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“Life Change from the Heart” is a sermon series on how God changes us from the heart through the gospel. How does it work? After we surrender our life to God, we start the process of cleaning the inside of the cup, our heart. We go through an extensive process of self-examination to find self-indulgence in our heart, confession of what we find, repentance, and embrace God’s extravagant grace and pursue grace based discipleship. Then, step 8 is about starting the process of reconciling with our friends, family and neighbors.

“Life Change from the Heart” is a sermon series on how God changes us from the heart through the gospel. How does change from the heart happen? After we surrender our life to God, we start the process of cleaning the inside of the cup, our heart. We go through an extensive process of self-examination to find self-indulgence in our heart. Then, we confess what we find to God, ourselves, and to another person. Step 6, the subject of this week’s sermon, is about repentance, changing the posture of our heart. Although repentance is a separate step, it is really a continuation of self-examination and confession. As we begin to see how self-indulgent our heart has been, we start the process of changing the posture of our heart from being self-indulgent to seeking God’s grace. We don’t just repent of our behavior (our bad habits, our anger, our alcoholism, our sinful lifestyle, etc.); we repent of various ways in which we have self-indulged: self-pity, self-centeredness, dishonesty, sloth, pride, etc. We repent of our heart’s biggest idol: self; then, we open our hearts towards God. The parable of the sower helps us understand our part of preparing our soil—our heart—to the work of God, the Great Gardener.

“Life Change from the Heart” is a sermon series on how God changes us from the heart through the gospel. How does change from the heart happen? After we surrender our life to God, we start the process of cleaning the inside of the cup, our heart. We go through an extensive process of self-examination to find self-indulgence in our heart so that we can confess them and seek to get rid of them. We saw that a great way to find self-indulgence is to look for resentments. Once we have spent time examining our hearts, we must confess them to God, to ourselves, and to another human being. That’s what step 5 is about. Kevin shared from Psalm 32 to talk about the power of confessing to God. He shared from 1 John and James to discuss the importance of confessing to another human being. Jonathan Paredes shared a testimony of going through a confession.

“Life Change from the Heart” is a sermon series on how God changes us from the heart through the gospel. How does change from the heart happen? After we surrender our life to God, we start the process of cleaning the inside of the cup, our heart. We can’t change ourselves just by trying to clean the outside of the cup, meaning by trying to change our behavior. We have to first focus on cleaning our heart, which Jesus said is full of self-indulgence. So, step 4 is about examining our heart for self-indulgence so that we can start the process of cleaning our heart. It is critical to find the self-indulgence in our heart if we want to change our life. But, our spiritual blindness makes it difficult to find selfindulgence directly. There is an indirect way to find our self-indulgence, though. It is by looking for resentment, a more noticeable byproduct of our self-indulgence. So, one way we find self-indulgence is by examining our resentments and asking, “How might each of the following forms of self-indulgence be at the real root of the resentment: pride, self-pity, dishonesty, and self-centeredness?” As we do so, we will find self-indulgence. It is very important for us to take the time necessary to ask this question for every feeling of resentment we experienced. A lot of people find this too hard to do. But if you want real change, you should go through this process even if it takes months to complete. This is at the core of examining our heart.

“Life Change from the Heart” is a sermon series on how God changes us from the heart through the gospel.  Step 1 is admitting that we are powerless, our lives have become unmanageable, and we can’t fix ourselves.  If that’s the case, we need to find a Power greater than ourselves to restore us to sanity.  That’s what step 2 is about.  We need to go on a quest to find that power.   We can’t just see if it works; we have to see if it is true because if it is not true, it is not really going to work in the long run.  So, Kevin shared two things: (1) an intellectually credible case for Jesus—that he is not a legend, liar, insane, or just a good teacher, but the Lord God Himself; and (2) that Jesus can restore us to sanity through the gospel.  Robin Castañeda shared her testimony in support of the second point that God can restore us to sanity.