Hey everybody, we are in the middle of a series called Soul Detox.

It is based on my new book, but what we're covering on the weekends and during the week is actually different content.

The title for today's message, I want to talk to you about the tortured soul.

Now, I don't know how many of you, when you were kids, you had somebody bigger than you, pick on you, or torture you.

But I had a kid that lived down the street that would take me and pin me to the ground, take both of my arms and pin them back, put his knees on them, tower on top of me, take his knuckle, and drive it into my chest as I would scream like a little girl feeling helpless.

If you know what I'm talking about, anybody ever do that to you as horrible, then I'd be back fighting and scream, and then this very mean bully would actually tower over me, and he would spit a lugee that would go straight down toward my face, and it would go down, and it would hover there, and they suck it back up.

I hated that so much, and so I did the same thing to my little sister, because that's what big brothers do, as I held my little sister down, and pounded on her chest, and then did the lugee thing where I spit it out, but I'd never practiced it before, and so when I tried to suck it back up, it broke and went in her face, and so I just say publicly, at least I'm sorry.

Never told anybody that before, and I don't really feel much better, but I did it anyway, and so that's not real torture compared to what a lot of people go through in the world, there's I mean real torture, Christian suffering, and people in war, and such, but typically when we think about being tortured, we think about physical torture.

And what I want to talk to you today is not about physical torture of the body, as much as a spiritual torture of the soul. Now, if you weren't with us in the previous weeks, we have a key thought driving this series, you may want to write this down, we need to understand that we are not a body with a soul, but what are we?

You know what I say aloud, what we really are is we really are a soul with a body. In other words, we are not really our body, our body is a house for who we are. When our bodies die, we don't die, our bodies die, but we live on eternally, that's why Jesus asked the question, what good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his what, yet forfeit his soul.

And so many people we focus on detoxing or keeping our bodies healthy, which is good, but I want to talk about detoxing or keeping our souls healthy, because the tragedy is today, you will find so many people who look fine on the outside, but their souls are tortured.

A little bit perhaps like the Apostle Paul in Romans 7, if you're a Christian, you might be able to relate with his battle. He said, the things I want to do, I don't do, and the things that I don't want to do, I end up doing, and there's this internal battle, there's this, this torturing of the soul, maybe you've done this before, where you promise God, I'll never, ever do this again, ever again, I promise, as long as I live, and then boom, you do it again, and you're plagued with guilt.

And there's a sense of inward conviction, and so sometimes you cover up that sin, and you don't want anybody to know, and on the outside, you can put on church face and come in and look good and fool people.

Hello, brother, how are you doing today? Praise the Lord, thank you, Jesus, God is good, hallelujah, and you can do that, but inwardly, your soul is tortured because of secret sin.

This scripture, say, actually brings this about, Peter said this in 1 Peter 2, 11, he said, dear friends, I urge you as aliens and strangers in this world, he's talking to Christians, saying, you're not of this world.

He said, I urge you to abstain from what? He said, I urge you to abstain from sinful desires, which do what? Everybody say this aloud, which war against your soul.

What is it that tortures the soul? Let me give you two things. The first thing if you're taking notes is this, we're tortured by the sinful things that we've done.

We do something that breaks the heart of God, we feel guilty, we carry our unconfessed sins, and we're tortured by this.

David is a great example in Psalm 38, verse 3 and 4, feeling the weight of sin, he said, my bones have no soundness because of my what? He said, because of my sin.

He said, my guilt has done what? Everybody, all of our churches, let's say this together, he said, my guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. I'm overwhelmed.

I don't have the inward strength to carry me because of the weight of this sin. I'm tortured in my soul. I'll be very transparent with you.

The first time I remember feeling this tremendous guilt, I was in the fifth grade, and I went over to my friend Steven's house, and Steven's parents weren't home for a little while.

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