So in 2023 in February in Kentucky, really nowhere Kentucky, a town of two stoplights small college, Asbury College was having chapel. Now they had chapel three times a week. It's no different than the way many of you come to church on every Sunday. But this Sunday was different or this weekday chapel service was different. When the chapel ended, everyone went back to class except for 1919, students stayed two 30 in the afternoon.

The 19 were still there, four 30 in the afternoon. The 19 had turned into 75, and then it happened in a room full of 75 college students. One girl walked down to the very front of the stage, she stood up and this is what she said, I've been mean to almost all of you. My parents are getting divorced. They're both alcoholics.

I'm scared I'm gonna be just like them. I went to the bridge to jump last week. I'm a ghost on this campus. None of you really know me now. As soon as she said that, someone standing in the back of the room, another girl in the very back stood up and she said, yeah, but we wanna know you.

And in that moment, those 75 students gathered all in the center and it just begun to happen. It was a pit of students experiencing God's love. It was a pit of broken, depressed, anxious college students that began to see God differently. Now, I heard an interview this week and it was one of the professors, he was talking about everything he experienced that week and he went back to that first day and he said there was a moment in that day where they had to make a decision. Do they let it continue or do they put an end to it?

He said they chose to let it continue. 16 days later, nine different venues, every church in town, 400 people in the front lawn, six to 10 hours to get into town, two and a half miles of traffic to get on campus. And my favorite, look at the sign on the highway, revival is over capacity. Can you imagine that moment and better yet, can that happen here? What would it take for you and me to get to see God?

Now listen, I think that the beatitude that we've made it to this week, I think this is the beatitude that sets the stage for us to experience something like that. And so here it is. I wanna introduce you to our beatitude. This is a powerful one this week. And the beatitudes, maybe you remember this because we've been doing this for several weeks, but the beatitudes at the very beginning of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, and it's almost like a doorway.

Like before you can get to the whole sermon, before you get to the message, before you get to the whole thing, there's these beatitudes, these nine statements that describe Jesus in his character. And what we've said to you, and I wanna remind you of this, this 'cause this is really important. This isn't like a checklist, but rather this is like a journey. This is who you and me are becoming. So I want you to see the one for this week.

Here it is. Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. Now when when I throw this one on the screen, I don't know about you. There's several words that kind of pop to me. The very first one is one you've seen for several weeks now, and it's blessed.

I've told you this, I'm for a blessing. Like if you hand out blessings, count me in. But the context of this word blessed in this moment, it's a little bit different. And here's the words we've said. I want you to think when you see blessed, think fulfilled, I think complete and whole, think fully satisfied.

Now, these are words that don't just come with like a material blessing. It's deeper than that. So blessed. Now the next word you see in the little statement here, I love this. It's just the word are blessed are.

Before we get to the rest of this, th this, I don't know a whole lot about this and be real honest with you, but I know this is like present tense. Blessed are like, this is something you can experience today. Blessed are doesn't mean like one day when you're in heaven. It's not like all future tense. It's not just when you get there, it's not past tense.

Like if you would've done this or back then when you were doing this, you could have been, no. It's like this is something you're becoming, this is the journey that you're on. And when you begin to do these things, you will be blessed in this life. Blessed are now, that's the next word that really jumps pure for lots of us, that's a game changer. It's, it's more like a dead end.

I came in, if you saw my web browser, if you knew the places my phone has been, if you knew my stories, innocent absolute, maybe Disney princess ish, those are the things that come to mind when I think about pure. If you're like me, you're like, that just disqualified me. And this is so good. I love this. I don't want you to think about your past.

When you see pure, I want you to think about Jesus's promises because it's very different. Because that word didn't exclude you. It didn't take you off the list. Instead, this is a promise for you. This is who you can be pure is what we become when we are living by Jesus's promises pure, not perfect boy, that's a big one.

You see how it still applies to you and say, yeah, yeah, this is for you. This is my promise for you is you can be pure when you follow the promises of Jesus. And the big idea for today, the thing I'm gonna try to get across to you is real simple. It's how God sees you. It's how he sees you.

Because you and me begin to think, that doesn't apply to me because I'm not pure. But what I'm gonna show you today in God's words so that you can have Scripture to hold onto this next verse may be one you wanna write down. It may be one you wanna take a picture of. It may be a reference you wanna grab hold of. It may even be one you wanna memorize because the enemy doesn't want you to see yourself this way, but here's how God sees you.

This is in Philippians. This is so good, so that you may become blameless and pure. That's who you and I are becoming. Remember I told you that about the beatitudes? It's not a checklist, it's a journey.

It's who we're becoming. You are becoming blameless and pure. You're a child of God without fault. Now here's the problem. We are stuck in a warped and crooked generation.

I don't have to explain that. It's like I got the story for it. But here's what's so frustrating about you and me. We stay here more than we stay there. Why do we do that?

Every one of you, you can, you can, you can tell me a story about a, a crooked, warped generation. You can tell me a story about an epic failure. You can tell me a story about a moment that you disappointed yourself or others, but I'm trying to start focusing more on who I'm becoming and less of who I've been. And I want you to start turning the page a little bit with me because this is how God sees you. You may become blameless and pure even though you're in a warped and crooked generation.

That's the journey that you and I are on. Listen, as a child of God, it's always been more about what he has done than what we have done. And that's a big journey. That's a big shift in your mind because we wanna talk about our failures and we wanna talk about the ways we, we wish we would've done something. We gotta start talking about the righteousness that's available for you and for me that Jesus gives us.

Because it is free and it is available for you and for me. And it is a game changer because that's where you wanna be. You and me are pure in his sight. We are blameless. Scripture even said, did you catch it?

At the very end we're like stars. I'm just telling you, I feel like I know in my life there's moments that I feel like that's a star. Like I've either, I wanna be the star on the stage, like, look at me, or I feel like that star that's like lost. It's it, it's like dim. It's like one you can barely see.

But when we start to reflect Jesus's love and his righteousness and the way he sees us as blameless and pure man, we're reflecting a really bright light. It, it's like a lighthouse. My family's gotten into national parks. I don't know about you guys, but uh, it seems like everybody's getting into national parks now. But we've gone to several of 'em and it's kind of been one of our fall break things where we'll go to a national park and uh, we're gonna do it again this fall break.

But a couple of fall breaks ago, we went all the way to Maine, uh, Acadia National Park. And it is beautiful. I mean, we did some hikes and, and we saw the whole thing. We, we, I mean, it, it was, it's an incredible place We've never been. But one of the highlights that we time to be right at, right at sunset.

And and you probably, if you've seen pictures of this, you've seen the beautiful lighthouses and this lighthouse was out on the, out on the rocks, you know, and, and it's shining and it's still got the light coming and it's the sun's going down. You can, you can now see the rocks and you can see the shore. You can see everything. The captains that are in the ships that are going by the harbor, they are given light to see things because of the power of the lighthouse. You and I are part of a really powerful lighthouse.

It's not, and it's not just venture. It's it's people that have been radically saved by Jesus. There's now this light inside you and me that shines like stars. But I gotta help you see you that way. That is who you are in Christ.

You are a new creation. You are a powerful, and you are part of a powerful lighthouse because of Jesus. Here's what I wanna talk about today though. How do we stay that way? Like if we are blameless and pure, if we're a new creation in Christ, how can you and I stay pure?

'Cause I struggle to stay pure? Well, here's the first one, and they're all three hard. Can I just tell you that I don't know, wish it was easier, but I think the enemy wants to make it hard for us because he doesn't want us to be a lighthouse. He doesn't want us to see ourselves blameless and pure. Here's the first thing you gotta do to stay pure.

Oh man, you gotta be quick to forgive. You're like, done. That's hard enough right there. See, the the thing about being blameless and pure is you, you know this. That's not natural for you and for me.

But when we invite Jesus into our life, he gives us a new heart. He gives us a new power. He sees us this way. We are this way. The problem is we, we fall back into the old patterns in our old hearts and we do the, the r and r.

There's two things that you're gonna really connect to. 'Cause you do this, I do this. The first one is we ruminate. That's when you, you begin to dwell on something in an obsessive or an unhelpful way. You play something over and over again in your mind.

You, you do like a cow does who eats up the grass, swallows it, spits it back up, and then just for some reason goes right back at it to eat it again, swallow it, need it. He's ruminating over the same thing, the same incident, the same words. And that's develops a hard heart in you. Me too. If you don't do that, then you probably do this, right?

The other R is to rehearse. That's when you start to repeat something over and over again until it becomes ingrained in our memories, in our behavior, or even in our emotions, ruminating and rehearsing. Let me, let me, let me give you an example 'cause maybe this will help you. Uh, over 30 years ago, I was a sixth grader, but in my mind, I can go back to sixth grade English class. And I can remember when the teacher was a moment for her to call on someone to read something, and she called on me to read it.

Now, she should have known I was a bad reader, but she still called on me. I said, sixth grader. I remember when a friend of mine in that classroom said, Craig's a terrible reader. Now I have to read in front of a thousand people and my mind can go back to that moment. I can ruminate, I can rehearse, I can tell you everything about the moment, but I have to catch myself because that's my old heart.

That's my hard heart. But instead, I'm trying to get to a place now where I'm learning that Jesus has given me a new heart. And with that new heart comes power. Uh, there's grace to see others the way he sees me, the's strength to begin to move past some of the things that may have shaped me in a negative way. But I gotta catch myself, and then I gotta begin to apply God's Scripture.

Watch this one. This one's really gonna hit you right between the eyes. Do not let the sun go down while you're still angry. I've let the sun go down for 30 years on that make you feel a little better, maybe about how you're struggling. Here's another one.

All right? You ready? In Ephesians, get rid of all bitterness. Do you hear that bitterness still in my heart towards the person that said that. I can tell you who it is.

I could say it. Get you back. Know where she is right now. I better. I gotta watch out.

I had, I had lunch with a guy this week. He's, I think he's in his sixties. He began to describe his father. You know, the two words he used for him? Rage and anger.

See, I know, I know. I get it. Like my story about being a bad reader, you're like, Hey, I got stories that can, your little story ain't nothing. I, I remember what my dad said to me. I remember what my mom said to me.

I, I remember what my spouse said to me. I'm not telling you these things are easy to move past. I'm just telling you, if we're gonna stay pure and blameless the way God sees us, then we have to be ready. It's on the next one quick to forgive each other. And I'm, I'm gonna give you the kid, man.

I think I, I think I, I know the only way for you to do this, and it's for you to get to a place where you get to where I am, where you say I can't, but he can. I think that's the key to this one, because I know how hurtful those words have been. I know about the pattern that you've set, where you think about it every time the situation comes up, or every time you hear, every time you see that person, or every time you go to that place, it comes back in your mind and you catch yourself. And that's your old heart. But today, I am helping you.

See, that's not how God sees you. And now you have a new heart in you. And now we're gonna break some of those rhythms and you can't, but he can. That's the beauty of this. That's the first one.

We've gotta be quick to forgive. Now, here's the second thing to remain pure and blameless. If that wasn't hard enough, the second thing we gotta do is be quick to repent. I, I, I know this is gonna, I'm gonna be sarcastic, and you're not supposed to be sarcastic when you preach. I'm gonna be sarcastic just for a minute, believe it or not, between this moment and when I die and go to heaven, I'm gonna sin.

I know that shocks you, right? I just am. I think you are too. And so that's the beauty of this rhythm that God gave us, is that you, you, you don't have to stay there. Instead, he gives us this thing called repentance where we begin to recognize these patterns and these sins that are in our life.

And, and we don't have to get baptized every time we sin. Instead, all we have to do is begin to repent as, as we go back to God and say, God, I recognize that this was sin. I recognize my motives were bad. I recognize this was my old self, my old heart, and I'm gonna begin to turn now and walk towards you again. And we repent.

And we repent. It's remember the lighthouse, the story of the lighthouse that, that you could see things all out. The, the lighthouse also works inside your heart. I'm starting to notice that, like I love that lighthouse when I'm like able to encourage you and, and give light to you and show you the direction that God's showing us. But there's also moments where the lighthouse like shines on little areas of my heart that convict me, and it leads me to repentance.

It leads me to begin to turn. Lemme give you a verse because this is really powerful. It says repent then like that's the next thing that I want you to do. Like I want you to forgive and I want you to repent and turn to God. Like I don't know what it is that maybe you kind of turn to what habit you turn to, what website you turn to, what, what, what you know, what habit you turn to, uh, whose other voice in your life that you've turned to, what relationship you've turned to.

He said, listen, just turn to me, turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out because he's the only one that can do that. And that this is so good. You ready for this? This is, this is what you want. That times of refreshing may come from the Lord, I, I've been getting in a cold plunge looking for refreshing.

That's painful. I'm reading this and I'm beginning to understand that maybe I can just turn to the Lord and he would refresh me. I want you to see this because this is really important. Refreshing comes from the Lord, not from living a perfect life. 'Cause if you're waiting on the perfection side of things and you're waiting on to live perfect, then you're trying to earn something that one, you can't earn that two you can't do.

Instead to stay pure and blameless. Not only do we forgive, but we constantly keep turning, keep adjusting, keep letting that light of the Holy Spirit that's shining in us. Show us things that are distracting us. And then the refreshing comes from when we come back to the Lord. I, I think, I think what's happened is it, it's, there's almost like, I feel like you have an expectation that once you pray and you accept Jesus, that life is gonna be like a straight line.

I'm just, I'm just telling you, I'm, I'm not, I'm not as old as some of you, but I'm old enough to realize it's not a straight line. And I've, I'm, I'm watching people that I love and it's like, you're still playing Texas. Hold them. You ain't Texas. Hold 'em.

Fans, any card players, any men's group, you know, you do a little gambling on Friday night. It's okay when you play Texas, hold them. You have to hold your cards. I mean, you right, you, you may get lucky enough and get to get rid of one, draw one, yeah. But, but, but you can't like lay all your cards down.

You're stuck with 'em. And that's not the story of the Gospel. That's the beauty of the cross. It's when you laid all of your cards down on the cross and you picked up a royal flush. You, you picked up the best card hand you could have, you picked up his righteousness and you exchanged your sins.

I don't know where that got missed. Like, instead it was like, alright, I prayed to accept Jesus and now I tried to be perfect and I wasn't. I feel like a failure. That's not the story of the Gospel. It's like you missed the whole thing.

The good news is that now we get to lay that down and we get to pick up the goodness of God and we get to rest in it. We get to find refreshing in it. I talked to a guy this week and, and he was telling me, he was telling me about his mom, and he's in his sixties, his siblings are in their sixties. Just an incredible family and an incredible mom. I mean like a godly mom.

And, and she's sick now. She's in her nineties and the tables have turned. Maybe you're in a family where you're doing this. I know some of you are where they're taking care of her now, and it's a gift. I mean, she, again, she, she loved them so dearly.

She was an incredible mom. I'm gonna tell you something that they're seeing that was probably a pattern in her life all the way up. But now that she's in her nineties, it's even more profound. She can't apologize and he's watching because she'll, she'll say things that he sees written all over her or on the phone call with her that she wants to apologize for, but because she can't apologize, she'll literally make herself sick. I started thinking about that because I'm not good at apologizing either, but I thought, man, of the things I wanna pass on to my kids, like I'd, I'd love to pass on a great inheritance of things and some trips and some experiences, and man, I want them to hear me say I love them.

I want them to hear us say, I'm sorry, because we make mistakes. I wanna model to them. And I'm not good at this. Katie's much better at this. Like this is confession, okay?

I I they're gonna make mistakes. Like we're making mistakes at times. But is there a culture in your home where they hear you say, Hey, I'm sorry. 'Cause it's the way that we remain pure. It's the way we remain blameless.

It's a powerful thing to pass on. Deferral is not your friend with this. You don't wanna be 90 years old and still not able to say you're sorry. So here's the application for this little step. Okay?

This is gonna, this is gonna hurt. This is gonna go from, oh, that kind of feels good. I bet you're right to, oh no, I've gotta do something. I want you to set a date and a time that you're gonna turn, you're gonna repent from whatever it is that's got you distracted, okay? You can, you can grab your communication card before we leave.

You can open up a notes app and you can say, Hey, uh, by today at five o'clock, I'm gonna have this conversation. Hey, by Monday at dinnertime, I'm gonna make this, this is on my list. I gotta do this because deferral, you're gonna look up and you're never gonna done it, and you're gonna miss refreshing. That comes from the Lord. That's the number two.

Okay? Now number three. And there's just three ways to keep us pure, and I really like this one. Uh, this one, this one's not quite as, doesn't hurt your feelings quite as bad. You gotta fix your focus.

Here's the best way to see this. I want you to see this illustration. I I I love these things. Many of you, when you look at this, in fact, lemme just ask you, how many of you see a duck? Okay, how many of you, you see a rabbit?

Okay, I wish I had a cool fact to tell you. Like, if you see a duck, then you're gonna be a millionaire. If you see a rabbit, then you're gonna go broke. That's, that's not that. The idea with the illustration is that you can't see both.

Like you either see one now, if you start looking at it now, you're like, no, I, I can see both. Like I see the duck and I see the rabbit, but you can't see 'em both at the same time. You, you've gotta fix your focus to either see the duck or to see the rabbit. Here's what God's word says. It's the, it's really similar.

It says fix your eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. Since what is seen is only temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. He's saying, I don't know where you are in this journey, but I'm challenging you to begin to fix your eyes, not on the circumstances that are all around you. Think about Mary. I I love the verse about Mary, the one that says she treasured up these things in her heart and she pondered on them.

What, what do you think she was treasuring That she was pregnant as a teenager. Maybe she was treasuring that she was homeless. I guess she was treasuring that she just had a baby in a barn. Do you see how her perspective was so different? I mean, it meant to all the things that she was dealing with.

She had vision to not see the things that were right here, but yet to see the things that were eternal. Uh, think about Paul. I I love Paul. If you, if you've been reading this in our, in our Bible reading plan, we we're in Timothy, and this is where Paul begins to write back to like a friend of his, a mentor of his. And Paul refers to himself.

You read it this week in the Bible reading plan. He said, I need you to know I'm the chief of all sinners. What? At the same time, he's chained up and he's literally writing God's word for us. So how does he see himself?

Does he see himself as the chief of all sinners or does he see himself as this vessel that God's now using? Does he see himself like chained up in a first century jail, couldn't have been real nice, or does he see himself still as a work in progress that God hasn't taken his eyes off of him? What about Peter? Now, I Peter's probably my favorite, I think because Peter was, was like sporadic. Like he just, he just jumped and did things.

And I'm, I can be that way a little bit. Peter saw Jesus walking on water. You remember the story, and Peter's like, why not me? I'd like to come out there. And so Peter's the envy of the whole thing of like, all of you are watching Peter, and here he goes, he's walking on water and he's the man.

Go, Peter, woo woo woo. And then look at the verse, look what happens to Peter. So when he saw the wind, he was afraid and he began to sink. So how does Peter see himself? Like everybody was watching.

It was this epic moment, yet he sunk, he failed. He had to cry out literally, Lord, save me. Or does he see himself as somebody that got to be captured in the arms of Jesus, that got to be pulled up in that moment and got to be loved and cared for and seen? How do you see yourself? My fear is that you still see yourself sinking.

That's not how Jesus sees you. I, many of you see God as being angry at you. That's not who he is. The barn poll says 50% of you, that's the way you view God. Listen, if you see God that way, then it's really hard to see yourself the way he sees you as blameless and as pure.

No longer are you damaged goods. No longer are you the chief of all sinners. The ground at the foot of the cross. It's even, it's it's level. It's not like, Hey, down here, here's the preachers and here's me, or here's the missionaries, or here's those that give, or here's those that still cuss.

I lost the camera. No. Instead he says, you are pure and you're blameless. You're a new creation in me. I thought about the girl, the the girl that walked down to start the revival.

She was depressed, she was suicidal. She was lonely, But there was a purity about her not a perfection. Here's what pure means here. Here's what pure means. Pure.

I think I have something for pure, pure. I'm gonna say it to you just in case. Pure is undivided, undistracted, single-minded. That's pure, undivided, undistracted, single-minded Mary. She was pure.

Despite all that was going on in her life, Paul, he was, he was pure. He still had a single undivided Peter, despite the epic failure, he was, he was locked in. Listen, I've, I've led you to a moment right here, and this is a little different. I'm trying to get you out of the moment that happens like every single Sunday. This is a moment.

This, this is a moment for you to examine your heart. We've talked about Mary's heart, we've talked about Paul's heart and Peter's heart. We've talked about the random girl that we don't know in Asbury, Kentucky's heart. What about your heart? So here's what I want you to do, because you're surrounded by people unless you're at home and, and I, I wanna give you a moment to examine your heart because it all starts in your heart, blessed of the pure end heart, for they will see God.

So here's, here's just a second for you. I want you to bow your head, and in a minute we're gonna sing. And in a minute you can come down and respond and you can even have someone pray over you. And for you, but just for a second, let's start with just the three things we talked about today. The very first one is there, maybe you need to forgive yourself.

Maybe you need to give forgive someone else. Would you examine your heart in that? Next, we talked about repentance. How, how, how sometimes things distract us and they, they pull our attention away from the main thing. Would you, would you pray and say, God, search my heart like that lighthouse.

Show me where maybe I've gotten distracted. Tim, I wanna turn back to you. Finally, we said, vision. God help me see me the way you see me. That's just a real simple prayer.

I'm gonna read a psalm to you and then I'm gonna pray. But when I'm reading the psalm, I want you to grab hold of one of these words. That's gonna be your prayer for this week, okay? This is Psalm 51, and you're listening for the one word that God lays on your heart, that you're gonna pray this week. You ready?

Created me a pure heart. Maybe that's where you start renew a steadfast spirit within me. Maybe your word is renew. Maybe your word is steadfast. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.

Ready? You're listening for your word. Restore. Maybe that's your word. Restore to me.

Ready? Here's another one. The joy of your salvation. Grant me a willing spirit. Maybe that's your word.

Here's the last one. Sustain me. Sustain me. God, I thank you that you still move, that revival still happens. God, I thank you that it's not about perfection, it's about being pure.

God, I thank you that the righteousness of the cross, it's available for me. God, it's a two-way street and, and God, I'm so thankful that my sins are gone, but God, I'm also so joyful to get to receive your righteousness. God, my word is sustained. Would you sustain that in me? God, my word is create.

Would you create in me space to, to learn, to love you and to live for you? God, my word is joy. God, my word is a willing spirit. God, give me a willing spirit to see and step into moments. God, my word is create.

Create in us a church that is pure, that is undivided. Father, we love you and we worship you. It's in your name we pray. Amen.