re worn out at the end of every day, confused, or feel stuck, this talk is just for you.

Today @ The Gathering we continued with Step #9 in our series, “12 Steps Up.” It’s the step in AA that may be the hardest. And that is, to be willing to face up to the stupid things we’ve done, the people we’ve hurt, and try to make amends.

All of us have awakened with a case of “the stupids.”  You know what I’m talking about, a period of time when you do things or say things that you just can’t imagine that you have ever said or done.  But many times these lapses into times of weakness have caused consequences all out of proportion to the moment.

We talked about what you can do after dumb.  You can flee, you can fight, you can ignore it, and you can deny it.  But there is someplace in your life that if you’re going to grow up and be a healthy, emotional, intellectual, spiritual person you’re going to have to face up to the dumb things that you’ve done.

So we used the word FACE as an acronym for the four steps in facing up and making amends.

1. We’re going to have to fix what we can.
2. We’re going to accept what we can’t.
3. We’re going to concentrate on the changes we can make in our own life.
4. We expect that God will redeem what we’ve wrecked.

If you or someone you know is living with the consequences of bad decisions, this talk would be just the ticket to get you unstuck, and take you to a better place.

We talked about the four kinds of people who wound us: those who mean to, those who didn’t mean to, those who don’t care, and those who don’t even know that they did.

We talked about what Jesus taught about forgiveness; the two elements that are essential for forgiveness to happen.

But maybe the most important thing we talked about today was, what is the cost of unforgiveness, as well as the cost of forgiveness?

Forgiveness costs us two things we can live without, but evidently we don’t want to: our arrogance and our pride.  For me to not forgive those who have wounded me means I have to put myself in a superior position; that I would never stoop to hurting anyone the way I’ve been hurt.  While I hope that would be true, I certainly can’t guarantee it, because I do stupid things all the time.

What does forgiveness cost us? More than you’re willing to pay. I guarantee it.

It is true that religion can make you a better frog.  But only Jesus can turn frogs into princes and princesses.  And we become that as we act like the Lord we serve, and extend grace and forgiveness.

Today @ The Gathering we continued our summer series, 12 Steps Up. We’ve been talking about how messy people mature over time.

Today we talked about Step #7, Grow Up.  Growing up means I get out of the shallow end of the pool and begin to launch out into deeper things; into bigger, better, bolder things.  Instead of worrying about the small things that used to upset me and sidetrack me, I am now able to endure the stress and the strains of adulthood.

As we celebrate the 4^th of July today, remember that millions of people have sacrificed their lives so that we might be free.

Freedom isn’t cheap.  It costs.  And it’s aimed at something; particularly at the freedom from fear.  We don’t have to fear the government. We don’t have to fear being persecuted by our faith.  That freedom is also our responsibility to dream big dreams and to dare things that are beyond us in our childhood; to grow up and to begin to give our attention to big, serious adult things; things that change the world.

Whatever you do, don’t believe the lie that says one life can’t change the world. Don’t tell Abraham Lincoln that.  Don’t tell Martin Luther King, Jr. that.  Don’t tell others who have taken their gifts, talents, and opportunities and leveraged them for the benefit of others.

To truly change we have to believe that God has our best at heart.  Think about it.  When the Scriptures tell us that God predestined us,  He thought about us.  He foreknew us. He saw us long before we were born.  He knew what would happen to us.  He knew the failures, the stupid things we would get involved with.  And yet He still decided to say “Yes.”  For all the reasons he could have said “No” he said, “Yes.” So what is His plan?  It’s easy.  The Scriptures tell us that we be conformed to the image of His son.  What did Jesus look like?  Loving, gracious, happy, energetic, creative, sacrificial: all the things that make life worth living.

But to get them, we have to be changed.  The Scriptures say, “conformed.”  And you know that anything that requires being squeezed into another shape is going to be a little painful.  So today we talked about what God wants to take away, and what He wants to add. The most important things are the things He wants to add.  But we have to be ready; ready to let God take away and add to.  That takes courage.  Most of all it takes conversion.

Today we told you how to let God give you a converted heart.

Today @ The Gathering we continued our series, “12 Steps Up: How Messy People Mature.” We talked about the importance of relationships.  You were made and created for relationships. And yet our own woundedness has a way of getting in the way of bringing people in really close.

Today we talked about the fact that people who make life meaningful are also often the kind of people that make it messy.  So how do you find a better class of friend; someone who will come close and stay on the journey with you to not just healing, but figuring out just how good life can be?

We talked about what happens when a person does life alone.  They wind up as a victim: complaining, skape-goating, side-stepping, and asking other people to pity them.  And that’s not who you are.  God created you a winner, not a victim.  Winners are people who accept the responsibility for their own lives and behaviors and ask for accountability of other good people to live the life of their dreams.

Today we talked about those characteristics of the people you need to look for: the people who can shut up after you’ve told them a secret, the people who can stand up and show up; the people who can speak up and say “no” to you, the people who help lift you and spur you on to greatness, the people who can challenge you to do more than you think you can do.

Right now, stop, and list the five people in your inner circle who meet the qualities that I talked about today.  If you don’t have them, get on the search today.  And if you can’t find them after you’ve searched for them, here’s the secret: be these things to someone else and you’ll attract the right kind of person.

Today @ The Gathering we talked about Step #4 in the 12 Steps Up series: Lighten Up.  We talked about why we often carry around burdens that weigh us down, rob us of our joy, leave us feeling lethargic with no energy, and thinking that it’s just a physical problem not realizing it has a spiritual origin.

Today we talked about how to let go of things in your past; things inside that drive you, that often cause you to act in ways that are against your own self-interest.  Contrary to popular opinion, it is not the burden of an average day that robs you of your joy.  It’s carrying and dragging yesterday’s hurts and resentments along with tomorrow’s dreads and fears that crushes our souls.

In this talk today, we dealt with the things that drive us: things like unfulfilled promises, unfinished business, unrealized potential, uncelebrated service, unresolved anger, and unaccepted acceptance.  If you or someone you know is longing to look below the surface to understand how to clear away the clutter and the stuff that drag us down and keep us down, this talk is for you.

Here is the problem most people have with religion and spiritual things. They believe it’s just about believing certain things: “I believe certain things about God, certain truth statements about Jesus, certain confessions and admissions about my life and the lives of others.”  And they think that’s enough.  Believing is not enough. It has never been enough.  It will only make you miserable.  Believing stuff you don’t live out in the real world is just another weight.

So today we talked about lining our lives up – alignment.  We know what alignment’s about.  Get in a car where the wheels are out of alignment and the car will shake you to death, wear out the tires, and ruin the experience.  It will also ultimately destroy the whole vehicle.  Just one tire out of alignment is all it takes.  Misalignment over time equals misery.

So this morning we talked about how to bring your life into alignment.  We’ve talked about Wake Up, we’ve talked about Look Up, and today we talked about Line Up.

So today we talked about how to Look Up.  Not look up to the stars or the sky, or look up to some small-g god, but look up to the God Who created you and redeemed you.

That leads us to the question: “What do you believe in?” We talked about the four choices that you have: I believe in me, I believe in nothing, I believe in everything, I’m a truth-seeker.

This is an important issue, for no one is a Christian because they’re a Christian.  At least, they shouldn’t claim to be. The truth is, Jesus Christ was very clear about his truth claims, that He and The Father are One, He is God incarnate; that He is our one and only God, Lord, and Savior.  We need to embrace Him that way, or not at all.

We gave the options you have when it comes to Christ; you have to choose one and then live with it.

Then we talked about the three demands God makes on your life before a genuine connection is made.  We talked about what they were and how to make them work for you.

The first step of course is Wake Up. How many people have you seen and said to yourself, “That person is sleepwalking through life”?

Today we talked about the ways in which we try to get other people to wake up. We shout at them, we “should” them, shame them, and often we shun them but it doesn’t seem to work.

We also looked at how people can hide their addictive lifestyles for so long. We talked about the different ways we all choose a different drug of choice. Not all the things we use to medicate our pain are socially unacceptable. Some things we’re even rewarded for like using work to get approval.

We talked about how to truly wake up and live using the letters ESPN. We talked about exposure, surrender, promise, and getting a new name. Anyone can be set free from their addictions no matter what it is or how long it’s been hanging around. But the first step is to wake up and confess that you are powerless over your addictions, you are powerless to be set free from the things holding you back, and that you need God’s power.

God opposes the proud, but gives mercy to the humble, the Scriptures say. The question is, “When was the last time you humbled yourself before God and used your adversity – whether it’s a flood, cancer, loss of a job, a divorce, or the estrangement from a child – as a wake-up call, to not just see life differently, but to be different?”