Father, in your name, we pray that you would place your Holy Spirit upon our minds and our hearts, upon our understandings, that we'd be able to grasp the essence of this message in Jesus' name. Give me ability to speak clearly, I pray. Let your people hear. Thank you for it. Amen.

Last week, we studied the theme of influence and its positive and negative effects upon the life of the believer. We looked very closely at the agenda presented in the New Testament that the church had of apostles' doctrine, fellowship, breaking bread and prayers, and the resultant unity and power that they experienced. Then we went into the Old Testament example and looked closely at the life of Lot as it's tucked into the fabric of the message of Abraham and the tragic result of his separation from Abraham and pitching his tent towards Sodom.

In both cases, their relationships, Abram's with God and Lot's with the people of the land, held powerful sway not only over their personal lives, but on the lives of their families and their households. Jesus warned us to remember Lot's wife, who had become so accustomed and attached to the carnal lifestyle of Sodom that she found it impossible to leave during the miraculous angelic intervention. But instead, constantly looking back and longing for her children in that life, which is so understandable, she was struck by the power of the Lord and became an example.

To the deep inroads of sin in the hearts of good people who camp in the wrong camp, who live in the wrong place, who, even though they're good, they refuse to obey God's principles of godliness. As we go on in this series today, I want to deal more specifically with this subject. There are some things I need to explain to you.

First of all, I realize that most of us have never heard this kind of admonition from the pulpit. I know that some will have difficulty in applying the principles that we're talking about to their personal relationship and to some of the tangled relationships that we have. I also know that Satan has done his best to try to... pre-stage or pre-determine our response by conditioning us because of past failures.

Many of us have had relationships with Christians that have been very hurtful and painful. And we've tried to relate one with another and we found that it would be easier to relate with someone who is a non-Christian because of the painfulness of one relationship. I also know that the precise plan of Satan is to hinder you from attaining God's best in your life by simply causing you to have a failure in an attempt, maybe that wasn't done in a correct manner, so that when it comes up again you'll just say, no, that doesn't apply to me or that doesn't work.

In this way, Satan has robbed thousands of us of ever reaching God's best. We've simply become convinced that what God says in his word is not pragmatic or possible in my particular situation. With that in mind, let's continue to look closely at some of the additional insights into the command of God of separation and of having a separate fellowship for God's own people with the hope that His Word and His Word alone will cause us to move in wisdom into an action that will cause our lives to have strong... futures, and more consistent help because of it.

Remember that our main theme during this time is learning to walk in the Spirit and the natural and spiritual hindrances that occur that detour us from reaching that goal. At first glance, The story of Sodom brings several emotional reactions from me. I first sense when I think and when I've read about Sodom in the first years of my life, I remembered and heard of Sodom and I accepted it as God's judgment and God's anger upon the sin of homosexuality.

And I didn't try to look into the reasons for it. I just accepted at carte blanche that that was God's reaction. That's the way it is. And I tried to look at my life and find out where I was camped towards Sodom and keep my own family clean, and that was it.

Then after that, a kind of judgmental condition set in that, well, Lot ought to have known better, and Lot should have recognized that the attack... of the kings when he was taken captive and Abraham went down to rescue him that that was a good swat on the seat that he should have learned from and by staying in Sodom he was really asking for it.

And God's grace was so good to get him out and it was kind of a cutting off of Lot from my mind and a judging of him and then kind of closing the issue in my mind feeling I understood it well as if I knew it all and just saying let's move on to something else and hopefully something more positive.

And so that's the way I treated God's judgment. But another thing had come over me during these years in a more subtle manner, and it's a deep conviction that I've really not seen God's love in all of His judgments. But instead, I just looked at God's judgments as if they were that God had a bad temper and that being He was patient, He let His temper build until He couldn't handle it anymore.

And then when He got mad enough, He just went, bam, and that was the end of it. And I didn't really think that in God's judgment that he... Well, in fact, in my understanding of judgment, I always looked at judgment as condemnation. I didn't look at judgment as what it really is, is a considered decision rendered by a judge who has looked at all of the facts and all of the ramifications and with love deals with man.

Lately, I've been... sensing something very different. I began to see this judgment then not as God's revenge, but as it truly is, I believe, this decision of a judge who knows all the fact. A judge whose whole desire is to save and to bless. I've come to realize that God literally does consider every life, every ramification, all the domino effects of his actions.

He considers every side of it. In fact, I even believe that even though he knows everything, he calls all heaven together and all the angels give him all the input that they have. And he considers all of these things. He receives all the facts and acts in the way that will bring salvation.

In this thought pattern, I've come to see completely different opinions about God's laws and commandments. I didn't realize how much based I was in a humanistic attitude towards God's Word. And when I say humanistic, it has become in my mind a catch-all to all that the human mind contrives, the better ideas that we have than God.

Where we exalt our minds and our ways and kind of take with a grain of salt what God says and think that His ways are kind of less important. Now, even though we don't do this religiously, we do this in action and lifestyle. And so, well, just for example, let me explain to you.

In your Bible, when you read the Old Testament, you find that among God's laws, there are certain penalties that He lays out for sins. And those penalties differ according to the sin. And the penalties reveal how God feels about a sin. For example, immorality, sexual relationships outside of marriage was dealt with by stoning. It was the death penalty.

Yet our culture, there is absolutely no penalty for adultery in our country today. It's like we say, God, you're wrong. You're not as compassionate as we are. You're not as understanding as we are. And so in our minds, when we get into the church age, we bring some of that feeling, that humanistic attitude about God into our feelings about the things that God says, not thinking that maybe God had considered all of the ramifications of adultery and really knew the damage, really knew the problem, and that His word was a word of merciful judgment.

Well... I see God's commandments lately, not as restraints, but as wisdom. And as the songwriter says, as love's safe harbor that brings me protection from winds and currents and adversity that I can't cope with without those guidelines.

During this time, I've also gone through a tremendous personal crushing. When maybe God's crushing the starch out of me and the rebelliousness and the stubbornness in this area. I hope most of it is gone. I don't need to. I don't like this crushing especially. You know what I'm talking about?

And the Holy Spirit softens you to look at his word in a new light. And so this new principle became apparent to me in considering all of the ramifications of God's laws and judgments. I call it the principle of defilement after what Bill Gothard called it to us pastors in one of his meetings.

Again, it's seen throughout the scripture. It works like the old slogan that we used to know when I was a kid. And I guess we don't know it anymore because today we go down to the supermarket and we buy our apples and they're cold and we put them in a little plastic bag and we bring home three or four pounds of apples because of the terrible price.

But we used to have a slogan that said, one bad apple will destroy the whole barrel of apples. Remember that one? I don't think I'm quoting it just right. But you've got to remove a bad apple from the barrel because of the principle of defilement.

And that is that 99 good apples won't heal a bad apple. But instead, one bad apple will bring corruption to the 99 good ones. It's the principle of defilement in just a common, ordinary statement. And God sees that principle and He knows that there are certain sins that if they're allowed to exist within the church body, that they will actually bring defilement to everybody they touch.

And that those people then will struggle with that and they'll go on and on. And it isn't just the individual relationship before God that's at stake, but not only the defilement of that life and the fact that many times those sins never erase their effect on the life, but they harden the life and they damage the mind and they damage the ability to understand God.

They come between He and God, but they also do the same thing to everyone they touch. And so... Certain types of sin, according to the scripture, and if we give God the benefit of the doubt, will destroy much good. Therefore, they must be dealt with differently than other sins.

For example, when we were talking about these things, many scriptures came to mind. And because of the lack of time, I don't have time to really develop them. But I want to just mention a couple of them that many of you will know about. The defiling sin of covetousness that we don't even treat as anything important.

Covetousness, what's that? One of the commands of God is thou shalt not covet. And covetousness is mentioned all through the scripture. Jesus said beware of covetousness. Watch out for this one. In a modern day church we don't even know what it is.

We find in Israel when Joshua was commanded to lead the people into Canaan. When they were moving from the desert into the land of promise. It was a great battle of Jericho and by the command of God they circled and encamped the city and walked around it seven days in silence.

And then the seventh day they went around the city seven times and at the last broke into a great roar of praise and exaltation of God. And the walls of Jericho fell and crumbled before them and that impregnable fortress fell before the armies of Israel.

And there was one family, one man in Israel who as they entered in fell into a house as he was going in to capture the city. And there he saw great wealth and he coveted after that wealth. And he laid hold upon the gold and the silver and he had a little caravan bringing it into his home and he put it under his tent and he hid it and he kept it.

The next week, as their next strategy was to go out and fight against the little insignificant town of Ai with no protection. They said, it's such a small city, we shouldn't bother the whole tribe. And they sent a little army out. And as the army went against it, they went without the presence of God.

Because God had seen the covetousness of one man and his family. And God said, I won't go up with them. They didn't call out to God, they just presumed. And as they went, the men of Ai came out of the city and turned the armies of Israel to flight.

And those great warriors that had subdued the mighty city of Jericho fell before them and 36 people died. 36 innocent warriors died because of the sin of Achan and Ai.

Joshua didn't know what went on and he called out to God and he fell upon his face before the Lord. And the Lord says, no, get up off your face. Don't be praying to me. There's sin in the camp. This is not me being moody. This is not me being depressed.

This is not a happenstance thing. But there is the sin of covetousness into Israel and it has destroyed your ability to do battle. But you see, we don't consider covetousness as even important.

Because we don't look at things the way God looks at. That's why our minds must be renewed by the word of God. And that's why we must come to the word of God in simplicity and openness and hear it. Hear it in pureness and hear it as the Lord gave it.

They went through the elimination and they called out to God and they cast lots. And Achan's life was brought before them and he confessed what he'd done. And God brought victory again to Israel.

There is the sin of reviling. The sin of men that don't like leadership and spouting off and speaking against leaders. And how did God deal with that in Israel? The ground opened and swallowed them up. There is the sin.

Of reviling that got so deep that after God dealt with them personally, an entire group of a nation began to murmur against the leader and blaming it on him. And 14,000 people died because of the way that they were contaminated by somebody mouthing off reviling against the leader.

There was the sin of adultery that came under the counsel of Balaam when the nation of Israel began to relate socially with the Gentiles around them and the men fell in adultery. And thousands of them died in a day.

And the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 10, we are to pay heed to those failures that we would learn from. But still, the major problems of the church are those covetousness, reviling, immorality, compromise.

And so I begin to look at these principles as something that's very important. This is why the different penalties of sin reveal the danger of those sins and the contamination principle in them.

Some sins are so defiling and so deceptive that they must be dealt with very strongly. If not, they will also drag many others down with them. Other sins are dealt with in more gentle ways.

This is where the traditional churches get the idea of levels of sin, such as a minor or cardinal offense, or as they're called in some circles, venial or mortal sins. I have begun to see that all sin brings separation from God, but some are crippling to the body.

And when I say crippling, I want to just bring a little illustration that the Lord gave me when I was just beginning my ministry. He gave me the vision of the body come together and being healed and becoming a man and standing.

And then he related it to an experience I had as a child when we lived in an area that was just growing up. It was a suburb. It was kind of half in the city and half out. And the city had kind of encased in Sacramento, California, this 40-acre parcel of an old man that had been a veteran of the war.

And he was, I believe he was in his 90s. At least in our mind, he was very, very ancient. And he was a little bit... Crazy. At least we thought he was crazy. Because he wouldn't let anybody around his house.

He had these big dogs, you know. But the guy was really interesting because he had all kind of relics in his house. And he wore a sword. You can imagine to 10, 12-year-old boys that somebody wearing a sword would be very, very interesting to them.

And you couldn't see him. So we would sneak up to his house. Catch the dog sleeping, you know. And we'd sneak up to his house. And his house was an interesting old run-down place that had knot holes that you could see in the house.

And we'd go up and we'd creep and we'd look at that old man. Gotta see this guy with the sword. And occasionally he would catch wind of us there. And of course he would set his dogs on us.

But what would really get us upset is when the old guy himself would stand up and come to the door. And the Lord brought to my attention how the devil must feel. When God stands up. And you know the scripture says, let the Lord arise and his enemies be scattered. Because we would just leave like quail.

We'd just go, I mean, every direction. No rhyme or reason in our escape when the old man would stand up. And I can see that God wants to arise in his church. And if his church were not crippled and she could stand.

Many of the demonic forces and influences would flee at the presence of God's people standing. So Satan's main strategy is to keep God's people tied down and crippled. And weak, and never moving in unity, never moving in accord.

And that's why this is such an interesting and important scripture. I've begun to see that all sin brings separation from God, but some as crippling to the body. Therefore, as a pastor, I've become very wary of neglecting to follow the commands of judgment that God gives leaders of his flock in dealing among the people.

I've come to the conclusion that God is right about this subject as well as all others, and that my position of being a servant leaves me no option but to change, no option that I might have to change things and come up with a better idea, but that I must lay out these principles before you.

That conclusion opened the door to me for understanding that I want to share with you as a body. First, let's look at some basic foundations of us being a separate people. This is not taught much today.

But there is an important foundational principle of separateness among God's people. James chapter 4, verse 4. James says, Know ye not that friendship of the world is enmity against God

Here is the cleaned-up sermon transcription with proper punctuation, capitalization, and natural paragraphs:

He says, "Don't you know that relationships, that friendship development with the world is enmity against God?" Whosoever therefore will be the friend of the world is the enemy of God. In other words, he's saying there is no in between. You can't embrace the world and God at the same time. You must be a lover of God or a lover of the world. You cannot do both. Jesus said, "You cannot serve God and mammon." Not you ought not to, but you cannot.

Now, if we look at this in the light of Old Testament testimony and New Testament words, it becomes very apparent that there's a tremendous flow of Scripture that is so much of it that we don't even see it. It's like looking at something so big that you can't see it because you're focusing in on a part of it. Just as Abraham, the father of the faith, was called out of Mesopotamia. He was called out of the land of his fathers.

Why was he called out? Why didn't God say, "You stay there and I'll make you a witness and you'll change your father's house?" God says, "You get out of your father's house and go to where I'll show you and walk with me." It was important for Abram to become separate to follow God.

Secondly, we look closely at Egypt and Israel while they were in Egypt. God didn't say, "I'm going to pour out my spirit upon Israel while they're in Egypt and they'll be so powerful that they'll change Egypt." No, he says, "Let my people go that they may go out in the desert separately." And serve me that I can deal with them. They must come to me and they must leave Egypt.

When we come to the word church, the word that Jesus used, "I will build my church and we are called a church." The very entrance of that word simply means those called out. If you belong to the church, it means you are one who is called out and is separate. That's what it means to be part of the church.

In the Old Testament, we find the commands of God in Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers that they should not maintain the relics of the old people that were there. They should not learn their customs. They should not study their religions. They should not take part in any of their festivals. They should totally be separate from the peoples of the land.

They were not to emulate them or learn about them. Their customs were called by God abominable. Their worship, their culture. So that, he said, they would not adopt their ways and eventually fall into their snares.

Now this theme is repeated again in the New Testament in the book of Corinthians. The Corinthian people had been saved out of the philosophy of the Greeks and Romans. They were the erudite. They were the philosophers. They were the understood people. Corinth was a great city of worship and culture.

These were the cultured people who, when they were saved, brought their old culture into the church and didn't fully separate themselves unto God. And so Paul deals with the center of their problem. First in judgment about them becoming immoral and not using the gifts of the Spirit correctly. Not using the Lord's Supper correctly.

He tells them one of the centers of your problem is your yokes. Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God. For he has said, "I will dwell in them and walk in them and I will be their God and they shall be my people."

Wherefore, listen to verse 17. Come out from among them. And he's repeating the Old Testament prophet. He's repeating the words of the prophet of God in Old Testament language. And he's applying it to their situation in Corinth in the New Testament church.

Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing. And I will receive you and will be a father unto you. And ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

Now this Old Testament passage then is applied to New Testament believers. And deals with their close relationships. It's seen again in Revelations 18.4. As the angelic messenger explains the heart of God to his people in the last times of impending judgment. He talks about Babylon.

Babylon, that mystery city that I believe speaks of a system of confusion. The world's ways. Babel, you remember, was where they said, "We'll build another way to reach God." We'll build another way to escape God's wrath.

And Babylon, which is the city of Babel, the city of confusion, where God confused mankind, divided up their languages. That same system of going another way. God says, listen to verse 4, I heard a voice from heaven saying, Come out of her, my people. Come out of her.

Again, the same call, Old Testament, New Testament, and end times. Come out of her, my people. He says why? That ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. Two things. If you stay in her, you'll participate in her sin, and you'll be part of her plages.

This is exactly the message of Lot and Sodom. Yet it is given again to the church. How does your life respond to the cry of God? How are you and your family separate from Babylon?

You need to ask yourself that question. Or have you just dismissed the message? Let's look closely at the wisdom of 2 Corinthians 6, 14 through 15, and what he's saying.

Paul explains the five components of a yoke relationship. And a yoke relationship is any relationship that ties you to somebody, whether it's marriage, partnerships in business, or close friendships.

And he tells us the five components of a yoke relationship are these: fellowship, communion, concord, part, and agreement. These five things are what make a relationship supply and give to us what God intended. Without them, or some of them, the relationship will bring frustration and problems.

To be yoked together... That yoke to supply correctly to you needs to have these five components. Fellowship, in this instance, is the word metoke and means participation. And he says simply, how can righteousness actively participate with unrighteousness without it being compromised?

Communion is the next word, koinonia, social intercourse, relationships of partnership. What partnership or intercourse does light have with darkness? How can you mix light and darkness? How can they get along?

The next one is concord or harmony, to be harmonious. How can Christ be in harmony with Belial? And the word Belial is an epithet or an alias of Satan. It's another word they call Satan or Lucifer.

How can you put Jesus with Belial and expect there to be harmony? Part. This word means a portion or a share. Used much in the Old Testament to speak of the inheritance in their land.

When Joshua divided up, he gave each Israelite their part in Canaan. The Levites had their part. Some of them carried the curtains. Some of them were singers. Some of them did different things. That was their part, their allotment in life.

He that believeth looks for a different part in life, a different joy, a different satisfaction than the unbeliever.

Agreement, a disposition of sentiment, an ability to agree, a harmony in relationships, to be in accord, to have the same feeling about things. He asked the question, the temple of God, which you are, cannot be an agreeable to idols.

So he says, these deep relationships that you're forging with the world are affecting your whole way. So he says, be separate from them, come out of them.

If you remember when Nehemiah had them build the wall, the first thing he did was have them break the yoke relationships with the Gentiles. This goes all through the Bible.

Understanding this will bring clarity to many of the struggles of our lives with marriages and with work association and friendship. You can't fight against truth. You see, it simply is. You can't discard it. You either cooperate with it or it deals with you.

Now let's look at some of the Proverbs that speak to the subject of whom you associate with and why.

I'm just going to put four out here because of the lack of time. Proverbs 22, verses 24 through 25 says, "Make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man thou shalt not go, lest thou learn his ways and get a snare to thy soul."

So God says, Fool around with a guy who gets angry a lot, and you'll learn his ways and get a snare. This week's memory verse in Grace Christian School was, "He that walketh with wise men shall be wise." Proverbs 13, 20.

But a companion of fools shall be destroyed. In the version that the kids are learning, it says the companion of fools will suffer harm.

And he's using the word fool in the concept of those who know not God. Those who reject God. The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God."

In Proverbs 14, 7, Go from the presence of a foolish man when thou perceivest not in him the lips of knowledge.

He's talking about don't be influenced by the man who doesn't hold God in his knowledge. Then we find whole sections of the Proverbs devoted to telling his son about the error of various things.

There are almost three chapters devoted to telling Solomon's son not to associate with loose women because he said their end is bitter as gall.

And he said, even though they entice you, even though their tongue is smooth, even though they entice you with words, even though they pet you, he says, many are there wounded. Their house is on the way to hell.

He says, and finally he says, very few ever come out of there and are the same.

It's in the scripture, the association with loose women. And then he gives a whole chapter on associating with friends who are so wanting of things that they're willing to hurt people and harm people.

And we say, come on, let's have a common purse. Let's do it together. He says, don't even have anything to do with those people.

In Proverbs 23, verse 20 through 21, he uses this. He says, be not among wine-bibbers, among riotous eaters of flesh, for the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty.

And drowsiness shall clothe the man with rags.

I believe these are principles of life that must... that cannot be ignored. They must be regarded.

Now within the body itself, remember he was talking into the economy of Israel, which all were believers. But now we get into the body where there are differences of people. There are believers within a community and non-believers.

Within the body itself, there are kinds of sin that must be cleansed out of the body, according to Saul or Paul. They cannot be tolerated or condoned among the Christian fellowship because of their defiling characteristics to everyone they touch.

And so in 1 Corinthians 5, verse 7 through 11, he warns us about who to eat with. And when he talks about eating, he's talking about entering into close relationship because that was a symbol of close relationship, is the family eating together.

He says, purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump as ye are unleavened. And he used the example of leaven to talk about the kind of sin that doesn't come from the pulpit, that doesn't come from official statements, that comes from relating to people.

The kind of affection that happens by being close to somebody and having their life influence you. Talks about the hidden influence.

Purge out therefore the old leaven, he says. For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast not with the old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators or the sexually immoral, yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world or with covetous or extortioners or with idolaters, for then must ye needs go out of the world.

But now I have written unto you not to keep company if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator or covetous or an idolater or a railer or a drunkard or an extortioner with such in one know not to eat or simply do not allow intimate close relationship.

The goal of the apostle was to have a fellowship that would be totally supportive of Christian ideals and goals. A fellowship that would help people out of worldliness and into kingdom relationships and into kingdom living.

How tragic to bring people into the church, have them converted and turn to the Lord, only to have personal influences from the body itself influence them to be half-hearted with God and to turn back into the world.

So he names five general categories of sin that will have a damning influence and commands that believers not eat with those who call themselves believers and yet have refused to leave those things from their past.

First of all, he uses the word fornicator. And the broader term fornication means those sexual sins mentioned in Exodus and Leviticus, which include adultery, rape, incest, homosexuality, bestiality, and others.

A fornicator is the person involved in that kind of lifestyle.

Covetous is a person whose goals are set firmly on things. They have captivated him in his thinking. He strives to get things at the expense of his spiritual walk.

Third was idolaters, image worshipers, is what the word actually means. One who in their day, in Corinth, had held on to the old practices and worshipped other gods than Jesus.

For a railer, an abusive railer, revival. To rail is to revile or scold in harsh. or insolent or abusive language, especially authorities.

A drunkard is someone given to alcoholism. I believe this includes drug addiction.

Sixth was extortioners. It was someone that gets gained by force or undo or illegal power or ingenuity. It carries with it the idea of arresting or strong-arming. And it talks about the pressure sales. It talks about the pressure influence, the putting people in binds to get ahead.

Paul felt that the Old Testament commands and the move of the Holy Spirit clearly revealed that the body life of the church must be free from this defilement before it could be what God intended it to be. It demanded a carefulness of each believer. So lovingly and discerningly watched. They needed to watch their associations and keep the body pure for everyone's sake.

I can't finish this message because of the time. But I can finish it tonight. And I believe I've given you enough to think about.

Tonight I want to talk about friendships in more depth. Talk about marriage. Talk about family, and some about the dating relationship. Hopefully it will give you some wisdom about how to establish the correct kind of relationship.

I realize that many of us have looked for friends and have failed in the church. But there are many reasons for that. Let's look at the reasons for failure rather than writing God's program off.

There's something else this morning I want you to consider with me. In our walk with God as a body, I feel that at times I've spoken in the Spirit, asking you as a people to humble your heart and come to a surrender and lay your life on the altar.

First to Jesus' Lordship. We've gone down through several items in our life that we've surrendered to the Lord as a body, a major thrust of the Spirit.

Our last major thing was to try to get our house in order concerning our stewardship of funds and things and time. But I've never asked you to put your relationships on the altar.

And yet I believe that's exactly what the Holy Spirit wants us to do, to think about this and to take our relationships and lay them out before God and say, Lord, I realize I've been heady and strong-minded and resistant about my relationships.

And I want to make an issue of humbling my heart and approaching this whole thing by laying it down to you first and asking for your leading and asking for your wisdom about my relationships. Can we pray about that?

I want to pray for you, Father, in the name of Jesus, we come before you as a people and we've seen many of our children struck and hurt because of relationships. Not alone, but contributing to their hurt.

We've seen our own life affected positively and negatively by relationships. And somehow, Lord, your Holy Spirit is leading us to approach this whole subject.

Father, I've spoken enough, and I believe your Spirit has spoken enough to bring us to a place of decision on whether or not we are willing to bring this thing before you as well.

And I ask, Lord, that this whole church today will begin to lay relationships on the altar. That we'll be willing to give up and to give to you and to reconstruct and to remold all of our relationships.

In Jesus' name.