Conia [00:00:52]:
Well, good morning again. You know, I was sitting here thinking, lord, what am I. What am I going to talk about today? And he reminded me of something that happened a few weeks ago, and I got in a little bit of trouble. You ever get a little bit of trouble? Have you ever noticed how, like, the thing that is really good about you is also the thing that can get you in a lot of trouble? So mine is this. It’s my mouth. And that is what I use to bless people with. And God has given me this great mouth to use and bless people with often, but my mouth can also get me in a little trouble and really is the brain that’s connected to the mouth, but the mouth just can’t seem to stay short sometimes. And I said something that I should not have said, and it wasn’t terrible, but I knew that.
Conia [00:01:57]:
I knew that. I knew that I shouldn’t have said that. I just shouldn’t have said it wasn’t necessary, it wasn’t good, it wasn’t edifying. It was probably a little snarky. You know, old habits die hard, and we’ll talk about that here in a minute, maybe. But I said something that I should have said, should not have said. And then I got really convicted about it, and I repented because we’re supposed to repent. That’s what we do.
Conia [00:02:25]:
We repent. I said, lord, please forgive me. I know I shouldn’t have said that. That was a dumb thing to say. I should not have said that. And then I kept kicking myself, and I kept kicking myself, and I kept kicking myself because I knew better. You know? You know, you know that. You know better.
Conia [00:02:43]:
You know what’s gonna happen. You know that you’re not supposed to say that thing. You know, that’s not a good thing to do or say, and you do it anyway. And I kept kicking myself and I said, lord, please forgive me. And he goes, Kanya, done did it the first time you asked. You don’t have to ask again. And I’m like, but, Lord, that was. I should have done.
Conia [00:03:04]:
I should not have done that. I shouldn’t have said that. Wasn’t nice. He goes, yeah, I know. Did you repent? And I said, well, yeah. He goes, did you mean it? Well, yeah, yeah, I meant it. Yeah, I meant that. Are you gonna do it again? No, no.
Conia [00:03:26]:
Then where’s the problem? Lord, I knew better. I should have said. He’s like, we’ve been through this already. And he said to me kind of something that I’ve said to some of my clients and people in the past, and he said, Conia, in five years, are you going to still be kicking yourself about this? No, Lord, I’m not going to be kicking myself. In five years, it’ll be long gone. I will have forgotten it long time ago. Conia, in three months, are you still gonna be kicking yourself about this? No, Lord. In three months, I’ll be done with it.
Conia [00:04:00]:
It won’t be bothering me anymore? No, no. In three months, I won’t be next week. Is this still gonna be bothering you, like. No, I don’t think so. And he says, why not just cut to the chase and quit letting it bother you right now? It’s already done. And I say that often. It’s already done. We are just doing the done.
Conia [00:04:27]:
And once we ask for the forgiveness, the forgiveness is given if we are sincere in our hearts and we truly repent, which means that we are coming back not to ever do that again. And we are coming back to God because we have repented and we want to come back into right state standing with him, and he forgives us immediately. There’s not a timeline for it. There’s not a probationary period. There’s not a. There’s not a. Oh, you got to go to detention before I forgive you. You got to earn the forgiveness.
Conia [00:05:00]:
It’s instant. Are there consequences? Sometimes, for sure. For sure there’s consequences. But if we repent quickly, we mitigate the consequences. So what are you holding on to? That maybe you shouldn’t, that God forgot about a long time ago, and you keep bringing it up, and he’s like, I have forgotten about that. And it’s not. We will find, because he has a bad memory. There’s reasons why God forgets these things.
Conia [00:05:38]:
Hang on. And we have a new life. I can go and walk forward in my new life as a new person because I know that I am forgiven. And so let’s talk a little bit about this forgiveness. What do we have to do? Let’s go back to that. What do we have to do? What did I have to do to get my forgiveness? Well, one john one nine says if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. All. Not some.
Conia [00:06:27]:
Not a little bit all unrighteousness. Confessing your sin to God is essential to get to the point of redemption and repentance. That is part of the repentance. It’s surfacing. Yeah, I did that. I did that. But he’s faithful to forgive us. Acts 319 says, repent and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.
Conia [00:07:00]:
You know, if you find yourself in a time of stress and a time of yuck, it may be because you’ve got some sins that you haven’t gone to him and said, lord, I don’t want to do that. That’s not good for me. That’s not good for you. Let me. Let me get this off my chest. Let me lay this at your feet and tell you, Lord, I am sorry. This is not who I am in you. This is not what your child does.
Conia [00:07:26]:
So you repent. You go re. You go back, right? And you repent for what you’ve done. Repentance involves turning away from sin and turning towards God. It’s a u turn. You go back. You know, we’re allowed u turns. Thank goodness.
Conia [00:07:45]:
David and I would never get anywhere if we weren’t allowed u turns. We do u turns all the time. Well, God allows u turns. He’s like, come on back. I got you. Thanks, doll. Framp. Turn around.
Conia [00:07:57]:
Come on back. Let’s. Let’s get back to on the right track to where we were going. Make that u turn. Repent. Come back to God. Psalm 51 one and two says, have mercy on me, o God, according to your unfailing love. So they were coming to God, and we’re saying, we’re gonna repent.
Conia [00:08:20]:
And so you’re asking him, I need your mercy because I don’t deserve your forgiveness for what I’ve done. So I am relying now on your mercy to forgive me. Okay, we are at his mercy now. He’s willing to give it. So that’s great. According to your unfailing love. According to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. This goes back to knowing who God is.
Conia [00:08:54]:
You know that God has unfailing love. You know that he has great compassion for us, and because we know that we know that we know that he has that for us, because we know that we know that we know he does not change. Then we can be sure that when we come to him and ask him for his mercy, repent. Turn back from our sins and ask for that forgiveness, we know he is faithful to forgive because we know who he is. You’re not going to go to him and say, hey, can I be forgiven? And have him go, nope, sorry, there’s no more forgiven. I forgive you like 872 times, and this is 873 and you’re done. He doesn’t say that. He says, I am love and I see your heart and I see that you truly do want to come back to me.
Conia [00:09:51]:
Therefore, my mercy and my compassion, my love is yours. Don’t forget that part. This is David speaking in this psalm. And he goes on to say, wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from sin. The love and the compassion is what washes and cleanses us here. Again, it’s who God is coming close to him. Being like him is what cleanses us. Just by coming to him.
Conia [00:10:29]:
We are therefore cleansed. And so what you’ve got here is you’ve got humility. I did it. You’ve got the repentance. I’m coming. I’m making the u turn. And Lord, I’m coming back to you. I’m coming back to you.
Conia [00:10:46]:
Please. I’m asking because we had, we have not, because we ask not. God’s willing to forgive always, but it’s our job to ask for the forgiveness. So he’s asked for the forgiveness. Here in this psalm, David has demonstrated for us exactly what we need to do. And while David was the one of, he was the man after God’s heart, right? Jesus comes from the line of, David, I will bless your offspring for generations to come. Even David, a man after God’s heart, had his transgressions, but he knew. I have to come to you.
Conia [00:11:29]:
I have to confess and repent. And I know that you are faithful to forgive in your mercy. It’s pretty cool. So it goes in, in proverbs 20 813, it says, whoever conceals their sin does not prosper, but one who confesses and renounces their sin finds mercy. David knew this. He knew this. He knew that concealing his sin was going to keep him from God’s greatness. When we conceal our sin, when we try to hide it, when we try to separate ourselves from God in order to keep our secret, that keeps us from being able to receive the blessings of God.
Conia [00:12:14]:
Because we are now separated and we come far from him in our sin, sin can exist close to the light. So when you are concealing your sin, you just can’t get that close to God. If you’ve ever been as a little kid, you’ve had a secret from your mom. And you know that. You know you marked up the wall with the marker. And you know. You know she’s gonna find out. Now, see, God, he’s different.
Conia [00:12:45]:
He already knew. He already knows what your sin is. But you’re afraid mom’s gonna find out. And you’re gonna hide that. You’re gonna close the door to your room. And you’re not gonna let mama see the marker on the wall. Cause you know you’re gonna get in trouble. And all that time, the worry about mom finding out about the marker on the wall keeps you from being able to get close to mom.
Conia [00:13:10]:
We’ve all been there. We’ve all been there where we’ve had something that we’re hiding from someone, hoping that they won’t find out. But that thing that we hope they won’t find out keeps us from being able to be truly close to them. And our sin keeps us from being truly able to be close to God. And he doesn’t want that. And neither should you. Let God take away your sin. His love washes you.
Conia [00:13:42]:
You get close to him, you make the U turn. You come back. He’s right there. You can’t help but get clean. Don’t conceal your sin. Confess your sin. Renounce your sin, and you will find mercy. It’s right here.
Conia [00:14:04]:
Now, that’s necessary. It’s not just an option. It’s not just one way you can do it. It’s necessary for you to confess and renounce your sin. I remember I was watching mash. I love that show. I just love that show. And the writers of M a s h covered a whole lot of terfen.
Conia [00:14:29]:
But one of the turfs they covered was Father Marquahi. And there was a soldier in there who had switched his dog tags with somebody else who was headed home who had been killed. And so he switched the dog tags so that he could go ahead and go home. And he’s asking Father Mulcahy for some sort of penance, something that he can do to be absolved of this sin of switching these dog tags and lying about who he is. And Father Mulcahy tells him, I can’t even give you a penance for that because you’re not repentant. So I don’t believe in penance, and I don’t believe that that is the way that God functions. But I do believe that if you go to God and you say, yeah, I need you to absolve me of that thing that I did, God’s gonna go if you don’t regret doing it, and if you’re going to keep doing it, there’s not redemption there. So you have to really want to stop doing whatever it is that you’re doing.
Conia [00:15:38]:
And genuinely, I think that most people do. And the soldier in our story came around, and he did the right thing, just like you will. James 516 says, therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Now, I want to put a big warning sign on this. Be very careful who you choose to confess your sins to. It says, the prayers of a righteous person are powerful and effective. Make sure you choose wisely who it is that you confess your sins.
Conia [00:16:23]:
And you don’t want to confess your sins to everybody. That’s not necessary. You don’t have to tell the whole world all the things that you did wrong. Now then, if God’s using you, if he’s used your past to be able to make an example of you, to go out to others and say, this is who I was, but God redeemed me, that’s a different story. But if you go and you’re lamenting to everybody, oh, I did this thing. I did this thing. I was terrible. I was terrible.
Conia [00:16:47]:
That’s not doing you any good. That’s certainly not doing God any good. And he’s trying to get to the point where he can forgive you and forget. Go to a trusted person who, you know, has no vested interest in sharing your malarkey with anybody else and really has your best interest at heart. Be very careful, but make sure you do trust someone. Let them help you. Let them pray over you. Let them.
Conia [00:17:28]:
Let them pray over you. I’ll have to remember to tell Toby to edit that out. Otherwise, y’all just laugh and move on. Let those people pray over you. Let them help you. Let them lead you and guide you. Because a lot of times they’ve already been there. They’ve been there before.
Conia [00:17:54]:
Let them help you. Okay, now we go on to Luke. 1813 and 14. But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, have mercy on me, a sinner. I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. It’s the one who says, have mercy on me. I’m a sinner.
Conia [00:18:23]:
It’s been laid out for us already. And this is an execution of what has laid. Been laid out for us. That this is how you do this, that you ask God to have his mercy on you because you’re truly repentant and you’re ready to come back to him. So the tax collector’s prayer shows the importance of humility and sincere repentance. All right. Matthew 612 is the Lord’s prayer. And it says, forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven our debtors.
Conia [00:19:00]:
Our debts are not just about how much we owe. It’s not about money. Well, it can be, but in most cases it’s not. Forgive us, Lord, where we fall short. Forgive us where we’re not doing what we’re supposed to do. And this says, as we also have forgiven our debtors, we need to forgive those who have come against us, who’ve transgressed. We need to have God’s mercy and God’s love so that we can then also be forgiven in the Lord’s prayer. So once we’ve done this, what happens? We’re forgiven.
Conia [00:19:41]:
Are we really? Yes. Hey, we got scripture for it. You ready? Let’s go on back to psalms 100 312. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. I don’t know how far the east is from the west, but I know it’s pretty far. I don’t know how you measure that. And I think that’s kind of the whole point of the hyperbole here, that there’s just no way to even measure how far he has removed our transgressions from us. They’re no longer a part of you.
Conia [00:20:20]:
They don’t belong to you anymore. You don’t identify with that anymore. It is not part of you anymore. When he removes your transgressions from you, they don’t, you don’t identify that way anymore. God completely removes there’s there’s no residue of the sin when he removes it. You know, you can you can clean a cup, and if you don’t get it real clean, there might be a little bit of coffee residue. You go to a a not so great diner or sometimes even a nice restaurant, and you get that cup of coffee, and they bring the cup and there’s like, you know, lipstick left on it from whoever because the dishwasher didn’t quite get it. You know, God’s better than a dishwasher, really.
Conia [00:21:10]:
There’s there’s no residue. There’s no remnant with God. Once he cleans you, you are just as good as new, maybe even better. In Isaiah 43, verse 25, it says, I even. I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake and remembers your sin no more. This is for God’s benefit just as much as it is for your benefit. Well, here it says it’s for his benefit. When we have our children home and you take your kids and somebody asks you, oh, how’s little Johnny? Well, you don’t go through all the list of things that he’s done that week while he, you know, coloring on the wall with marker, and he did this and he did that.
Conia [00:22:00]:
Oh, you say, oh, Johnny’s great. He’s got his shapes. He’s got his colors. He was so sweet the other day. There was a little girl. She fell down and he kissed her boo boo. And it was just the sweet, sweetest thing. Those are the things that you tell people, and those are the things you remember.
Conia [00:22:17]:
God’s the perfect parent. We’ve talked about this before. God’s the perfect parent. God doesn’t want to remember your sins, just like you don’t want to remember Johnny’s sins. God doesn’t want to remember yours either. He likes you presented, lovely, perfect, clean. That’s why his love has the power to wash you clean, is because that’s how he likes you. That’s how he wants you.
Conia [00:22:42]:
Mary Poppins, when she gets the kids ready to go, she’s like, well, you’re not as well turned out as I’d like, but still, there’s time. There’s time with God. He can get you as well turned out as he would like. He has that power. And when you repent and he washes it clean, you are now well turned out. Micah 718 and 19. Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of his heritage. He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in mercy.
Conia [00:23:26]:
God wants to be merciful. It’s like one of his favorite things to do. He delights in it. There’s things that we delight in. We delight in our children when they do well. God delights in mercy. He’s like, I can do that for you. I can give that to you.
Conia [00:23:50]:
I can give you cleanliness. I can give you no more sin. Let me do that for you. He delights in mercy. He will again have compassion on us and subdue our iniquities. He will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea to be remembered no more. He’s committed here. He’s going to wash your sins away.
Conia [00:24:22]:
You just got to remember. Make the U turn, come back, repent of. Be confident that his mercy will clean you and his love will clean you, and he will do it. We go into the New Testament, and Hebrews 812 says, for I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. Here it is again. You know what God says at once? It means something. He keeps saying it over and over and over again, that he does not remember it anymore. He doesn’t want to remember it.
Conia [00:24:53]:
He doesn’t need to remember it, and you should not remember it either. Stop it. One John one nine. Remember this one. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us. We go back to when we started. He is faithful and just to forgive us. If we confess.
Conia [00:25:17]:
You have to use your mouth, you have to open it up and you have to say, lord, I did that thing. Lord, I said that stupid thing. And he’s like, yeah, I know, lord, I’m sorry. That is not who I am. That’s not who I want to be. That is not lovely and of good report. Please forgive me. And he will every single time, because he wants to present you and he wants to see you as clean, as lovely, as well turned out as you can possibly be.
Conia [00:25:55]:
He’s faithful to forgive us. When God forgives our sins, he completely removes them. He chooses not to remember them. It’s his choice. He’s got a choice, and he chooses, and that’s what he wants. He no longer holds us against them. His forgiveness is total and it is permanent. You can’t lose it.
Conia [00:26:17]:
Once he’s given it, it’s given. It’s given. You got to remember that we have new life after our sins are forgiven. Now that for most of this, this is for the new believer, but this is for us too, that have been around the block a time or two, and we’ve been forgiven for a gazillion years. And sometimes I think we forget the greatness and the newness that we have. And you know what? God’s mercies are new every day, and we are a new creation every day through the renewal of our minds. So let’s go back and see what happens when God forgives you. Second Corinthians 517 says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come.
Conia [00:27:06]:
The old has gone, the new is here. You are new every day. You are new, not just at the moment you ask Jesus to come into your heart. Yes, and that’s the big hurrah, right? That’s the big one. But we get to do that every single day. We are new every single day, just like God’s mercies are new every single day. Romans six four. We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the father, we, too may have a new life.
Conia [00:27:48]:
This talks like about the baptism. Now, then the thief on the cross got to go to heaven. You do not have to be baptized to go to heaven. But you know what? When you take that act and you make that act of obedience, you symbolically die with Christ to all of your sins. You get to come up and walk in newness of life. The thief on the cross, y’all wasn’t going to be around much longer, so the baptism probably, you know, not a thing for him. It is a thing for you. Do that.
Conia [00:28:23]:
Bury your sin, bury it with Christ, and come up into the newness of all that God has for you. Remember that moment. Go back to that day. If you’ve been baptized. It’s a cool thing. It seems so silly. The things that we do that are symbolic, and we’re like, it’s just a symbol, but it’s a symbol. Symbols are powerful.
Conia [00:28:46]:
Embrace the symbol of baptism. Embrace the obedience of baptism. Go and be baptized if you haven’t, and walk in the newness of life. Ephesians 422, you were taught with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitudes of your mind and to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Put on your new self. Now then, if you’ve got some old roots, there might be some. Some fruit that still kind of comes out that. That may not be the best.
Conia [00:29:32]:
I said the dumb thing, that’s not grapefruit. But we are constantly being renewed. Constantly being renewed. And part of the new fruit that I exhibited was going, I saw this tiny, tiny transgression of fruit, and it was so obvious, it was so big to me that it was like, oh, my gosh, I can’t believe that I did that. And it wasn’t, in the grand scheme of things, heinous. I mean, there’s. There’s a lot worse transgressions out there. But when you get to the point where you’re walking in that newness of life, the little bits of dirt show up magnified, and you don’t want that in your life anymore.
Conia [00:30:21]:
And it’s actually kind of cool to go, oh, my gosh, that little bit of dirt was so magnified because I have managed to ward off all that old fruit. I have managed to walk in the new man so much that that little bit of old fruit, we had to get rid of that in a hurry. Abandon your old sinful nature. Embrace the new identity in Christ. And we talk about being new and being authentic and being in Christ and being able to be genuine allows you to see when you’re not being genuine. And I’m reminded of how they teach people to find fake counterfeit money. And they don’t show them all the ways that people are counterfeiting money, and they don’t tell them all the different things that they use and all the things to look for. They make them study the bills that are actually genuine.
Conia [00:31:22]:
So when you study the genuine over and over and over again, the counterfeit stands out with big, huge, highlighted, glaring lights. The counterfeit will show up and you will see it quickly. It’s pretty cool. Colossians three nine do not lie to each other. Since you have taken off your old self with its practices and put on the new self which is being renewed in the image of Christ. You don’t do that anymore. You don’t do those old things anymore. Cut that out.
Conia [00:31:56]:
Galatians 220 I’ve been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. Our new life with Christ guides us in how to live by faith. It shows us when we need to repent, and we can do it quickly and we can walk in that newness today. We don’t have to wait. We don’t have to. There’s not a waiting period. We don’t, like I said, we don’t go to detention. We walk in it every day.
Conia [00:32:29]:
Let God cleanse you, let him forgive you, let him love you, repent and walk in that genuineness that is the real and not the counterfeit. You father, thank you for this time. Thank you, Lord, that you reveal to us who we are when you are manifest through us. Thank you, Lord, for coming into our lives. Thank you that you are faithful, faithful, faithful, faithful always to exhibit mercy and cleanse us with your love. We love you, Lord. In Jesus name, amen. Pastor David’s going to come and close us out.
