Be Honest About Your Failures and Determined to Change

And we're being called upon to walk worthy of the calling that God has called us to. This is the question! Are you decided to succeed? And it doesn't start right now. Are you decided to take the message you heard in the first hour and say you know what? That convicts me, but I don't want to just go out here convicted, I want to go out of here changed. My wife doesn't really know this happened, but a couple weeks back I'm driving down Commerce Street. And I'm coming up on a street light and I've got a green light. And the guy comes up the other way and he makes a right on red, but I don't think he even stopped. He just kind of went through it, and I was really close to him. And you know, I didn't over-break. I just kind of flew up real close behind him. And my wife said something about just doing that because you're trying to punish the guy. I mean, she was mildly rebuking me. And I thought, well, that's exact what I'm doing. And I thought I am not going to do that any more. There have been various times my wife has said you know this is what you're doing, and I've said like when she's not looking I turn to the Lord and I say, Lord, that was exactly what I was doing and I don't want to do that any more. But I hope you're like that. That's the way we've got to approach Scripture where it's like something is pointed out to us and it's like yes, I'm going to put forth an effort. This may not happen perfectly, but I'm going to draw a line in the sand. It's like I'm not going there any more. And if I find myself there, I'm going to repent just like that. I'm going to back off of that. Are you decided to succeed? And like I say, it takes being honest. You've got to be dead honest. James could sit here and tell you this convicted me. Yeah, and I was squirming over there too. And I can tell when my wife - she's nodding and I'm thinking, yeah, she's thinking about me. But if we don't admit where we fail, you're not going to do well. We've got to be honest - honest with the Lord, honest with each other. Because look, we're all in the same boat. We all are. We're a people that need to be saved. We need the grace of God. We need the help of God. We need the power of God.