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Part 2 of 5Relationship Over Religion
Relationship Over Religion
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Connected by scripture or shared themes.
Part 2 of 5Relationship Over Religion
Relationship Over Religion
Continue exploring
Connected by scripture or shared themes.
Good morning, everyone. I'm excited to be here with you today. We are continuing part four of our series, Relationship Over Religion. Today, I want to teach you a phrase in Spanish: Mi casa es su casa—my house is your house, and your house is my house.
If you're in a relationship, especially if you're married, you understand this saying. In marriage, what's mine is yours and what's yours is mine. But I'll be honest—in my marriage, it feels a little lopsided. She can wear my clothes, but I don't think she'd appreciate it if I wore hers. It feels more like what's mine is hers and what's hers is hers.
But here's the real issue: some of us live with God that way. We say, "God, what's yours is mine," but when He asks for something back, we hesitate. We expect God to bless us, but we're not ready to surrender the things He asks us to release.
Let's look at what Jesus teaches us about His Father's home. In John 14:1-2, Jesus says:
"Don't let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father's home. If this were not so, I would have told you. I'm going to prepare a place for you."
Notice how Jesus describes Heaven. He doesn't speak of it as some distant, esoteric place with gold streets and pearly gates. Instead, He speaks of it as God's home. The Father is saying, "I want you to live with me."
There's a real difference between finding a place for someone to stay and making room in your home for them. If someone comes to you without anywhere to go, you might help them find shelter. But when you say, "I'm making room in my home for you," that's real commitment.
God is doing something powerful here. He's not just offering you a visitor's spot in heaven. He's making you a permanent resident in His home. He's opening His space to you because He wants genuine relationship.
But there's more. In Matthew 16:19, Jesus says:
"I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."
He didn't just make room for you—He gave you the keys. When you have keys to someone's home, it means something profound. It means access. It means you can come and go as you please. You don't need permission. You don't need to text first or give warning.
Jesus goes on to say something important in Matthew 16:20: "He ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah." He revealed something intimate to them and said, "Keep this between us."
This teaches us something vital: not everything that happens in your relationship with God or with your partner is meant for public consumption. Some things are sacred and should stay private.
I say this especially for those in new relationships. We live in an age of Instagram and social media where everyone broadcasts everything. But this is dangerous. Going viral is literally a virus. When you expose everything happening in your home and relationships to the public, you invite trouble. Some things must stay in the house.
The same is true for what God is doing in your life. You can't always share everything God shows you. Not everyone will celebrate the favor God gives you. Sometimes you have to learn to be quiet with your blessings.
But here's something even more important: your body is God's home. This isn't just about a physical place called heaven. God wants to live inside you—in your body, your soul, and your spirit.
In Romans 12:1, Paul writes:
"I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice. This is truly the way to worship Him."
Paul repeats this urgency: give your bodies to God. We'll give God our hearts, but what about our bodies? What are we doing with them?
Here's a profound truth: the way you really worship God is not what you say with your mouth—it's what you do with your body. Yes, we express worship in church. We lift our hands, we sing, we say, "God, I love you." But that's just an expression of worship. The actual worship is your lifestyle.
Think about love in a relationship. If I buy my wife flowers, that's an expression of love. When I say "I love you," that's an expression. But my actual love is shown in how I treat her when no one's watching, day in and day out. It's easy to express love, but living it is expensive.
God is saying the same thing: "Your worship in church is just an expression. I appreciate it, but it means nothing if your lifestyle doesn't back it up." You can say all day, "God, I love you. You're my everything." But your body will tell the real story. What you do when you leave church—that's your actual worship.
This is why 2 Corinthians 6:14 is so important:
"Don't become partners with those who reject God. How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong? That's not a partnership—that's war."
Let me be clear about what this means. Light and darkness cannot exist in the same room. When light shows up, darkness must flee. For darkness to thrive, light cannot be present. The two are always at war.
Have you been in a relationship where all you do is fight? Where you can never get on the same page? There's always a misunderstanding, always conflict. Maybe that's because you're not following the same Spirit. I can't expect us to be on the same page when we're not even following the same God.
It's not partnership—it's war. And war breeds only injury.
When you put opposing spirits in the same house, one person is always taking and the other is always giving. One person is being used while the other benefits. You go home tired. You pull up to your house and have to sit in your car for five minutes because you know chaos is waiting inside. Why? Because you're not submitted to the same thing.
In verse 15, Paul asks: "Does Christ go strolling with the devil?" Of course not. And in verse 16, he continues:
"Who would think of setting up pagan idols in God's holy temple? But that's exactly what we do. Each of us is a temple in whom God lives."
When you partner with someone who serves an idol—someone not serving Christ—you're bringing a false god into God's temple. You're forcing God to live alongside His enemies.
This becomes especially critical when we talk about sexual relationships. 1 Corinthians 6:16 says:
"There's more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As it's written in scripture, the two became one."
Listen carefully: every time you have sexual relations with someone, you're saying, "God, give me everything they have." If the two become one, you're approving of their trauma, their lies, their experiences, their betrayal. Everything they are is now traveling inside of you.
This is spiritual, not just physical. This is why we call them soul ties. Your spirit follows your body. When you connect your body with someone, your spirits become locked together. The more you do it, the more deeply you're tied.
This is why, when you separate from someone, it feels like they took a piece of you. Because they did. You got your body back, but something in your soul still feels missing. Your spirit is still attached.
The quickest way into depression is to give all of your soul to someone through sexual experience, only to find yourself without even knowing who you are anymore.
This has been true since ancient times. In pagan temples, they always had two things available: sex slaves and drugs. Why? Because these are the two things that tap into your soul without your conscious permission. You don't even have to say yes—your yes was given when you put your body in agreement.
Look around today. Every song is about sex and drugs. Every viral moment on social media centers on sex and drugs. Talk to any teacher in high school or middle school—they'll tell you sex and drugs are taking over. The enemy is after our children, and we're asleep in the same trap they're falling into. We can't save them because we're having fun while the enemy rocks us to sleep.
In 1 Corinthians 6:17, Paul writes:
"Since we want to become spiritually one with God, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy."
What is this kind of sex? It's the mentality of "friends with benefits." It's saying, "I want your body, but I'm not ready for a relationship. I'm not ready to commit. I just want what I can get from you."
You're avoiding intimacy—you're not letting the other person truly know you. Six months later, you realize you've been with someone completely dishonest. They never showed you who they really are because they didn't want intimacy or commitment. They just wanted sex.
This is not new. Listen to the music of any generation, and you'll hear people singing about this struggle. The music reflects what we're dealing with.
But listen: if you ain't said "I do," then I don't. We have to stop playing this game. It's the same trick over and over for the last 2,000 years, and we keep falling for it.
When you pursue sex without commitment and intimacy, you become lonelier than ever. You can never truly become one. You keep giving pieces of yourself to people, and I'm speaking to both men and women here.
We talk about this like it's only a woman's issue, but men, you make all the money in the world and still don't know who you are. You're confused, lost, jumping from body to body trying to feel like a man. But you'll never feel complete. You're just left feeling more lonely.
Women, you give yourself, hoping you can change him, not realizing you're damaging yourself. You're cursing yourself trying to heal someone who never asked for healing. It leaves you more lonely than ever.
Lust and sex damage your ability to truly see a person. When lust is involved, you might like someone who isn't even good for you. They're just scratching an itch your body craves. You knew they were bad when you met them, but sex kept you blind.
Here's what makes sexual sin different. 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 says:
"There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from every other sin. In sexual sin, you violate the sacredness of your own body. These bodies were made for God-given love, for becoming one with another in real love. God owns the whole works—all of you."
Sexual sin is the only sin where you sin against God AND against yourself. You violate something sacred that God made for a holy purpose.
I want to share something that happened. After one of our services, someone came to me weeping and broken. She had just discovered she was pregnant, and the man she was with no longer wanted to be with her. I prayed for her, my heart breaking.
Then at the next service, someone ran to me with another young woman in the same situation. Pregnant. The man gone. I looked at God, and He spoke to my heart: "This is what I've been trying to protect them from. I'm trying to protect you from the pain and damage that comes from giving what I made sacred to someone who never even made a commitment to you."
God isn't trying to stop you from having fun. He's trying to stop you from killing yourself.
Sometimes we don't realize how damaging something is until the damage is already done. Then we get healed, get whole again, and go right back to the same thing that broke us. We have to break that cycle.
I want to close with 2 Corinthians 12:21, where Paul writes:
"I am afraid that when I come again, God will humble me in your presence, and I will be grieved because many of you have not given up your old sins. You have not repented of your impurity, your sexual immorality, and your eagerness for lustful pleasure."
I have the same fear standing here as a pastor. I'm grieving because many of us have not given up the things that God is challenging us to release. Many of us have not repented of sexual immorality and lustful pleasures.
Many of us have made a comfortable life serving both God and flesh. We come to church, we worship, we say all the right things—but our bodies tell a different story.
Today, I want us to be real. I want us to repent and be honest. It doesn't matter who you are—if you're a leader, an intercessor, a pastor, on the greeting team—God is challenging all of us to give up old sin.
Some of us have been enjoying certain things, but they've been killing us. We've been in situations, but they've been destroying us. We came here to encounter a real God, and we can't keep pretending.
If that's you, I want you to come to the front. Come to the altar. Let's be real. Let's repent together. There's no shame in this church—we're transparent. We're real and unedited.
Father God, as Your people come to the altar, I pray for every single one. It doesn't matter who they are. Your Word says: "If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sins, and heal their land."
Many of us have lands that need healing—the land of our minds, our hearts, our spirits, our families, our marriages. We repent before You today. We're sorry, God. We realize we haven't let go of things Your Word explicitly told us to release.
We put down pride and ego. Forgive us for not keeping Your temple sacred. Forgive us for not protecting the temple You've given us. Forgive us for playing with something You call special.
I pray that You would heal and restore every person who has experienced brokenness from a soul tie. I pray that every man and woman would have their identity restored in Jesus. I pray that they would experience what it means to be whole again, to be a new creation in Christ.
For those who lost their way at an early age, for those who experienced things they didn't choose but have been stuck in ever since—I pray for wholeness. I pray for restoration and healing.
Thank You, Father, for restoration. When we repent, You restore. When we repent, You restore. When we repent, You restore.
Many have lost their purpose, their calling, their real assignment—giving it up for momentary experience. Lord God, set them free. Set them free from what they have no business being in. From this moment forward, as we've repented not just in words and expression, but in action and lifestyle change, we rededicate ourselves to You. We say, "I do" to You. We're in covenant with You now, in Jesus' name.
Good morning, everyone. I'm excited to be here with you today. We are continuing part four of our series, Relationship Over Religion. Today, I want to teach you a phrase in Spanish: Mi casa es su casa—my house is your house, and your house is my house.
If you're in a relationship, especially if you're married, you understand this saying. In marriage, what's mine is yours and what's yours is mine. But I'll be honest—in my marriage, it feels a little lopsided. She can wear my clothes, but I don't think she'd appreciate it if I wore hers. It feels more like what's mine is hers and what's hers is hers.
But here's the real issue: some of us live with God that way. We say, "God, what's yours is mine," but when He asks for something back, we hesitate. We expect God to bless us, but we're not ready to surrender the things He asks us to release.
Let's look at what Jesus teaches us about His Father's home. In John 14:1-2, Jesus says:
"Don't let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father's home. If this were not so, I would have told you. I'm going to prepare a place for you."
Notice how Jesus describes Heaven. He doesn't speak of it as some distant, esoteric place with gold streets and pearly gates. Instead, He speaks of it as God's home. The Father is saying, "I want you to live with me."
There's a real difference between finding a place for someone to stay and making room in your home for them. If someone comes to you without anywhere to go, you might help them find shelter. But when you say, "I'm making room in my home for you," that's real commitment.
God is doing something powerful here. He's not just offering you a visitor's spot in heaven. He's making you a permanent resident in His home. He's opening His space to you because He wants genuine relationship.
But there's more. In Matthew 16:19, Jesus says:
"I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."
He didn't just make room for you—He gave you the keys. When you have keys to someone's home, it means something profound. It means access. It means you can come and go as you please. You don't need permission. You don't need to text first or give warning.
Jesus goes on to say something important in Matthew 16:20: "He ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah." He revealed something intimate to them and said, "Keep this between us."
This teaches us something vital: not everything that happens in your relationship with God or with your partner is meant for public consumption. Some things are sacred and should stay private.
I say this especially for those in new relationships. We live in an age of Instagram and social media where everyone broadcasts everything. But this is dangerous. Going viral is literally a virus. When you expose everything happening in your home and relationships to the public, you invite trouble. Some things must stay in the house.
The same is true for what God is doing in your life. You can't always share everything God shows you. Not everyone will celebrate the favor God gives you. Sometimes you have to learn to be quiet with your blessings.
But here's something even more important: your body is God's home. This isn't just about a physical place called heaven. God wants to live inside you—in your body, your soul, and your spirit.
In Romans 12:1, Paul writes:
"I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice. This is truly the way to worship Him."
Paul repeats this urgency: give your bodies to God. We'll give God our hearts, but what about our bodies? What are we doing with them?
Here's a profound truth: the way you really worship God is not what you say with your mouth—it's what you do with your body. Yes, we express worship in church. We lift our hands, we sing, we say, "God, I love you." But that's just an expression of worship. The actual worship is your lifestyle.
Think about love in a relationship. If I buy my wife flowers, that's an expression of love. When I say "I love you," that's an expression. But my actual love is shown in how I treat her when no one's watching, day in and day out. It's easy to express love, but living it is expensive.
God is saying the same thing: "Your worship in church is just an expression. I appreciate it, but it means nothing if your lifestyle doesn't back it up." You can say all day, "God, I love you. You're my everything." But your body will tell the real story. What you do when you leave church—that's your actual worship.
This is why 2 Corinthians 6:14 is so important:
"Don't become partners with those who reject God. How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong? That's not a partnership—that's war."
Let me be clear about what this means. Light and darkness cannot exist in the same room. When light shows up, darkness must flee. For darkness to thrive, light cannot be present. The two are always at war.
Have you been in a relationship where all you do is fight? Where you can never get on the same page? There's always a misunderstanding, always conflict. Maybe that's because you're not following the same Spirit. I can't expect us to be on the same page when we're not even following the same God.
It's not partnership—it's war. And war breeds only injury.
When you put opposing spirits in the same house, one person is always taking and the other is always giving. One person is being used while the other benefits. You go home tired. You pull up to your house and have to sit in your car for five minutes because you know chaos is waiting inside. Why? Because you're not submitted to the same thing.
In verse 15, Paul asks: "Does Christ go strolling with the devil?" Of course not. And in verse 16, he continues:
"Who would think of setting up pagan idols in God's holy temple? But that's exactly what we do. Each of us is a temple in whom God lives."
When you partner with someone who serves an idol—someone not serving Christ—you're bringing a false god into God's temple. You're forcing God to live alongside His enemies.
This becomes especially critical when we talk about sexual relationships. 1 Corinthians 6:16 says:
"There's more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As it's written in scripture, the two became one."
Listen carefully: every time you have sexual relations with someone, you're saying, "God, give me everything they have." If the two become one, you're approving of their trauma, their lies, their experiences, their betrayal. Everything they are is now traveling inside of you.
This is spiritual, not just physical. This is why we call them soul ties. Your spirit follows your body. When you connect your body with someone, your spirits become locked together. The more you do it, the more deeply you're tied.
This is why, when you separate from someone, it feels like they took a piece of you. Because they did. You got your body back, but something in your soul still feels missing. Your spirit is still attached.
The quickest way into depression is to give all of your soul to someone through sexual experience, only to find yourself without even knowing who you are anymore.
This has been true since ancient times. In pagan temples, they always had two things available: sex slaves and drugs. Why? Because these are the two things that tap into your soul without your conscious permission. You don't even have to say yes—your yes was given when you put your body in agreement.
Look around today. Every song is about sex and drugs. Every viral moment on social media centers on sex and drugs. Talk to any teacher in high school or middle school—they'll tell you sex and drugs are taking over. The enemy is after our children, and we're asleep in the same trap they're falling into. We can't save them because we're having fun while the enemy rocks us to sleep.
In 1 Corinthians 6:17, Paul writes:
"Since we want to become spiritually one with God, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy."
What is this kind of sex? It's the mentality of "friends with benefits." It's saying, "I want your body, but I'm not ready for a relationship. I'm not ready to commit. I just want what I can get from you."
You're avoiding intimacy—you're not letting the other person truly know you. Six months later, you realize you've been with someone completely dishonest. They never showed you who they really are because they didn't want intimacy or commitment. They just wanted sex.
This is not new. Listen to the music of any generation, and you'll hear people singing about this struggle. The music reflects what we're dealing with.
But listen: if you ain't said "I do," then I don't. We have to stop playing this game. It's the same trick over and over for the last 2,000 years, and we keep falling for it.
When you pursue sex without commitment and intimacy, you become lonelier than ever. You can never truly become one. You keep giving pieces of yourself to people, and I'm speaking to both men and women here.
We talk about this like it's only a woman's issue, but men, you make all the money in the world and still don't know who you are. You're confused, lost, jumping from body to body trying to feel like a man. But you'll never feel complete. You're just left feeling more lonely.
Women, you give yourself, hoping you can change him, not realizing you're damaging yourself. You're cursing yourself trying to heal someone who never asked for healing. It leaves you more lonely than ever.
Lust and sex damage your ability to truly see a person. When lust is involved, you might like someone who isn't even good for you. They're just scratching an itch your body craves. You knew they were bad when you met them, but sex kept you blind.
Here's what makes sexual sin different. 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 says:
"There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from every other sin. In sexual sin, you violate the sacredness of your own body. These bodies were made for God-given love, for becoming one with another in real love. God owns the whole works—all of you."
Sexual sin is the only sin where you sin against God AND against yourself. You violate something sacred that God made for a holy purpose.
I want to share something that happened. After one of our services, someone came to me weeping and broken. She had just discovered she was pregnant, and the man she was with no longer wanted to be with her. I prayed for her, my heart breaking.
Then at the next service, someone ran to me with another young woman in the same situation. Pregnant. The man gone. I looked at God, and He spoke to my heart: "This is what I've been trying to protect them from. I'm trying to protect you from the pain and damage that comes from giving what I made sacred to someone who never even made a commitment to you."
God isn't trying to stop you from having fun. He's trying to stop you from killing yourself.
Sometimes we don't realize how damaging something is until the damage is already done. Then we get healed, get whole again, and go right back to the same thing that broke us. We have to break that cycle.
I want to close with 2 Corinthians 12:21, where Paul writes:
"I am afraid that when I come again, God will humble me in your presence, and I will be grieved because many of you have not given up your old sins. You have not repented of your impurity, your sexual immorality, and your eagerness for lustful pleasure."
I have the same fear standing here as a pastor. I'm grieving because many of us have not given up the things that God is challenging us to release. Many of us have not repented of sexual immorality and lustful pleasures.
Many of us have made a comfortable life serving both God and flesh. We come to church, we worship, we say all the right things—but our bodies tell a different story.
Today, I want us to be real. I want us to repent and be honest. It doesn't matter who you are—if you're a leader, an intercessor, a pastor, on the greeting team—God is challenging all of us to give up old sin.
Some of us have been enjoying certain things, but they've been killing us. We've been in situations, but they've been destroying us. We came here to encounter a real God, and we can't keep pretending.
If that's you, I want you to come to the front. Come to the altar. Let's be real. Let's repent together. There's no shame in this church—we're transparent. We're real and unedited.
Father God, as Your people come to the altar, I pray for every single one. It doesn't matter who they are. Your Word says: "If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sins, and heal their land."
Many of us have lands that need healing—the land of our minds, our hearts, our spirits, our families, our marriages. We repent before You today. We're sorry, God. We realize we haven't let go of things Your Word explicitly told us to release.
We put down pride and ego. Forgive us for not keeping Your temple sacred. Forgive us for not protecting the temple You've given us. Forgive us for playing with something You call special.
I pray that You would heal and restore every person who has experienced brokenness from a soul tie. I pray that every man and woman would have their identity restored in Jesus. I pray that they would experience what it means to be whole again, to be a new creation in Christ.
For those who lost their way at an early age, for those who experienced things they didn't choose but have been stuck in ever since—I pray for wholeness. I pray for restoration and healing.
Thank You, Father, for restoration. When we repent, You restore. When we repent, You restore. When we repent, You restore.
Many have lost their purpose, their calling, their real assignment—giving it up for momentary experience. Lord God, set them free. Set them free from what they have no business being in. From this moment forward, as we've repented not just in words and expression, but in action and lifestyle change, we rededicate ourselves to You. We say, "I do" to You. We're in covenant with You now, in Jesus' name.
