Thank you for listening to this message from Life House Church.
Good morning, good morning.
Listen, turn somebody, give them a high five, tell them it is Do Not Do Life Alone, Do Not
Do Life Alone Sunday.
Give them a high five, tell them that.
That's a mouthful, all right?
Make sure you go back, check out those Life Group signups, and take a look.
There's donuts back there.
We like to get you sugared up before you sign up, all right?
And we want to get you signed up for Life Groups.
We believe in that deeply here at Life House.
We believe in community, and we believe in coming together and really kind of following
Jesus in a community of believers.
There's something special about walking beside other people.
That's really how God designed it.
It's how Jesus set up the church.
So we want you involved in that.
This is just one of the ways you can do that, but we want to give you an opportunity.
So make sure you get a donut afterwards, and make sure you sign up and take a look at those
Life Groups and those Life Group leaders.
You can go online and look at all kinds of information there about the Life Groups.
But listen, we are on the cusp, say the cusp, all right?
We are on the cusp of a brand new year.
We're saying goodbye to 2023.
We're heading into 2024, a new year, right?
New starts, new beginnings, new opportunities, all those things we hear around New Year's.
And if the Lord allows us a few more hours, you all are going to get together with somebody,
probably in your family.
You know, I don't know what your New Year tradition is.
Maybe you get together and eat, you know, if you're from central Pennsylvania or maybe
Western PA, you eat sauerkraut and kibossi.
I don't know why.
I don't know what that's all about.
But you'll eat sauerkraut, kibossi, all right?
You'll get together with family, friends, maybe just you and your dog, whatever it is.
How many of you are planning on staying up past midnight tonight?
Come on, raise your hand if you're going to do it.
How many of you are like, that's crazy.
That's nonsense.
I'm not doing that.
All right, you're sleeping in the New Year, right?
But our prayer is this.
Our prayer is that you bring in and that you ring in the New Year with Jesus.
That's really what we want to hear.
And we want you to really focus on Christ.
You've heard it all morning in the worship.
You heard it in the announcements.
You heard it in the offering.
Just put your focus on Christ and really kind of come into this New Year looking up as much
as you are looking out, right?
Because we're looking up and we're looking out into the New Year.
And our heart here is really to hear you do that.
And we're starting this brand new message series going into January.
We want to start the end of 2023 and launch into the New Year.
And we want you to hear from God and we want you to hear from the Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit.
And we want that to be, look on the sides of the wall.
Look right now.
Right?
We want that to be loud and clear.
Say it.
Loud and clear.
All right?
We want your spiritual ears tuned in as you go into this New Year.
And we've really got a threefold plan to do that.
One is the message series, loud and clear.
We want to bring God's word to you and what God's word has to say about hearing God loud
and clear.
Second, we had that fasting devotion that you heard about.
Staff got together.
Each wrote a devotional.
It's just a one page deal for each day of the seven days of the fast.
You can take that.
We'll have those available next week, January 7th for East Shore, West Shore and online
as well.
We'll have that devotional ready to go so that you can just kind of give yourself a
jumpstart.
Maybe read that in the morning as you go into a day of fasting and prayer and focusing,
you know.
And we also, you know, have a worship night.
We've got multiple ways, multiple levels for you to get involved and really to take, go
into the New Year focusing on God and hearing Him loud and clear.
And here's what I know.
Here's what I know.
If you don't participate, you miss out, right?
All right.
If you don't go back to that table and get a donut, you missed out.
That's all I got to say.
Right?
Prayer and fasting is the same way.
It's not my idea.
Prayer and fasting is biblical.
It is scriptural.
It's God's idea.
If we don't engage, if we don't get involved in it, you're going to miss out.
So you know, we want to hear.
It's good to get engaged in prayer and fasting and increase your listening.
Right?
It's good to learn how to listen.
Right?
My wife's still trying to teach me how to listen.
If she was here, she's at East Shore campus this morning.
She just said, amen.
Right there.
Right?
It's intentional time.
That's what we're looking at.
Intentional time to hear from God loud and clear.
And I don't know a follower of Jesus Christ who doesn't want to hear from the Lord in
a more clear manner.
I've yet to meet one.
Right?
I want to hear his voice clearly, free of static, free of noise, free of distraction.
Right?
Free of distortion.
Free of all the things that seem to get in the way.
Because sometimes it can feel like that when we're communicating with God.
Sometimes when we get in prayer, it sounds staticky.
Sometimes I throw up a prayer and all I hear is noise.
Right?
I don't seem to really hear God.
And it just feels that way.
It's a little bit like a long time ago when I was a kid.
How many of you know it was a long time ago when I was a kid?
You can say, hey man, it's okay.
All right?
It was a long time ago when I was a kid.
But when I was a kid, there weren't a lot of electronic forms of communication.
As a matter of fact, they were extremely limited.
Right?
We didn't have cell phones.
We didn't have those nice cell phones, iPhones, whatever you got.
Right?
All the people under 25 were going, you didn't have a cell phone?
Right?
We didn't have cell phones.
We didn't have tablets.
We didn't have computers.
We didn't have gaming systems.
We didn't have any of those kinds of things.
We didn't even have the internet.
In fact, when I was growing up, the only form of electronic communication that I had as
a kid was these crazy little things called walkie talkies.
How many remember walkie talkies?
All right.
They're going to put a picture up there for you.
That's the walkie talkie from the 1980s.
They're about the size of a brick or a block.
Okay?
Had one big old orange button on them.
All right?
And when you got your walkie talkie out, you and your buddies, they had a distance of about
50 foot that they would carry if it was nothing in between you and the other person.
Right?
And you get on and the other could be on and you're like... That's what happened when
you push the button.
That's what it sounded like.
That was our form of communication.
And the person on the other end would be going... Right?
Which was a total lie.
You know?
So they would.
And it was loud and clear.
You know?
And many times it feels that way when we pray.
You know, we're praying and we're trying to communicate with God and it just sounds like
that.
It's just you got something or almost nothing.
Right?
You feel like you hear a few muffled things back from God or maybe you just feel something
just in a little bit of way, but it feels like you're distant.
How many know that happens in prayer?
And if that happens enough, you'll do exactly what we used to do with the walkie talkies.
We played with them for 15 minutes and we figured it's not worth it.
We put them down.
Right?
We just let... We put them down.
They went in a toy box, whatever.
They stayed in there until the 9 volt battery leaked on them and they were ruined.
That's what happened with them in the 80s.
And we do that... We'll do that with prayer.
We'll pray and if we're not hearing back and we feel like we're not getting anywhere with
it, we just stop praying.
We put it down.
We put it away.
And if we're not hearing back and we'll even start to say things like this.
People start to say, well, I just don't think God talks to me.
I've heard... I've had a lot of people telling me that.
I get talked with them like, well, God doesn't talk to me.
And that's a whole nother conversation.
God does.
And I don't got time to go there right now.
Right?
But they'll say things like that or God just talks to other people.
Right?
That's for other people.
And sometimes they'll think, well, I must not be holy enough or I'm just not good enough.
Well, I got news for you.
None of us are good enough.
Right?
He's the only one that's good.
He's the only one that's right.
So it's not that.
But here's the thing.
God doesn't work like a walkie talkie.
He doesn't work like our cell phone.
He's not like an iPad, a tablet.
Right?
It's not a matter of holding in just the right button.
It really isn't.
It's not about plugging in the right Wi-Fi password to get to God or just to have the
right cadence in your prayer.
How many of you got the right cadence when you pray?
Right?
If you pray good enough, then God hears.
That's not how it works.
It really isn't.
It's a matter of positioning ourselves to hear God.
All right?
Taking notes is a good spot to take notes.
And I encourage you to do that.
It's a good place.
You want to position ourselves to hear God.
He is the creator of the universe.
He is God.
He is all powerful.
He is omnipresent.
He has all things in his power.
And it's not a matter of just a sterile, right?
Mindless kind of action of pushing a button or a spiritual button of some kind, dialing
up a number, you know, throwing up a prayer and hoping it sticks kind of thing and hearing
God loud and clear.
It's about positioning ourselves to hear God and the problem of static noise and distortion
when we're praying, it is never an issue on God's side of the equation.
Right?
He's transmitting to us all the time.
He really is.
The problem is on the receiving end.
Right?
I'm the receiver.
He's the transmitter.
It's on the receiving end.
It's me.
And I'm not hearing because I'm not tuned in sometimes to the king of the universe.
I'm not hearing sometimes because I'm on the wrong spiritual channel.
Right?
I'm not on the right wavelength.
If you've got a radio, and I know it's not like it used to be old school, right?
You turned the knob right to the station and the new ones, you look for the digital readout
and how many others a number associated with a radio station, right?
WJTL is 90.3.
K Love is 107.9.
WDAC 94.
Whatever the radio station is that you're listening to has a number for it.
That number is not just a call number that they give to a radio station.
That's a frequency that they transmit on.
That's the wavelength that that signal goes on.
It goes out on.
And when you're tuning your radio, you're you're dialing into that frequency.
And how many know when you get to that frequency, what happens?
You got music, right?
You got someone talking to you.
If you turn it off one, right?
It's 90.3 and you turn it to 90.4.
What happens?
That's what you hear.
All right.
You might catch a couple of words.
You might be on a completely different station.
If you go to 90.4, spiritual tuning is about positioning ourselves to hear God.
He's transmitting.
We just got to get in a place to position ourselves to hear.
And for a lack of better a way of saying it, we got to get on God's frequency.
We really do.
We got to pick up what he's putting down and tune into his spiritual station, tune into
what he's trying to relay.
It's not a transmission problem.
It's a receiver problem most of the time on our end, if not all the time.
Right?
How I'm receiving so many too many times we're on some other frequency.
Right?
God's on 90.1 and we're on 90.5 and not a good don't go look those stations up.
Right?
I don't know what that is.
I just made that up.
All right.
So we're going in to hear God loud and clear, get in the frequency right.
So first step, say first step.
Good.
You're with me.
First step, first step in getting the frequency right to hear God on a regular basis is this.
Jesus must be savior and Lord of our life if we want to hear from God loud and clear.
Now I am not saying that Jesus doesn't talk to those who are far from him.
I'm not saying that he doesn't talk to those who don't know him as Lord and Savior.
What I am saying is if you want to hear God loud and clear, if you want communication
in the way we want communication from God on the regular, how many want to hear from
God on the regular?
I do.
Right?
If you want to hear from God on the regular, he it's about being him being savior and Lord
of our life.
It's it's a if you want to hear from God in a way that's going to direct you in life.
Right?
If you want to hear from God like maybe a child hears from a good parent.
Right?
If we want to hear from God in it, not be a one time event, but clear communication
on a regular basis.
He must be Lord and Savior and maybe a better way to say that in a right order is he has
to be Savior and Lord of our life.
Right?
Savior first, Lord second.
God is not Google God.
He's not a fortune cookie.
He's not some cosmic crystal ball.
Right?
He's not a magic once in a while when you need some good advice or answers.
Right?
He's not just an instantaneous intervention when things aren't going well.
He's not a heavenly Santa Claus who's just leaning in.
Right?
Just waiting for our every women wish to be spoken to him.
The earth is the Lord's and everything therein.
He's sovereign.
He's powerful.
He's righteous.
He's holy.
He's creator.
He's not just creative.
He is the creator.
He is the king.
First Peter 312 says this, for the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears
are open to their prayer.
But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.
What kind of communication do we think we're going to have if God's face is against us?
Right?
Have you ever had somebody's face against you?
Come on.
You ever had somebody's face against you?
Somebody who does not like you at all.
Maybe somebody who hates you.
In fact, if you've ever had somebody's face against you, what kind of communication do
you get from them?
Is it pleasant?
Is it lovely?
Is it something you want on the regular?
Absolutely not.
Right?
First Peter tells us that his ears are not even open to the prayers if we're rejecting
him in his way of living.
Right?
If we're just thrown up by Hail Mary prayer and hope that something sticks to the ceiling
and see what might shake out.
Right?
Which I might get in a desperate moment and throw that thing up there.
Hear me.
I'm not Google God for the evil and those whose faces against he is a loving, patient,
holy, righteous, merciful God.
But too many times we mistake God's mercy.
We mistake his patience for acceptance of the relationship as it is.
God hears and communicates on the regular with those who are close to him.
Those who see him as savior and Lord.
Now, just so you don't think I've cherry picked one scripture.
Right?
So you Bible theologians, you're saying he only picked one and just built up.
I'm going to give you some scripture to back up what I'm talking about this morning.
Psalm 66, 16 says this, come and listen all you who fear God and I will tell you what
he did for me.
For I cried out to him for help praising him as I spoke.
If I had not confessed, listen, there's the savior part.
Right?
He's Lord and savior.
I confess the sin in my heart the Lord would not have listened.
But God did listen.
He paid attention to my prayer.
Jesus God who did not ignore my prayer would draw his unfailing love from me.
Listen to the words of Isaiah to those who are religious.
Right?
But not righteous, not in relationship with God.
Isaiah 1, 10 says, listen to the Lord, you leaders of Sodom.
Listen to the law of our God, people of Gomorrah.
What makes you think I want all your sacrifices?
Says the Lord.
I'm sick of your burnt offerings of rams and the fat of the fattened cattle.
I get no pleasure from the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
When you come to worship me, who asks you to parade through my courts with all your
ceremony?
Stop bringing me your meaningless gifts and incense of your offering disgust me.
As for your celebrations of the new moon and the Sabbath and your special days for fasting,
they're all sinful and false.
I want no more of your pious meetings.
I hate your new moon celebrations and your annual festivals.
They're a burden to me.
I cannot stand them.
When you lift up your hands in prayer, I will not look.
Though you offer many prayers, I will not listen for the hands are covered with blood
of the innocent victims.
He was talking to people.
He was talking to the Jewish people of that day who were living a lie.
They were doing the ceremony, but they were not following God.
If we want to hear God loud and clear, he's got to be Savior and Lord.
I'm going to drive it home with one last scripture in the New Testament.
Hebrews 10 26 says this, for we willfully sin after we receive the knowledge of truth,
there is no longer means of sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of
judgment and fiery indignation that will devour the adversaries.
Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
Of how much worse punishment do you suppose will he be thought worthy who has trampled
the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified,
a common thing and insulted the Spirit of grace?
For we know in him vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.
And again the Lord will judge his people.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God.
God wants to speak to us.
He wants to speak to his children.
He wants to bless us in our lives.
He wants us to hear him loud and clear.
We got to get on the right frequency.
We got to stay tuned in.
We got to be in the right place on God's spiritual down.
And that starts with Savior and Lord.
Savior means that I have recognized that I am sinful and I am lost without him and I
am separated from God without him.
And the only way to God, the only way to hear him is that I say God I confess this, I know
this of me and I need you Jesus to be the sacrifice for my sins.
Right?
That is Savior.
Lord of my life means that he is first.
He is first.
I dethrone me and I enthrone him.
Right?
I dethrone me and I enthrone him.
That is what it means for somebody to be Lord of your life.
Right?
That is what it is.
That is why Dixie doesn't call me Lord.
Alright?
My wife does not call me Lord.
She never will.
Alright?
Amen?
I thought I would get some amen from the ladies from that one.
Alright?
Come on.
It is Lord.
If he is Savior and Lord we are tuned in.
We are in the right position.
You think man you are preaching hard going into the New Year.
No I am not.
I am telling you straight what God's word says.
Right?
If he is Savior, if he is Lord it is not going to be a walkie talkie relationship of.
Right?
We are going to begin to hear.
It positions us.
Say number 2.
Number 2.
Alright.
Second one.
It is God speaks loud and clear according to his will.
God speaks loud and clear according to his will.
You might want to write that down.
Right?
If we want to tune into what God is saying to us we tune into God's will and not ours.
If we really want to hear God loud and clear we pray according to his will and not ours.
We look for, we pray what?
For the sovereign will of God and not our own.
We pray for God's good pleasure and not for our own good pleasure.
We pray for God's instruction and his bias and not mine.
Right?
That is what it means.
We really want to tune into God.
We start to pray according to his will.
In fact praying according to his will should not only be a mindset but it should change
how we pray.
It should change how we pray.
If we pray according to his will we will drop, tell me what I need, what I want you to know.
Right?
We get into prayer.
Tell me what I want to know God.
Just please tell me what I want to know.
It changes from that to what do you want me to know.
There's a difference between the two.
There's a big difference between the two.
It's a big difference if I come and tell you what I want and let's see what you can do
about it for me.
Right?
We do that with God.
Right?
I come and tell them what I want and let's see what you can do about that for me God.
There's a big difference between that and me coming and saying Lord this is what's happening
in my life.
Tell me what you want me to do.
What's your will in the middle of this?
What, you know, because I can come with all kinds of requests and ask God to do all kinds
of things but I should be coming with the requests and saying God what do you want me
to do?
There's a huge difference.
Right?
If I tell you to come fix my problem versus here's my problem please tell me what to do
about my problem.
Right?
Way too often we come to God and we tell him the problem and we should.
Right?
But then I want to tell him how to fix it.
Lord, you put this person in my life.
You know this person is a sandpaper person in my life.
Ever have a sandpaper person in your life?
Come on.
I have.
Alright?
They're sandpaper in my life Lord.
Could you just smooth them out a little bit?
God, hey anybody ever pray, Lord could you just relocate them somewhere else?
Colorado is lovely this time of year.
Could you just move them God?
Right?
Glory to God for their benefit of course.
Right?
Could you just move them a little God?
We do that right?
We come and we ask God about the problem and then we say Lord, Lord let me tell you what
would be really good.
This would be awesome for me anyway.
Right?
Or I got a financial need.
Lord, you know if I open my door and there's a big bucket of cash in front that would be
awesome.
Right?
Could you just send somebody by Lord?
How many have had that happen?
Right?
Just drop off a big bucket of cash in your doorway.
If you have that happen let me know because I haven't.
Right?
If you don't pray and say God this is the problem and I want your will to be done on
this, what do you want me to do with this?
Sometimes I think we don't do that because God might say well you know that sandpaper
person in your life?
I want you just to love them a little bit more than you would somebody else.
Right?
Or maybe God I need more cash in my life and Jesus saying you know Sheetz is hiring right
down the road.
You know?
Sometimes we don't want to hear what he has to say.
It's kind of like taking your car to the garage to get fixed and then you walking in the garage
and telling the mechanic how to fix it.
That's really what it's like versus going in and saying hey my car's got a problem can
you tell me what we got you know what I what I got to do about it or what you can do about
it.
Right?
There's a big difference.
Life shifts in our prayer life if we're asking God what the will His will is and we talk
and listen you got to talk to God about the thing.
Right?
Because we all got things.
You got to give them the thing.
That's actually scriptural right the Lord's Prayer.
You come and ask for your daily bread.
This is a word of God says when did when the disciples asked Jesus how to pray and he began
to do the Lord's Prayer with them.
We asked for daily bread.
We bring the thing to God.
Right?
But it also says your kingdom come and your will be done.
So we got to bring the thing.
Say bring the thing.
Bring the thing to God and then you got to say hey God what's your will about this thing.
What do you want me to do about this thing.
What are you thinking about this thing.
How should I handle this thing.
Instead of saying God just fix the thing.
Right?
Your kingdom come your will be done.
We ask God and we hear from God when we do this because God always talks His will.
He's always speaking about His will.
He doesn't speak about my will.
Thank God.
Right?
He speaks His will.
He speaks what He's talking about and we should count on that because God has all knowledge.
Right?
He can see all things.
If I got you up right now and told you I won't do this because there's liability issues but
if I got you all up and told you to stand on the chair spin around your chair and tell
me everything you see you all could describe what's in this room.
How many know you're not going to see beyond that.
Right?
That's all the further you can see.
You might think you're very detailed and you can see a lot of things but you can't see
all that far.
He sees the whole way.
The Holy Spirit knows what's going to happen tomorrow.
He knows.
He knows the Father and the Son.
They know.
They know all things.
So when I come to God and God's speaking I need to say God what's your will.
Right?
Romans 12.1 says I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your
bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is your reasonable service.
I give Him my body for His purposes.
How many know your brain is included with your body.
Right?
Nobody's walking around with their brain over here.
I hope not anyway.
Right?
It's in your body.
I give to God.
When you come to prayer you've given yourself to God.
I come and sacrifice to God.
And look what the next verse says then.
It says do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your
mind that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect what?
Will of God.
Right?
God's will instead of mine.
You will hear from Him.
One of my favorite verses is Proverbs 3, 5 and 6.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart lean not on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him and He'll direct your path.
That is His will.
I'm going to look for His will.
Right?
Amen.
I think hearing God's will is a little bit like flying a commercial airliner.
Not that I've ever done that.
But it's a little bit like flying a commercial airliner.
I don't know if you've ever got into a commercial airliner where there's hundreds of people
that ride on that plane.
And I've had the privilege a couple of times of the door being open right into the cockpit.
And what do you see when you look in that cockpit?
Right?
There's switches.
There's 5,000 switches knobs in there.
There's instrumentation of all kind inside there.
There's screens.
Right?
There's communication devices all kind.
Do you know what that pilot does not do?
He does not get in that plane on a Saturday morning and they fill the plane up and he
says, you know what?
I'm just really tired of people in the control tower.
I've had it.
All right?
I'm not talking to them today.
Click.
Shut the radio off.
Right?
You know, I'm sick of all these instruments blinking at me all the time and telling me
where I'm at.
I'm just shutting all that off too today.
Right?
I'm just doing this.
I've been piloted for a long time.
I've been driving this plane around back and forth right from Florida back to Harrisburg.
I've done this a hundred times.
I think I'm just going to shut all that off and I'm just going to wing it today.
No pun intended.
Well, a little bit.
All right?
I'm just going to wing it today.
I'm going to make it happen today.
Right?
I got my coffee.
I'm going to make it happen today.
They don't do that.
They're talking to the control tower.
They're saying, when can I take off?
In what order do I take off?
They're checking when they get in the air.
They may not even have any visibility when they get in the air.
They're checking their instruments.
Right?
And then they're waiting for the control tower to tell them what ceiling or what altitude
they're going to fly at today, whether it's 25,000 or 35,000 or somewhere in between.
They're listening for all of that going on and they listen for when they're going to
land and what order they're going to land in.
And from beginning to end with that flight, they're depending on the one that they're
speaking to.
They're part of the equation.
They got to walk it out and work it out, but they're listening.
That's what it is to follow God's will.
If you follow His will, He'll tell you when to take off.
He'll tell you when to land.
He'll tell you what altitude you should fly at.
He'll tell you what speed you should be flying at.
He'll tell you.
But you got to pray according to His will.
You can't come in.
We cannot come in and say, God, here's my problem.
Now let me tell you what I think.
Amen?
I'm going to ask you to stand.
Thank you for tuning in to this message from LifeHouse Church.
We pray that you were impacted powerfully by this message.
If you have been personally affected by our ministry and you would like to partner with
us as we love God, love people every day, visit our website at www.LifeHouseCOG.com.