Come ye sinners.

This was the sermon I gave:

Good morning, friends.  I am beyond blessed to be here.  I had the privilege of coming to Nicaragua for the first time in March and I fell in love with your country, your people, you.  It is an honor that the Lord has brought me back.  I’m going to speak from my heart, about what the Lord has been teaching me over the past month or so.  It is my prayer that this will resonate with at least one of you.  That God will use these words to pierce someone’s hearts as they come from Him and not me.  

Let us pray.

You don’t have to raise your hands, but answer for yourself:  do you have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus?  What does it mean to KNOW Jesus?  Sometimes it is easy to think knowing Jesus means being “good enough.”  

Yet I don’t always feel good enough.  Do you?  Friends, sometimes I feel like I can’t move forward.  Sometimes I feel like I keep getting stuck doing the same old things over and over again even though I know Jesus.  Do you ever feel that way?  Do you ever wonder if you’ve really been changed by the blood shed on the cross?

A lot of things that we do one day look different when we wake up the next morning.  I shouldn’t have slept with my girlfriend.  I shouldn’t have said that nasty thing to my friend.  I shouldn’t have been mean to my mother.  I shouldn’t have gotten drunk.  I shouldn’t have stolen. I shouldn’t have gotten pregnant.  I shouldn’t have walked out.  I shouldn’t have stayed.  There are so many “I shouldn’t haves...” out there...

How many of you just want to “get it together?”  How many of your fight the battle in your head that you can fix yourself?  I know I have.  

What I want you to hear today...what I need to hear today is that Jesus offers GRACE.  

John 1:14-17
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. ( John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Verse 16, “For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has given us grace.  BUT do you accept it?

John 20:30-31
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Jesus is the Son of God the Father.  He gave His life for our lives -- that we might have eternal life in heaven and abundant life on earth.  If we are living with Jesus, shouldn’t we be living abundantly?  

Romans 6:12-15
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13  Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. 15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!

It is one of me beautiful mysteries of being a Christian, of knowing and loving Jesus.  That, yes, we are to fight our sin.  But we don’t have to fight alone!  We have been given a helper!  We have been given the Holy Spirit!

Romans 5:5-6
and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

And, when we listen to the Spirit, when we walk with Him, we are able to be more obedient.  Yet, we will fall down.  And when we do, there is grace.  Christianity does NOT tell us we have to be perfect.  It does NOT tell us we have to get it together, that we cannot make mistakes.  Quite opposite really.  God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit tell us to come as we are.  

Romans 6:20-23
20  For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21  But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23  For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Friends, as you know, life is not always easy.  We face money problems.  We face people problems.  We get heart broken.  We do things we wish we could take back.  We are sick.  We lose loved ones.  We wonder how we will survive.  

And, yet, we have been promised life.  Those who know and love Jesus have been promised abundant life.  Jesus does NOT promise that our lives will be easy.  We will endure hardships and troubles and pain.  But we will endure those things.  Because He has promised NEVER to leave us and NEVER to forsake us.  He has promised to provide for all of our needs out of His glorious riches.  He loves us.  He loves us more than we can understand.

1 Peter 2:9
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

So, yes, there are times when we make bad choices.  Times when we do things we know are wrong and are not glorifying to the Lord Jesus Christ.  However, we are NO LONGER slaves to those things.  No, we have been bought by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.  We are His.  We are chosen!  We are royalty!  We are holy!  

Is this how you perceive yourselves?  If you’re a believer in Jesus, then you are royalty!  It doesn’t mean that you will be perfect.  It means something so much greater!  It means that God sees you.  He knows you.  He thinks you are special.  He loves you.  It means that no matter what you do, He loves you.  It means that there is nothing you can do to separate you from His love.  

The Lord has spent the past year reminding me that I am royalty.  He has patiently been telling me and showing me that I belong to Him.  That I am his daughter, beautiful and beloved and anointed.  He wants me to know those things; I want to live out of that truth -- to live a life that reflects the inheritance one can only receive through the cross.  Living a life out of the love I have so greatly been given.  

You don’t have to do enough.  You don’t have to try to make yourself good enough.  You don’t have to keep trying -- only to feel burdened from doing so.  Someone told me a few weeks ago, “this is your identity; you can accept it or reject it.”  So, I ask you: how do you see yourselves?  Do you know who you are?  Are you living like royalty?  Are you accepting the identity that can ONLY be given to you by God?  

Our earthly fathers are sinful just like each of us is.  But our father in Heaven is perfect and he loves us perfectly.   Because when we live as God’s children, we see God more clearly.  We see Him providing for us and blessing us.  We know that we can go to Him with anything.  We know that He loves us.  We know that He cares for us.  We know that He delights in us.  We know that we belong to Him.

And when we live out of that truth, when we know who we are and who we belong to, we are able to trust God.  We are able to be thankful and grateful, even when life is not easy.  We are able to live full and abundant lives.  We come as we are, we come messy and dirty, and full of mistakes.  We come and we let God love us and make us into the children He created us to be.

I am reminded of the hymn, “Come ye Sinners,” with the following words:

Come, ye sinners, poor and wretched,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
Jesus, ready, stands to save you,
Full of pity, joined with power.
He is able, He is able;
He is willing; doubt no more.

Come ye needy, come, and welcome,
God's free bounty glorify;
True belief and true repentance,
Every grace that brings you nigh.
Without money, without money
Come to Jesus Christ and buy.

Come, ye weary, heavy laden,
Bruised and broken by the fall;
If you tarry 'til you're better,
You will never come at all.
Not the righteous, not the righteous;
Sinners Jesus came to call.

Amen.  Let’s pray.