["Stay Distant"]
I will never forget you
And oh, happy day, happy day
One more day away
Oh, happy day, happy day
I'll never be the same
Whoever I may be
When I turn around and look back
When I start to think of things to be
I know I'll never be the same
I'll never be the same
If I'm so far away from you
I'll never be the same
So pray that you don't stay too long
I'll never be the same
In the light
And oh, happy day, happy day
One more day away
Oh, happy day, happy day
I'll never be the same
Forever I am the same
Oh, what a glorious day
What a glorious day
And through our pain and pain
And through our glorious day
What a glorious day
And oh, happy day, happy day
Watch my step away
Oh, happy day, happy day
I'll never be the same
Oh, happy day, happy day
Watch my step away
Oh, happy day, happy day
I'll never be the same
Alright, good morning, good morning, good morning
We're gonna have some folks traveling, have some folks still on the way
So we're praying that the Lord will be with all of them
And also be with us as we try to give the Lord glory in this place today
We're gonna learn a little bit from God's Word and have a little fun
Just kind of two reminders real quick
One of you see up there on the screen, actually see both of them up there on the screen
So this evening at 5 o'clock at Pearson Park near the tennis court there
So when you go through the park, you can be on the left-hand side, playground tennis courts
And I think now you pull in the first driveway, I think that's the way they do it
This is the second one
This is the second one?
They change it to the second one
So you pull in the second driveway and then move back around, that's how they do it now
And so we'll be there for a cookout and play some games together and just have a little bit of fun
And that starts at 5 o'clock
And so Ken, I'll show up right at 5
You're welcome to get there a little bit early and help set up and that kind of thing
And 5 o'clock at the cookout at Pearson Park
And then next week, not this week, but the following week starts Vacation Bible School
It is literally right in our face, it came up fast after our last event
And so we got people who are scrambling to be ready for that
And it will be, I'm going to get this right, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Monday, Tuesday
That's how we did it, so it's Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
And then we'll be here on Sunday morning just like normal
And then Monday, Tuesday
And that's all the evenings
And then we'll have two runs from 6.30 to 8.00, that's two hours every night, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
And of course we have Bible study on Tuesday
So it will literally be Bible study Tuesday, VBS Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
Sunday morning church, VBS Monday, Tuesday
That's what the week is going to be like
We're going to be on a mission for Jesus, learning and living together
And we're going to have a lot of fun
So dinner
I still need helpers for all of the classes and I have not done any scheduling for dinner yet
Okay, so we need dinner, if you're willing to help make dinner
And we need volunteers to help in the classes yet
So most of the classes, I think, actually preschool nursery actually has a helper, right
So theoretically we have a helper there
But otherwise every class needs a helper
And then dinner is at 6.00
So you can come and eat at 6.00
But if you're going to come eat at 6.00, you might want to come at quarter to 6.00 and help out with dinner
And let you know in advance you're going to do that
So that we have the manpower to do what we've got to do
And obviously we'll get these announcements out to those who couldn't be with us today
Because they're out of town and that kind of thing
So we're trying to make sure everybody's in the loop, okay
All right
So remember that
And then the last announcement, which is not in the bulletin, not on the radar, is our spiritual discipline
So as of May 22nd, we do one spiritual discipline as an emphasis for six months
And so as of last Sunday, we needed a new spiritual discipline to emphasize for six months
And it is going to be prayer, okay
So for the next six months, we're going to be talking a lot about prayer, different kinds of prayer
The benefits of prayer, that kind of thing
We'll do it in an inspirational moment, we'll do it in the classrooms and lessons on Tuesday nights
We're in the review of our 30 disciplines
Prayer was in there, we'll hit it
We haven't already, but we'll hit it very soon
And then we're starting in just the next couple of weeks
The Baptist Faith and Message Bible study, which is a book-based Bible study
On the Baptist Faith and Message, which is what I think is probably the best doctrinal statement
That has ever been written under the sun, outside the Bible
The Bible is the best, right, but outside that
That's a good summary of what the Bible says about various doctrines
So we'll be doing that on Tuesday nights
We have about 15 books, so we hope people come and get a book and plug in
And do that Bible study with us, and we're going to be promoting that
And then remember I told you last week that there is a gift coming for the church
And it will be next Sunday
So next Sunday we'll hear about that gift, and it's something that you will get
And you will be able to take it home with you
And it will be for just about all ages to benefit from
So it will be kind of an exciting thing
And we'll take a few minutes to look at it together as a group
And then get to see what that's all about and what we can do with it, okay?
And so that's coming next Sunday
Which that's the Sunday right before VBS, so that's a good way to do that
So it'll be the Sunday right before VBS
And then we'll start Tuesday night Bible study, Wednesday night VBS, and right on into it
And then around the corner, down the bend a little bit, and not too far
Is the Freedom Celebration on Main Street
And so we're doing that block party opposite the Fourth of July
And that always takes some labor, and we've got to make sure we have plenty of manpower
If you're willing to sit in a dunking tank, volunteer early
So we get that list formed
And then we're going to need everybody to serve food
And we're going to promote that, we did have a good showing last year
But if this block party that we just did on our lot was in the indicator
My guess is the block party that's going to be on Main Street this year is going to be even bigger than it was
Now last year we had a couple hundred people show up over there
We had about 350 people here on Sunday, last Sunday
And we did have a lot of folks who were asking questions about coming to church
A lot of folks who were asking about, so there's a lot of that going on
So I expect we're going to see some decisions, we're going to see some growth
It's a pretty cool time to be serving Jesus
And a lot of folks are looking forward to New Heights
We've also had a bunch of people following us from literally all over the world
Following us on Facebook or following us downloading our apps
So that's kind of weird but kind of exciting at the same time
We have people looking in our direction from all over the world
Even though it's for this little teeny church
So you are a city on a hill, stand firm, serve the Lord
Alright, so in honor of our spiritual discipline of prayer
I'm going to open us in prayer this morning
As I do so, I will say part of my prayer is an adoration to God
Part of my prayer is a confession to God
Part of my prayer is a thanks to God
And a part of my prayer is asking God for some thanks
Alright, so let's pray together
Hey, King, real quick
I have a prayer request
My niece, Erolyn, is asking some really touchy questions
Because her biological dad shot himself
And she's asking her sister questions about whether it's her fault or not
So she's praying for Erolyn as she's processing the death of her dad
And the bad situation
Alright, Father in heaven, we adore you
You are amazing
We've got to have our hands up, our voices up
We've got to have our butts up
We've got to have the Lord just looking to you in all things
Because you are an awesome God
We were talking this morning, driving the van back to the field park
Maddie and Maya and I were talking about migraines
And how the body is complex
And sometimes there's some things wrong with the human body
And we don't know exactly what causes it
The doctors can't even figure it out
And so they give it a name
And they'll say, well, that's migraines
Or that's IBS or that's fibromyalgia or whatever
And what that really means is they don't know
Because God, they are not you
No one is you
You are the creator God
You alone were present when there was not even an atom of matter
And you brought it all into existence
You are an amazing, powerful God
And we recognize you today
To be sovereign over us
To protect us and guide us as we need it
To be living in us for those of us who believed in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior
To be providing for us daily
Every bit of food, every penny that comes our way
Every hour of every day
You made it possible and we adore you
For being that kind of generous, giving, loving God
Love, love, love
At the same time though we confess to you that we've made a lot of mistakes
We made some decisions that didn't honor you
There were times when
It may not be true of everybody but there were times when we lied
When we took something that didn't belong to us
And we slacked off and stood around the corner
Rather than stepping into a situation where we really could have done something that could have made a difference
We didn't step up and witness and testify
My God is awesome, He can save your soul
Or we didn't ask, would you be willing to be saved?
Would you be willing to be a follower of Jesus Christ?
Or we said we would pray for somebody and we didn't
Just forgot
Lord we are weak compared to you
We ask you for forgiveness and we know that it is available through Jesus Christ your Son
And we spend aid for past, present, and future
And Father we thank you for that
We thank you for this place
We thank you for all the resources you have provided
We thank you for your love and your care towards us
We thank you for our friends and family that are gathered here today to worship you
We pray that even as we are beginning to worship
We know many churches all over the world are finishing their worship
And there are others who won't worship for hours and hours yet
We pray that this Lord's day would be your day
That it would truly honor you
We thank you for the opportunity to do it
And we ask you Lord to inhabit the praises of your people
Make us your good representatives
Pillars of strength and truth
We would stand up and be
What it is that we are supposed to be
Father I ask you to do a little zoli right now
Just bump yourself
We pray for Arden's back and my back
We pray for all the folks who are suffering from allergies
It's been a lot this year
Palmitron has been so high
We pray for a deep and abiding healing
For Michael, the stuff that he's had going on with his stomach has been years
And Father we pray for those who couldn't be with us today
Because they have health concerns
Struggling with a migraine, struggling with issues
Struggling with things that are distracting them or drawing them away from you
Father we pray that you would be so real and so present and so powerful
That no one could deny that you are a God who answers prayers
Who loves us, who is innocent with us and working on us
We pray that you will do these things not because we are good
Because we know that would be a foolish argument
But Lord we pray that you will do these things because you are good
Please Lord we turn this time over to you
That it would truly honor you
We pray it all in Jesus name, Amen
Music
Jesus, the King of my life
Jesus, you have the power to govern and bless with your Spirit
Here in the heart of my heart you are
The heaven rising where you are God in the mountains we know
Your breath my olive oil and your blood your blood
This is the flower of love Jesus, you save my soul
I'll thank you forevermore Jesus, the love of what I know are
The heaven rising where you are God in the mountains we know
Your breath my olive oil and your blood your blood
This is the flower of love Jesus, I am in awe of the love that you have shown
Jesus, how precious you are to me to me The heaven rising where you are God in the mountains we know
Your breath my olive oil and your blood your blood
The heaven rising where you are God in the mountains we know
Your breath my olive oil and your blood your blood
This is the flower of love
I'll thank you forevermore I'll thank you forevermore
This is the song of love
Music
There is an endless song that goes in my soul I hear the music ring
Until the storm may come I am going on To the path I take
How can I keep from praying in your name? How can I ever say no?
How a pain to give you love How can I keep from shouting your name?
And now I am alive by the gate And it breaks my heart my faith
As you lift my eyes in the darkest night For I know I think of them
And as I walk into your window see me through And see the storm fill me
How can I keep from praying in your name? How can I ever say no? How a pain to give you love
How can I keep from shouting your name? And now I am alive by the gate And it breaks my heart my faith
I can sing in the troubled times Sing when I'm with you I can sing let alone myself And fall down again
I can sing as you make me laugh Sing as you laugh I can sing as you give me more But only you will know
I can sing as I let myself sing for love And I'll sing with the angels and sing for all the world
How can I keep from singing your name? How can I ever say no? How a pain to give you love
How can I ever shout in your name? And now I am alive by the gate And it breaks my heart my faith
And it breaks my heart my faith And I'll sing let alone myself
Alright, so we come to inspirational moment time and we ask ourselves how has the Lord been speaking this week?
What did you see that drew your attention? I do want to remind you in case you've not really paid attention to that direction
or look at that or whatever that tomorrow is Memorial Day. I was reminded as I was in prayer about that
the purpose of Memorial Day is to remember that those veterans who have lost their lives in service to our country
that is the purpose. I did some reading and some studying and I found out that the concept of Memorial Day
as we understand it was actually put into practice in 1971 which is only a year after I was born
but it's been my whole life that I've had that Monday to think about how people have literally given their life
for our country and I'm guessing that I didn't start really doing that at all until after I got saved
and I think that's pretty interesting that the church then stands as a pillar of truth, a reminder
for those who sacrificed themselves for our country. How many people do you think are out there
and it's a sad testimony who will tomorrow they'll grill or they'll sleep in or whatever
but they will not remember the great sacrifice that has been made by so many in order that our country can stand
We this, oh probably two weeks ago we can have a go we watched a movie about Dunkirk which was a war movie
and it was rated PG and so Ariana watched Part Civil with me and we talked about how many people gave their lives
in World War II and she said well what is the war that most people died in, most Americans died in,
what was the civil war actually because everybody who died on both sides of the war was an American
they just had different visions of what America was going to be like and that was a tragic time
many would be Americans died in the Revolutionary War but America didn't exist at that time
we hadn't been constituted as a country. So I'm reminded of a professor of mine named Paul Kisling
he went over to Russia as a missionary and it was right after the Iron Curtain of Thoth, if you don't know what that is
there was a time at which Jesus was not allowed to be shared in Russia
not only that but no Bibles were allowed, Bibles were illegal
and so there were missionaries who were sneaking Bibles into Russia behind enemy lines as it were behind the Iron Curtain
and Paul was there the week after that opened up and the wall was torn down and this was in the 1980s
and people were allowed to bring Bibles and talk about Jesus for a period of time anyway
and he went to a house church and as he walked down the hallway, there were pictures on the wall
he said like over a hundred or whatever, the whole wall from floor to ceiling was covered with pictures
8 by 10 pictures of people, men, almost about 99% or maybe all men
and he said are those the founding members of this little house church? That's pretty incredible
and the person who was walking said oh no, those are our martyrs
whenever there is something that is worth something, there is someone who has died for it
and the Kingdom of God has been seasoned over the years with the blood of martyrs, people who stood up for Jesus
and I will say to you that the many many many soldiers who have died for America over the years
died for America believing they were serving God, serving their family
protecting a nation in which people could be free to worship or to speak out for what they believe in
and we should not forget as a church, in fact I believe that being a pillar of the truth
is to be a reminder that we have seen much sacrifice by veterans of our country for our country
and then on top of that many of them died and maybe more now than ever, faith is much needed
and so we are very blessed that that price was paid
that will be tomorrow, so don't just cook out, don't just sleep in
don't just hang out with your family on an extra day off or thank God that you don't have to go to work
and put away groceries or do snow or do maintenance or whatever
don't just do your chores and your project, Menards, one of the busiest days ever, Memorial Day
because everybody gets a chance to do it, don't just do your project, you want to do the private? Fine
They died in parts so you can do that, but I realize that tomorrow has great value
so they can take a moment to thank God that there were those who cared enough to stand up
that we are still here as the United States of America today and also for the Kingdom of God at the same time
so praise God for that. Okay, moving on from the world they talked for a moment
and as we close out we will pray that folks will honor that
but before we do that, how has the Lord been speaking to you this week? What have you seen? What have you heard?
Where's Ariana? Ariana, you had something you wanted to share, right?
Yeah. Video? Can you pull that video up? It should have already been there, you just have to get to it
because it's in the background or minimized.
Okay, come on.
Press the play button, it's on the bottom? Press space. Space, yeah.
Music
Dear friends
We are two love, one and other
For love is from God
And when we love one another He lives in us
And if you don't love then you don't know God
Because God is love
And if you don't love then you don't know God
Because God is love
Oh this is love
Not that we loved God, but that He loved us
And since His Son
So He could save us, offer Him for us
Oh this is la la la la la la love
Dear friends
We are two love, one and other
For love is from God
And when we love one another He lives in us
And if you don't love then you don't know God
Because God is love
And if you don't love then you don't know God
Because God is love
Oh this is love
Not that we loved God, but that He loved us
And since His Son
So He could save us, offer Him for us
Oh this is la la la la la la love
Oh this is how we shout His love
He said it's time to tell the world
So we can live
Oh this is love
Not that we loved God, but that He loved us
And since His Son
So He could save us, offer Him for us
Oh this is la la la la la la love
Yay!
So this song reminds me about
God loves us so much that He sent His only Son to die on the cross for our sins
So He could be forgiven
Very good, and if He could be that, then we should like it. Good word.
Anybody else?
That song came from a software by the way called Right Now Media. You'll hear more about that later.
Anybody else got something going on? Are you trying to pull something up?
Yeah.
While RJ is doing that, I'll talk to you briefly. I told you I'd be at a cage.
I might share some more things out of the current fasting retreat that I went to.
I also already shared part of the story, the background for what I'm about to say, which is
I went to my tent that night and I was praying and I felt like my own fatigue was getting in my way of praying and studying the Word because I kept falling asleep.
The funny thing is when I would wake up and I would pray and I would study the Word some more, I did not feel guilty.
I thought about that because in the past there have been times where I was praying and I would fall asleep and I was like, oh I shouldn't fall asleep and praying is so important.
And you know in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night that Jesus was arrested, they came so far with Him and then Peter came a little further, Peter and John I think came a little further,
and then he said stay here and pray and keep watch and they fell asleep and he came back and he woke them up and then he went back and then he came back and woke them up again.
And I would read that story and I was like, oh how could you do that? Jesus Himself was with you and told you to pray and fall asleep.
And I thought about that over time since I was in the current fasting retreat, like why didn't I feel guilty?
And every time I woke up I went right back to praying and right back to studying the Word.
And I did feel like I let myself get so tired that I couldn't do a good job and then I needed to fix that.
Like I needed to not be so tired when I decided to pray and fast.
You know that needs to be, maybe the higher priority needs to be God and the less priority needs to be the things that made me so tired.
But that being said, I didn't feel guilty. And afterwards I asked the Lord, so why? Why didn't I feel guilty about that?
And He said, look I don't care if you fall asleep while you're praying, just keep praying.
So I thought about that and I thought, you know, if you go to sleep praying and you wake up praying, who's to say you're not praying while you're sleeping?
You know, obviously you have to block out time to pray to do that, right? You have to be praying.
And I do think, I did feel the conviction as I said that I need to make the time before I get so tired that I can't say, hey I'm falling asleep while praying.
I think that is important. But the point is, 2nd Thessalonians 5 17 says, I think I got the right reference, pray without ceasing.
If you pray right up until we go to sleep and start praying again right when we wake up, I think we're honoring that verse.
And I would encourage you to try to do that. If you lay down and act like you're so tired, oh man I'm aching or whatever, I gotta get to sleep.
Take time to pray, you know, and maybe your spirit will find peace when your body doesn't. Are you ready now?
Alright.
So before I do this, Zoe has found her favorite movie, Moana. So I've been watching a lot of Moana lately because she absolutely loves this movie.
It's a cute movie, but this particular scene keeps playing over in my head and I'll explain after, but there's a reason for it.
So I'm gonna answer it.
Are you okay?
Zoe?
Hurry up. Keep your mouth shut.
I told you to turn back.
I thought we could make it.
We?
I thought I could make it.
We can fix it.
It was made by the gods. You can't fix it.
Next time we'll be more careful. Tikal was stuck on the barrier island. It's lava. It can't go in the water. We can find a way around.
I'm not going back.
We still have to restore the heart.
My hook is cracked. One more hit and it's over.
Molly, you have to restore the heart.
Without my hook, I am nothing.
That's not true.
Without my hook, I am nothing.
We are only here because you stole the heart in the first place.
We're here because the ocean told you you're special and you believed it.
I am Moana of Motului. You will board my boat.
Goodbye, Moana.
Stay all across the sea.
I'm not killing myself so you can prove yourself that you're not.
I restore the heart of Tifiti. The ocean chose me.
It chose wrong.
The biggest thing about this scene that has stuck with me is, for one, how he says without his hook he's nothing.
Everyone finds something that defines them as a person.
We feel that without that we're nothing.
In this, he feels that it's his natural finish hook that without it he's nothing.
As a Christian, we need to realize that our something is God.
Without God, we're nothing.
We're broken people full of flaws, full of mistakes, full of bruises.
But without God, we're nothing.
But with God, we can have that confidence like Moana has to say, I know who I am.
I know that God chose me to do something.
And he chose me for a reason.
Even though someone else might say that we're not that person and that we're not special, in God that is a lie.
In God we are special. We are something. We are meaningful.
We are here for a reason. We have to find that reason though.
And then we can have that confidence that she had and say, no, I know who I am. I know what I'm here for.
No matter how much the world tries to put you down, you have to realize that if you're with God,
if God is your thing that divides you, then nothing can stop you.
As you were speaking, two things struck me. First of all, I never really realized that was a fish hook.
I've seen that movie probably eight or ten times. I never even thought about the fact that that was a fish hook.
It's a hook. I'm like, oh, it's a hook. It's a fish hook. Duh.
I'm like, why does he have a hook? Now I get it. It's a fish hook. Okay.
Secondly, it's interesting too that you're talking about a fish hook that allows him to change shapes.
And actually that plays right into what you're talking about because people are always changing roles.
All the time we're changing roles. I'm a mom now. I'm a worker now. I'm an office person.
I'm a medic taking care of a bruised kid's knee or whatever.
You're always changing roles from place to place to place to place.
But in Christ, we have one role. We are a child of God. We are saved.
And we can do all of those things as a child of God.
You don't have to stop being a child of God to be a mom, to be an office worker, to be whatever else.
You're a child of God always. So he's saying that which allows him to change roles makes him powerful.
And she's saying, no, what makes you powerful is I know who I am. See the contrast? That's powerful.
Yeah. Knowing who you are, that's powerful.
If you think you can only be one thing, which is maybe going to be a mom or a dad or whatever at one time,
and you have to leave behind those other things, that actually sucks. It's hard.
It feels like that you that was that other thing died in order to be what you have to be now.
That's very painful. People have to do that all the time.
Like people lose a job and they're like crushed because, oh, I worked there for eight years.
I love that job or whatever, you know, or I hated that job, but it paid my bills, whatever.
And they're crushed because of the change.
But when you know what's really important is who you are in Christ, the change doesn't affect you the same way.
You know, like, OK, now I'm not going to be that anymore. I'm going to be this.
And the seasons of God come and go.
And you're able to change roles and still know who you are in Christ.
So he was trusting in that which changed him from one thing to another.
You could fly now, you could swim now, whatever. And she was saying, no, I know who I am.
That is actually a great message. Thank you for that. Anybody else?
OK, Brother Rob, would you pray for us as we transition and remember Memorial Day
and the sacrifice of our veterans and brothers and sisters in Christ?
God, Father in heaven, we thank you.
Thank you for lessons that you teach us throughout the week.
Lord, the times when we look to you for wisdom and you share it with us,
you open it up in our hearts and our minds.
We're glimpses of your glory that is yet to be fully revealed.
Father, please be with all of us this weekend.
Thank you for the men and women who served in our armed forces that have given everything
so that we can enjoy this freedom.
Lord, I pray for their families, their loved ones right now.
That you would help them honor and remember them this weekend.
That when we are celebrating tomorrow and when we're doing our various things that we have planned to do,
that we would always remember that we have the freedom to do it on the backs of those people that gave their lives.
And I pray that we'll always remember that you gave your life first so that we can enjoy freedom.
I pray, Lord, that everyone will come to repentance.
I know I come to repentance on this day.
And I thank you for being the God of a thousand changes.
Bless this day. Bless the rest of our worship, Jesus.
I pray it's pleasant to your ear.
I pray for the sermon. I pray that it will be spoken with wholeness and conviction.
Thank you in Jesus' name, amen.
Thank you.
Just real quick for those of you that need to give electronically, I'll have the thing at the end of the service.
Alright, children to the front. It's all me today, so let's do this together.
I'm going to walk you through these motions because it's been a long time since I've done this one.
It's really simple. I'm going to change the motions and then we're going to do it twice.
Okay, so we're doing great and mighty. So this is great. Muscles on this side. Mighty on this side.
Okay, so great and mighty is the Lord, with an L, Lord our God. Great and mighty is he.
Do that again. Great and mighty is the Lord our God. Great and mighty is he.
Lift up your banner, let the anthems ring. Praises to our King.
So make a King like this. King. Great and mighty is the Lord our God. Great and mighty is he.
Do the whole thing twice. Okay?
Praises to our King. Great and mighty is the Lord our God. Great and mighty is he.
Great and mighty is the Lord our God. Great and mighty is he.
Lift up your banner, let the anthems ring. Praises to our King.
Great and mighty is the Lord our God. Great and mighty is he.
Good job.
He touched the low like a bee, though I could pry myself in the door.
For I've been blessed beyond measure, and by His strength alone I overcome.
Oh, I could stop at times of success, and pull like diamonds in my hand,
but those trophies could not equal to the grace by which I stand.
If I stand alone and find my trust, if I find only the power of the cross,
in every victory let me sell and be my source of strength, my source of hope in Christ alone.
If I stand alone and find glory, for only by His grace I am free.
It's only His tender mercy that reached beyond my weakness to my knee.
Now I can sing no praises or unhappiness, and just an open heart,
and to count my deeds will blossom to the glory of the Lord.
If I stand alone and find my trust, if I find only the power of the cross,
in every victory let me sell and be my source of strength, my source of hope
in Christ alone.
If I stand alone and find my glory, for only by His grace I am free.
In every victory let me sell and be my source of strength, my source of hope in Christ alone.
My source of strength, my source of hope in Christ alone.
This next song, I'm going to, this song really speaks to the inspirational moments that we had today,
and I changed the order last night before I sent it out to put this song in place of another one,
kind of because Amalia wasn't here, but kind of because this song was stuck in my head all week,
and so I think that was God saying, hey, this song, not that one,
and this song is a challenge for me, and I was not expecting a sore throat, so I am sorry if my voice cut out.
I, a couple years ago, told Tim I wanted a challenging song.
I was feeling proud of myself for singing some of the songs that I could sing back in the day,
and I was like, I'm going to sing you this song, and then it took me like six months to be able to sing this song.
So, but in that, with the words and listening to the words of this song,
asking the question, is God strong enough or pure enough or brave enough to pull you in,
to give you a second chance to be the strength that you need, and the answer is yes,
and the song speaks to that, and I did put the words up there,
so you'll have those to read and sing along if you want, but this song really hit me hard in preparing this song,
and then again this past week, because I've been listening to it a lot.
As I rest against this cold hard wall, will you pass me by?
Will you criticize me and as I sit and cry?
I had fought so hard, thought that all my battles had been won.
Oh, please, I find the war has just begun.
Is he not strong enough? Is he not pure enough to break me, pull me out, and start again?
Is he not brave enough to take my chance on me? If can I have one chance to start again?
Will my weakness for an hour make me suffer for a lifetime? Is there any way to be made whole again?
If I'm healed, renewed, and find forgiveness by the strength I've never had,
will my scars forever ruin all God's plan?
Is he not strong enough? Is he not pure enough to break me, pull me out, and start again?
Is he not brave enough to take my chance on me? If can I have one chance to start again?
He took the life into his hands and turned it all around.
My most desperate circumstances there I finally found.
Is he not strong enough? Is he not pure enough to break me, pull me out, and start again?
Is he not brave enough to take my chance on me? Oh, thank you for my chance to start again.
Amen.
Love it when there's a heart-wrenching song right before you get up to preach.
You feel like going, let's just go straight to the invitation, shall we?
Awesome. That was awesome. Thank you so much.
I'm going to tell you a story. This is a first-person, first-hand, me.
I was there. I saw it. I lived it. I'm telling you the story that happened in my life.
So this is about 15 and a half years ago. I know because Arden was about a year and a half old.
We got to take a wonderful trip and we thought we were going to go to the Grand Canyon,
but we discovered in driving to the Grand Canyon that it's a heck of a lot of a drive.
It's a lot further than we thought. So we went to Moab, Utah, which is northeast.
It has a great, they call it Arches State Park. Just huge, huge canyons there, not unlike the Grand Canyon,
except for there, it's a lot of red dirt and rock and in the Grand Canyon, it's a lot of foliage.
There's a lot of plants and stuff like growing in the Grand Canyon.
That is a little different because Sherry and I got to go there later as part of our wedding anniversary trip.
But this trip, we took the kids and we camped in the tent.
And as we camped in the tent and got the red dirt everywhere,
it was kind of neat because everywhere that you would camp in a tent, they had little like shelters.
You would have a roof over your tent. And I thought that's kind of weird.
You'd stay in a campground and have a shelter. But then one night it rained.
And man, when it rained, it rained. Like it came down like golf ball sized rain drops, not hail,
but rain drops coming down just heavy hitting that roof. We could hear it roaring.
But anyway, so while we were there, we went on a hike.
And we decided we would take a hike into the wilderness, into Arches State Park,
and see this, what looked to be this beautiful set of stone arches that God had created.
We parked our car early in the afternoon and the hike was nine miles each way.
Now that's a long hike with a one and a half year old.
But he was a rugged little kid and we thought, you know, well, we'll get through it.
And Aaron was two and a half years older than him, whatever.
And I may not have the exact years right. But Aaron was a hiker extraordinaire.
He loved to hike. He had a hiking pole. And when we go on a trip, he'd say,
I've taken my hiking pole, even if we weren't planning on hiking. He loved to hike.
And he's still very physically capable of walking and hiking really long distances.
And so we parked the van, which I think was a rental van, I think we had.
But then we parked the van and we got out and we had plenty of hours left in the day until it would get dark.
So we thought, no problem. It's not going to be a problem.
And we started hiking down this trail and it was awesome.
And we took like hundreds of pictures and I thought, man, I would like to have pictures of this trip here to show you today.
But as you can see, I don't exactly have pictures here to show you today.
But anyway, as we're hiking and just having a great experience, we get about six, seven miles into the hike.
And Aaron starts to complain his feet are hurting and it is kind of hot outside and it's in the desert.
But then there was some trees and foliage around us and shelter from rocks and stuff.
And so we stopped and we had a little snack and then we hiked some more.
We stopped, we had a little break and we hiked some more.
And we walked through the river, get our feet nice and cooled off.
And all this was going on.
And we got to be at about seven and a half, eight miles.
So we're about a mile away or a little less than a mile away.
It might have been just over eight miles from the arches.
And Arden was, he said, I'm done.
And I don't want to go any further.
So my feet hurt so bad.
And he said, I just need to rest.
And I thought, that's a problem, because we're eight miles from the van.
And it's going to be a trek back.
And I thought, so we better let him rest.
Sherry said she would stay with him.
And we got up on the biggest kind of promontory.
You could see a long ways.
It was really pretty beautiful.
And she sat down with him and they had another snack and a drink and talk and stuff, trying to take his mind off of it.
And Alicia and Amalia and I walked on to the arches.
And we took some video of the arches and it's a cave.
And you look up and you see slivers of the sky.
And it was beautiful.
And the rock was all different colors.
Beautiful pictures.
Someday I could show you the pictures.
But anyway, we were in there for about a half hour, 45 minutes.
So they got a good solid rest.
And I took some video and I sent live footage back to Sherry, because she wasn't going to get to see the arches.
And it was pretty cool.
And then we walked back to them and we got back up on there.
And we're like, OK, we got to go.
Let's go.
We're going to head back to the van.
And Arden's like all chipper.
He's excited.
And for about the first 100 yards, he was raring and ready to go.
And then after that, he's like, you carry me.
It's too hard.
I can't do this anymore.
And so I said, well, I'll make you a deal.
You walk a quarter mile, then I'll carry you a quarter mile.
And so then he walked about a half mile.
And then I honored my deal after that.
I carried him for about a quarter mile.
I didn't tell him he walked about a half mile at that time.
But he was still going.
So I was just going to let him go.
And then I picked him up and I carried him for a while.
And then I put him down.
And then he walked maybe a couple hundred yards.
And he was ready to be carried again.
So just up there around that van, I kept pushing him, pushing him a little bit,
walk a little bit, walk a little bit, because I don't want to carry him.
Eight miles is a really long way.
Now it's late in the afternoon.
We've still got a good six miles to get back to the van.
And it's starting to kind of, you know, sun's low in the sky.
And we're like, we may not make it back before dark.
And in our infinite wisdom, we did not bring flashlights.
And we started right after like 1 o'clock.
So we figured it's no problem to make the walk.
And we didn't bring flashlights.
And we thought, this is going to get dark, dark.
We had seen it the night before.
And like there were stars, but there was no moon or very little moon.
And it was very little light.
And it was really pitch black, dark.
And we thought, we are in trouble out here away from anything like a streetlight or a flashlight.
We are in trouble if we don't get back to the van.
So we're pushing real hard.
And Alicia carried Arden some.
And Amalia tried to carry him a little bit, but he was heavy for her.
And so she couldn't carry him very much.
And I was carrying him.
And so we get to be like three miles, three, four miles away from the van.
And he's just done.
He will not walk another step, even in between.
Like he's complaining.
And of course, then Sherry was kind of getting worried about him because his feet were obviously sore.
And it was a problem.
And so it was me carrying him three miles.
Alicia was pretty well cooked by that time.
It was me carrying him three to four miles or we weren't going to make it back to the van.
That was what was left.
Now, you have to understand Arden, when he was that age, he weighed about 55 pounds,
which is for a not so strong guy like me, a lot of weight.
I carried him on my shoulders.
I carried him on my back.
I carried him on my front.
I carried him on my side.
I switched him side to side.
And that's how we got through about the next mile.
So we're between two and three miles away from the van now.
And there's no mile markers.
We really didn't know how far we were.
But afterwards we figured out.
And I told her, and I'm like, I'm at the point where I don't think I could do it anymore.
And I said, you know, why don't we sing praise songs?
We're in a tough spot here.
I had already prayed, been praying for the last couple of miles.
And I said, we're in a tough spot here.
Why don't we sing praise songs?
And Alicia and Amalia had both started singing worship, leading worship as young people
as part of the praise band at New Heights.
Neither one of them were playing an instrument at that time, but they were both singing.
And they said, OK.
So I started naming a praise song, which I probably couldn't have sung three words of it
without their help because I've always been terrible, still terrible this day.
I can, they can do a song we've only done two or three times.
I can sing along, even close my eyes maybe part of the time and sing along.
But if I'm two lines into closing my eyes, I'll mess it up.
So if I watch their models, I can sing right along with them.
But if I have to remember the words, I'm in trouble.
And so I would give them a song.
We started, of course, with like Amazing Grace and we did Jesus Loves Me
and just every song that I could think that I knew the words of.
And then I was having them help me remember the words.
And I'm carrying Arden.
And I found that I was able to carry him long stretches, long distances,
like half mile, mile at a time if we were singing praise songs.
And so we walked for about a mile, mile and a half.
And I carried him and we did that mile and a half in about, you know,
it was probably about an hour.
It wasn't fast.
We were moving real slow.
But then we had done through all the praise songs that we'd done.
And we threw them like most of them three or four times.
And we took a little break and I'm carrying them again.
We've got to be a mile, two miles from the van still.
And I'm just beat.
I'm just done.
And I'm like, and we weren't singing anymore.
And I'm like, something's wrong.
And I said, we better sing.
And Alicia and I didn't kind of didn't really want to sing more
because they'd already sung for like an hour straight, you know,
most of the time.
And I said, we just got to sing.
So we sang praise songs.
And I was able to carry him the last mile and a half or whatever back to the van.
We got to the van, got in the van, started the van.
And the dome light came on.
We opened the door.
And within just a few minutes, it got so dark that if it was not for the light of the van,
we would not have been able to see.
Now, you can say whatever you want to say about praise songs,
give you strength, praise songs don't give you strength.
That's your call, your opinion, whatever.
But I can tell you this, this I know for a fact.
Absolutely, to be honest, out of a doubt, this I know for a fact.
Had they not sung those praise songs and led me in singing,
had I not been singing praise songs, we would not have made it back to the van before it got dark.
I know it for a fact.
Absolute certainty.
And that's a scary place to be in with your family,
a quarter mile, half mile into a wilderness hike.
Like, did you don't know we went down it on the way out, but with no lights.
It wasn't like a trail that you could follow back.
We were pushing branches out of the way, stepping over rocks,
going back and forth over the stream.
We wouldn't have made it.
So God did that.
Did he do it because we were praising him?
Did he do it because we were praying to him?
Did he do it because I had prayed, Lord, please get us back safely?
Did he do it because he could feel my heart starting to tremble in fear
whether we're going to be stuck in the wilderness?
And have to call the park rangers and say, hey, we think we're about a half mile from our van.
We don't know where we are.
Can you find us on GPS or something because we're lost in the wilderness?
Is that going to be us?
Did he do it to make that not the case?
I don't know, but this much I know.
If we had not prayed and sung praise songs, we would not have made it back to the van before dark.
I want you to bear that in mind as we look at one of the shortest Psalms today.
We will use some other text to support it and break it down a little bit.
But we're going to go to one of the shortest Psalms in the Psalms today.
Maybe give me a hoot to holler at amen as we go to Psalm 134.
Amen.
Thank you very much.
That reminds us that from here on out, this is the word of the Lord.
Obviously, I explained some things.
My explanations are not necessarily inspired of God.
I try to do the best I possibly can.
But what we read here is for sure God's word and we can be affected by it.
So Psalm 134, it is only three verses.
So as I break down and expose these three verses, they will go by very quickly.
So kind of try to absorb as you go as quickly as you can so we get as much out of this as we can.
And then as I said, we will use some other references to help us understand these texts.
There's a couple of phrases in here.
If you just read it, you probably wouldn't get it.
Okay?
So here we go.
Psalm 134, beginning in verse 1.
Behold, bless the Lord, all servants of the Lord, who serve by night in the house of the Lord.
Okay?
So first of all, behold, that's an easy one.
Anytime you see behold, it's like, look, pay attention.
Come on.
This is important.
The same word in the New Testament, sometimes you see lo, lo, behold, look here.
All of those phrases mean the same thing.
Like, pay attention to this.
Bless the Lord.
And blessing the Lord is a power-packed phrase, right?
It's hard for us to think of us blessing God.
What does God need?
Like, we're going to buy Him something or give Him something?
That's not what it's saying.
Okay?
So we'll break it down in a minute.
Bless the Lord.
The Lord here is the Creator God, Yahweh.
If you're reading in a New American Standard Version, you'll notice that it's L-O-R-D, all capitals.
And that means that it's the Yahweh Creator God.
It's the Lord God who created everything.
We're going to bless the Lord.
We're going to give blessings to God, the Creator of everything.
And it says, all servants of the Lord.
And so that word, their servant, just means those who serve, right?
I once read a book and it said this.
It said that there are those who sometimes serve and then there are servants.
And they are completely a different thing.
A servant is a person who goes, I will serve in any way I can, any time I can, anyone I can.
That's what a servant is.
Those who serve are people who see an opportunity or they have a skill or an ability and they go,
Okay, I can fit.
I can make a difference.
Or they feel prodded by God and they'll say, I can make a difference or whatever, and they'll step in and do it.
But a servant is a person who says, I will serve in any way I can, anyone I can, any time I can.
And so these are servants of the Lord.
And I submit to you, if you are a servant of the Lord Creator God,
you are an aspect of the God of Heaven's ministry.
If He's the one who made you, He's the one who's doing it,
then if you're a servant, then you ought to be willing to serve at any time, in any capacity,
in any way you can, anybody you can, right?
Remember, the Creator God is a servant, right?
Jesus is a servant.
He got down, got up, rather, because they were probably lounging on the floor, got up,
put a strapped towel on Himself and began to wash their feet.
And when He got done, He said, now, if you know what I have done to you, right?
Because if I would do this, then you need to do that.
Jesus is a servant, right?
And if we are a servant of the Lord, it says, bless the Lord, all servants of the Lord.
We ought to be servants like that, ready to serve at any time, any opportunity, anyone we can.
That is the idea, that is certainly who Jesus is.
Sometimes Jesus gets abused because of that.
He certainly did while He was alive.
And we will too. You will.
You will be like, ah, man, every time I set out to serve, somebody of you,
it always comes back to bite me, right?
Or as I am fond of saying, kind of jokingly, but also it is kind of sad,
and that is that no good deed goes unpunished, right?
You go out of your way to try to help somebody, it is going to cost you.
And they might even be the reason it costs you.
So, behold, pay attention, bless the Lord, all servants of the Lord,
who serve by night in the house of the Lord.
And so that is an interesting phrase, right?
Not during the worship service, per se, but there is something more going on there,
and we will come back and break that down in the points as well,
so you will get a better picture of what that is.
So this is another kind of servant.
It is a servant that serves by night in the house of the Lord.
And that is kind of like, that is a little odd.
Verse 2, lift up your hands to the sanctuary.
And so here is that command, lift up your hands to the sanctuary.
This is where Islam gets its idea of praying and always praying toward the Temple Mount.
And there are some devout Jews who do the same thing.
They always pray toward whatever direction Jerusalem is.
That is the direction I am going to pray. I am praying toward Jerusalem.
But that is totally misunderstanding the context of this verse,
if this verse were used to support that.
Lift up your hands to the sanctuary is clearly talking about God,
the sanctuary is representing God's presence,
and technically we become the sanctuary, right?
But lift up your hands to the sanctuary means lift up your hands toward God's presence.
And it literally means lift up your hands.
So if you are in worship and you are praising God,
and you find that you cannot lift up your hands,
now if you are physically unable because of a health condition, that is one thing.
Maybe you cannot lift your left arm, maybe you lift your right, whatever.
You say, well I am physically unable lifting either one of my arms because of a health condition.
Otherwise, if you are not able to lift your hands in worship, there is a problem.
Now, if you feel compelled by lifting your hands in worship by something other than God,
that also would be a problem.
So don't take my word for it.
Don't listen to me or my idea of it.
But there are words for praise that talk about lifting up your hands,
and they are all over the Psalms, but they are really all over the Bible.
So if you see me lifting up my hands, like why is Pastor Dan lifting up his hands?
I will tell you, I am lifting up my hands out of obedience to the Lord.
I don't care whether you think I should or not, because I am doing what God wants me to do.
Now, if I see you not lifting up your hands, I am going to assume that you are not lifting up your hands out of obedience to the Lord,
which is moderately problematic because all over Scripture it says lift up your hands.
But I am not going to judge you, and I would encourage you not to do the same when you look at me.
Lift up your hands to the sanctuary literally means lift up your hands to the presence of God.
Lift up your hands. It doesn't mean do a little work.
People think my hands are down on my side. I see that needs to be picked up. I am going to lift up my hands.
No, that is not what that means. It means lift up your hands.
They would never in the temple have worship where they would not lift up their hands. Ever.
If you were a Jew, it would be unheard of for you to worship God without at some point in time lifting up your hands,
because it is commanded in the Scripture all over the place.
The fact that Christians do it on a semi-regular basis, before we are done,
you have to make a decision whether or not that is going to be acceptable for the rest of your life.
I am never going to lift up my hands in worship.
Well, I am going to take that up with the Lord at some point in time. That is probably not going to be the case.
Lift up your hands to the sanctuary. He says, and bless the Lord. There it is again.
And bless the Lord. Do something for God. Do something that God quote unquote needs you to do or would be blessed by.
Do something that he would be blessed by. Verse 3.
May the Lord bless you from Zion.
Zion was always a reference in place with his presence, kind of Jerusalem on earth, but then really heaven.
We are talking about heaven. May the Lord bless you from heaven.
He who made heaven and earth.
If you are going to get a blessing, that is a good place to get one, because he made heaven and earth.
When your body is broken, there is somebody who knows exactly what is wrong with it and exactly how to fix it.
And it is the Lord. A doctor may know, may not know, but the Lord knows exactly what is wrong and he knows exactly how to fix it.
The problem sometimes why we do not get there is because, number one, we do not trust him.
Think about the guy at the pool in Bethesda. And Jesus said, do you want to be healed?
And I want to say this to you as just a little bit of an aside for a minute.
You would be careful about what you ask the Lord to do. To whom much is given on him much is expected.
So you are working, right now you work seven days a week, you work for the Lord.
You do ministry on Sunday, you do ministry on Saturday, Monday through Friday, you do your job.
Whatever your job is, whatever task you have, you do that as if you are working for the Lord.
And then you are sick, you have some kind of an illness, you have a financial condition, you have an emotional struggle, something like that.
And you say, God, please help me with X in Jesus' name.
Now if God does that, then what are you going to do that is more?
Well, how are you going to respond if God does what you ask him to do?
Because of him to whom much is given, of him much is expected.
So if you ask God to heal you now physically, and you are already serving him seven days a week, what are you going to do?
Well, part of that is going to be described here in the points.
So we have been through Psalm 134, 1-3, I am going to read it again now.
I can do that because it is only three verses. It will be awesome.
Behold, bless the Lord, all servants of the Lord, who serve by night in the house of the Lord.
Lift up your hands to the sanctuary and bless the Lord.
May the Lord bless you from Zion, he who made heaven and earth.
Alright, so there are three things in here. They are going to seem simple at first, but actually they are quite challenging if you kind of begin to process it.
The first thing is, we bless God. That is hard for me to swallow because he is God.
I think about when Moses was in the wilderness and God said, I am just going to wipe out the Israelites and start over again.
And Moses said, oh no please. And he got on the way and he got down on his knees and on his face and he begged the Lord,
no please don't do that for your witness because the Egyptians will say that he was so mad at his people he had to call them out of the wilderness and destroy them.
For God's sake, he begged God not to destroy them because he didn't want them to be destroyed.
He loved them just like God loved them. Maybe not as powerfully because God is loved, but he loved them in the same way that God did.
He did not want to see that happen. We bless God.
There is something about what we are, what we do that we are called to bless God.
So go first with me. There is going to be some flipping here. I hope you brought your Bibles and you are willing to play this game.
Because some of these verses are a little bit more obscure even.
I am going to read to you a verse right now that you may never have read ever in your life.
So the first one is 1 Chronicles 9, so chapter 9. So it is to the left, 1 Chronicles, back into Chronicles.
I always remember Chronicles is after kings because the Chronicles is kind of like the history of the kings.
It is the story of how the kings came about. So it is easy to remember.
Samuel has got to be before kings because Samuel anointed the kings.
Then you have the kings and then you have the Chronicles of the kings.
So that is how I remember the order.
So 1 Chronicles 9, verse 33, and it says this.
It is talking about the servants in the temple and how they would be set up and like that.
And it says this, Now these are the singers, heads of fathers, households of the Levites,
who lived in the chambers of the temple, free from other service.
For they were engaged in their work day and night.
And so it is talking about, remember our verse says this, Behold, bless the Lord, all servants of the Lord,
who serve by night in the house of the Lord.
So we are going to learn a little bit about the kind of people it is talking about.
Bless the Lord, do it. What are they going to do?
They are going to praise God. Day and night praise God.
And it is interesting, and I will come back to this later, that they are excused from other service.
So substantial is their service and so continuous is their service that they are excused from other things
that they might need to do or that Levites or Kohathites or whatever might need to do in temple service.
They are excused from that because they praise the Lord day and night.
So these are singers. These are praisers.
So how do you bless the Lord? Well you bless him with praise, first of all.
And you do it day and night.
But it is interesting that they were ordained to do that.
They were chosen by God and then put in place by Moses, essentially, and Joshua,
to honor God with their praise, to bless God by their praises.
And they were to do that day and night.
Now this song that we are reading here, most of them are songs or prayers, right?
This song is what is called a song of ascent.
So this is a song that the Israelites would sing as they are going up to Jerusalem.
So the people come in and they say,
Behold, bless the Lord, all servants of the Lord, who serve by night in the house of the Lord.
Basically they are saying, come on you singers, sing!
And God is commanding the servants of the Lord who can sing, sing.
And they are like, well, but I can't, I am not good at singing, right?
I don't see anything about skill in there.
Obviously there would be those who were distinguished maybe,
recognized as quote unquote melodic or better singers than somebody else.
But the bottom line is, if God called you to be a servant of the Lord, sing!
Sing! Praise the Lord!
In church, heck yeah!
In the hallway, yes!
In your car, yes!
With the weed eater or the hammer or the drill or the saw or whatever in your hand, yes!
Praise the Lord and do it day and night because that will bless the Lord.
Amen.
You want to give God praise because number one, God deserves praise.
God has ordained for Himself praise from all creation, only humans among creation,
unless you count demons and evil spirits, but among the creation of the earth,
only humans ever have decided not to praise the Lord.
Suspicious, isn't it?
It's suspicious because of this.
Because in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve sinned against God
because they wanted to be like God.
They knew that God alone was worthy of praise and they wanted to be like God
because He is worthy of it, not the trees, not the plants.
You could say the fruit, right?
She looked at the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
and she saw that it looked good to eat and also was beneficial for wisdom.
By the way, what's that called?
It's called praise.
When you see something is good for this and good for that and you say it,
it's called praise.
When you think it in your head, that's a version of praise.
It's preparation for praise when you think it in your head
and it becomes praise when you say it.
You say, that looks good.
It looks good to taste good.
It looks good for wisdom.
She praised an object of creation.
She took the praise that could belong only to God
and she praised an object of creation.
Then she took the object of creation and ate it
because she wanted to praise herself because she wanted to be like God.
Every time you are choosing not to praise God, whatever you are going through,
don't kid yourself.
You are despising the God of heaven.
You are making him small and not worthy of praise
because you are in a difficult spot,
because you don't like the way things went down,
because you are in the midst of complaining or cursing somebody else or whatever.
What does James say?
He says, with our mouths we bless God and then turn around and curse mankind
who was made in God's image.
While you are cursing somebody and saying slanderous words or gossip to them,
and it is gossip if you are repeating something to somebody else that they didn't see.
Not between husband and wife.
You are sitting with your husband and you are telling him what you saw.
You are sitting with your wife and you are telling her what you saw.
That is not gossip.
You move outside the marital covenant and you start telling somebody
what they didn't see is gossip.
Our mouths are made to testify about the God of heaven.
So now you have gossip and you have slander.
Both of those things are curses by comparison to what we are supposed to be doing,
which is praising God.
Your mouth was made for praising God.
Only humans of all creation have decided not to praise God.
And we as believers having now been reconciled to God, we should be reversing that.
We should be praising God all day long every day.
Because the breath you just took was a gift from the God of heaven.
And if you are not willing to praise Him for it, you stole that gift.
Because He deserves our praise.
We bless God when we praise Him as servants of the Lord day and night.
That means all the time.
And night has an interesting connotation.
Because day is praising Him in the sunshine.
Praising Him in the gentle breeze.
Praising Him when the check comes in.
Praising Him when you are feeling strong.
Praising Him when you are receiving some comment from someone that makes you feel better about yourself.
Praising Him when somebody recognizes you for being a good person because you worked hard.
Praising Him then, that is praising Him in the day.
Praising Him in the night is praising Him when it is hard.
Praising Him when somebody says something you do not like.
When things go the wrong way.
When it is raining.
When you wish you could be out in the sun.
When your health is failing you.
When you wish you could do some work.
Praising Him in the day and night means you praise Him all the time.
Your waking day you praise Him.
If you are a servant of the Lord you are called by this Psalm.
And I could give you probably 20 other places if we wanted to take the time.
You are called to praise Him.
Day in and day out.
Praise Him.
Or maybe, just maybe, you are not a servant of the Lord.
Or maybe, just maybe, you are a servant of the Lord.
And you need to be admonished by the Lord and hear the Psalmist say,
Praise Him servant.
Bless Him.
Bless Him singer.
Bless Him.
Psalm 100 verse 4 and 5 sums this up beautifully.
Helping us to see that the Psalmist really did mean and really understand this concept.
Psalm 100.
So we are back almost smack dab in the middle of the Bible.
Psalm 100 verse 4 and 5 they say it this way.
Enter His gates with thanksgiving.
And His courts with praise.
How do you come to God?
You want to draw near to the Lord?
How do you do that?
Sing praises.
Enter His gates with thanksgiving.
And His courts with praise.
Give thanks to Him.
Bless His name.
For the Lord is good.
His loving kindness is everlasting.
And His faithfulness to all generations.
In the midst of the difficulty when you are facing something that you don't like what you are going through.
Don't you dare think for an instant to turn off the faucet of praise.
What? So you are going to go through some difficulty, some thing that is bad.
Some hurt that you are going to go through.
And in that moment you are going to say God is not worthy of praise.
I am going through some stuff.
I am going to be belligerent.
I am going to be upset.
I am going to get worked up.
I am going to break something.
Or I am going to go do something.
Or whatever.
You are going to get in that moment of time.
You are going to do something.
That you are going to make it better.
Because the God of heaven ceased to be worthy of praise.
Because in that moment things are not going the way you wanted them to go.
You are not God.
You are not God in your house.
You are not God in your family.
You are not the God of the Bible.
You didn't create it.
You barely get to use it for a short time compared to the extent that creation exists.
You are a blink of an eye compared to God.
You are not allowed to despise the God of heaven.
Certainly not as a servant of the Lord.
Not as a saved individual.
If that is who you are and what you do when things don't go the way.
You need to repent.
You need to turn to the Lord and say in that moment praise the Lord.
When I was not even a Christian yet there was a young man.
His name was Dave who worked at my Pizza Hut.
And my Pizza Hut was as foul mouth as the day is long.
When I got saved it became a problem because I was trying to give up that.
I didn't become a preacher or anything but I was trying to give it up.
And everybody around me was like that.
So I knew what he was like.
He had gone away to Bible college in Texas by the time I got saved.
But he was working on a Friday night.
It was like 7 o'clock and tickets were streaming off on the floor.
And pizzas were taking an hour and a half to get to people's houses.
We were selling $5,000, $10,000 worth of pizza in one day.
It was absolutely nuts.
And everybody was like F this and F that.
And every cuss word all over the place.
I dropped it and they're cussing up a storm and it ain't this.
All these cuss words are flying all over the place.
And he was the best cook I ever had working lead on the make table.
He pulled that ticket and he made the pizzas.
We had pizzas stacked like in a pyramid shape like 10, 15 high on the end
because you couldn't go in the oven because the oven was backed up.
It was totally full.
And in the middle of that somebody spewed a cuss word and he said, praise the Lord.
And I'm not a Christian.
I'm going like that was weird.
A minute later somebody said a cuss word and he said, hallelujah.
I didn't even know what that meant back then.
I didn't know that hallelujah meant praise the Lord.
I didn't even know what that meant.
A little bit later he said somebody cussed or something.
He said, praise the Lord.
And I'm thinking, so now I'm thinking he's thanking God for people cussing.
That's what I figured out.
Like that would make a lot of sense.
So after the rush started to die down, I had about 10, 15 times.
And I said, why are you screaming praises to God in the middle of the rush?
I said, could you please not do that?
I'm on the phone.
Mind you, they're cussing up a storm, right?
And I probably was too because I wasn't saying that's kind of who I was back then.
And I didn't have any problem with them cussing up a storm.
I didn't want the customer on the phone to hear that.
But other than that, I didn't have any problem.
And they're rushing around and cussing and stuff.
And I didn't correct them unless they got where a customer was.
But he'd yell, praise the Lord, real nice and loud on the phone.
You could hear that, right?
And I said, you've got to really tell it.
If you're going to do that, I don't know what that's all about.
But you really got to tone it down.
And he said, well, I'm going to tone it down if you want me to.
But I'm going to yell, praise the Lord, and say hallelujah every time somebody else cusses,
as long as we're in the middle of it.
Because in the middle of it, the Lord deserves the praise.
And what they're doing is the reason people are cussing,
the reason people are using cuss words is because their soul in the middle of it
is not capable of praising God.
And they can't get out the words they should get out,
which is praise the Lord, hallelujah.
They can't get that out.
So they're spewing cuss words because they don't know what to say.
Just listen to anybody who's talking.
Anybody who's a lot of cuss words, when do the cuss words come in?
They come in when they don't know what else to put in there, right?
So it's a big cuss word blue truck.
Because there's some word for that.
I don't know what is a big truck.
And you've got to know it's a really big truck.
And I can't think of a word right now for really big.
So it's a really big cuss word blue truck, or a cuss word blue really big truck,
or something, because they don't know how to say gargantuan or huge.
Or they just want you to think it was so big.
So they've got to throw a cuss word in there.
So that's what we do.
We throw cuss words when we can't get the words out,
and we're created to praise God in the middle of trials.
And so he said, so in the middle of trials, I'm going to say praise the Lord every time they cuss,
because they're praising their God, and I'm praising mine.
Do you understand?
Bless God.
Praise Him day long, night long.
Every time something goes wrong, every time something goes right,
every time nothing goes.
Bless Him.
Secondly in the text, you see it says, we lift up holy hands.
We lift up holy hands.
Turn with me if you would to 2 Chronicles, also chapter 29.
2 Chronicles, in 29.
2 Chronicles, chapter 29, I'll begin in verse 10, and this is what it says.
Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with the Lord God of Israel,
that His burning anger may turn away from us.
My sons, do not be negligent now, for the Lord has chosen you to stand before Him,
to minister to Him, and to be His ministers and burn incense.
From the Levites arose, I'm going to mess this up,
a bunch of names, let's do that, down to, and from the sons of El-Az-Zafan,
Shemri and Jael, from the sons of Asaph, Zechariah, and Madaniah,
and from the sons of the man Jehiel and Shemiel, from the sons of Jehudotham, and so on.
And 15 it says, and they assembled their brothers, they consecrated themselves,
and they went in to cleanse the house of the Lord according to the commandment of the King by the word of the Lord.
These folks, these are the Levites of their day.
They're the folks called to relate to God, and so what did they do?
They consecrated themselves, they consecrated the temple.
How do you consecrate something? Let's talk about that for just one second.
You consecrate it maybe with holy water, how do you make holy water?
Say it again? Amen. It's prayer. We're talking about prayer.
We're talking about asking God to bless the altar, asking God to bless His priests,
asking God to bless the holy water. We ask God to make holy that which is not holy.
That's how something becomes holy. You ask God to make something holy that's not holy,
and nothing holy without God. That's the reality.
And you ask God to make it holy. Pray over your children. Pray over your life.
Pray over your relationships. Pray over your house. Pray over your finances.
But here's what we do. We wait until it's in the tank, when it's going away, when it's falling down,
when it's burned up in ashes, and then we say, God, will you resurrect it?
We lift up holy hands to God's presence means we pray to God for God to do what needs to be done
before it's too late. Stop praying for resurrections and start praying for life.
Stop praying to fix whatever's broken and start praying to be a good steward of what you've been blessed with
so that when the time comes, if it's broken, you already know that it wasn't meant to be.
Because you can use everything for what it's supposed to be used for.
We lift up holy hands. Turn to the New Testament in case you're disagreeing with me in any way.
First Timothy. Go to First Timothy. So we're going all the way down there on the right to the T's,
which sometimes are tricky to find because they're not very long.
But if you find anything like a Thessalonian or a Timothy, you're in the right area.
First Timothy, chapter 2, beginning of verse 1.
First Timothy, chapter 2, beginning of verse 1. He says this. He says,
First of all, then, I urge that in treaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgiving
be made on behalf of all men for kings and all who are in authority in order that we may lead a tranquil
and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. Who do we pray for? We pray for everybody.
You get busy praying for everybody, you have less time to do other things.
Unless you're going to do things while you're praying, which in that case you're going to have to memorize
who everybody is and the prayer list and so on.
Verse 3 says, this is good and acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior, who desires all men to be saved
and to come to the knowledge of the truth. You know a lost person who wants nothing to do with God?
You should be praying for them every day and if at all possible every day, every time you think about it.
If the sun goes up and you start praying, the sun goes down and you pray, and you pray five or six or seven times in between,
and I'm not saying repeat the exact same rote phrases or think you're going to get it just because you're praying.
That's your heart, that becomes your concern. I want to see this person come to the Lord.
It may actually happen. There's so many stories, right? So many stories about how people come to Christ
who everybody thought would never come because somebody was praying for them.
Anybody ever heard of a man named Elvis Presley? Had the opportunity to meet his brother who lived with him
in the mansion for the last years of his life. That young man dated a girl who was a church going young lady
and she said, well I'll see you for lunch after church on Sunday. He wasn't going to church, he wasn't a professor of Christian,
she would not date him unless he came to church. And then they could do lunch after church on Sunday with her mom
or whatever. There had to be somebody else there, she wasn't going to date him. So he went a couple times to church
and eventually their relationship separated, whatever. Elvis Presley died, he'd never seen her again,
I guess I think she went on and got married to somebody else or whatever. Twenty years later, he said,
I was eighteen to twenty years later, he went to that little church that he had gone to and walked into the church
and he sat down and he said several people from the church recognized him and went up and said hi.
And he's like, I don't understand, how can you recognize me? He was not any kind of a celebrity at that time.
He had worked in the background on the business side, been employed by Elvis' production company like that
but never in the front lines. So he didn't understand how they recognized him and they just said okay.
And then it would come time for the invitation, he walked forward and got saved.
Now we went to evangelism celebration about ten years ago, he was there preaching and I got to meet him.
He's telling this story. And he said when he got saved, there was a revival, the Holy Spirit broke out of the church
and everybody got super excited. And he's like, well that's awesome, everybody got excited that I got saved.
And then one woman came walking forward and he recognized her and it was that girl's mom.
She had continued to attend that church for twenty years and she walked up to him and pointed out on their prayer list
in that church his name. They had been praying for him for twenty years or however long it was, fifteen to twenty years.
And that day he came, not somewhere else, not by a televangelist, not by some guy at 1-800-Ask-Me-Questions-About-the-Lord
and not by some guy handing him a track, but he walked forward in their church at their invitation and got saved
because they were praying for him for fifteen to twenty years by name. He said he was the worst drug addict.
He'd been in drug sales, he'd been in prison for a time, he'd done everything under the sun except even consider,
even think twice about Jesus. But he got saved. They were praying for him. Pray because God desires all men to be saved
and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Verse five says this, for there is one God and one mediator also between God and men,
the man, Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony, born at the proper time.
And for this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle. I am telling the truth. I am not lying.
As a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. Therefore, listen, wait for it, here it comes.
Therefore, I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without wrath, that means opposition,
and dissension, that means breaking apart. I want all men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands to God
without wrath and dissension. Paul wrote to Timothy that we should pray and lifting up holy hands, and by doing so,
I submit to you, bless the Lord. Back to Psalm for one second. This will go by quickly. Psalms 28. Psalm.
Psalms 28. There we go. Psalm 28. Psalm 28. I guess it's both.
Psalm 28, and we're just going to look briefly at verse 2. Psalm 28, verse 2. Hear the voice of my supplications when I cry to thee for help.
When I lift up my hands toward thy holy sanctuary, what's it talking about, lifting up your hands toward the holy sanctuary?
It's talking about prayer. And I submit to you that we should be praying everywhere, all the time.
Just try this. I don't know if it'll work. I haven't tried it. Go to a restaurant and use this by your head for every food, right?
Why don't you try this? Father God, please bless this food. I thank you for it. I know you created everything, sent your son Jesus to die for us.
Father God, bless me. If there's anybody in the sound of my voice who needs to know more about Jesus, tell them I'm here and I'm willing.
Otherwise, Lord, if there's somebody in the sound of my voice who's somehow offended by my praying, Lord, comfort them. Soften their heart in Jesus' name. Try that.
You guys ready? Yeah, I'll try it. Why not? Let's try it. What do you think might happen? I don't know.
We pray out loud as a family every time we go out. But what happens if you do it with hands up raised?
It's like, Lord, bless this food. Lord, bless this food. I didn't even have to try. My voice came out of my body.
Louder, bolder. We got people in this room that are twice as bold as me about what they prefer to eat.
The man at Walmart today was a loud boy. The whole time I was waiting outside and I could hear him. He sounded like from the Broadway. We ended up finding him and he had a Bible and he was standing out with a loudspeaker.
But I couldn't understand what he was saying. It's one of the problems with loudspeakers is the annunciations are hard and his accent.
So we got, we blessed the Lord in praises. We got, we blessed the Lord in prayers.
And then lastly, and I think this one, everybody go, oh yeah, that just makes sense. We need God's blessing.
We need it. Not want it. You probably want it too. Right? But you need it. And the truth is, if you knew, again, as I said before, the full ramifications of receiving God's blessings,
you might not be quite as quick to draw down on it. If God's Holy Spirit fills you up to the point that you're preaching and teaching the gospel, everywhere you go you're going to encounter persecution.
Someone, sometime or other is going to strike you. Or your vehicle, or your house, or your family. I already know that to be true because that's already happened to me.
And I'm just a pastor of a little church in Toledo. Right? I've already had a contract taken out on my life in the street, among the street gangs. I'm nobody.
But if you will start asking the Lord to work through you and speak through you in every case, and if you'll pray like that, your waitress might come over and say,
sir, I'd like you to pray for me about this. Or the manager might come over and say, you know, when you visit our restaurant, we'd like you to not lift your hands and pray out loud.
At which point in time you can say, it's okay. If that's what you would like, I don't have to come back. But I'm practicing my freedom of religion as an American and my freedom of speech as an American.
See, that's the thing. We know men have died for our freedom of religion, but we're too cowardly to practice it. We know men have died for our freedom of speech, but we're too cowardly to practice what they died for.
Because we won't speak up about Jesus. We won't speak out in prayer and lift our hands in public and actually step up and talk about what's really important.
The people that died and went to heaven, they're ashamed of how little we talk about Jesus.
We need God's blessing.
We are not worthy of God's blessing.
We are not going to get his blessing because we somehow become worthy of God's blessing.
You could take my advice and begin to pray from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed.
And you could begin to praise God from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed.
And none of that will make you worthy of his blessing.
God's blessings are delivered by his grace. They're delivered because he loves us.
They're delivered because he has storehouses, look it up, in heaven, filled with blessings that he's waiting to pour out on people who will just believe and receive by his grace.
And those blessings are still in the storehouses because cowards like us will not live.
You say, no, I'm not a coward. You chafe against the word.
When's the last time you asked somebody to accept Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior other than Sunday school, BBS or in church?
This is where we get amped up and filled up by God so we can go out there and live for God.
If you walk out of here and say, I work for God, I serve God, trying to lead my family in the right direction, whatever, but I'm not witnessing.
Oh, well, there's no oh, well.
God has called us to speak on his behalf to the Ministry of Reconciliation, given us the Great Commission.
There's no oh, well.
Bless him.
Bless him with your prayers.
Bless him with your praises.
Listen to the psalmist and live according to what we know makes sense.
And that is that God literally has everything at his disposal.
He created it all.
If God needed to create an entire another universe and an entire another human race and a billion more plants to bless you, he could do it like that.
If God needed to create a 40 billion dollar stimulus package for you specifically, nothing to God.
It's nothing.
And yet instead of praying to God and raising our hands, praising God, lifting up holy hands and his hands dedicated to his work, hands with him at the center, hands with him is the most important.
Instead of lifting up holy hands to God in prayer and praise, we're.
Mild mannered versions of the supermen and women that God has created us to be.
We need God's blessing.
That brings us to the conclusion.
The prayers, the praises, the need for God's blessing, they have this in common.
Day and night.
Good and bad.
The day after you win the lottery, which probably most of you won't and I won't because we don't play the lottery.
But the day after you a ticket blows up on your foot and you pick it up and turn it in for a million dollars, you will need God's help.
The day after more than you needed the day before.
The day after you're diagnosed with cancer, the day of.
The day your child tells you that they don't want to listen to you anymore.
Or that they're going to live a way that you don't approve of.
Or the day that you say something stupid to your significant other that you never should have said and probably can never take back.
The day the semi goes left the center.
And in those seconds, you're just about to head on.
In every one of those moments, you should be praising God, you should be praying to God, and you need his blessing.
We bless the Lord with our praises.
We bless the Lord with our prayer.
We do it with our uplifted, holy hands, day and night, whatever we're going through.
And we need his blessing.
As RJ said and beautifully put, we cannot do anything.
We literally are nothing without God.
God is pouring into you and you are using it for what?
Are you using it to praise him day and night?
Are you using it to pray to him day and night?
Are you using it to lift up holy hands?
Are you using it to be blessed in the moment?
Not receiving truly the blessing that God has in store, but just feeling like you're OK right now because you got this good thing that solves that problem that you foresaw.
Day and night, that's what all of this has in common.
Notice it's interesting, and this one will kind of like trip your fancy if you think about it.
Those who were the singers in the temple, they were freed from other service so that they could be singing, praising God, day and night.
So hang on.
If you will commit yourself, if you could commit yourself to praise God from the moment you awake to the moment you go to sleep and every time you wake up in the middle of the night not sleeping very well.
If you would commit yourself to praise God from that, then God doesn't need you or want you even to do anything else.
You don't have to clock in.
You don't have to pay a bill.
You wouldn't even have to witness.
In fact, if you were singing praises to God every time you went into the restaurant and while you were sitting at the table and you and your family are softly singing praises, then when you lift your hands like this to pray over your meal, no one's going to think that's odd.
You might not see anybody sitting within two tables of you, but it's all going to be OK because you're praising God.
But we're not.
Our cells are because they're amazing.
Our DNA is because no one can fathom it.
It's an incredible written language that controls the creation of everything.
Every carbon-based life form has DNA at its cellular level and it's amazing language of God and no one can quite fathom it.
They can manipulate it a little bit, but they can't really understand it because it's the language of God.
Our DNA is praising God.
Our cells are praising God.
Your hair is praising God, but your mouth is strangely silent.
And if we weren't, we could be freed from other service.
We are to be doing this without ceasing, good or bad.
That's what 2 Thessalonians says, pray without ceasing.
And I submit to you that it is also praise without ceasing.
Two references and then we're through.
The first one's in John chapter 4.
And you might go, oh, John 4, that sounds familiar.
It is familiar to many of us anyway.
John 4, it's the story of the woman at the well.
Does that sound familiar?
Maybe not.
It's okay.
We're going to read it.
John 4, beginning of verse 21.
Now, I'm not reading the full story because we don't need the full story to tie in with what we're talking about.
But I'm going to read to you what Jesus said to the woman after she's talking about the contrast between
where the Samaritans believe you should worship God and the Jews believe you should worship God.
And this is what Jesus said.
Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father.
You worship that which you do not know.
We worship that which we know.
For salvation is from the Jews.
But an hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth.
For such people the Father seeks to be his worshipers.
God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
The woman said to him, I know that the Messiah is coming.
He who is called Christ and when that one comes, he will declare all things to us.
And Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he.
Has the Lord himself, Jesus Christ, come into your life and affected your heart?
If so, this is what he would say to you, that the God of heaven is seeking worshipers in spirit and in truth.
If you think you're getting away with something, the very best you could possibly be doing is interfering with your worship of God.
Your secret thing, the best it could do is interfere with your worship.
But the worst it does is summon evil spirits, summon demons into your life, destroy your witness, have ramifications.
And God will to your face challenge you.
Revelation 19, last reference of the day.
And it's a goodie.
All the way to the right, last book of the Bible, Revelation 19.
Beginning in verse 1.
19, 1, after these things I heard as it were a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven saying, wait for it.
Hallelujah, which means praise the Lord.
Salvation and glory and power belong to our God.
If salvation and glory and power belong to our God, then praise the Lord basically, right?
Because his judgments are true and righteous, for he has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality.
And he has avenged the blood of his bond servant on her.
And a second time they said, hallelujah.
Her smoke rises up forever and ever.
And the 24 elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who sits on the throne saying, amen.
Which means so let it be.
Hallelujah, which means praise the Lord, and a voice came from the throne saying, give praise to our God.
All you his bond servants, you who fear him, the small and the great.
Give praise to our God.
And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude and as the sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty peals of thunder saying,
hallelujah, for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns.
Praise him, because when we get there, we will praise him.
Praise him, because we need the blessings that he delivers.
And we can bless him.
And if you've ever been blessed by him, bless him.
Praise him.
Pray to him in the good times and in the bad.
Day and night, nonstop.
Praise him.
Get holy hands.
How do you get that?
Ask God for it.
And then follow what he tells you to do.
Get holy hands and then lift up your holy hands to the Lord.
This idea of prayer, you know where this comes from?
It comes from feudal England.
1500 plus years after Jesus died on the cross, this was invented.
You know why?
Because what would happen was the king was going to be commissioning a knight or a feudal lord or something.
And he would come and he would get down on his knees in front of the king and he would put his hands up like this.
Here's my hands.
And the king would reach down and he would put his hand on the knight's or the lord's hands.
And he would commission him.
And so from there we began to do this in front of our Lord, in front of our God.
That from prayer we would get up and be commissioned by our God to do what it is.
This is not even biblical.
This is not lifting your hands.
I'm not saying you can't do it.
It makes a statement about I'm commissioned by God to do what I'm asked to do.
Which, by the way, is not whatever you think it is.
It is praising Him and praying to Him and needing a blessing from Him all day long.
That's what we're commissioned to.
Then the great commission says go and teach them all the things that I taught you.
Go and make disciples of them, which means plug them into God.
So they will have lifted holy hands that they too can lift.
And honor to our God.
Where did it go?
This is the truth of the Bible.
And we've had access to it since Jesus was born.
Jesus had access to it.
It's been around that song for going on 3,000 years.
Where did it go that we should courageously lift holy hands in prayer and praise
all day long, every day, and honor the Lord as maybe the most important thing we'll ever do?
Because we need His blessings? We can bless Him.
Where did it go?
Well, I'll tell you where it went.
It was lost.
Lost in memory.
Lost in history, even though it was in the covers of our Bible.
It was lost to us.
I told you when I began my sermon and I'm concluding with this illustration.
You remember I said I would like to come up here and show you some pictures from that hiking trip.
So right now I'm going to do that.
Here they are.
They're on this portable hard drive amongst 20,000 other pictures that I have taken in the last 20 years.
For me to find them, I would have to go searching for them.
I would have to go looking for them.
Now the beauty of it is I labeled some of them.
I know I did after that trip.
So I could find them faster than I could find something else that I didn't label.
It's just got a date.
The Psalm is labeled.
The Psalm is in our Bibles.
It's right here.
It was with us all the while.
If you want to know what God wants you to do daily,
He wants you to praise Him.
He wants you to pray to Him and in that prayer He will expose certain things to you.
He'll say, well, now I want you to do this. Now I want you to do that.
I want you to put this away. Get this out of your life and get this into your life.
And so He'll teach you through prayer.
We become His disciples. He teaches us and then we teach others what He teaches us.
Where is the church?
Where is the church that goes out and tells people that what God deserves
and now you can see demands all day long every day is our prayer and our praises?
Where is the church that goes out and tells people,
look, the suffering that you're going through, what you really need is a blessing from God.
Why do you 50 bucks so I can fill my gas tank? OK, I'll give you the 50 bucks.
But we don't bother telling them about the blessing they really need from God.
No. It's time that we were the church that we praise Him and pray to Him all day long every day
and realize we need His grace. We are no better than anyone else.
We need His grace again today.
And then we go out and let them see us praising Him.
And we go out and let them see us praying to Him and go out and let them see
that we know we need a blessing from God.
Just because we go to church, that doesn't mean we don't need a blessing from God.
And we also know they need a blessing from God.
They're struggling, not knowing the language of their own soul.
They use the cuss words instead of the hallelujahs
because they don't know what their soul was created for.
And our job is to go out and show them.
But somehow we lost that in our memories.
And today God brought it back to us.
If you're here today and you're a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, I'd like you to commit.
As best you can, as best the Lord will help you, as best He's strong in you,
to praise Him and to pray to Him every day, all day, when it's good and when it's bad,
when you're tired and when you're not.
Because He deserves it and because you were created able to bless Him.
And that will bless Him. That's something that will bless Him.
So let's do that.
If you're here today and you're not a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ,
I just don't know, I don't think I have this kind of relationship with God,
but you're willing to in Jesus Christ.
And just right now just say, okay God, take the rest of my life
and make of it what you will in Jesus Christ.
And be saved. And get holy hands. And start lifting them up to the Lord.
If you're a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and He's been speaking to you
while you've been here today about something completely different,
it has nothing to do with what I've been talking about,
but you know it's been God working in your heart, then submit to Him, whatever that is.
If it's make this your church home or be baptized or start a ministry
or serve in a certain capacity, whatever it might be,
submit yourself to the Lord, for He's God. He made all this.
He's in charge of all of this. And for you to think otherwise is just foolishness.
I ask the praise team to come forward at this time.
We're going to have a hymn of invitations, also our closing hymn to our service.
When we sing together, we're going to praise God together as a group.
You'll go out there later today and you'll praise God everywhere you go,
which you take that very seriously.
But right now is your opportunity to praise together as a group.
And then at the same time, we're committing ourselves to whatever it is God is calling us to.
So if you have a response and you need to make that response public,
and you say, OK, I think God wants me to do X, then you do that now.
Whether you're getting saved or being baptized or going to church or ministry or some sin,
God's convicted you of some sin that you need to let go.
You publicly let that go. We all need a blessing from the Lord.
Would you stand with me then and let's sing this song together,
this is closing out our service today.
Let the Lord work in your heart, do what He's calling you to, wherever that is.
I have decided to follow Jesus.
No turning back, no turning back.
No number with me I still will follow.
No turning back, no turning back.
My cross I'll carry till I see Jesus.
No turning back, no turning back.
OK, let's sing this last one together, this is our closing prayer.
No turning back, no turning back.