Josh  
Welcome back, everybody, for this week’s podcast, which is also available on YouTube. For those you watching on YouTube, you already know that it also while you’re there, I want you to check out our other podcasts you may not notice, but Regeneration has two podcasts that becoming a whole podcast and one that is also specifically for women. Now that this podcast isn’t, but that one is specifically by the women on our team for women, so if you haven’t heard that podcast, please check it out. And if you’re a guy and you want to listen to that podcast, you probably learn a lot of helpful stuff in your relationships for the women in your life. With that said, I want to dive into a topic this week about ceilings, ceilings, a lot of conversation these days about glass ceilings on kind of prohibiting women from from moving into positions of authority and making what men make and those kinds of things. That’s not this conversation and important information, but not this conversation. But it’s related in this. So I’ve been in this area ministry for over 25 years now. 20, not quite 25 years, almost 25 years. And one of these I’ve experienced is the reality that so many people have ceilings on how far they can go. And the ceilings come from different places, sometimes they come from what people have said is possible is impossible. As far as changing their lives, as far as transformation goes, I think of our dear brothers and sisters who experienced same sex attractions, there’s a ceiling that is that people put on that and say, you know, you’re always going to experience that, which may be the case, we’re gonna talk about that a minute. But But, and then. And then I think also another example would be men who start with lust. Interesting, I don’t know that, that women experience the same feeling here, and maybe they do. But for men who are with lust, there’s kind of this overarching belief in our culture, that men will always struggle with lust. And what they mean by struggle there is that men will always lust at least sometimes. So they’re these ceilings over how far we think we can go, how, how free we can be, how transformed into the image of Christ, we can become. Now the other side of this conversation are people who, who resist and reject all ceilings, like, there’s, there’s no stopping you, you can become anything you want to become. You can be absolutely healed of everything, count on it, depend on it, presume it, it’s yours, just believe. And I’d say there’s an error on both sides of that debate. The air on air on the first side is obviously a lack of faith, it’s putting our faith in what people around us say what our culture believes. Also a lot of times on our own experience. So if I haven’t experienced change, after, you know, trying X, Y and Z and working on it for so many years, then I’m more likely to believe I guess it’s just not for me and to give up hope of for the transformation further change. Again, I’m gonna talk about that a minute. On but on the other side of the of the equation in putting my hope they are pretty My my, my idea of how far I can go there instead of on, on Jesus. On the other side of the the the argument, though, are the people who say you can have it all. And there’s, but there there’s a sin of presumption, there’s a sin of of saying, look, the Kingdom of Heaven has come. And it’s all mine right now I get it, I just need to believe. And practically speaking, I’ve also people who live in those waters, I’ve often encountered not all of them, but some of them really experience a lot of despair and end up kind of leaving Christ altogether. And because they’re believing, I must just not have enough faith. And I think it can really turn into kind of self hatred, even ashamed about their their own lack of faith because they’re not experienced the kind of transformation they want. We live in, in between times. I see as little as called the Shadowlands. The kingdom of God has come in Christ, Jesus says, The kingdom of God has come. And yet he in Christ Jesus, in His incarnation, and yet he is going to return and that will be the conservation of the ages. And so we are not there yet it’s the theologians have for years called it the now and not yet of eschatology. We recognize that Christ has come, the kingdom of heaven is ours. But we still pray, Lord, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Why did Jesus teach us to continue to pray this? If not, for for not if the ceilings would remain? Or if it was all already happened? We continue to pray because we are somewhere in the middle. So for those of you who have who have placed a ceiling in your head or let somebody else place a ceiling on your head as far as how far you will go, I would encourage you to smash that ceiling. To submit it to the power and love and word. The promise of Christ that he makes all things new, or Romans eight, one of my favorite passages in all of Scripture. The apostle Paul says, if he if God did if God raised Jesus from the dead, how much more so will he bring life to your mortal bodies, and they got a such application for us as we’re talking about our sexual sense of Lord, bring life to my mortal body. Right? That can be our prayer, your kingdom come, Your will be done in my body, as your as your will is done in heaven. And we, and we, and we wait, we wait. We don’t get into the sin of presumption. We wait. Now, what about that, that topic of getting discouraged and despairing about about how far we’ve come or how far we haven’t come? I want to speak to that for a minute. Because I’ve been there. I’m there in parts of my life right now. I’ve experienced a lot of change, for example, in the area of of lust, I don’t look at pornography anymore. I don’t masturbate anymore. I don’t do a lot of things I used to do anymore in that regard. And yet, and there was a season in my life, where even the idea of looking at pornography, the idea of lusting felt loathsome to me, I felt a sense of, I don’t want to treat people like that. I’m not going to treat people like that. And I can treat my wife like that. But I’m also gonna treat it and treat this person, as an object for myself as gratification, I felt it. And I lived it out. And it was, it was a really sweet season. But it didn’t last. And it didn’t, it didn’t stop because I gave into sin or something like that. I don’t know why it stopped. And I wish it would continue. And I pray that, that I would experience that again. And so I wait, I long a yearn for that. But it was a taste of the reality of Heaven in me now. And I’m not saying I was perfect, and I was far from perfect time but, but I was experiencing a freedom, a removal of ceiling that I hadn’t experienced before. And I want to encourage you to let Christ smash those seals in your life so that you can anticipate hope or pray for move for seek to become conformed to His image and his likeness. Alright, so let me rewind for a second. For those of you who wrestle with experience, same sex orientation, sexual orientation. I mentioned earlier in the podcast that that many people do not experience complete freedom from that. So how do you live with that the not having a ceiling about how far you can be transformed, but also Humbly accepting, where something does continue for you. Now, before I go further, I said specifically to the brothers and sisters who are dealing with a sexual, same sex, sexual orientation. But I also want to just let you know and let all of our listeners know this really applies for all of us. It applies to men, dealing with lust. It applies to anyone dealing with ongoing sexual sin in your life or any kind of besetting sin in your life where you continue to feel drawn to tempted by a Lord by even feeling in your body pull towards something that you know that you want to leave behind that God does not want for you. But I think one of the most powerful ceilings that kind of heaviest lead in ceilings in our in our culture right now deals with those who are dealing with sexual identity issues, specifically around same sex sexual orientation. So how do you how do you live with with both the reality that you may not experience the change you hope for? You may not experience complete change in your attractions. You can expect you can experience change your behaviors you can experience, change in how you identify yourself, that maybe you still wrestle with the same sex, sexual orientation. How do you live with that embrace that not feel ashamed by that not feel less than for that, but also not live underneath that leaden ceiling that says, Well, that’s because it’s who you are. And here I’d say in this hope this is a not doesn’t feel like cliche answer, but we place our hands in the hands of Jesus, and we fix her eyes on his face. We fix her eyes on him, not on our own progress. I wish it weren’t so honestly. But God does not promise us an end to all of our temptation. Matter of fact, again, looking at the Lord’s Prayer, he says, lead us away from temptation, and deliver us from evil and from the evil one.

Josh  
But he doesn’t promise us freedom from all temptation here and now we can hope for it, pray for it, seek it. But even the Apostle Paul had a thorn in his flesh and we don’t know what it was people a guest for many years. And Jesus said to him, I’m going to leave it because my strength is perfected and your weakness Well, so what was Paul supposed to do with that? lament? Stop doing ministry? No, he said his eyes on Christ and pursued him. So I would encourage you like where where you find encouraging myself where I find where you find a temptation to believe I will never be anything different than this. I will never experience Like differently than this, to remove that ceiling to say, I may, I may and I hope for and I pray for it, I want it, Lord, please deliver me. And I’m also going to walk humbly with you, even if I don’t experience the change I want. So I’m encouraging all of us in that posture to set our eyes on Jesus to set our eyes on his face to see him going to the cross, to see him suffering for us. He is worth giving our lives to he’s worth saying yes to even even though following him continues to be hard, even though following him and obeying Him can feel like it goes against our interest, our instinct, our bodily instinct, and what feels natural to us. So I know I’m speaking out of both sides of mouth here. Remove the ceiling, Jesus, we remove the ceiling in your name. We are created in your image and likeness. And it is for freedom sake, that you set us free. Your kingdom has come. And we believe in you, Jesus, we believe in the power of your cross, your resurrection and your ascension. We believe in the power of your Holy Spirit working in us. You spell the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead. You can raise our mortal bodies and all our affections to be in alignment with you and your design for us as male and female. And yet, Lord, even if we don’t feel a change in our attractions, even if we are still drawn and tempted by our lusts, but we will follow you help us to set our eyes on you, Jesus not on our problems, not in our temptations, not on our attractions, but to set our eyes on you. We say yes to you, Lord and no to our sin. Lord, Your kingdom come in us. Your will be done in us as your will is done in heaven. We pray all these things now in the name of the Father, the Son the Holy Spirit.