3 Questions from the Sermon to ask yourself:

1. Are you in the Old or the New?
2. Have you been Cleansed?
3. Have you been invited to the Marriage Supper?

Lord we just lift up Your Word to You right now Lord Jesus. God, let Your Word go forward in our hearts. Your Word is that double-edged sword God - it goes deep into us Lord Jesus - it goes deep and separates all the old self, all of the old man, all of the old ways, and God it brings about Your Spirit, Lord Jesus. So Father, we pray that Your Spirit may inhabit Your Word right now, Lord God, and we just thank You and bless You, in Your Name we pray, amen! Amen! Welcome to Sunday morning, amen? Amen! Hallelujah! Or as I like to refer to it: the Super Bowl of the week, right? The enemy tried to stop you, the enemy team tried to stop you from entering into God's house, but praise God, praise God, we are here to celebrate the victory that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ! Amen!

This week, I went to a training at work, and it was really interesting. It was about people who are in crisis, and who are going through issues, and maybe have a psychotic break, and how you intercede in their lives; like bring them down and help them. It was really interesting, but it was funny that as I was going through the training, they brought up a lot of questions that they didn't have answers to. It became obvious that they were missing the whole spiritual aspect of a lot of what they were teaching. They brought up questions like: ‘We’re not exactly sure why certain people are predisposed to certain actions;’ ‘we’re not exactly sure why the numbers are so dramatically increasing in the US;’ ‘we’re not sure why things like this are hereditary.’ They couldn't answer that, but listening I just knew, oh God, yeah, there's a whole spiritual side to everything that their teaching in this world that we live in. They started to bring up some numbers that I thought were really interesting, that really made me take a step back. It said that one in four children in the US experienced a traumatic event before the age of 16. We’re not in a third world country, and I'm not talking about having your cell phone taken away (although that's probably traumatic for a lot of these kids) - I’m talking about major traumatic events that stick with you your entire lives before the age of 16. One in five children between the ages of 12 and 17 are dependent - not social, not trying it - but dependent on drugs or alcohol. Almost 60% of the people who experienced a traumatic event and go to develop PTSD will go on to develop dependency issues.

Those are crazy numbers, and we know that even though those numbers seem solid, they are probably really low, because most of these things go untreated, unreported or unnoticed. This is why there is such a cry for people looking for relief; this is why the doctors offices are booked for months, with psychologists; this is why when we go to the pharmacy, there are lines out the door with people for psychosis medications; this is why even we see people coming into the church sometimes. We see people come to the church looking for relief - they might not necessarily be looking for God - and this is where you run into it. We as a family have seen it time and time again, where people come in looking for some type of relief and receive it, and then they’re gone - they’re not necessarily looking for the Healer, they're looking for just a little bit of healing.

When I began to pray about this I said God, and He reminded me of the Scripture the 10 lepers - not that that’s what I’m preaching on - but I said, “yeah Lord, 10 of those guys were healed,” and He said, “no, you don’t understand, only one was healed,” and I said, “no, I read the story, 10 were healed,” and He said, “look, just because on the outside that you are healed - just because they received some type of relief - doesn't mean they were truly healed on the inside.” You see, one came back and gave thanks to God, and one went on to live a life of communion with God. That's where true healing comes from. I can attest to it - and I'm sure many of you in here can - that true healing only comes from living a life of communion with God. It's not a one time thing, it’s not something that you get struck with and your good to go; no, it's something that comes with living with God day in and day out - that's what it's meant to be! Christianity was never meant to be an in and out thing, it was meant to be a transformative power that lives with you every single day.

Today I know that I do not receive healing as if my healing was something that I could take and hold on to - no, you have to understand that my healing is the Lord Jesus Christ - my transformation is the Lord Jesus Christ - everything about me is the Lord Jesus Christ; without that, I'm still that same 17-year-old kid, unhealed with a heap of issues. I do not receive anything for me to hold onto and call my own: God, the Lord Jesus Christ, He is my deliverance, He is my transformation and He is my healing, amen! So we look at what communion with God is meant to be: we’re meant to live with that healing, we’re meant to live with that deliverance every day - never walking away from it, but spending our entire lives hand in hand with God. People think that you can receive something outside of God, or receive something from God and just take it and leave, and it's all yours to do with what you like - but, that is such a lie, and I want to break it today and say: the only true healing comes living a life of communion with God, amen!

So today, the question is: are you living in communion with God today? To answer that, I’d like to present you three questions that we ask ourselves today. When I bring up these questions, I’d really like each one of us here to really ask the Spirit of God to reveal it to us and really apply it to our own lives and ask the Spirit: God, what is the answer to this in my life? The first question is: Are you in the old, or are you in the new? Are you in the old, or are you in the new? As I began to pray and say, “God, what does a life of communion look like?’ And I began to pray about a Scripture, and God brought up (you know Pastor Jerry said it’s like Easter in here, and I'm glad he said that because my sermon was a little “holy week-ish” this week and Jessica said, “you can’t do that, that’s like a holy week sermon” - but I’m going to do it anyway), but I as I was praying about it, God brought up the table - the Last Supper - to me.

He brought up that image of what the Last Supper looked like. I know probably a lot of you guys think of the Last Supper and think of da Vinci's painting, right? But that’s not really what it looked like, in his painting there were loaves of bread everywhere - this is during Passover, there is yeast, there was none of that; there’s a long straight table - most of the tables in those times were a U-shaped - so that's probably not what it looked like. But if you can get an image of what that time looked like for Jesus: It was an intimate time - it was the last time that He was going to spend really close knit with His disciples before He began the process of His crucifixion. For me, when I think about that Passover feast - and the story is really interesting about how He went in there and how He found it - and I’m going to go into it - but He gave them instructions on where to locate the feast. They go in and they go into this room, and He begins this time of intimacy with God. Not only was it a time of intimacy, but it was a time of sorrow too, and stress for Jesus, because He knew what Satan had done in Judas’ heart, and He knew what He was about to face.

So I’m going to pick up the story there in Luke 22 - and with all my verses today, I’m going to be jumping around the Gospels, but they're all surrounding the Last Supper. You guys all know this verse, we’ve said many times: “and He took the bread, gave thanks and broke it and gave it to them saying, ‘this is my body given for you - do this in remembrance of Me.’ In the same way after the supper, He took the cup saying, ‘this cup is the new covenant in my blood which is poured out for you.’” You see, in this one moment, God institutes the new covenant that is still in place today. The old would be fulfilled by His death on the cross, and the new covenant would be instituted by His blood, the payment poured out for us. In Him, all of our sins are forgiven on the cross, and He is our reconciliation back into a personal relationship with God. Let me just say what that means today: He is our reconciliation back into a personal relationship - the old was put away, and the new means that we are brought back to what it’s supposed to be; brought back to walking hand-in-hand with God in the garden; living in communion with Him means you're living in the new covenant that was instituted by His blood - that means that you are walking with Him hand-in-hand every single day.

It's very meaningful that it took place during Passover, Passover being the time that they took the blood of lambs and put it over the door, that death would pass over; where today that Jesus became the lamb, His blood over top of our hearts is why death passes us over. Remember what death is: we get this image of death of dying and the grave - but I’m talking about death as in separation from God, because to God that's what true death is. True death is spending an eternity separate from God and being separated from him forever. And God - Jesus Christ - came and He died and He poured His blood on us to institute a new covenant that we would no longer have to be separate from God; that we no longer would have to live in eternal separation from God, but that we could live in communion with Him.

I want us to realize how personal this covenant was. The old became kind of a ritual thing, and it became about completing requirements, and God found time and time again that people's hearts weren’t truly in it. But let me remind you that God gave His one and only Son to go and to die and to go through everything He went through, so that we might live: that’s personal. Jesus Christ right here in the verse explained that He gave His body, and His blood is being poured out for us: that's personal. Jesus Christ was obedient all the way to the cross with you and with me on his mind: that’s personal. This new covenant is not one of ritual, but it is personal. It's about living in communion with God every day, living in a personal relationship. We hear that word a lot in Christianity: do you want to accept God, have a personal relationship with Him? But this is what it means: it means living in communion with Him throughout your entire life - there is no separation, there is no breaking. Look, my son might be upstairs, I might be in a different room, but you better believe he knows I’m around at any time, or my wife is around anytime, he knows he just has to call out “Mommy!” and we are right there, and he knows that because there is no break in communication.

The lie in Christianity today is we can come in and out, do whatever we want, go into church on Sunday then go into the club on Saturday - it's just a lie that comes from hell, and I tell you today that God died that you might live in communion with Him every single day. We cannot be living in ritual and in communion at the same time, because those things are at odds with one another. Romans 7:6 (Pastor Jeff mentioned this last week), “but now by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, not in the old way of the written code.” So we have to look at our lives and say, ‘are we in the old?’ We have to really judge ourselves soberly and say, ‘God, judge my heart, is there any part of my heart that is still in the old, that is still in the ritual, that is still going through the motions? God, when I wake up in the morning and read my Bible, am I doing it to check the box? When I go to church on a Sunday am I just going because it's Sunday or am I going in expectation? God, when I take my dollars and put them in the donation box, am I doing it like I'm just paying another bill?’ Because that is all of the old - God did not die for the old, God died to bring you into the new, to bring you into a life of expectation and communion and love and trust with Him, amen!

I don't know if it's necessarily a guy thing or maybe it's a Kris thing, but I tend to thrive in routine - I am kind of a creature of routine. When you go into the military or police, they teach you to go through the routine and do the same thing every day. I’ve trained myself in that a little bit: even when I pull out my phone and something comes up, I have to put it in my phone right away or what? Jessica is like, “oh did you do this?” And I’m like, “oh I have to be somewhere!” and I forget if I don’t put it in my phone, so it’s a routine that I do: I put it in right away. But the problem is when we apply that type of lifestyle to our relationship with Christ: it doesn't work. It makes us rigid, and unteachable and unmovable. God does not work in routine, because that is of the old. God works in a life in communion with him, where every day you are living in expectation, every decision that you make you’re asking Him ‘God do I go to the left or do I go to the right today?’ Just because I went to the left five times before this doesn’t mean I’m going to do it again because that's what I always did, but God I'm living in communion with You this day.

God is calling for a life of communion. Let me explain to you what it means to live in communion today. It means we’re being led at every turn. It means that we’re alive in the Spirit, joyful in affliction, and no longer a son of this world. God wants to break the routine in your life today. God wants you to live being inspired by the Holy Spirit - He wants you to live in a personal relationship with Him. He wants you to wake up every morning reading your Bible in excitement to look into what God has for you that day. He wants you to be in church on Sunday, not because it's Sunday, but because like I said before, it’s the Super Bowl of the week, and you are ready to just be excited and in praise and victory of the victory that God has had in your life that week, amen! So God is asking us to search our hearts and seek out anything of the old, any of that routine and say, “God, You died that I might be in the new.” So we have to ask ourselves, “am I in the old, or am I in the new this day God?”

Secondly, we have to ask ourselves, “have you been cleansed?” Have you been cleansed? There are only two rituals that the Christian church does on a regular basis - and that's what, baptism and communion, right? They’re two rituals that still take place, and they’re deeply meaningful, and actually have a lot to do with one another. They’re deeply symbolic, and are meant to show something greater and more lasting and deeper in our lives. You see, communion was not meant to be a once a year thing we do during holy week - that's like the old covenant, where a priest would go once a year to God to be inside of His presence, and would have to do all the rituals to go and be in His presence. Communion is meant as an outward expression of a life of communion that you have with God. It is an extension of your life. This is why the Bible says that people come to the table, and they end up getting sick - why? Because they're treating it like the old - they’re still stuck in the old - they’re not living a life of communion - they think they're just going to go to God and just have communion with Him in that minute. That's not how it works, because what happened when the priest did in the Old Testament, and he just went to God nonchalantly; what happened? Death would come - and people are getting sick today because they go to the table treating it like the old, without living a life of communion, without really rending their hearts, without living a life with God every single day. They go to the table like that old priest and say, ‘God here I am.’ But that's not how it works. Communion is meant to show something deeper; same thing with baptism - baptism is an outward expression of what God is doing or has done in your life. The water represents us dying to our sins by the blood of Christ and being raised anew in the Spirit of God. The word ‘baptism’ and ‘baptizo’ means to immerse yourself in the Spirit of God; that you have died from your sins; that you have been cleansed of your sins, and that you have been raised in the Spirit to live a life of communion with God.

So we pick up the story in John 13. So the meal is done at this point: “so Jesus got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around Him. He came to Simon Peter who said ‘Lord are you going to wash my feet?’ Jesus replied, ‘you don't know what I'm doing now, but you will understand later.’ ‘No!’ said Peter, ‘You will never wash my feet!’ Jesus answered, ‘unless I wash your feet, you have no part with Me.’ ‘Then Lord!’ Simon Peter replied, ‘not just my feet, but my hands and my head as well!’ Jesus answered, ‘those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet, and their whole body is cleansed.’” We have to realize today that we can't live in communion with God unless we have been cleansed. There is a lie that goes throughout the US especially that says you can just do whatever you want, you can just live however you want, and you can still have communion with Jesus. Why? You can still come and have that relationship with Him, why? Because “God accepts you however you are;” Let me explain to you today: that God does accept you however you are, but God is a God of cleansing! You cannot expect to come with Him and stay the same day in and day out, and yet have this life of communion with God - that's not how it works. If you are near God, God is Holy, God is awesome, God is powerful, and if you come in communion with Him, guess what - your life can’t help but be cleansed and transformed! To live a life of communion with Christ means that you have been washed clean. It means that you are walking in communion with Him, and God cannot walk in communion with darkness; for what does light and dark have in common? The very term “Christian” means “little Christ” - it means that you have been washed clean by his Holy Spirit and are following Him out of a purity that is only granted by the Holy Spirit of God. We need to know today that we need to be cleansed. Let me tell you - I need to fix that in your mind today - you need to be cleansed!

Peter says, ‘Lord You will never wash my feet,’ which to me seems like a pretty decent reaction like ‘God, You’re God, You’re not going to go wash my feet.’ But then He says: ‘otherwise, you will have no part of Me.’ and Peter responds. ‘well then wash my whole body!’ Why? Because Peter in that moment knew that he needed communion with God. He said ‘God I will do anything to be near You - I will do anything to be in communion with You!’ The Christian realizes their need to be in communion with God. One time is not enough - one ritual is not enough. I came from a place when I was a kid that said ‘you can't take communion unless you’re baptized.’ So I was like ‘alright, I’ll go get baptized!’ Then I went and got baptized, having no idea what it meant. I went in the water, I got dunked, but really, my life was still a mess. I look back at that now and think ‘how silly they were treating it like a ritual,’ and I was just a kid, like ‘yeah that sounds great’ - but that's not what it is meant to be - you’re supposed to live a life of communion with God. It's about Christ dwelling inside of you and revealing what's inside of you. You see, you can never have enough of Christ and His presence. We are constantly being revitalized, revived and rescued every single day!

Let me tell you today that Christ revealing sin to be cleansed is the life of the Christian - if you're looking for a life where you never have any problems and just float through life, then Christianity is probably not for you. Christianity is about God coming in and showing the depths of our hearts, that we might be cleansed, that we can go into more communion with Him. It's a constant cycle that happens throughout the entire life of the Christian. I go before God and I say, ‘God, reveal my heart,’ and God says, ‘you have this inside your heart,’ so I say, ‘Lord I got to deal with that!’ I deal with it, and guess what the fruit of that is? I come out and I live in more communion with God, until next week when it happens again.

It's funny, in the beginning of the service, I was sitting here praying, and the Lord started to talk to me. He said, ‘Kris, you are missing something in your sermon,’ and I said ‘Lord, I worked pretty hard on this sermon, what am I missing?’ He said, ‘you're missing the fact of what it means to be cleansed.’ I've heard this about a thousand times where people say, ‘well, what, am I supposed to be perfect? Am I supposed to never sin? What do you expect of me?’ You see, when you are cleansed by God, it is not saying that you’ll never make a mistake and you’ll never sin, but it causes your heart not to stray. Your heart no longer strays from God; your heart is no longer wayward; your heart is no longer yearning for the things of the world and putting God to the side, going and doing things in the world. God reveals sin, and He brings it up that you can come into more and more communion, but if you have been cleansed this day, your heart is no longer wayward, going out into the world, amen? That's where people miss it all time - they say, ‘am I supposed to be perfect?’ No, you’re not supposed to be perfect, but your heart is supposed to be for God; but your heart is supposed to want God; but your heart is not to accept anything but God. That's what causes a Christian to go forward and want to be cleansed, and the lie in this world is that you don't have to be cleansed, you don't have to continually be cleansed to have a relationship and a life of communion with God. Well, let me tell you today, people of God, that that is the life of the Christian.

It all starts with the bath as God called it, where God comes in and forgives you of your sin, and saves you from your sin, and in Jesus is continually washing us more and more that we can come into more and more communion with Him. If you're looking for everything to just go through life and flow through it, then this isn't the place; but if you are looking for God to reveal the depths of your heart, that you might come closer and closer to true joy and true love and that you might live in deeper communion with Christ, then I tell you people of God, you found yourself in the right place this morning! I need you to know that Jesus’ blood is enough to completely cleanse you. Completely. His blood is powerful enough to completely cleanse you; it is powerful enough to break those generational curses that have been over your life; it is powerful enough to make you different than those that come before you; it's powerful enough to break addiction and depravity, and to heal your mental illness, and to break pride and arrogance, and cleanse every facet of who we have been.

God is calling for His people to be cleansed this day - to live a life of holiness. God came that you might live holy; God came to give you a life of communion, that you might live holy with Him - no longer living in the world, no longer going into the world and your heart being dragged to the things of the world - but God has called you to be holy this day, no longer something of this world, but a new creation. In John 13 He says, “now that I your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you should also wash one another's feet. I have set an example, that you should do as I have done for you.” God has called us to do the same for one another. That should be the cry of our hearts: cleanliness - cleansing; God cleansing. That should be the thing we’re praying for; that to be the thing when we’re praying for somebody, that should be, well everything should be, ‘God would You come, and would Your Holy Spirit wash over that person; would Your blood come and cleanse them, that they might live in more communion with You.’ Look, the job is going to be the job, the mortgage is going to be the mortgage, but there is nothing greater in this world than living in communion with God, and God has called us to even want to wash one another.That's why it talks about in Ephesians 5 about how we should present our bride when we’re getting married, to wash her clean and present her to God as a holy sacrifice, because that is what God has called us to do for one another. My preaching today is in the hope that you would be cleansed by God. When I do a youth group lesson, our lessons are in the hope that the kids might be cleansed. Our goals for one another in love should be that we would be cleansed, that we might walk in a deeper communion with God, amen!

So we had asked ourselves are we in the old or are we in the new? Secondly, we asked ourselves, have we been cleansed? Finally we ask ourselves, have you been invited to the marriage supper? Have you been invited to the marriage supper? Jesus, after eating a meal with His disciples, is coming to the last minutes before He leaves, and He looks at His disciples and He begins to say, ‘look, our time together is coming to an end.’ I don’t think all the disciples necessarily picked up on what He was talking about, but He's prompting them and saying, ‘look, things are about to happen,’ and He begins to speak about another supper - not the Last Supper, the one that they’re at - but one that is going to come. Where does that take place? It takes place in His Father's Kingdom.

I’m going to read two verses to you: Matthew 26, and this is after He's just finishing up and He’s speaking to His disciples: “I tell you today, I will not drink from this fruit of the vine from now on until the day when I drink it new with you - where? In my Father's Kingdom.” Revelations 19:6-9 “then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude like the roar of many waters and the sounds of mighty peals of thunder crying out, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God Almighty reigns! Let us rejoice and exalt and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His bride has made herself ready. It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure, and the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints’ and the angel said to me, ‘write this: blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’” To understand what this verse is talking about, you need to forget everything you know about weddings, especially America as how we've known them. We know the thing where we come into the church, and we come up front, and the bride says I do. That wasn't instituted until hundreds of years after Jesus' resurrection.

You have to understand what the Jewish wedding ceremonies look like. The wedding ceremony for the Jews are broken up into three parts, the three C's: contract, consummation and celebration. The contract is like the betrothal period. The contract is when - and each one of these phases really has to do with the process of salvation and and how we come into Christ - and the first is the betrothal. The parents would come together and they would sign a contract - and there's a name for it not that I tried to pronounce all week and I couldn’t do it so I’m not going to butcher it - but there's a contract that takes place and the parents agree on what it’s going to be, and then at that point, they’re engaged. At that point, it’s legally binding; at that point, they’d have to go through a divorce - there is no ‘let's see how what works, we'll see what happens’ no, there is none of that - at that point, it was legally binding. For us, that's the time that we’re marked by the Holy Spirit - it’s a deposit guaranteeing what is to come. The marriage has not been consummated yet, but we had been promised; there is a promise that is over the life of the Christian, an engagement that has taken place that is legally binding.

Phase two is the consummation. So, the parents agree on the contract, and then the husband goes - the groom goes and works for up to seven years! Can you imagine having a seven year engagement? Seven years he goes and works, and he goes and toils and he goes to fulfill the terms that were in the contract. He goes and raises money, he gets the house ready, he has the dowry, and he goes and everything, and he works until he finally achieves everything that was set out in the contract. At that point, there’s a day that is set, and on that day the bride and all the bridesmaids are inside of her father's house - and they're all there and are all excited and chit-chatting, whatever girls do, right - and they're all excited waiting for the groom to appear. As I'm talking about this, some of Song of Songs and Revelation should start to make more sense. So the girls - the bride and the bridesmaids - are all inside the house, waiting for the groom to come, and the groom leaves his father's house with all his groomsmen, and they start walking down the road towards the bride's house. They’re all celebrating, and he’s got his guys with them and they're all excited, and they’re yelling - and I don’t know what they say, like, ‘you got this man, you’re awesome!’ They hype him up, they’re like hype men - and they go to the bride's house that's where the consummation takes place of the wedding. That’s where the rubber hits the road, and everything is sealed, and all the working and all the toiling and everything they did, all of it comes in that moment. For us, this is the moment that the Holy Spirit infills us. This is the moment that God overshadows you and gives you the power to live a holy and Godly life in this dark age that we find ourselves in. This is the moment that we’ve had the Holy Spirit mark us, but we haven't necessarily been living a very powerful, overcoming life, God infills His people at this moment. He fills them with His Holy Spirit, and you begin to live that holy life, overcoming everything of this world.

The last part is the celebration. So the groom and the bride leave the father's house, and where do they go? They go back to the groom's father's house. Remember, it’s not like America, where you move six states away and go get your own place, and never talk to them again - that’s not what it’s like. We’re talking about the Jewish, where they would go back to the father's house, and they would go and they would begin to build their lives together. There was a huge celebration that would take place, and there would be a wedding feast that would take place at that moment at the father's house. You see, this is the time that God takes His church back with Him to His Father's house. This is the time that has finally come, and He went to retrieve the bride, and they went back with Him to the Father's house to live in God's Kingdom forever. People have this lie in their head that says salvation is a moment thing. You're just, “I say a prayer and I’m saved! I say a prayer and it doesn’t matter what happens, what I do, how I live, it doesn't matter because guess what I'm going to heaven because I said a prayer.” But let me tell you today that salvation is the wedding feast, and the ceremony starts that first day at the promise, but it is not complete until the groom comes and takes the bride and takes her home with them to the Father's house - that is when salvation is complete. Amen!

So the question for us today is: Have you been invited? I’m not talking about as a guest and you’re just watching - I’m saying have you been invited, because you have been promised to God, because there is a promise over your life, because there is something more. Have you been invited to the celebration? Has your life been committed? Have you been promised to someone else besides yourself? The world thinks that going to heaven is going to be because they are a good person, or because they went to church, because they believe there's a God - but this verse makes it very clear: only the engaged are the ones who are going to be invited to the celebration - only those who have been promised. Do Christians go to church? Of course they do - but they do it out of the fact that they had been promised to God, that they have been engaged, that there is a call over their lives. Why abstain from sin? Why not curse? Why not be at the bar every night? Why not cheat on our spouses? Is it just because you're not supposed to? Well guess what, that's of the old, and people found time and time again that they could not uphold the old, and they fell short over and over again; you see, there has to be something more - that’s the old covenant. God is calling for us to live as those who have been promised to God, who in their hearts have been promised to the King of Kings, who no longer live their lives however they want, because they know they have been engaged and there is a ring on their finger called the Holy Spirit of God, that they look down on every time they want to do something, say “no, I have been promised!”

What phase are you in? You'll notice that it begins with the promise. It begins with step one, is you are bound; there is an engagement, there is a legally binding contract that takes place. It’s not “let’s live together and see how it works and make a decision later.” It’s not “let me play the field and see if I can find something better, and if I don't find anything better I'll come back to you.” No, this whole thing starts with a promise, an obligation, a covenant, and it is not complete until we enter into the Father's house with our groom. Let me tell you this today: walking in communion with God means that you are living in that promise every single day - every single day until one day God comes and retrieves His church and brings them back to be with God. It means that you are no longer your own, you can no longer live your best life now, you no longer have multiple steps to a better you, everything in your life becomes about living about the promise - the covenant that you have made, and awaiting that time for the groom to come get you.

This is the opposite of what the world teaches. The world teaches you to go out, live the life up to the most, one day maybe when you get older maybe you’ll go to church and will try to do something better. It tells you to have multiple partners, and keep on dating around until you find one and maybe settle down later in life. But this is why there's so much divorce, because that's all about you, and the second it stops becoming about you, the only thing left to do is just go to a divorce. This is why we have what we have today. My wife said something really interesting to me the other day. She said, “you know, the world can never understand true marriage, because the world can never understand covenant.” They don’t understand what covenant means, and this is the same reason that the world struggles so much with salvation, because it's all about covenant; it's all about a promise; it's all about living every single day with that promise over your heart; that one day - there has been a date that has been set, I don't know it, you don't know it - but there's been a date that has been set where God is going to come and retrieve His church, His beautiful church, His bride that has been made clean, amen!

To walk in communion today means in your mind you are walking every day knowing that you had been betrothed, knowing that you have been engaged, knowing that you have been promised to God. I look at this world and I see people going out, and they do whatever they want, and that's fine for the world because they're not engaged - there's no promise over their lives. But you can understand why God countless times in the Bible looks at His church and calls it a harlot. Why? Is it because they couldn’t go out and do whatever they want; they had the right to do whatever they want, right? No, it’s because they're supposed to be betrothed to God; they're supposed to be engaged and promised to God. Church, I tell you today, your lives are meant to be promised to God. You are meant to live every day waiting for Him to come take you, waiting knowing that you have been engaged, knowing that there is a promise over your life. It starts on day one with the promise and is not complete until He takes us to be with Him.

So these questions that I asked: are we living in the old or are we living in the new? Are there parts of our lives, or maybe all of our lives, that are all about ritual and doing what we're ‘supposed’ to do? Or is God moving with us, is God's Spirit alive inside of us every single day? Are we walking hand-in-hand in communion with Him, have we been reconciled as it was meant to be in the garden, walking hand-in-hand with God? Have we been cleansed? Have our hearts been cleansed, that we’re no longer wayward in the world going out and doing, and being enticed by everything in this world, or our hearts cleansed and set with God? Have we been made holy? Has God called us holy, has God called us His bride? And have you been invited to the marriage supper? Is there covenant over your life today? Is there a ring on your finger? Do you live every single day knowing that you have been promised to God, living as the bride? I tell you God's going to return one day - it could be today, it could be tomorrow - that He’s going to come for His church.

What does that verse say? It says His church, who had been made clean, wearing white linens, the righteous deeds of the saints -that’s not being a good person, that's living for Christ. That’s not talking about doing the right thing as the world sees it, that’s talking about living every day for God, and stepping out in trust, and in love, and being powerful, and overcoming the world, and washing each other's feet, and doing the work of God, and expanding His kingdom. That's what it means to live in the white linens of God, because God has overcome your heart and you are living a life of victory for Him. God has called us to live as those who have been promised; to live as those who have been engaged, not doing like the world does - and this is why marriages have been so degraded to what it is today - marriage is about covenant; it starts with a promise. It starts with a promise, and from that promise, from that covenant, from that moment on you are no longer your own; but you are living under the covenant of God.

So Lord, I just lift You up right now God. Lord, these questions are heavy questions, Lord, we really have to look deep, but this is why Your word says it goes deep to the heart and separates bone and marrow, and goes deep and reveals the inmost places of our hearts. But God, we don't want to live as those who are just floating through life - God we want to live in communion with You. Lord, that is why you died; otherwise why did You come, why did You suffer, why did You go to the cross, if not to forgive our sins, to reconcile us back to You, that we might live a life of communion with you God. Holy Spirit I pray that You speak to our hearts this day God, speak to the depths of our hearts this day Lord. For this is the life of a Christian, a constant cycle of God revealing our hearts, of us being washed clean, and of us coming into deeper communion with You. Lord, may we be like Peter this day, that says ‘God I will do anything, whatever it takes I will be in communion with you.’ Whatever it takes, Lord, I will be in communion with You. Nothing else matters, nothing else in this world could hold a candle to what You offer, to who You are. You are the Creator over heaven and earth, You are the Creator of all things; all things are of creation except You, because You are the Creator.