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What’s portrayed in Thorin’s story is something true of our own stories. Whether you are a Christ-follower or not, you know something about dragon-sickness. See, we’re all in a battle; we fight against a great dragon—who only speaks lies, knows only fear, and breeds only hate—, but do not be deceived because we do not fight with uncertainty about the outcome. Jesus already dealt Satan his deathblow when He was nailed to that Cross. The ruin of the Dragon and of sin and of fear and abandonment was sealed away when Jesus was nailed to the Cross, defeated death, and rose to life victoriously. The Dragon has been defeated, but we continue to battle against dragon-sickness within each of our hearts, don’t we?

Here is the beautiful news about the gospel, though: we are not prisoners of our predispositions. God is making us into something new. Simply because our parents are our parents, they naturally have an influence on the type of people we become. Something of themselves becomes hardwired deeply into our DNA and shapes and influences us. But, this is not only true of our biological parents. This deeply rings true about our heavenly Father as well. I think this is one of the reasons Scripture alludes to birth so strongly when talking about coming to faith in Christ. When we are born again, we are made into a new creation.

Until we recognize that sin has reduced each and every one of us to fools, we’re going to continue on our same paths of frustration and doubt and worry and, ultimately, destruction. Eve made a foolish decision disguising itself as a wise act. We do the same thing so often ourselves. Isn’t it so true that we make our decisions and our decisions make us. In other words, who we are today is based upon the decisions we made yesterday. Who you will be tomorrow is determined by the decisions you make in this moment. Continue to make foolish choices and remain a fool.

The zipped-lips emoji wasn’t even fully welcomed to the community until 2015. Now, it may communicate that you have a secret, or it may be used to tell someone to “zip it.” Keep your mouth shut. And, man, that can be hard for us sometimes, can’t it? Just because we could say this or do that, sometimes the best option is to, well, zip it. And, I understand this isn’t so much an emotion in and of itself as it is the hinge upon which the door of our emotions hangs. As someone once said, “You are always responsible for how you act, no matter how you feel.”  That’s self-control. And, self-restraint is a rare quality.

We’ve always been good runners. Now, you may be like me and never have displayed any sort of penchant for the physical activity, but running has still been hardwired into our DNA. It doesn’t take much observation to realize this is true. One can easily see how our mind chases after certain thoughts or how our hearts run toward their desires swiftly and, at times, almost relentlessly. Our legs are not the only things that make us great runners. We are runners through and through. And, as we look at the life of Gideon, we see a man who ran toward the call of God even when it seemingly made no sense at all. Unfortunately, we don’t always use our running capabilities as they were intended to be used. Sometimes we hear the call of God and choose to run the other direction. So, in contrast to Gideon, we now turn to a familiar story—the story of Jonah, the man who ran from God.

It’s amazing how easy it was for an argument over the Scriptures to erode into a bloody war or how some unwelcome insects dissolved into sarcastic and personal attacks. Yet, these stories are things we can unfortunately identify with because every single one of us has been engaged in some sort of fight or quarrel. And, not just that but every facet of our lives has been touched by conflict―our spouses, our children, our jobs, our friendships, our neighborhoods, our nation. Some of you can’t even drive down the street without screaming at another car! And as we continue our series on the book of James, we find ourselves entrenched in an early Church conflict. I find it interesting that even one of the earliest books of the New Testament already had to remind the Church how to conduct themselves.

Words matter; and, last words really matter. Through the Gospels, we find it’s truly no different with Jesus. In fact, we see there are really seven significant phrases that Jesus said during His crucifixion. And, in this morning’s message, I want to take a look at just three of these famous last words.

Sometimes, we approach the Bible thinking we understand it; we think we know it. But, if we’re honest with ourselves we’re a bit reluctant to really open it up and dive in. Recently, it seems study after study has revealed that American Christians increasingly do not read their Bibles. In fact, a 2012 Pew Research study revealed that less than 20 percent of American Christians read their Bibles daily. LifeWay Research added that only 45 percent of those who regularly attend church read the Bible more than once a week and 18 percent never read their Bible. And, it’s not because we don’t have access. After all, nine in ten American homes own a Bible. Among those homes, the average home has three Bibles. This year alone, various Bible societies will distribute over 400 million copies. So, we have the Bible, but we’re not reading it.

We have spiritual blind spots. There are things within ourselves and things God is working around us that we are easily blinded toward. And, it’s not just us. King David had the same problem with spiritual blind spots. In Psalm 19:12, David says, “Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults.” See, David understood there was sin he was blind to in his own life. Then, in Psalm 139:23-24, David writes, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” Again, David was saying that though he may be blind to these areas, God could search him and see his blind spots. But, he needed God’s perspective.

think if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve felt like we were in the middle of one of these emoji conversations at times. We feel a certain way and we’re trying to communicate that to each other—trying to communicate that to God even—and things seem to simply get lost in translation. Sometimes we even begin to wonder if we should feel a certain way. Our hearts tell us, “God, You said you would be close to me, but I feel really alone right now.” And, then we begin to think, “I feel alone; therefore, I must be actually be alone,” and we begin to follow these feelings that we don’t even quite understand ourselves.