The Joy of a Forgiven Life

I want to direct your attention to a developed thought that I know will bless you for the rest of this year. I ask the Lord to give me the same dedication and passion for this message that he gave me this morning, and that I may share it effectively with you as well. Psalm 32; let us turn to the word of the Lord. It says:

“…Blessed is the one whose transgression has been forgiven and whose sin has been covered. Blessed is the man, the woman, whom Jehovah does not hold guilty of iniquity… another passage of the Bible says whom Jehovah does not charge with guilt; that is, he does not attribute guilt to that person even though the person is guilty—whom Jehovah does not hold guilty of iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit. While I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all day long, for day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was turned into the drought of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you and did not conceal my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to Jehovah, and you forgave the wickedness of my sin. Therefore every saint will pray to you at a time when you may be found. Surely, when the great waters overflow, they will not reach him.

You are my refuge; you will preserve me from anguish; you will surround me with songs of deliverance.—This is a promise from the Lord.—I will give you understanding and teach you the way in which you should walk. I will fix my eyes upon you. Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding and must be restrained with bit and bridle, or else they will not come near you. Many sorrows await the wicked, but mercy surrounds the one who trusts in Jehovah. Rejoice in Jehovah and be glad, you righteous, and shout for joy, all you who are upright in heart…”

May the Lord bless his word. It is a beautiful psalm. The joy of a forgiven life. The joy of a forgiven life. Let me tell you the origin of this meditation and this text.

Once again, as I often do, I was asking the Lord for a word for you as we were just beginning the second Sunday of the new year. I still feel as though we are still taking off into this new year. And it occurred to me how important it is to receive counsel from God, to receive direction from God, and to know how to obtain wisdom and guidance along the paths of life. This year we are going to face situations in which we may not know what to do—complex family, financial, perhaps even legal, relational, and work situations, among many other things. We have to know how to receive counsel from God so that we can do what is right.

I thought, okay, that is what I always want the Lord to speak to the people about: how to receive counsel from God in the coming year and in your future life. And this passage came to me because God has so many things stored there in our spirit. You continually read the word of God, and it is as though those texts are floating there, waiting to be grasped. Nowadays, in computing, people talk about the cloud, as though everything were in a cloud up there. Every so often, you reach out your hand, pull something out of the cloud, and bring it down.

There were many things in my spiritual cloud… and this text came to mind. I was telling the brothers and sisters this morning that this is why it is so important for you to have the word of God moving within you. When you continually meditate on the word of the Lord, God will always have something to build upon. When you are in need, a word from God will come to you—a text, a hymn, a chorus, a word that someone gave you, something you read a long time ago—and it will somehow rise into your mind, and that will be God’s word for you.

That verse which says, “I will give you understanding and teach you the way in which you should walk,” came to mind. I said, how precious that is. That is a good text on which to base a message about counsel and direction. And that was one of the last thoughts I had last night before falling asleep, because it came to me as I was getting ready to sleep. I did not want to lose any more sleep, so I left it there in the cloud. And this morning I got up and looked it up so I could prepare the message.

“I will give you understanding and teach you the way in which you should walk.” I found Psalm 32 in the concordance. I will give you understanding and teach you the way in which you should walk. And what a beautiful promise from God for us. I am going to give you understanding and teach you the way in which you should walk.

But then, when I began to explore it, I realized that this promise is embedded within a series of other thoughts and preconditions; it is an entire system that makes this promise from God possible in our lives. And then I understood that this promise is part of an entire meditation on forgiveness, the confession of sin, repentance, and bringing our burden and our debts before the Lord.

For us to receive counsel, wisdom, and instruction, we have to be in the clear; we must have clear accounts with God. So this entire psalm is a beautiful meditation on the confession of sins, on coming before God and acknowledging our faults, asking the Lord for forgiveness, and being forgiven by God. That is the precondition for a blessed life. That is why it says, blessed is the person whose debt, whose sin, has been forgiven.

Brothers and sisters, I want to speak to you about this: for us to have good communication with God, we first need to have a clear relationship before the Lord. This is a Maskil psalm, a type of psalm that has to do with wisdom. It is a psalm of instruction, and this psalm gives us a very powerful teaching about the importance of forgiveness in the lives of God’s children and of confessing our sin.

So the psalmist begins with a general thought, saying: What a blessing, how fortunate, how blessed is the person whose transgression has been forgiven and whose sin has been covered. The man or woman whom Jehovah does not hold guilty of iniquity. That is something very important that we must remember.

Now, three things are mentioned here: it says that we must be forgiven, that our sin must be covered, and that God must not charge us with iniquity. And I believe there is a teaching there that we must keep in mind. When God forgives us, many things take place in our lives.

It says, “whose transgression has been forgiven.” It is like, let us say, a person who has committed a crime and ought to be condemned for that crime, but who goes before a judge, and that judge forgives that person’s sin. A judicial transaction takes place. That judge says, “You know what? You should go to prison, but you are forgiven.” And that is what happens when we confess our sins before God, our debts before the Lord. The first thing that happens is that this debt is erased from the record. God erases our iniquities when we confess our sins before the Lord.

The devil can no longer come and seize upon that to attack you, criticize you, or harm you. God has said, “You are forgiven.” When that person is pardoned by the law, his record is clean once again.

And second, it speaks of the person whose sin has been covered. That is, as I see it, when a person has sinned, that person is ashamed before himself, often ashamed before others, and ashamed before God. It is like a person who is naked and stripped of dignity because all his nakedness is exposed. But someone comes and throws a cloak over him, covering his nakedness, and that person’s dignity is restored.

So when we are forgiven by God, I believe that also means we are free to appear in public and to walk through life without a sense of shame. We can accept God’s forgiveness and live with a clear conscience; we can go about our lives and conduct different affairs. We do not have to have that thing constantly pursuing us: I sinned; I did this; I did that. No. If God forgave you, do not look backward. Look forward and live confidently, knowing that we have already settled our accounts. I do not have to revisit that sin again. I am going to move forward now with a clean conscience before God. God covered; God hid my sin.

And third, it says that blessed is the one whom Jehovah does not charge with iniquity. That means, brothers and sisters, that when God forgives, God forgives. When God forgives, you do not have to feel as though you cannot come before God again. God has already healed you; God has forgiven you. God no longer holds anything against you. You can now come freely before the throne of God. God is not constantly remembering your sin and rubbing it in your face. God is simplehearted: when he forgives you, move forward, because God is now at peace with you, and you are at peace with God, if there is repentance in your heart.

Now, that is the essence of it, brothers and sisters: in order to live the Christian life effectively, we must live a life of continually coming before God, asking the Lord to forgive our debts and our sins, and being truly repentant.

I like this psalm because this psalm calls you, and it calls me, to a life that is very conscious of the fact that I continually need the grace of God in my life. You know what? As long as we are on earth, we will inevitably offend the Lord, because that is the nature of human life; that is the nature of the human condition. But that is why it is so important for us always to have an attitude of continually acknowledging our sins and recognizing that I continually need the grace and mercy of God.

I believe that God wants us, brothers and sisters, to examine ourselves continually. But I want to say this: we are not to examine ourselves with a sense of paranoia, nor with the sense that I am filthy, like people who have a compulsive neurotic disorder and are always washing their hands because they feel that they are constantly covered with germs. No, because there is a way of feeling guilty that weakens you, makes you neurotic, holds you back, and prevents you from living a happy life. And that is very dangerous. The devil often wants us to feel filthy and always be looking over our shoulders to see when God will deliver the next lash.

No, brothers and sisters, I am referring to an attitude of preventive humility before the Lord, one that recognizes that I need God’s grace twenty-four hours a day. And there must also be a willingness within us, brothers and sisters, to please the Lord and change our way of life.

I believe that a person must live a repentant life at all times. Nor am I referring to an attitude that says, “Ah, God has already forgiven me; God is good; God is merciful,” and then you live like a scoundrel, like a lawless goat, as Gregory often says. I am not referring to that either. I am not referring to what people call cheap grace. No. What I mean is that I believe all of us, if we are honest—including the person speaking to you—must remain continually aware that there are things in my life that can improve, that there were things last year, and yesterday, that I could have lived out better before God. That is why I continually need the grace and mercy of God.

Listen, brother, because there are many people who, I believe, abuse the Lord’s mercy and grace. They do not examine themselves; we do not examine ourselves. We believe that by coming to church and paying God a little offering, somehow everything is fine, and we lack that inward sense of saying from the heart, “Lord, have mercy on me. I need your grace. I need your forgiveness.”

And then may we come before God and receive that balm of forgiveness and grace. What the psalmist calls us to here, brothers and sisters, is a life of confession, a life of acknowledging our sins and our faults before the Lord, and of not underestimating the Lord’s holiness.

I believe that this year God wants you and me to live with a renewed sense of reverence before God’s holiness and an awareness of our debt, our sin, before the Lord. God wants a people who are grieved over their sin.

But again, it is a paradox, because on the one hand we grieve over our sins, while on the other hand we also know that we have a merciful God who has compassion on us. To me, that is the ideal balance, because there is a type of Christian and a type of legalistic church that is always lashing people, and all they have is a whip with four little bronze balls to strike people and tear furrows into their backs, but there is no medicine. That is wrong.

On the other hand, there are churches where everything is grace, grace, grace: do not preach anything that bothers people or makes them uncomfortable about their lifestyle, their situation, or their practices, because God is a God of mercy and love, and God understands you, and so on. And that is also terribly irresponsible.

And I believe there is a balance between those two things: a church, a man, a woman, that acknowledges its sin, acknowledges the need to improve, is aware of it, and is, in a sense, overwhelmed and saddened because one knows that one always falls short before God; that confesses its sin and makes a sound and honest commitment to improve and change its way of life, but that also knows that God is a merciful God, and that when we confess our faults to him, he covers us, throws the mantle of blessing over us, and says, “Okay, let us begin again.”

The Bible is full of such examples. I refer you to the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee. The tax collector was a scoundrel, a city or government employee who abused his position, was corrupt, and harmed people through his behavior; and this man, it says, comes to the house of God, while beside him there is another man who thinks he is holy and perfect, yet has not repented from the heart, does not acknowledge his faults, and is looking only at two or three little things. I tithe, I go to church, I do this, I do that, and he sees things only grosso modo, but he has not looked honestly at all the rotten things he has inside.

It says that the tax collector beat his chest and said, have mercy on me, Lord, a sinner. There was a radical acknowledgment of his sin, and I assume there was also a desire to change, because the Bible says that God saw his attitude, and he went home justified.

And that is what I mean, brothers and sisters: it is an attitude in which you weep over your sin; you know that you have failed. But neither does that paralyze you; it allows you to go on living because you receive God’s mercy, you know that God is forgiving you and that you are going to be better, that you are improving, that you are making progress, that you are doing everything in your power. There is sorrow in your heart over your sin.

That is why I like Psalm 51, which says, a contrite and humbled heart you will not despise, O God. I think of the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul was a man who served the Lord; he had lost everything for God and had sacrificed so many things in his life. God had used him so greatly, and yet he said, I am the chief of sinners. Because Paul knew that, despite everything he did, there was always something he could still improve. There was turmoil in his life.

It says that God allowed a thorn in his life, and many times he asked the Lord, deliver me from this; it says it was a messenger of Satan, a thorn in his flesh. And he asked the Lord to deliver him, and God said to him, no, I am going to leave it there so that you may learn to be humble. And he said, well, Lord, all right, whatever you want.

That is to say, I believe that every man and every woman of God, no matter how much they do and labor for the Kingdom of God, must always know that there are things you owe God and that it is only because of God’s mercy that he does not strike you with a bolt of lightning that splits you in half and sends you to the depths of hell. Because God is merciful, and that keeps us from being proud, arrogant, legalistic, accusatory toward others, and from assuming that we are the last Coca-Cola in the desert. No matter how much we give to the Lord, we will always be indebted to God, brothers and sisters, because that is human nature.

I believe that when you acknowledge that, it covers you; the devil cannot accuse you. Because when he tries to accuse you, God says to him, no, man, but that person already turned himself in ten years ago; look, here it is, I have already forgiven him. And he has to go away with his tail between his legs to look for some other sin of which to accuse you, because that one already… Look, keep turning yourself in before God before someone comes along and reports you. That is the best thing.

Keep short accounts with God. As soon as you discover something in your life that is not right before the Lord, throw yourself at the Lord’s feet and cry until your nose runs, ask him for forgiveness, repent, get up restored, and move forward with a greater purpose to serve God.

Look at what the psalmist says: “While I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all day long…”

While I kept silent—about what? About my sin. There are people out there who keep silent about their sins and think that if they remain silent, God will not notice, and neither will the devil. And that is the greatest mistake of all. God always notices because he is God, and the devil does too because he is old and has already spent many years on the earth; he has his spies out there.

You know that as long as one remains silent, as long as one conceals one’s sin, as long as one calls it something else—oh, that is a weakness I have, that is a flaw I inherited from my parents, it runs in the family, no, it is just that I am honest. No. It is not that you are honest; it is that you have a harsh tongue, that you are cruel to people, that you are verbally abusive. Do not call it honesty. Do not conceal your sin, do not disguise your sin, do not keep silent about your sin, do not hide it, and do not look at others who are supposedly worse than you so that you can then feel better than everyone else.

Prison inmates often have a system. People who abuse children, for example, are treated terribly in prison because the inmates say, no, now that is something that cannot be forgiven. That is nonsense; they do it to feel better than the other person. Oh, no, at least I do not abuse children. Yes, I killed seventeen women, but abuse a child? Never. It is man always trying to find something with which to hide his sin and avoid looking at himself.

Oh, no, I am not like those people in church who come forward, raise their hands, and cry; no, I am sincere with God. That is a lie. You are saying that so you will not have to admit that you have a sin you must confess before the Lord. Those hypocrites over there. No, confess your sin; do not focus on others. Look at yourself and acknowledge where you stand before God, and do not look around; do not look at anyone else in order to feel either better or worse than anyone. Do not compare yourself with anyone. You and God. Do not hide your sin; acknowledge it before the Lord. I confess.

That is why I say that this psalm calls me to a life of healthy confession in which I know that I owe the Lord. I will never be able to be perfect before God, but I will repent, I will acknowledge, I will confess, and I will make a sound resolution to keep moving forward, because if I do not, it will be like a nail that digs in and becomes embedded inside me, a nail that refuses to come out. Do you know what happens? It pierces the flesh—forgive the graphic description. A tumor that is trying to come out has to be cut out, it has to be removed, because it is obstructing a nerve, obstructing the flow of blood, obstructing something—breathing.

And unconfessed sin is like that. Many of us live a sinful lifestyle, brothers and sisters. And that is a tumor that keeps getting bigger, keeps growing. We conceal it, and when it gets too large, we cut off a little piece so that a little breathing room opens up, but we do not cut it out completely. And sometimes we cut away a little more, but leave the root because we want it to grow back again. Do not deceive yourself. God knows. God knows what I mean.

I have wrestled far too much with my own sin not to be a good psychologist of sin. I know the games we play with God, brothers and sisters. What my God wants is radical surgery. There are things in your life and in my life that we are going to have to surrender to God so they can be torn out by the roots, because if the cancer is not removed by the roots, it will spring up again. Listen, and it is going to hurt.

That chief demon lurking deep down inside is going to squeal like a tick when someone tries to pull it out of the flesh; it is going to squeal, but you have to do it. You have to confess, you have to surrender your life, you have to say, Lord, I radically repent, and I am going to live a life…

I encourage you this year, just as I encourage myself, to make it a year of saying, Lord, that is enough; cut out the tumor, cut it out by the roots. I confess my sin. Because when you do not confess it, when you do not repent from the heart, look, it says, my bones grew old; there is decay. The Lord’s hand weighs heavily upon you; it grew heavy upon you, as though God were putting pressure on you. That pressure is weakening you spiritually. Every day you are sinking deeper into sin.

It says, my vitality turned into the drought of summer. Do you know what happens? When grass is not watered and the sun begins to shine down on it and burn it, it becomes dry, straw-like, barren, and sparse; and unconfessed sin, sin that we do not deal with, sin of which we do not repent, leads to spiritual barrenness. It leads simply to living on the surface of spirituality without going deep in the Lord, because there are accounts to settle, there are things to put right.

The psalmist says, while I kept silent, I did not acknowledge it, I concealed it, I projected my sin onto others, I blamed others for what I do, I did not acknowledge my behavior, I remained in an improper way of life, and the Lord’s hand grew heavy upon me. My life dried up within me.

Now, glory to God, the psalmist did not remain there. The psalmist moves on to something else and says, my sin, which I declared—that is, he realized what was happening in his life, and then he finally went to the Lord, went to the temple, went to a friend and confessed it to him: let us pray together. He cried out before God. It says, I declared it to you and did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.

In other words, that is what we have to do every day, brothers and sisters. We must come before God, acknowledge our sins, confess them to the Lord, repent from the heart, settle our accounts with God, and look at what happens when you do that: and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

I wrote a little note here beside this passage in my Bible. It says, there is no resistance; God is willing. In other words, from the moment he acknowledges his sin, God tells him—and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

Look, the moment you become honest with God, God’s mercy is immediately ready to flow again. That is why I tell people, do not be afraid; do not play games with God, because you cannot play games with God. And secondly, it is because when you are honest with God, God immediately settles accounts with you, and it all ends right there. He now says, okay, come on, let us move forward. That is it; everything is settled. God is willing to forgive when there is repentance from the heart.

Because otherwise the alternative is stagnation. Do you remember the prodigal son? He went away to a distant place, full of pride, full of arrogance, carnality, and delight in the things of the world rather than the things of God; and it says that one day he came to his senses and said, you know what? I am going to return to my father and ask his forgiveness. And as soon as his father saw him, he immediately threw his arms around him, and he not only restored him to the status of a mere employee in his household, as the son thought he would, but gave him back all his dignity and placed the royal robe over him once again. He restored him to his status as a son and gave him back all his possessions and his position.

Because that is what God is like. That is why I tell you, brothers and sisters, that all of us must always be ready to come before the Lord and keep our accounts clear before God, rejoicing when we discover that there is something the Lord needs to deal with, because if you ask the Lord, he will help you move forward.

And then the psalmist says, for this reason every godly person will pray to you at a time when you may be found. In other words, given the fact that God is so willing to deal with us and forgive us, that is why we must pray before the Lord; that is why we must confess our sins. We must not hesitate to bring our needs and our condition before the Lord.

And now comes a list of additional benefits that result from this life of preventive confession and continual acknowledgment of our failings and our needs before the Lord.

Look at what it says: surely when the mighty waters rise, they will not reach him; you are my refuge, you will preserve me from trouble. One of the benefits of being forgiven by the Lord is that God will always be with you to rescue you in the day of trouble. When you are in the clear before the Lord, when you know that you will never earn God’s righteousness through your own works, then God is free to come to your aid when you are in distress and undergoing trials. In the day of trouble, the Lord will bring you through.

I was telling the brothers and sisters last Sunday: brothers and sisters, I do not promise you a year free of trials, but I do promise you a year full of victories. Troubles will come; perhaps trials will come into your life. I do not know what lies ahead for you or what lies ahead for me, but one thing I do know is that if I am right with God, if my life is clear before God, even if I fall into the pit, the Lord will bring me out of it.

The Bible says, many are the trials of the righteous, but the Lord will deliver them from them all. The psalmist says, I waited patiently for the Lord, and he brought me out of the pit of despair, out of the miry clay; he set my feet upon a rock and made my steps firm. Hallelujah!

When you are right with God and when God is free to act because you have already settled your accounts with him, and you have covered yourself with the blood of Jesus and are eager to please the Lord, then you are free for God always to bring you out of whatever problems may come into your life.

This year you can be certain that if you find yourself in a pressing situation, whether it lasts one day, ten days, three months, or six months, the Lord will bring you out of it because he watches over his children. But it is important that you be in the clear before him and that you have settled your accounts with him.

It also says here, you will surround me with songs of deliverance. You know, brothers and sisters, the person who is right with God and whose iniquity has been forgiven is a person who is always celebrating one victory or another. Such a person always has a joyful word to offer the Lord, always has a testimony about something God did and how he brought them through. Songs of deliverance.

I could tell you so many things that God… so many songs of deliverance… this very week, Friday began with a whole host of things and problems and construction challenges and other things, and by the end of the afternoon, all of that had already been resolved. Incredible. Songs of deliverance.

God gave me wisdom. May I share a brief testimony with you about that? Songs of deliverance. Look, we want to begin laying bricks this very week, even though it is winter and that involves certain complications, but there was an obstacle: we needed to see a person, an official with the City of Boston, as soon as possible. If this person did not give his approval, we could not begin laying bricks, and it seemed that we would have to wait far too long. There are some opportunities we have to take advantage of right now, and the architect told me, “No, it can’t be done this week; there is simply no way.”

I kept quiet and felt frustrated inside, but I was driving to another meeting, and one of those impulses that sometimes comes over me came over me, and I said, “You know what? I am going to call that person directly.” Right there at the City of Boston, like Queen Esther when she said, “I cannot go in there to see the king, because otherwise they will cut off my head.” I said, “You know what? I am going to entrust myself to the Lord’s grace.” This is a man whom, throughout all these years of construction, I have occasionally asked for mercy whenever I have been in a serious bind, and I have gone to him in my capacity as a pastor and told him, “I am not here as a professional; I am here as a pastor who is concerned about my church, and I need you to grant me an exception in this matter.”

And that man is extremely difficult to reach. The architect can never get hold of him, but for some reason, whenever I call, I always reach him. It is a strange thing. Nobody can reach him. The last time, about three years ago, I called him, and he said, “How did you get me? Nobody finds me on this phone ever.” He seemed annoyed and frustrated that I had caught him on the phone. He said, “Nobody reaches me when they call.”

And in fact, that time I presented my case to him, and he showed me grace. And this time I said, “Lord”—I had not even formulated the words yet—but I said, “Lord, although I am not sure what I am going to say to him, if he answers, I am going to take that as evidence of your grace, and I will say whatever comes to mind.” Listen to me: I was driving, I was late for a meeting, and the phone rang twice. “Hello?” I am not even going to say who it was, and I said, “Thank you, Lord.” Then I went ahead and told him, “Look, I know this is an exceptional matter. My architect is afraid to call you again. He left you a message, but I need this and this. I am calling as a pastor; I am not calling as a contractor or in any other capacity. Sometimes you have shown me grace, and this is what I need. We have a need and are in a bind; otherwise, we are going to lose a great opportunity.” He said, “Don’t worry. I am going to call the architect, and we are going to resolve this.”

I hung up the phone and called the architect. I told him, “Expect a call from this person.” And while I was talking to him, he said, “He is calling me right now. I have to hang up.” It was this man calling him. Songs of deliverance.

Brothers and sisters, God does not make everything easy in your life, but when you trust in the Lord’s grace, I know that I am not perfect, but I know that I have favor before God. He knows my heart.

So, when you have that confidence, you dare to do things. When you are in a bind, you say, “Well, things are right between my God and me. It is not that I have no sin, but he knows my whole life. He knows that I am prostrate at his feet and that I have a clear conscience; I am transparent before him. I have nothing hidden from him. I have his love, I have his grace, I have his mercy.” You can go down into the very pit of hell, and you know that God is with you.

And that gives you authority. Many times, we are like Adam and Eve: we have our sins covered up, we cover ourselves with leaves, and God knows. And when God wants to come and speak with us, we hide from him because we have no authority. When you know that you need God’s mercy and that everything God gives you is because he is merciful, compassionate, tender, forgiving, and patient, that immediately disarms the Lord. What God does not like is arrogant people, dishonest people, people who cover up their sin, people with deceitful hearts; but when God sees a contrite, humbled, transparent, sincere, simple heart, the Lord does not know what more he can do to bless that person.

That is why I ask you, brothers and sisters, let us be tender toward God. Let us be transparent with the Lord; let us be humble before our brothers and sisters and before our God, because that will always ensure that our lives contain testimonies and displays of God’s favor. We will have struggles, we will have battles, we will have times of distress, but the Lord will deliver us from all of them, and there will always be a song of deliverance in our mouths.

And then, there is the promise I was telling you about. The Lord says, “I will make you understand, and I will teach you the way in which you should walk.” When you are upright before God, when your heart is clear before the Lord—look—God gives you wisdom, gives you understanding, and teaches you each day the way in which you should walk. Every day, God’s counsel comes into your life.

I depend on that as a pastor, as a father, as a husband, as a counselor, as an administrator, as a person involved in so many different settings. I am continually saying, “Lord, give me wisdom. Give me counsel. How do I resolve this? I have to preach tomorrow, and I have nothing, Lord. I do not want to preach a generic sermon, because anyone can do that; I want a prophetic word. Where is your word? Where is your counsel?”

And I depend on God, brothers and sisters, 24 hours a day. I cannot tell you how many times, while I am driving, I say, “Lord, I have an appointment, someone I need to counsel, something I need to say, a situation I need to resolve, an important meeting. Give me the word; give me the counsel.”

And when your accounts with God are clear, all the lines are clear. You can receive; there is no interference. The word of the Lord comes down clearly. It is not like when you are in a tunnel and hear God’s voice breaking up, the devil is causing all kinds of interference, and you do not know what he is saying to you. No, when your life is clear, the Lord speaks to you in high definition; it is clear. The word of the Lord reaches you perfectly clearly. God gives you understanding. You receive God’s revelation intravenously, God’s counsel for your life.

Your life is a life of wisdom, of well-made decisions, and of correction; when you make a mistake, the Lord directs things in a good direction. “I will teach you, I will instruct you, I will make you understand.” Listen to me, what a thing! That is all-encompassing: “I will make you understand.” In other words, you will know who you are. What is the world like? What are life, death, illness, human relationships, finances, work, marriage, and children like? “I will make you understand, and I will teach you the way in which you should walk.”

But it all begins with having clear accounts with God. A life of confession, a life of acknowledgment, and a life of sound intentions, honest intentions to improve the way we walk with the Lord. “I will make you understand; I will teach you the way.”

And finally, it says, “I will fix my eyes upon you.” What a beautiful promise. Can you picture that? “I will fix my eyes upon you.” I hope you feel that when you walk, the Lord’s eyes follow you wherever you go. Because if God is watching you, brother, all is right with the world.

David lived with an intense awareness of that. Look at what Psalm 33, verse 18, says: “…behold, the eye of the LORD is upon those who fear him, upon those who hope in his mercy, to deliver their souls from death and to keep them alive in time of famine…”

I had told you about that dream I had of the Lord in the form of the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and what I saw was this lion—Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah—fixing his eyes upon the City of Boston, which was covered by a swarm of demonic spirits. And when I saw the Lord’s eyes in that dream, they were powerful eyes, eyes of authority, eyes of wisdom, and eyes of mercy. And I knew that simply by looking, he was able to exercise control.

Do you know that God is extremely economical? God does not have to go around swinging blows and pulling out a spear and a sword and cutting… No, no. God simply looks, and with his eyes he governs the universe. He does not have to stir himself too much.

So, if God is watching over you, the Lord’s protection is over your life, along with God’s control and God’s blessing. I always say, “Lord, may your eyes never turn away from my life. May your eyes never turn away from this congregation. May you always be watching over this little piece of land at 68 Northampton Street, because if you are watching over this community, this community will prosper and be blessed.”

Now, how do you make sure that the Lord’s eyes will be upon your life? Keep short accounts. When you offend the Lord, confess immediately, form a sound resolve to do better, and do not cover up your sin.

There is a corrective verse that says, “Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding and must be restrained with a halter and bridle, or else they will not come near you.” What does that mean? Do not be stubborn; do not be rebellious; do not persist obstinately in your sin. Instead, be submissive; be tender toward God.

Do not be rebellious. Brothers and sisters, there are people in the Kingdom of God, and even in this church, who have been here for years, and it is always the same thing. They never change. It is always the same. Their temper does not change, their character does not change, their personality does not change, their practices do not change, and we need to change our attitude. There are things that are causing harm in your life; there are things that are hurting your loved ones. There are things preventing the Lord’s grace from flowing in your life, and God says, “Do not force me to be harsh with you. Do not force me to exercise discipline because otherwise you will not obey me.”

We must always try to get ahead of God by confessing our sins before the Lord and changing. I want you this year to make a firm resolution to surrender to God all those things that do not please him. You know what they are. Do not give them a different name. And remember that I am always calling you to go very deeply into those things that displease the Lord.

Because many times we think, “I am not an adulterer, I am not stealing from anyone, I have not killed anyone, I do not go around kicking little old ladies in the street, and I do not steal candy from children.” There are things, there are other attitudes, there are deep things in our hearts; there is pride, there is rebellion, there are bad attitudes, there is verbal abuse, there are grudges we have not let go. There are things—attitudes—that are not grotesque sins, but they are nevertheless tumors that cause harm in our lives.

And I believe that a man or woman of God truly reaches maturity when he or she stops being concerned only about the grave, serious, and ugly things and enters that ethical area of life: those respectable and elegant sins that are nevertheless sinister and destructive and are just as harmful to spiritual growth. Surrender those things to the Lord as well; confess your sin so that God’s discipline does not fall upon your life.

And then you will be able to have all those benefits of which God speaks. I am the first who has to say, “Lord, help me to be honest and transparent with you. Have mercy; have compassion on me, O God, according to your mercy; according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me more and more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin, for I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before you. Against you alone have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be acknowledged as just in your word and regarded as pure in your judgment.”

“Behold, I was conceived in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, you love truth in the inward parts, and in the secret place you have made me understand wisdom. Unite me like hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness, and the bones you have broken shall rejoice.”

Brothers and sisters, that is the attitude. Read Psalm 51 for your devotional time this week. That is the attitude God wants 24 hours a day, 60 minutes per hour, 60 seconds per minute: a contrite and humbled heart, merciful, tender toward God, acknowledging that from the moment you get up—in fact, even while you are dreaming—you are already sinning and need God always to be covering your iniquity.

And when you live like that, the devil will not know what to do with you. God’s mercy will cover you again and again. God grant that this may be the attitude of this congregation.

Let us stand; let us surrender ourselves to the Lord. Let us not be rebellious. Let us not be proud before God. Let us be humble, submissive, prostrate on the floor before the Lord’s presence, trusting in his mercy every day. That is what I desire for my people; it is what I desire for myself. I need to meditate on this sermon ten times—me first of all.

This applies to all of us, brothers and sisters. God desires that we surrender our lives to the Lord. If you have not surrendered your life to Christ today, stop playing games with God and take refuge in the Lord’s arms. I want to invite anyone who has not yet surrendered his or her life to Jesus and wants to do so today: if you want to raise your hand, I want to pray for you and place you in the Lord’s hands.

Is there anyone who has not yet given their life to Christ Jesus and has not confessed their sins before the Lord? God bless you, my sister, amen, amen. The Lord knows your heart, and that is where justification begins. Justification begins with an acknowledgment of sin. There is no need to be ashamed of that. On the contrary, what a privilege it is to be able to cast off that ugly, filthy cloak and receive the cloak of justification that God wants to place upon us.

Is there anyone else who would say to the Lord, “Lord, I repent of my sins and give my life to you”? Amen, God bless you, sister. Amen, God bless you. Here too, hands are being raised. Glory to the Lord. Hands raised as a sign of repentance.

Perhaps someone upstairs as well? May I ask you to come up here to the front quickly. Come over here for a moment. I want to pray for you and give your life to the Lord. Someone accompany those souls. Come over here; do not worry. This is only between you and God. Come. I want to place you in the Lord’s hands and present your life to him, and I want you to walk in this way, as we have said: honesty, honesty, sincerity before the Lord. Come over here.

Let this be the watchword this year for you and for me: sincerity before God. Transparency before the Lord. Do not conceal your sin. Die—this is the year to die, this is the year to define, this is the year to decide. This is the year of clarity before the Lord. Define us, Father, once and for all.

We give you everything we have and everything we are. Sincerity, says the Lord, sincerity, transparency before me, says the Lord. Give me everything and confess everything to me, and I am more than willing to walk with you. I will never reject you, never whip you, never turn you away from my throne in shame. If you draw near to me contrite and humbled, my hand of mercy will always be extended over you. And my forgiveness will always be upon you.

I do not condemn you. If there is repentance, I do not condemn you, says the Lord. Walk with God this year. Walk with Christ this year. Seal in your heart what you are doing by coming up here to the front. Write it down somewhere; put a piece of paper in your bedroom, somewhere you will see it every day. Lord, I gave you my life, I gave you my heart, I acknowledged my sin before you. Now I want to live in that honesty.