May 13, 2025 • 20 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey there, and welcome back to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Today.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Rick continues in his series called Connecting with God the
Lord's Prayer. In this series, Rick shows us what it
means to be truly spiritually connected to God and to
each other through the power of God's love and God's word. Okay,
no need to wait. Here's Pastor Rick with part two
(00:26):
of a message called the Prayer of Cleansing.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I tried to bargain with God. God, if you will
forgive me, I will never do it again. God's it.
Don't make promises. Just go get it right. God, if
you will forgive me, I will never sin again. Right.
Just go get it right, God, if you will forgive me,
I tried to bargain with God. I will read my
Bible every day the rest of my life. I will
(00:52):
tell somebody about Jesus every day. God said, don't make promises,
go get it right. And I said, I don't want to.
He said, Rick, if you won't be real with me,
I won't be real with you. I want to bless
your life. I want to use your life. But if
I can't trust you in the little things of life,
how can I trust you in the big things of life.
(01:15):
This is a test. I tossed and turned all night,
from about midnight to about five am in the morning,
and finally I just go okay, And I just finally
said I would do it so I could go to sleep,
but I didn't really mean it. And I got up
the next morning and it was a Saturday, and I
(01:36):
did everything except go make those sins right. I did
all my homework, I cleaned up my room, I washed
both of my parents' cars, I cleaned up the patio.
I offered to do errands for my mom. I was
(01:57):
doing everything except that which I really need to do.
That night, I had been invited to be a guest
speaker to a youth meeting, a youth rally at a
small church about thirty miles away. I got in the car,
drove over to that church, and I spoke that night.
I shouldn't have spoken. I was out of fellowship with God,
(02:17):
out of fellowship with other people, myself. God's power and
presence wasn't there. God's blessing was there. The words were
just bouncing off the wall. And I went home very
discouraged and very defeated, knowing that God was withholding his
blessing in my life. My dad, who was a pastor,
asked me, said, Rick, can you go tomorrow up to
(02:40):
a little town about sixty miles from here, and can
you fill in there for the pastor there who's sick.
And I said sure. So I drove an hour north
and I went to this little church and I spoke
that morning, and I spoke that evening and all afternoon
I just wrestled with God that there is something intentionally
(03:02):
between me and God that I was refusing to get right.
I knew it was wrong, but I would not give in.
And to speak to this group was a waste of
their time and a waste of my time. And there
was no blessing, no power, no grace. And I was
discouraged and depressed and defeated, and I knew this wasn't working.
(03:26):
I got in the car and as I was driving
back home that night in the dark, I finally just
broke down and said, Okay, God, I am so sorry.
I'm never going to allow any little thing to get
between me and you. If I know it willingly, I
will confess it when I make mistakes, when I sin,
when I blow it, and I commit to getting this
(03:48):
right I got home that night and my parents and
my sister were sitting in the living room watching television.
Now to show you how long ago this happened, my
parents were watching Bonanza. Okay, so it's that old, all right.
And I walked in and I didn't even say anything.
(04:09):
I just walked over to the television in front of
them and flipped it off, turned it off like that,
and I turned around and said, I don't need you
to do anything, but I need somebody to just confess
this to and I need to get it off my chest.
I've already confessed it to God. I need to confess
it to somebody else. And I need to ask you
to pray for me that I will have the courage
(04:30):
to go get these three things right. And I admitted
those three things there to my parents and my sister.
I have this scar from my sister. No, I made
that part up. And so I just a minute and
I got on my knees in the living room and
I bowed, and I began to cry and weep and
weep profusely, and my parents and my sister began to
(04:54):
pray for me, and I felt the power of God
fall on my life like I have never experienced before
or since. And I could feel the blessing of God
flowing into my life, and I could feel the power
of God flowing into my life, and God saying, you
(05:17):
pass the test, and I'm going to use you. I'm
going to bless you and make you a blessing to
other people. And that power flowing into my life was
the turning point in my life. I want this so
badly for you. You have no idea how much God wants
(05:38):
to use your life. You have no idea how much
God wants to bless your life. The things He could
do in your life would astound you if your life
was a clean vessel. But you got to do business
with God. You've got to prayer, pray the prayer of cleansing.
(06:00):
Forgive us our debts, our sins, our transgressions, and mean
it and get specific. I want to give you now,
very simply, real, quickly, the six steps on the path
to a clear conscience. There is no reason you should
leave this building with any guilt in your life. Whatever
(06:23):
guilt you've been caring for weeks or months or years,
you need to deal with it. Now make business with
God and go out with a clear conscience and be
guilt free. How do you do it? Six steps on
the back of your outline there, here's the steps. Number one,
I review every area of my life. That's the first step.
(06:47):
I review every area of my life. We call this
making it a personal moral inventory or a personal spiritual assessment.
And what you do is you sit down with God
in a quiet space by yourself, all alone, when you're unhurried,
and you do what I just told you about I did. God.
(07:10):
I'm going to do business with you, and I'm going
to make a list of anything that's between me and
you that's wrong in my life that I feel guilty about,
consciously or unconsciously. Help me to know the things that
I know that are wrong and the things that I
don't know that are wrong. The Bible says in Lamentations
Chapter three, let us test and examine our ways. Now
(07:31):
you get off by yourself with a pen and a notepad,
where you're totally disturbed. You ask God to reveal your sins,
and you say, Lord, in clearing clear my mind, let
me give you a verse to write down. Psalm one
thirty nine twenty three and twenty four. Psalm one thirty
nine twenty three and twenty four says this, search me,
oh God, and know my heart, test me and know
(07:55):
my thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, anything,
and lead me along the path of everlasting life. That
is the prayer saying, God, turn your spotlight on my
innerside to find the stuff that's entangled me, that's hindering me,
that's holding me back. Now you take your time. You
don't rush it. You don't say, God, I got five
minutes for you to reveal every cin I've ever done.
(08:18):
Now you take your time, and you say write it
all down, and say, well, couldn't I just think it
might have to write it down. You have to write
it down. Writing makes it specific. Thoughts disentangle themselves through
the flips and the fingertips. You talk it and you say,
and you write it. If you haven't written it down,
you haven't really thought about it. It makes it specific.
By the way, it's also cathartic. It helps get it
(08:40):
out of you and onto the paper. You want to
get the gunk out of you. Now you're gonna burn
this paper later on, but you just get it out
of you. The Bible says this, if we judged ourselves
in the right way, God would not judge us. Now
to get you started, I've written here a personal spiritual assessment,
(09:03):
and if you open it up inside it's a sin list.
Here's a personal spiritual assessment too. The following is a
list of common sins that prevent God from blessing and
using our lives. As you prayerfully read this, examine yourself
and circle or highlight or underline the areas that apply
(09:28):
to you. You don't even have to write them down.
I'm making this easy. You just read it. Go yep,
that's me, yep, that's me, yep. You underline it, you
circle it, you highlight it, and then when you get
to at the end, you go, now, God, is there
anything else? And you write down those things too. And
nobody else is going to see this. It's just between
you and God. It's a personal spiritual assessment. By the way,
(09:51):
we'll put it on the website too, so those of
you are watching on the internet can download it. Those
of you who would like other copies can download it too.
And nobody else is going to see this. Now, let
me ask you a very important question. How serious are
you about God blessing your life? How badly do you
want God's blessing in your life? Oh? I'd like to
(10:11):
have it enough that you're willing to be gut level honest.
Are you willing to be honest to God? Are you
willing to be honest with yourself? You're going to lie
to yourself? Are you going to be willing to be
honest with other people? Are you going to just live
in denial? Denial in God's blessing do not go hand
in hand. Friend, You are seconds away from liberation. You
(10:34):
are seconds away from a feeling of cleanness and joy
and purity that you haven't had ever, that you've never experienced.
You are seconds away from a total freedom in your
life that could set you free from some habits and
hurts and hang ups that are messing up your life.
(10:55):
I want to ask you to do this today. Don't procrastinate.
There's nothing more important than your life than to have
the blessing of God. Go home today, get alone by yourself,
read through this and do a personal moral inventory. That's
step one. Now, once you've done that, you do step two.
Here's the second step. I repent of every sin. First,
(11:20):
I review every area, and then I repent of every sin.
What does it mean to repent. It means three things.
It means first, I take responsibility for my sin. Yep,
I'm not going to blame anybody else for this. Second,
it means I turn away from those things. And third,
it means I turn toward God and his grace and say, God,
(11:43):
I don't want to be that anymore. I take responsibility,
I turn away, and I turn. Two. That's what it
means to repent. Now what do you do on that?
The Bible says this, let us turn again in repentance
to the life Lord. Let us lift our hearts and
(12:03):
hands to God in heaven and say we have sinned
and rebelled. You write it down, you accept responsibility. What
does it mean to repent? Well, first, I don't rationalize it.
I don't say, well it was no big deal. Well
it was a big deal, you wouldn't have remembered it.
I don't minimize it. I don't rationalize it. I said,
(12:24):
well it happened so long time ago, or it was
just a stage I went through, or everybody does. It
doesn't matter. You don't rationalize, you don't minimize, you don't accuse,
you don't excuse, you don't blame others. Well it was
mostly their fault. Well, it may have been ninety nine
point nine percent their fault. God says, you accept responsibility
(12:44):
for your one percent or point one percent? What am
I saying? Listen very closely. The greatest hold up to
the healing of your hang up is you. You're not
waiting on God. You're not waiting on anybody else the
hang ups in your life. The greatest hold up to
(13:07):
your hang up is you. God wants to heal it
in your life. Now, the Bible says this up here
on the screen. If we claim to be without sin,
we're just deceiving ourselves. We're living in a world of illusion.
When the Bible says, we're acting in a fantasy world
(13:27):
where we're pretending. We're faking it. If we claim to
be without sin, we're just deceiving ourselves. We're certainly not
deceiving God, and we're not even deceiving anybody else, because
everybody else knows you've blown it. We just deceive ourselves.
It's self deception and the truth is not in us.
And I listen very closely to this. The things that
(13:51):
defeat you in your life, the self defeating habits in
your life that you don't like about you? Would you
like to get rid of them? You will stop defeating
yourself when you stop deceiving yourself. I will stop defeating
myself when I stop deceiving myself. It all starts with
(14:14):
level honesty. That's wrong, no matter how much your rationalize
excuse it. It's wrong, and I need to admit it
and confess it and get it out of my life.
Let me ask a very important question. What are you
pretending not to know? What are you pretending not to
feel guilty about? What are you pretending was not a sin?
(14:37):
What are you pretending doesn't bother you? But it really does?
Don't you think it's time to finally deal with it
and get it out of your life and get it
over with and then have freedom and clear conscience and
all that God wants you to have. I review every area.
I repent of every sin. Here's a third step. I
(14:59):
resolve to make restitution. I resolve to make restitution. As
you go through that list, you find somebody that you
have hurt and they know it. Then you go and
you make restitution. If you've hated them, you've hurt them,
you've mistreated them, or you've cheated them. If possible, you
(15:21):
make restitution. Now, sometimes it's not possible. They may have died,
they may have moved away and you can't find them.
They may have remarried, and it would be not a
good thing for you to reopen an old wound. And
so in some situations you can't make restitution, but anything
you can do to make it right, you do. So
(15:43):
there's a story in the Bible of a guy named
zach Chius. He was a tax collector. And I don't
want to shock you on this, but he was a
tax cheat. Can you imagine anybody cheating on taxes. One
day Jesus came to his house and he was so
touched by that. Here's what he said. He said, if
I've cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back
four times the amount. And Jesus said to him, today,
(16:08):
salvation has come to your house. I resolve to make restitution.
Number four. The fourth thing I do is now I
receive God's forgiveness. I receive God's forgiveness once I've reviewed
every hour of my life. I've repented of the sin,
(16:28):
I've accepted responsibility. I've resolved to make restitution where I
need to. Now I receive God's forgiveness. The Bible says this.
And by the way, you don't have to be hesitant
or shy about coming to God for forgiveness. He says,
Let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God,
and there we will receive his mercy, and we will
(16:50):
find grace to help us when we need it. I
want you to circle mercy and grace. Let us come
boldly to the throne of our gracious God, and there
we will find he said, not scolding, not punishment, not rejection.
He says, when we come to God with our sin,
we receive his mercy and we find his grace. What's
(17:12):
the difference between mercy and grace. Mercy is forgiveness for
all the things you've done in the past. Grace is
the power to change in the future. And you need both.
You need mercy for all the things you've done wrong
in the past forgiveness, and you need grace, the power
to change in the future. And God says, you come
(17:34):
to me with honestly, with all your sin. And he say, God,
this sucks, this stinks, this looks bad. I'm embarrassed about
It's the good, the bad, and the ugly in my life.
God says, you will have mercy for your past and
grace to change in your future. He said, I will
give that to you, and he received God's forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Hey, thanks, thank so much for being with us today
and listening to Pastor.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Rick's daily Hope.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
I hope that you were just as blessed as I
was from today's broadcast. And now here's Rick to tell
you about today's offer.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
You know, I've been a pastor for over three decades,
and I've been teaching the Word of God for over
four decades. And over all that time, I couldn't count
the number of people that I've talked to and the
number one questions that people ask. They've come to me,
they come back over and over and over again. I've
noticed that people tend to ask the same questions. All
(18:32):
of these common questions have common solutions, and they're all
found in God's Word. So I sat down and I
took the most common questions that I've been asked over
forty five years in ministry, and I began to answer
them according to scriptures. And I wrote a little book
called God's Answers to Life's Difficult Questions. It provides simple,
(18:56):
straightforward answers that you can apply right away. In fact,
this will get you the answers to probably questions you're
asking yourself right now. You say, well, what are those questions? Well,
let me just give you a few of them. How
do I cope with stress? Have you ever asked that one?
How do I rebound from a failure? Have you ever
asked that one? How can I be more confident in
(19:19):
the crisis that I'm going through? How do I live
above average? Why is this happening to me? How can
I overcome loneliness? And how do I change the things
that I want to change in my life? Well? I
answer those questions In this book, God's Answers to life
difficult questions. You'll discover the simple truths that God has
(19:41):
given to us from his word. And it's just my
way of saying thank you for supporting Daily Hope with
your financial gifts. You know we're a listener supported ministry.
We don't have any giant secret donors that fund this.
I don't do this for a salary. We do this
for free as a ministry to you and as a
ministry of spreading the word of God around the world.
(20:02):
Thanks for listening today. Join me next time as we
continue to look into God's word for our daily hope.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Just go to pastorick dot com to get your copy
of this great resource. That's pastorick dot com. Or you
can just text the word hope to seven oh three
oh nine. Again, that's the word hope to seven oh
three oh nine. And thank you so much for your support.
Your gift to Daily Hope helps us share the hope
of Christ with people everywhere. This program is sponsored by
(20:32):
Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support.
Hey there, and welcome back to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Today.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Rick continues in his series called Connecting with God the
Lord's Prayer. In this series, Rick shows us what it
means to be truly spiritually connected to God and to
each other through the power of God's love and God's word. Okay,
no need to wait. Here's Pastor Rick with part two
(00:26):
of a message called the Prayer of Cleansing.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I tried to bargain with God. God, if you will
forgive me, I will never do it again. God's it.
Don't make promises. Just go get it right. God, if
you will forgive me, I will never sin again. Right.
Just go get it right, God, if you will forgive me,
I tried to bargain with God. I will read my
Bible every day the rest of my life. I will
(00:52):
tell somebody about Jesus every day. God said, don't make promises,
go get it right. And I said, I don't want to.
He said, Rick, if you won't be real with me,
I won't be real with you. I want to bless
your life. I want to use your life. But if
I can't trust you in the little things of life,
how can I trust you in the big things of life.
(01:15):
This is a test. I tossed and turned all night,
from about midnight to about five am in the morning,
and finally I just go okay, And I just finally
said I would do it so I could go to sleep,
but I didn't really mean it. And I got up
the next morning and it was a Saturday, and I
(01:36):
did everything except go make those sins right. I did
all my homework, I cleaned up my room, I washed
both of my parents' cars, I cleaned up the patio.
I offered to do errands for my mom. I was
(01:57):
doing everything except that which I really need to do.
That night, I had been invited to be a guest
speaker to a youth meeting, a youth rally at a
small church about thirty miles away. I got in the car,
drove over to that church, and I spoke that night.
I shouldn't have spoken. I was out of fellowship with God,
(02:17):
out of fellowship with other people, myself. God's power and
presence wasn't there. God's blessing was there. The words were
just bouncing off the wall. And I went home very
discouraged and very defeated, knowing that God was withholding his
blessing in my life. My dad, who was a pastor,
asked me, said, Rick, can you go tomorrow up to
(02:40):
a little town about sixty miles from here, and can
you fill in there for the pastor there who's sick.
And I said sure. So I drove an hour north
and I went to this little church and I spoke
that morning, and I spoke that evening and all afternoon
I just wrestled with God that there is something intentionally
(03:02):
between me and God that I was refusing to get right.
I knew it was wrong, but I would not give in.
And to speak to this group was a waste of
their time and a waste of my time. And there
was no blessing, no power, no grace. And I was
discouraged and depressed and defeated, and I knew this wasn't working.
(03:26):
I got in the car and as I was driving
back home that night in the dark, I finally just
broke down and said, Okay, God, I am so sorry.
I'm never going to allow any little thing to get
between me and you. If I know it willingly, I
will confess it when I make mistakes, when I sin,
when I blow it, and I commit to getting this
(03:48):
right I got home that night and my parents and
my sister were sitting in the living room watching television.
Now to show you how long ago this happened, my
parents were watching Bonanza. Okay, so it's that old, all right.
And I walked in and I didn't even say anything.
(04:09):
I just walked over to the television in front of
them and flipped it off, turned it off like that,
and I turned around and said, I don't need you
to do anything, but I need somebody to just confess
this to and I need to get it off my chest.
I've already confessed it to God. I need to confess
it to somebody else. And I need to ask you
to pray for me that I will have the courage
(04:30):
to go get these three things right. And I admitted
those three things there to my parents and my sister.
I have this scar from my sister. No, I made
that part up. And so I just a minute and
I got on my knees in the living room and
I bowed, and I began to cry and weep and
weep profusely, and my parents and my sister began to
(04:54):
pray for me, and I felt the power of God
fall on my life like I have never experienced before
or since. And I could feel the blessing of God
flowing into my life, and I could feel the power
of God flowing into my life, and God saying, you
(05:17):
pass the test, and I'm going to use you. I'm
going to bless you and make you a blessing to
other people. And that power flowing into my life was
the turning point in my life. I want this so
badly for you. You have no idea how much God wants
(05:38):
to use your life. You have no idea how much
God wants to bless your life. The things He could
do in your life would astound you if your life
was a clean vessel. But you got to do business
with God. You've got to prayer, pray the prayer of cleansing.
(06:00):
Forgive us our debts, our sins, our transgressions, and mean
it and get specific. I want to give you now,
very simply, real, quickly, the six steps on the path
to a clear conscience. There is no reason you should
leave this building with any guilt in your life. Whatever
(06:23):
guilt you've been caring for weeks or months or years,
you need to deal with it. Now make business with
God and go out with a clear conscience and be
guilt free. How do you do it? Six steps on
the back of your outline there, here's the steps. Number one,
I review every area of my life. That's the first step.
(06:47):
I review every area of my life. We call this
making it a personal moral inventory or a personal spiritual assessment.
And what you do is you sit down with God
in a quiet space by yourself, all alone, when you're unhurried,
and you do what I just told you about I did. God.
(07:10):
I'm going to do business with you, and I'm going
to make a list of anything that's between me and
you that's wrong in my life that I feel guilty about,
consciously or unconsciously. Help me to know the things that
I know that are wrong and the things that I
don't know that are wrong. The Bible says in Lamentations
Chapter three, let us test and examine our ways. Now
(07:31):
you get off by yourself with a pen and a notepad,
where you're totally disturbed. You ask God to reveal your sins,
and you say, Lord, in clearing clear my mind, let
me give you a verse to write down. Psalm one
thirty nine twenty three and twenty four. Psalm one thirty
nine twenty three and twenty four says this, search me,
oh God, and know my heart, test me and know
(07:55):
my thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, anything,
and lead me along the path of everlasting life. That
is the prayer saying, God, turn your spotlight on my
innerside to find the stuff that's entangled me, that's hindering me,
that's holding me back. Now you take your time. You
don't rush it. You don't say, God, I got five
minutes for you to reveal every cin I've ever done.
(08:18):
Now you take your time, and you say write it
all down, and say, well, couldn't I just think it
might have to write it down. You have to write
it down. Writing makes it specific. Thoughts disentangle themselves through
the flips and the fingertips. You talk it and you say,
and you write it. If you haven't written it down,
you haven't really thought about it. It makes it specific.
By the way, it's also cathartic. It helps get it
(08:40):
out of you and onto the paper. You want to
get the gunk out of you. Now you're gonna burn
this paper later on, but you just get it out
of you. The Bible says this, if we judged ourselves
in the right way, God would not judge us. Now
to get you started, I've written here a personal spiritual assessment,
(09:03):
and if you open it up inside it's a sin list.
Here's a personal spiritual assessment too. The following is a
list of common sins that prevent God from blessing and
using our lives. As you prayerfully read this, examine yourself
and circle or highlight or underline the areas that apply
(09:28):
to you. You don't even have to write them down.
I'm making this easy. You just read it. Go yep,
that's me, yep, that's me, yep. You underline it, you
circle it, you highlight it, and then when you get
to at the end, you go, now, God, is there
anything else? And you write down those things too. And
nobody else is going to see this. It's just between
you and God. It's a personal spiritual assessment. By the way,
(09:51):
we'll put it on the website too, so those of
you are watching on the internet can download it. Those
of you who would like other copies can download it too.
And nobody else is going to see this. Now, let
me ask you a very important question. How serious are
you about God blessing your life? How badly do you
want God's blessing in your life? Oh? I'd like to
(10:11):
have it enough that you're willing to be gut level honest.
Are you willing to be honest to God? Are you
willing to be honest with yourself? You're going to lie
to yourself? Are you going to be willing to be
honest with other people? Are you going to just live
in denial? Denial in God's blessing do not go hand
in hand. Friend, You are seconds away from liberation. You
(10:34):
are seconds away from a feeling of cleanness and joy
and purity that you haven't had ever, that you've never experienced.
You are seconds away from a total freedom in your
life that could set you free from some habits and
hurts and hang ups that are messing up your life.
(10:55):
I want to ask you to do this today. Don't procrastinate.
There's nothing more important than your life than to have
the blessing of God. Go home today, get alone by yourself,
read through this and do a personal moral inventory. That's
step one. Now, once you've done that, you do step two.
Here's the second step. I repent of every sin. First,
(11:20):
I review every area, and then I repent of every sin.
What does it mean to repent. It means three things.
It means first, I take responsibility for my sin. Yep,
I'm not going to blame anybody else for this. Second,
it means I turn away from those things. And third,
it means I turn toward God and his grace and say, God,
(11:43):
I don't want to be that anymore. I take responsibility,
I turn away, and I turn. Two. That's what it
means to repent. Now what do you do on that?
The Bible says this, let us turn again in repentance
to the life Lord. Let us lift our hearts and
(12:03):
hands to God in heaven and say we have sinned
and rebelled. You write it down, you accept responsibility. What
does it mean to repent? Well, first, I don't rationalize it.
I don't say, well it was no big deal. Well
it was a big deal, you wouldn't have remembered it.
I don't minimize it. I don't rationalize it. I said,
(12:24):
well it happened so long time ago, or it was
just a stage I went through, or everybody does. It
doesn't matter. You don't rationalize, you don't minimize, you don't accuse,
you don't excuse, you don't blame others. Well it was
mostly their fault. Well, it may have been ninety nine
point nine percent their fault. God says, you accept responsibility
(12:44):
for your one percent or point one percent? What am
I saying? Listen very closely. The greatest hold up to
the healing of your hang up is you. You're not
waiting on God. You're not waiting on anybody else the
hang ups in your life. The greatest hold up to
(13:07):
your hang up is you. God wants to heal it
in your life. Now, the Bible says this up here
on the screen. If we claim to be without sin,
we're just deceiving ourselves. We're living in a world of illusion.
When the Bible says, we're acting in a fantasy world
(13:27):
where we're pretending. We're faking it. If we claim to
be without sin, we're just deceiving ourselves. We're certainly not
deceiving God, and we're not even deceiving anybody else, because
everybody else knows you've blown it. We just deceive ourselves.
It's self deception and the truth is not in us.
And I listen very closely to this. The things that
(13:51):
defeat you in your life, the self defeating habits in
your life that you don't like about you? Would you
like to get rid of them? You will stop defeating
yourself when you stop deceiving yourself. I will stop defeating
myself when I stop deceiving myself. It all starts with
(14:14):
level honesty. That's wrong, no matter how much your rationalize
excuse it. It's wrong, and I need to admit it
and confess it and get it out of my life.
Let me ask a very important question. What are you
pretending not to know? What are you pretending not to
feel guilty about? What are you pretending was not a sin?
(14:37):
What are you pretending doesn't bother you? But it really does?
Don't you think it's time to finally deal with it
and get it out of your life and get it
over with and then have freedom and clear conscience and
all that God wants you to have. I review every area.
I repent of every sin. Here's a third step. I
(14:59):
resolve to make restitution. I resolve to make restitution. As
you go through that list, you find somebody that you
have hurt and they know it. Then you go and
you make restitution. If you've hated them, you've hurt them,
you've mistreated them, or you've cheated them. If possible, you
(15:21):
make restitution. Now, sometimes it's not possible. They may have died,
they may have moved away and you can't find them.
They may have remarried, and it would be not a
good thing for you to reopen an old wound. And
so in some situations you can't make restitution, but anything
you can do to make it right, you do. So
(15:43):
there's a story in the Bible of a guy named
zach Chius. He was a tax collector. And I don't
want to shock you on this, but he was a
tax cheat. Can you imagine anybody cheating on taxes. One
day Jesus came to his house and he was so
touched by that. Here's what he said. He said, if
I've cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back
four times the amount. And Jesus said to him, today,
(16:08):
salvation has come to your house. I resolve to make restitution.
Number four. The fourth thing I do is now I
receive God's forgiveness. I receive God's forgiveness once I've reviewed
every hour of my life. I've repented of the sin,
(16:28):
I've accepted responsibility. I've resolved to make restitution where I
need to. Now I receive God's forgiveness. The Bible says this.
And by the way, you don't have to be hesitant
or shy about coming to God for forgiveness. He says,
Let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God,
and there we will receive his mercy, and we will
(16:50):
find grace to help us when we need it. I
want you to circle mercy and grace. Let us come
boldly to the throne of our gracious God, and there
we will find he said, not scolding, not punishment, not rejection.
He says, when we come to God with our sin,
we receive his mercy and we find his grace. What's
(17:12):
the difference between mercy and grace. Mercy is forgiveness for
all the things you've done in the past. Grace is
the power to change in the future. And you need both.
You need mercy for all the things you've done wrong
in the past forgiveness, and you need grace, the power
to change in the future. And God says, you come
(17:34):
to me with honestly, with all your sin. And he say, God,
this sucks, this stinks, this looks bad. I'm embarrassed about
It's the good, the bad, and the ugly in my life.
God says, you will have mercy for your past and
grace to change in your future. He said, I will
give that to you, and he received God's forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Hey, thanks, thank so much for being with us today
and listening to Pastor.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Rick's daily Hope.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
I hope that you were just as blessed as I
was from today's broadcast. And now here's Rick to tell
you about today's offer.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
You know, I've been a pastor for over three decades,
and I've been teaching the Word of God for over
four decades. And over all that time, I couldn't count
the number of people that I've talked to and the
number one questions that people ask. They've come to me,
they come back over and over and over again. I've
noticed that people tend to ask the same questions. All
(18:32):
of these common questions have common solutions, and they're all
found in God's Word. So I sat down and I
took the most common questions that I've been asked over
forty five years in ministry, and I began to answer
them according to scriptures. And I wrote a little book
called God's Answers to Life's Difficult Questions. It provides simple,
(18:56):
straightforward answers that you can apply right away. In fact,
this will get you the answers to probably questions you're
asking yourself right now. You say, well, what are those questions? Well,
let me just give you a few of them. How
do I cope with stress? Have you ever asked that one?
How do I rebound from a failure? Have you ever
asked that one? How can I be more confident in
(19:19):
the crisis that I'm going through? How do I live
above average? Why is this happening to me? How can
I overcome loneliness? And how do I change the things
that I want to change in my life? Well? I
answer those questions In this book, God's Answers to life
difficult questions. You'll discover the simple truths that God has
(19:41):
given to us from his word. And it's just my
way of saying thank you for supporting Daily Hope with
your financial gifts. You know we're a listener supported ministry.
We don't have any giant secret donors that fund this.
I don't do this for a salary. We do this
for free as a ministry to you and as a
ministry of spreading the word of God around the world.
(20:02):
Thanks for listening today. Join me next time as we
continue to look into God's word for our daily hope.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Just go to pastorick dot com to get your copy
of this great resource. That's pastorick dot com. Or you
can just text the word hope to seven oh three
oh nine. Again, that's the word hope to seven oh
three oh nine. And thank you so much for your support.
Your gift to Daily Hope helps us share the hope
of Christ with people everywhere. This program is sponsored by
(20:32):
Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support.
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