Gift of Grace #3 - The Downward Spiral
Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund explores Romans 1:18-23 to reveal how understanding God's justified wrath against our self-directed living is essential to appreciating His amazing grace. Discover why coming to Jesus isn't just about making life better—it's about recognizing our desperate need for salvation from the consequences of suppressing truth and exchanging God's glory for lesser things.
Summary and Application
There are certain Bible verses that should trouble us—not because they're unclear, but because they're all too clear about the human condition and God's response to sin. In his recent message on Romans 1:24-32, Kurt explores one of those troubling passages: the phrase "God gave them over," which appears three times in rapid succession.
The Water Slide Analogy
Kurt uses a vivid image to help us understand this passage: an abandoned water park. Unlike a normal water slide where you end up safely in a pool, picture getting on a slide where "what's at the bottom is not what you actually want to experience." This is the reality of the downward spiral of sin—once you're on it, momentum takes over.
But here's the good news embedded in this difficult passage: "Grace could be defined with the old acrostic... God's Riches At Christ's Expense. But what grace is, is not getting what it is we deserve. So even once we're on the slide, it's God pulling us out of the slide, whether we're part way down or all the way down at the bottom."
Three Spirals Downward
The passage describes three progressive stages where "God gave them over":
1. From Innocence to Indulgence (Romans 1:24-25)
The first spiral involves sexual impurity. "Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another" (Romans 1:24).
Interestingly, Kurt points out that secular culture is rediscovering what Scripture has always taught about sexual faithfulness. Authors like Louise Perry argue that "hookup culture and the associated promiscuity often benefits a small minority of men, while leaving many women—and many men for that matter—feeling used and emotionally unfulfilled."
What these secular writers miss, however, is the full biblical picture. "What marriage does is it doesn't just say, 'I'll be committed to you physically,' but it says, 'I'll be committed to you socially, economically, and physically.' And that's where real security, intimacy, and all of those benefits are possible."
2. From Natural to Unnatural (Romans 1:26-27)
The second spiral addresses same-sex relationships. "Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones" (Romans 1:26).
Kurt acknowledges the difficulty of this passage in our current cultural moment but emphasizes what the text actually says: "This passage says that you move from what's natural to what's unnatural. That is the downward spiral. And so what our culture might say is just our orientation, God says is unnatural."
3. From Fit to Unfit (Romans 1:28-32)
The third and final spiral is perhaps the most sobering: "Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind" (Romans 1:28).
What follows is an extensive list of sins—wickedness, evil, greed, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, pride, and more. Kurt's point? "The downward spiral is any step that we take on the slide away from God."
The Danger of "Good Sins"
One of the most convicting parts of Kurt's message draws on Ray Ortlund's concept of "good sins" versus "bad sins." Ortlund writes: "We feel the pain of our bad sins. But our good sins, they feel good, which makes them more poisonous. A man who commits adultery might feel bad about it, but a man who looks down on an adulterer probably feels good about that."
This echoes Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, where he takes "sins that we're comfortable condemning" and forces us to deal with "sins that we're comfortable excusing." Looking with lust is like adultery. Hatred in your heart is like murder. The point isn't that consequences are identical, but that we're all on the slide somewhere.
"Even if you're standing at the top of the slide trying to hold yourself back, you're still on a downward spiral," Kurt warns. The consequences don't always progress to worse actions—fantasy can simply cause us to stop investing in real relationships; hatred can destroy community even without physical violence.
Grace at Every Stage
The hope of the gospel is that grace meets us wherever we are on the slide. "When we've gone all the way down the slide, we're at the bottom, and God just says, 'You're in a mess, and I'm going to pick you out of this.'" But grace also comes "when you're on the slide" as God "shines a light on something and helps you turn."
The key is recognizing that "the consequence of sin in this passage is more sin," and that true freedom comes from trusting that "the God who created us, who made us, and who gives us these passages, these words, is for us, that he made us and wants our best."
Questions for Reflection
Where are you on the slide? Is there an area where you've been excusing "good sins"—gossip, judgment, fantasy, hatred—that God might be calling you to turn from today before the spiral continues?
Do you truly believe God is for you? Kurt emphasizes that lasting change requires "confidence that the God who created us... is for us, that he made us and wants our best." How does doubting God's goodness keep you stuck in patterns of sin, and what would it look like to trust His grace more fully?
-
Books Referenced
The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry
How Intimacy and Commitment Enrich Our Lives by Kathryn Wallace
The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz
The State of Affairs by Esther Perel
-
When I read the Bible, there are some verses that jump out at me that are troubling to me. After years of reading and studying, I can't shake them. Some verses are just troubling. And I'm alluding to the kinds of verses that when I read them, I say I really want to be in the category that this verse talks about.
One of them is in Matthew 25. It's where Jesus is teaching and he's talking about the parable of the sheep and the goats. And at one point he talks about how the people who are among the sheep are those who've cared for the least among those in our culture, and those who've ignored are among the goats. And the reply of the people is basically to say, "Well, when did we visit you in prison? Or when didn't we visit you in prison? When didn't we help you?" And then in Matthew 25:45 it says this: "He will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'"
And the reason that that's troubling to me is because I know that either literally or figuratively, I walk past need more than I would like to admit to myself. And Jesus' words haunt me just a little bit.
Another verse that's troubling to me is in Luke 17. Beginning in verse one, it says this (again, Jesus speaking): "Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come." Then here's the verse that's troubling: "It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble." Then verse three, in case you didn't get it: "So watch yourselves."
And maybe that's uniquely troubling to me because of what I do. But the weight of saying, "I don't want somebody to stumble either because I in some way represent Christ in a way that is less than honorable to who he is, or I somehow diminish the standard of God." But that text says that if you do that, you're going to be like somebody with a millstone thrown around your neck and thrown into the ocean. And I don't think it's really unique for me because any of us who speak about what God is like, talk about how God relates to people in our lives—that passage can apply.
And then there are the verses that are in the text that you heard read today. We started a new series a couple weeks ago working our way through the book of Romans. And today we're at Romans chapter 1, verses 24 through 32. And there's this little phrase that's repeated—verse 24, verse 26, verse 28. And the phrase is "God gave them over."
And that's troubling because what it pictures is God saying, in essence, "If you want to go a certain way, I'm going to just hand you over. I'm going to say, 'Go ahead, have your way.'" The way I described this last week in talking about this a little is I said in this passage—not saying in all of the Bible, but in this passage—the consequence of sin is more sin. And the reason it's troubling is because when God gives somebody over to sinfulness, it means that in a sense you are moving in a direction in which God just says, "You want that? Go ahead and have it."
Now I don't think that ever excuses us and lets us say, "Well, God gave me over, therefore I can't help myself." But it still is a haunting passage.
The Downward Spiral
And so today we're going to talk a little bit about this downward spiral, and I'd like to just give you an image that I hope will help you think about this. This is a picture of a water slide, and this is a pretty gentle water slide. But if you're ever on a water slide, here's what you know: You come up to the water slide and you have a moment where you have to decide to get in the water slide and go or to abort.
The last time I was on a water slide was about a year ago and it was actually a much bigger water slide, and it was one of those where you get on and you can't see and you're doing a straight drop for a while and then you go through all these things. And I had this moment where I was thinking, "I don't know if I actually want to do this. I'm not as young as I used to be." But the eight-year-old behind me motivated me, so I jumped in.
And the reason I say a water slide is because once you're on it, you don't really have a choice. You're going down. And that is the picture of "God gave them over." But here's probably a better picture. Our team found this—this is an abandoned water park. And the reason I show you this is because a water slide is generally a happy event because you know that it's generally going to be fine. You'll end up in a nice pool. But the picture here is you get on the slide and what's at the bottom is not what you actually want to experience. And that is the picture of "God gave them over" because the consequence of sin is more sin.
Now we're talking about the gift of grace. And grace could be defined with the old acrostic—it's not unique to me, it's been around for decades—God's Riches At Christ's Expense. But what grace is, is not getting what it is we deserve. So even once we're on the slide, it's God pulling us out of the slide, whether we're part way down or all the way down at the bottom. It's God saying, "I'm going to give you something better than the outcome of the choices that you have made." That is the grace that's in view in Romans. But the downward spiral is something we still need to understand.
The Reasons for God's Wrath
And it begins in verse 24 with the word "therefore." The old joke in Bible interpretation is whenever you see the word "therefore," you should stop and ask, "What is it there for?" And what it's there for is showing that the wrath of God has its reasons in verses 18 through 23. That's what we looked at last week. And today we're going to look at the results of God's wrath, verses 24 through 32, which are these three downward spirals, each time corresponding to the phrase "God gave them over."
First Spiral: From Innocence to Indulgence
So the first spiral, the downward, is in verses 24 and 25. And it's from innocence to indulgence. And here's what it says, verse 24: "Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another."
Now that's the NIV. It's the version that we teach from here weekend after weekend. And it's a very good translation. And in this translation, twice they've added a word to bring clarity. So when it says "impurity" in the original language, it's just the word "impurity," but it has the connotation of sexual impurity. Therefore they've added the word "sexual." So some translations will just say "impurity," but I think they've rightly added that word to say that's what's in view here, especially because right afterward it says "degrading their bodies with one another." And then they've added the word "sinful" to the word "desires" to try to say this is the kind of desires that you have. And here, maybe I'm not as big a fan of the addition of the word, because the word "desires" is a word that simply means a desire for something good or bad, but a lot of that desire, an over-desire almost.
And so what the passage is saying is God gives you over to an abundance of desire for sexual fulfillment in your life, but then it says so that they do things that they degrade themselves with one another. You get on the slide, you end up at the bottom of the pool.
And then what the apostle Paul does here is he adds to it this encounter, this verse 25, that basically says this is a form of idolatry. You're making much of yourself. He says, "They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised."
And so what he's doing is he's saying the result of our sexuality is that instead of worshiping God, we worship ourselves because we want pleasure. We want somebody to make much of us, almost somebody to worship us, if you will. And that is why we pursue sexuality the way that we do.
Cultural Affirmation of Biblical Principles
But I want you to see something, and that is that this idea of monogamy, of being faithful sexually, is actually being extolled among many secular writers today, even though it's an archaic idea in the sense that it's old. (Archaic, I guess, connotes it's out of fashion, and I'm not saying it's out of fashion. It's old. It's actually back into fashion because people now are saying this is actually a good idea without naming the Bible, without thinking about it from a biblical lens.)
Let me just give you a few. I didn't read all of these books, so this is not a blanket recommendation of these, but it's just saying here are some things that are out right now that are saying this is a better way to live.
This is from a woman named Louise Perry called The Case for Monogamy, 2022. And in her book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, she basically argues that from a feminist and evolutionary perspective, hookup culture and the associated promiscuity often benefits a small minority of men, while leaving many women—and many men for that matter—feeling used and emotionally unfulfilled. And her point is this: when you hook up, you end up kind of in the pool of feeling used and unfulfilled rather than valued and cherished.
In Kathryn Wallace's book How Intimacy and Commitment Enrich Our Lives, she argues that casual sex, from a historical and psychological vantage point, actually disrupts intimacy. She argues that sexual honesty and fidelity are essential for the kind of profound interpersonal integrity that makes life meaningful. She posits that the hazards of casual sexual promiscuity include a fragmented sense of self and a diminished capacity for deep and lasting connection. In other words, the more you hook up or are casual about it, the less deep your connection will be with somebody when the time comes. Again, not written from a Christian perspective.
Barry Schwartz, in The Paradox of Choice, which isn't really about sex, but in a chapter about it, argues that having an infinite array of partners—promiscuity or just casual dating—can lead to analysis paralysis and lower satisfaction. In contrast, he says, committing to one person, fidelity, allows the brain to stop searching and start investing, which leads to higher levels of long-term happiness.
And then in The State of Affairs by Esther Perel, her work is on infidelity, and she writes about why fidelity is so highly prized. And she describes modern marriage as "the new monogamy," where we look to one person to provide what an entire village used to: grounding, meaning, and continuity. Her work suggests that the weight we put on fidelity today is a testament to its value as a foundation for emotional security.
Now, the reason I quote this or show you this is to show you that when God thought up sex and gave it to us, it is a beautiful gift to be cherished and enjoyed. But one of the downward spirals is when we say, "But I'm going to use it for my own ends and I'm going to treat it not as God intended—with a man and a woman in a committed relationship for a lifetime—but instead as a series of monogamous relationships." Even that devalues us and we degrade ourselves.
Now what these books miss is the idea of marriage. Because what marriage does is it doesn't just say, "I'll be committed to you physically," but it says, "I'll be committed to you socially, economically, and physically." And that's where real security, intimacy, and all of those benefits are possible. And so there's a downward spiral that goes from innocence to indulgence.
Second Spiral: From Natural to Unnatural
But there's a second downward spiral that we see here, and this is in verses 26 and 27. In verse 24 it says, "Therefore God gave them over." Verse 26: "Because of this, God gave them over." And then it says, "to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error."
Now obviously this is alluding to same-sex, not just attraction, but kind of moving beyond attraction into consummation. And there are those who look at these passages and say, "Well, these don't mean what they appear to mean." And I'm not going to go real deep into this today. I did actually four years ago in March of '22 when we were working through First Corinthians in a message called "Washed and Waiting." So if you want to look on the website, that's still there.
But one of the ways that people look at this and say, "Well, maybe this doesn't mean what it appears to mean," is they'll say, "Well, it says that they exchanged what was natural for what is unnatural. But if they were naturally same-sex attracted, therefore this doesn't mean that that's out of bounds." And in doing that, it isn't really what the passage says. Some will say, "Well, this is only talking about shameful lusts, so lusts that are over-realized." And again, that isn't what the passage says. And then some will say, "Well, this is really talking about a unique kind of thing—of pedophilia between men and younger boys. And that is what is in view here." But again, that's not what the passage says.
And my point here is just to say this passage says that you move from what's natural to what's unnatural. That is the downward spiral. And so what our culture might say is just our orientation, God says is unnatural. What sometimes people in our culture say is just kind of the way that I was born is something that God says, "You've exchanged what is natural for what's unnatural." And what some people say, "Well, this is my identity," God here just simply says you're just going deeper and deeper in, a downward spiral.
Therefore God gave them over to basically their heterosexual desires. Then it says, "Because of this God gave them over" and there's some same-sex desires.
Third Spiral: A Depraved Mind
And then it says this, verse 28: "Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind."
Now I want you to see something here. Notice how verse 24: "Therefore God gave them over"—so it's building on reasons for God's wrath, verses 18 through 23. Verse 26: "Because of this, God gave them over." So is that because of what's in verses 24 and 25, or because of verses 18 through 23? It looks to me like it's building. And then it says, "Furthermore," verse 28, building on what's right before it.
And here's my point: It would be easy in some ways to read this passage and say, "Oh, this is talking about people who are outside of faith and are far from God." And in one way, that's fair from an interpretation standpoint, because this is about people outside of faith. But in another way, it misses the depravity, because the grace of God can save us from sin ultimately, even after we've done what we know we shouldn't do, and we have eternal salvation because of what Jesus has done. But it also can save us from the consequences of sin being more sin when we turn from our current sin and don't have to go down the path.
But here's what I want you to see, that the progression here moves to this, what he calls a "depraved mind." "Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind." That still can be maybe a little opaque when we see that.
And there's a translation that came out just a couple years ago called the Legacy Standard Bible. It's a remake of the old New American Standard Bible, which is probably way more information than you want in this moment. But they translated as "fit" and "unfit," kind of. God took what was kind of fit and made it unfit. And in their notes about it, they say this: "The expressions 'see fit' and 'unfit' here represent cognate Greek words." And they go on and talk about the words and the verb. The first one has a sense of determining or testing the quality of something. And the adjective, which kind of is the second one, indicates that something is of worthless quality. So in other words, it's fit in the sense that it's worthwhile to kind of say to have knowledge of God. But when we don't, then it becomes an unfit mind.
Michael McGill, who translated the Bible as an individual, has a New Testament called The Disciples' New Testament, and had a precursor to it that had more notes in the first version. He said, "Note the play on the root word. They did not approve after testing, so they were disapproved themselves after testing."
The List of Sins
And here's kind of why I point to this, and that is the point here in verses 28 through 32 is to get you into this list of all of these things and recognize that this is part of the downward spiral. So I'm going to just read through this list a little bit and give you some of William Barclay's explanations of these words:
Wickedness and evil. Wickedness being having the opposite mindset of what is right and good, therefore robbing others and God of what is due. Evil is a word that can mean villainy, badness, or someone who's willing to hurt others.
Greed is a lust to get more and more stuff.
Depravity means viciousness or lacking goodness toward other people.
Envy means we resent what others have or who they are in such a way that we no longer want them to have it. And that leads to these next phrases:
Murder, strife, deceit, malice, where we act on our envy. Murder is obvious. Strife is a willingness to be contentious with other people to knock them down a little bit. Deceit means diluting something. It was used of diluting metal and representing it as being fully precious in its quantity, or kind of adulterating wine and passing it off as being better than it was. And so deceit means that you are in some ways using deceit to get ahead. Malice has a way of always taking the worst about others.
Gossip and slander are sins of the tongue. Obviously gossip has the connotation of doing it quietly off to the side so that you're whispering about people, while slander has the idea of just aggressively tearing somebody down.
God-haters, insolent, prideful, arrogant means having contempt for others except ourselves.
Boastful had the idea of walking around putting ourselves forward. And so here it means taking credit for anything and everything that we can to make much of ourselves.
Inventors of evil means seeking bigger and bigger ways to get an end for ourselves.
Disobedient to parents seems obvious.
No understanding means that we don't learn, that we're senseless.
No fidelity that we break agreements.
No love that we're willing to live without an affection and putting other needs first.
And no mercy that we don't feel or act on another's behalf even when they're suffering.
The Point of the Passage
So you hear that and you might say, "Okay, so what does that really mean for me or for you?" Well, here's what I want you to get, and that is if you hear this passage and you say, "Wow, there's some people who really are on the downward spiral," the downward spiral is any step that we take on the slide away from God. And yes, there is an ultimate grace, but there is also a grace that turns us.
And you may think, "Well, I can hold myself at the top of the slide, like I can go just a little bit and then I can not go too far." And I get that. But what we do when we do that, if we go back to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, is sometimes we look at sins that we're comfortable condemning. But what Jesus does is he takes sins that we're comfortable condemning, and he forces us to deal with sins that we're comfortable excusing.
Here's what I mean. Jesus says, "You've heard it said, 'You shall not commit adultery.'" Sin we're comfortable condemning. And he says, "But I tell you that even if you look with lust in your heart after another person, basically you've committed adultery with them in your heart." What is that? A sin we're comfortable excusing.
What does Jesus say? "You've heard it said, 'You shall not murder.'" Sin we're comfortable condemning. "But I tell you that if you say in your heart or say in your words, 'You fool, you empty head,' that it's the same as if you kill."
Now, here's what Jesus doesn't mean. He doesn't mean that the consequences are the same. Like if you think, "Oh, you're a fool" about somebody, it doesn't mean that you have the same consequences as somebody who murders, okay? And when I talk about the downward spiral, it doesn't mean that just because you think somebody's foolish or you have hate in your heart that you will necessarily end up killing them. Or if you allow fantasy in your mind, that you'll end up committing adultery. But it means that even if you're standing at the top of the slide trying to hold yourself back, you're still on a downward spiral.
Because the consequence of fantasy doesn't have to be that you progress. It can simply be that you stop investing in the relationship that you have or potential relationships because you live in fantasy world. The consequences of hate or running people down in your mind can be destroyed community between you and others. It doesn't always have to progress to the next thing.
Good Sins and Bad Sins
Ray Ortlund, in talking about this, once categorized something. He said there are "good sins" and "bad sins," and the good sins are more dangerous than the bad sins. Now, you may object to the categorization, and I understand that, because in a sense, sin is sin. But that's actually what he's trying to drive at, but kind of playing off what Jesus said about, you take kind of these sins that we're more comfortable condemning and Jesus pushing us to sins we're more comfortable excusing.
And here's how Ray Ortlund wrote about it. He says, "We feel the pain of our bad sins. But our good sins, they feel good, which makes them more poisonous. A man who commits adultery might feel bad about it, but a man who looks down on an adulterer probably feels good about that. Our good sins don't warn us. They lie to us. They flatter us. And we love that flattery. Our lying hearts tell us that we are just fine, but we are not."
In other words, the downward spiral ultimately is anytime we say, "I'm okay with this," even if it isn't kind of what God has outlined. And what happens is, we start down this path, and as we start down the path, we find ourselves maybe not even objecting to it until all of a sudden we look up and say, "How did I get here?"
There was a movie several years ago with Jeff Bridges and a song that came with it, "Fallen Feels Like Flying." Here's how the song goes. It was about a man who made a lot of bad choices: "Said I was going where I shouldn't go, seeing who I shouldn't see, doing what I shouldn't do, and being who I shouldn't be. A little voice told me it's all wrong, another voice told me it's all right. I used to think that I was strong, but lately I just lost the fight. Funny how fallen feels like flying for a little while. Funny how fallen feels like flying for a little while."
Again, what is he driving at? That often when we start, it feels good. It feels like this is the right choice. I'm finally free of church. I'm free of my parents. I'm free of God. But what you're actually doing is you're starting on a downward spiral that's going to take you to places that you don't actually want to go.
And at the end of chapter one of Romans, there's this verse, verse 32: "And although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them."
So it isn't just engaging in it. But he says, even if you just approve others, if you make it easy for others, he says you're kind of in the same boat.
Responding to God's Grace
And so here's what I'm hoping today you will hear. If we go back to kind of the water slide picture for a moment, you get this water slide that you kind of, figuratively speaking, can step into, and the grace of God can come. Because that's what this is ultimately about in two ways for us.
One, when we've gone all the way down the slide, we're at the bottom, and God just says, "You're in a mess, and I'm going to pick you out of this." And in a sense, when you get there, what happens is God is saying, "Even though you've made a complete mess, I'm going to deliver you from it." Now, ultimately, you come to Jesus and you have salvation, freedom. Jesus forgives our sins. Grace means that there's no more punishment for sin eternally with God, but it doesn't mean there's no more consequences. Sometimes God's grace will make it so that those consequences aren't as great. Sometimes you're going to live them.
But another way that the grace of God comes is sometimes when you're on the slide, God will just simply say, "Here's a chance to turn and come a different direction and not have to experience the consequences of your own choices." The consequence of sin in this passage is more sin. And if God shines a light on something and helps you turn, although you don't have to worry about your future eternal salvation, what he's doing is he's calling you to something better here and now. And the question is, will you respond to that from God?
You know, the grace of God is this beautiful gift that just simply says, "Turn toward me, I'm good." But the problem for us a lot of times, if you notice each of these things, deals with our desires. And so the answer ultimately isn't just simply to say, "I need behavior modification." It's to say, "I need a change in my heart, at the level of my desire." And the only way we get that is to have confidence that the God who created us, who made us, and who gives us these passages, these words, is for us, that he made us and wants our best.
Because without that, what we will do is we will say, "Well, this slide is fun and falling will feel like flying." But when we say, "God is good and he's for me, and he's gracious to me and he's good," then why wouldn't we want to turn toward him?
And here's my real hope today. One, that some of us may see where we are on a slide and say, "I need to turn." Maybe we've been indulging in slander and gossip, or we've been in a place where we've been deceitful about something and we know it, and we're just not sure how to get out of it, whatever that is. There's a chance to turn and experience the grace of God.
But what I really hope that you see even more is that there is a God, that no matter how many times you get on the slide, no matter how far down the slide you go, no matter what kind of pit you're in, is a gracious God who wants to bring you back. And that is the beauty of the message of the cross and of the book of Romans.
Closing Prayer
Let me just ask you to bow your heads, close your eyes for a moment, and let me just ask you today: If you're here and you find yourself kind of in the pool at the bottom, and maybe you think there's no hope, and since you've already blown it and gotten to the pool at the bottom, that there's no point, can I just encourage you to turn toward Jesus? His ultimate grace, his current grace is there for you.
Maybe as we've talked today, you found yourself on that slide, and you know that you've been on the slide, but you haven't hit the bottom. But maybe today is just a call to say it's time to turn in an area that's important.
Or maybe this is one of the first times you've just understood that there is a downward spiral, that there's sin before God. And today is the day just to say, "God, I trust Jesus as my Savior."
Maybe you're in that pool at the bottom, and it doesn't feel like it's because of your choices. It feels like it's because of somebody else's. But either way, God is a God who loves to bring beauty from despair. And sometimes we just need to hold on and not take a path that's a further downward spiral.
And we can come to Jesus by just simply saying, "God, just as I am today, without a plea, but that your blood was shed for me and that bids me to come to thee." Basically says, "O Lamb of God, I come." And as that old song says, "Just as I am, thou wilt receive, well, welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve, because thy promise I believe. O Lamb of God, I come. O Lamb of God, I come."
God, help us to turn towards you and get off the downward spiral so that we don't experience you giving us over to more and more sin. But let us experience your grace, and we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Thanks for being here. Have a great day.
==============================
Disclaimer: This transcript has been edited from the original audio recording for clarity and readability. While every effort has been made to preserve the speaker's intended meaning, some minor adjustments to grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure have been made. This is an AI-assisted transcription and cleanup.
