Thank you for listening to this message from Life House Church.
Good morning.
Hey, it is good to be in the house of Lord to worship together.
I heard the worship.
I heard the voices coming, you know, and while I was up there praising them, the Lord reminded
me of something.
I don't know if you realize this or not.
Sometimes we come into church, we look around, we see 100, 150 people here, and we forget
how large the kingdom of God is.
God was reminding me that there'll be millions, maybe billions of people around the globe
meeting and worshiping him.
I don't know if you know this or not, but if you're saved, you know Jesus Lord and Savior.
You're part of the biggest organization on the face of the planet, right?
And if we could get us all together, it will blow our minds how big it is, the kingdom,
and then I can't even imagine one day when we walk into heaven, right?
From all of time, the billions of people.
So as I heard your voices just coming in one accord, I was just kind of reminded, and the
Lord's like, yep.
And I'm like, man, it's awesome.
It's awesome, right?
All over the globe, people are worshiping today.
So good, so good.
Well, listen, we're in the third message of Loud and Clear, this series that we began
several weeks ago, and I hope that your ears have got spiritually attuned to what's taking
place in the spiritual and in the heavenly realm.
And we're looking forward.
I got one more week I want to preach on this after this week, and hopefully it's fed your
spirit and opened your ears both.
But I want to pray before we go into God's word and pray over his word one more time.
Lord, we thank you for this day.
God asked Lord that your word would go forth and God that would go into our spirit, into
our hearts and minds.
And Lord, God, your word never returns void.
The word of God says that.
So Lord, I pray that it accomplishes the work that is set out to do this morning in hearts
and lives.
God, here in the house, God, those that are listening online, at East Shore, God, in all
those places, God, that this would take place and we give you glory in Jesus' name.
Everybody say it together.
Amen.
That's a good amen.
Well, listen, here's been the big idea of this, really this message series from the
very beginning, and it is this, that hearing God is a matter of spiritually positioning
ourselves to hear from God.
It's not some kind of spiritual voodoo, some kind of special whatever.
It's really about positioning ourselves.
And as we've gone along in this series, we've talked about God speak to those who are his,
right?
Those who are born again, those who call him by name.
He speaks on the regular to those who call him Lord and Savior.
We also learned that he will only speak according to his will.
He doesn't speak outside of his purpose, outside of his will.
If you hear something from God and it is truly from God, it is going to line up with scripture,
it is going to line up with his will, it is going to line up with his purpose, right?
And we also learned last week that when we come and we want to hear from God, we got
to come in a humble sheep-like manner, right?
Say baa.
Baa.
No, right.
Come on.
We got to come in a humble sheep-like manner and that he's the good shepherd and the sheep,
hear him, right, when he calls us by name.
It's in the Word of God.
And that he's given us a living proof and that is the Holy Spirit.
He has come to reside inside of each believer.
We are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
God sent the Holy Spirit to come and to speak to us and he is not a silent partner.
When you got saved and the Holy Spirit came to reside in you, he is not a silent partner.
He came, he wants to baptize you in his presence so that you hear him more and more and more,
right?
But there's even more to positioning ourselves to hear God.
We're not done yet.
Say we're not done yet.
Tell somebody.
Come on.
We're not done yet.
We can talk, you know, we cannot talk about hearing God and not talk about prayer.
Not talk about prayer.
We got to talk about prayer.
And I can say this with great confidence that we will not hear God on the regular if we
are not praying on the regular.
We're not going to hear God on the regular if we're not praying on the regular.
I'm not hearing God on the regular.
I'm going to say it a third time unless I'm praying on the regular and I won't hear God
on the regular if I don't want, say want, right?
I don't want to pray on the regular.
What do I mean by that little change in that statement?
What am I trying to say with all that?
We don't do what we don't want to do.
Right?
Amen.
Come on, just say it.
You know it's true, right?
We don't do what we don't want to do.
We don't do what we're supposed to do the way we're supposed to do it.
If I don't want to do it in the first place, we don't.
If I don't really want to do it in the first place, as soon as someone's not looking, I'm
not going to do it.
If someone forces me to do what I don't want to do, right?
I'll actually rebel against that.
You might even fight against that and not do what I'm supposed to do.
And what am I saying?
There's got to be a want to in prayer.
There has to be a want to.
There has to be a want to in seeking God and searching God out.
There's got to be a desire to communicate with Him.
And it's true about anything that you're doing.
You don't do what you don't really want to do, right?
If you don't really want to go to the gym, you won't, even if you've got a gold card
status, right?
Gym membership.
It's hanging on your mirror in your car collecting dust, right?
And you got the membership, you pay every month, they suck it out of your bank account
every single month.
And you got gym membership.
Yep.
Right?
When's the last time you've been to the gym?
Can't remember.
Okay.
Right?
Yeah, you know, it does.
If you don't want to go, you won't go.
If you don't want to go to the doctor, come on.
So I'm going to get some amens here.
How many don't want to go to the doctor?
If you don't want to go to the doctor, you're not going to go until someone either makes
you and your family or your body forces you to, right?
If you don't want to go to church, we want, we find 1000 and one excuse is not to go to
church.
I could write a book.
I've heard them all.
All right.
It's true.
If we don't want to eat well, we sneak junk food every chance we get, right?
It's true.
We do what we want to do.
We really do.
And I know we can know in our head it's good to pray.
We can know that it's right.
According to scripture, I can know in my, in my mind that it's beneficial.
I know that, that I hear God when I pray, but if I don't really want to pray, guess
what I don't do.
I won't what I won't pray.
I won't.
I was keeping it real this morning, right?
Just keeping it real.
I was preaching pie in the sky and the apostle Paul knows what I'm talking about in Romans
chapter seven.
If you got your Bible's head to Romans chapter seven, I'm going to start out verse 13.
Paul was really talking about the law.
He's talking about the rules.
He's talking about the good rules that God's laid out, the laws and how they're beneficial.
But he says this, I know I should do it, but I don't really do it.
And he says it in a really unique way.
It says this in Romans seven 13.
Has then what is good become death to me?
Certainly not.
But sin that it might appear sin was producing death in me through what is good so that the
sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.
Now listen, Paul talks a lot of double talks.
You got to listen closely, right?
For we know that the law is spiritual, right?
The law, God's law, his rules are spiritual, but I'm carnal, sold under sin.
For what I'm doing, I do not understand.
For what I will to do, right, what I know in my will, what in my head to do that I do
not practice.
But what I hate that I do.
Even then I do what I will not to do.
I agree with the law that it is good, but now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that
dwells in me.
For I know that in me that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells for to will.
That's my head knows, right?
That's back to will again.
Is present with me, but how to perform what is good, I do not find.
For the good that I will to do, I do not do, but the evil I will to do, that I practice.
Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in
me.
How many know that's a unique way to say something?
That's a lot of do's, amen?
That's a lot of do-do right there, okay?
I know it is good in my heart, but for some reason I just don't do it.
Things like praying, I just don't do it.
My flesh, this fleshly side of me, this sinful nature that's in me, stops me from doing what
I know to do in my head is right and what is good.
And I know that it's going to be beneficial, right?
And it takes want in our prayer life, even though I know it's good to do it, it takes
the want.
And Paul continues with this idea in verse 21, he says, I find then a law that is evil
is present with me, the one who wills to do good.
For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man, but I see another law in
my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the
law of sin, which is in my members.
And he even disclares, he says, oh wretched man that I am, right?
This dichotomy that's going on inside of me.
Who will deliver me from this body of death?
Then he answers his own questions, kind of rhetorical.
I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
So then with my mind and myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of
sin.
And then he goes into Romans a one and this gets quoted a lot.
There is therefore no condemnation to those who are on Christ Jesus, who do not walk according
to the flesh, but according to the spirit.
For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin
and death.
What is Paul say?
We will not pray because there's a rule that says we should pray, right?
No matter how good we know or think the rule is, I will not pray because I just think it's
a good idea to pray.
I will not pray because I know in my head that it's beneficial to pray.
I will not even pray if I think I might even hear from God sometimes when I pray.
We pray when our spirit is convinced to pray, not when just my mind or my emotions or my
self will is engaged in it.
I pray when my spirit, right?
I want to, the want to in me is activated when my spirit is convinced that it is beneficial
to pray, right?
When the spirit starts to control what is on the inside or in that spirit, man starts
to control what's on the outside and I begin to do what I'm not doing normally, right?
It's not just my head.
It's just not my emotions that convinces me to do something, right?
It really doesn't.
It's my spirit that changes my actions.
People don't change because their spirit doesn't change.
We change people's minds all the time, right?
If all I needed to do was convince my head to change my actions, education would fix
everything.
We could just go to a class and it would fix everything.
All it took was just, you know, pouring the right information into my head.
How's that working out for us, right?
We're the most educated generation on the face of the planet and we've got problems
in every corner.
Why?
Because it's a spirit thing, right?
We all know in our minds.
We all got the knowledge in our minds that it's bad to eat chips and soda for lunch every
day.
But some of us eat chips and soda for lunch every day.
Why?
Right?
Because your spirit isn't telling you not to eat chips and soda every day, right?
Our prayer life will take off because we won't take off because we've read more scripture.
Now I highly recommend reading all the scripture you can, but it's going to take more than
that.
It's your spirit.
This is a spirit thing.
Your spirit's got to change.
You can read in Psalms, David was a man whose spirit, his heart, it says, right, he had
a heart after God.
He was a man after God's own heart.
He's spirit.
We use heart and spirit sometimes interchangeably.
Sometimes I don't know if heart's a good word to use because sometimes we tie heart with
emotion, but he's talking about your spirit.
You can read Psalms 25, one, it says to you, oh Lord, I lift up my soul.
This is David, right?
Oh my God, I trust in you.
Let me not be ashamed.
Let not my enemies triumph over me.
Indeed, let no one who waits on you be ashamed.
Let those be ashamed who deal treacherously without cause.
Show me your ways.
Oh Lord, teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth and teach me for you are the God of my salvation.
On you I wait all the day.
His spirit is convinced that God has the, that God is the only one with an answer.
He said, I will wait all day.
This is King David, right?
David's head, his heart, his soul, his spirit is convinced that God is the only one that
has the answer.
It is our spirit that convinces us, that convicts us to do something different.
Let me show you another verse that'll prove what I'm talking about here.
Romans 812 says this, therefore, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh to live according
to the flesh for if you live according to the flesh, you will die.
But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
For as many that are led by the spirit of God, these are the sons of God by whom we
cry out Abba Father.
Now catch this next phrase.
The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.
And if children then heirs and then heirs of God and join heirs with Christ, if indeed
we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified together.
The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.
Do you know how you know and realize that you're a child of God?
When the Holy Spirit bears witness with your spirit, then you're convinced that you are
a child of God.
The enemy, Satan does not want you to hear from the Holy Spirit.
He's okay if you read and build your intellect to no end.
He's okay if you even come into church, get a little emotional and passionate and I'll
probably do that more than anybody.
He's okay with that.
But what he does not want you to do, he does not want your spirit getting connected with
the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit will start convincing you of something.
See it's the spirit of God that comes and convinces you that you're a son or a daughter
of the Most High.
And that's dangerous for the kingdom of darkness.
Because when you know that you are a son or a daughter of the Most High, you begin to
walk in your authority in the kingdom of God.
You begin to understand.
Your identity begins to wrap up in being a son or a daughter of the Most High and not
in anything else.
And man, you can take down the enemy.
Satan has no power over the father.
He has no power of the son.
He has no power of the Holy Spirit.
And he has no power over a child of God who knows who they are and walks in that authority.
He does not.
So the word of God tells us that the Holy Spirit, right, speaks into our spirit and
you become convinced.
We use that word heart all the time.
It's not your emotions he's speaking to.
It's your spirit.
It is the eternal part of you.
It is that spirit man or woman who's going to go on forever.
And when that happens, when that happens, I won't be able to hold you back from praying
when the spirit convinces you that that that you when you pray, when you get convinced
by the Holy Spirit that prayer changes things, I will not be able to hold you back.
No one will be able to hold you back from praying.
You'll be like David.
You will talk about it.
You will sing about it.
Right.
You will declare it and you will live it.
That's what David did.
If you look in scripture, right, if you want your spirit man or woman to be convinced,
get with the Holy Spirit.
See sometimes we see people who are prayer warriors, you know, and we think, well, man,
they got some kind of special call in their life.
We're just prayer warriors.
You know, God called them out.
They're separate.
They're different.
Let me tell you what's different with this with a prayer warrior.
A prayer warrior is convinced that God can do something.
They're convinced in their spirit.
Right.
They're they're so convinced it's spooky almost.
It's true.
Right.
You talk to somebody's a prayer where there's they're so convinced that God's going to do
something.
It's almost spooky to talk to them.
They'll just talk it in outside ways left and right.
And they know they know.
Right.
So if you want prayer to skyrocket, what is your spirit listening to?
Because you change when your spirit changes and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Come on.
It's in God's word.
One more thing I want to give you about prayer today.
Right.
One more thing I want to give you about prayer.
You may not be hearing from God on the regular if we're not meeting at a God spot on the
regular.
OK.
Say spot.
Good.
You're with me.
I'll never forget hearing a pastor that I highly respect.
Bishop Mitchell told a great man of God.
He's probably I don't know in his 70s now.
And I remember hearing him preach and minister.
And any time I got to hear him, I would just sit and I actually got that I don't know him
personally.
I got to sit and talk with him one time for 15 minutes.
I don't know if he wanted to talk to me, but he was all alone in a room.
So I took advantage.
I just I did.
I just laid right in beside him like because when you talk to him, it's like, honey, man,
I was listening to I was like, I got you alone.
I'm just doing it.
So I sat down and he was forced to talk to me because that's what happens when somebody
awkwardly sits right beside you.
Right.
And we got into conversation and it was amazing.
We just spent 15 minutes.
I remember later on that week hearing him preach a message and I was sitting there in the congregation
as he was preaching.
And and he said, listen, you need to have a spot where you meet with God in prayer.
And I kind of got a little miffed.
Do you ever get miffed listening to somebody preach?
Right.
I got a little ticked off listening to someone preach.
I got a little miffed in my spirit.
Now, I'd never say it out loud.
And I certainly won't say to him because I highly respect him.
But I got a little miffed.
I thought I don't need a spot to pray.
I pray all the time ish.
OK, right.
I pray all the time and and I don't need a spot to pray.
And I started getting all theological in my mind.
Listen, God's omnipresent.
Right.
I know that to be true.
You know that to be true.
He can be anywhere at any time.
I can pray to God anywhere I am.
Right.
And I'm going through all these things because he's kind of he kind of convicted me just
a little bit.
Right.
You need to have a spot.
And then just to insult me just a little bit more in my mind.
Right.
He starts talking about his prayer spot.
He says, I got this place in my house.
He said, I go up to the third level.
And he said, I got a bench there.
He said, that's where I just pray.
That's where I hear the Holy Spirit.
That's where I meet God.
And he starts to describe his bench a little bit that he's got up there.
And he started talking about the finish.
And he started talking.
I think he's talking about a throw or a prayer shawl that he had over.
I don't know.
I kind of tuned out because I was still a little bit miffed.
Right.
And I'm like, I'm going through this thing in my and he describes in great detail.
And you know, this this spot where he comes to pray.
And I'll tell you what, by the time I got done listening to him, I was convinced that
he met God there because he started talking about how he met God and in this spot.
And I thought, well, you know, one of us is right.
One of us is wrong.
And the reality is that he wasn't he wasn't trying to say he wasn't coming off.
He was saying you don't place you can pray in one spot.
That's not what he was saying.
He was not coming in and saying he's a bright guy.
He was not saying that God's not omnipresent and God can't be everywhere.
He was just saying you need a place to meet with God.
You need a spot to go and pray.
You need a place where you get with God and you can hear God and God can hear you.
And the Holy Spirit speaks into your spirit.
And right.
And there's communion that takes place there.
And as I began to look at this, I began to look in in scripture because that's where
we go.
Right.
And it's true in the Old Testament, there's this leader named Moses, say Moses, one of
the greatest leaders, if not the greatest leader in the Old Testament.
And when we talk about Moses all the time, right, we always think about the burning bush.
If you know by if you've been to Sunday school or Bible training of any kind, we always talk
about what Moses was this great leader.
He was going to lead the children of Israel out of slavery.
And God meets him in the wilderness on the backside of a desert at a burning bush.
There's this bush burning and it doesn't get consumed, catches his attention in the desert.
So he walks over and God begins to speak to him out of the burning bush.
We preach about it.
We teach about it.
But how many know that was only a one shot deal?
That only happened one time in scripture.
If you read it in scripture, it happened once in one time only.
But God met with Moses on a regular basis.
If you go to Exodus 33 and seven, it says Moses took his tent and pitched it outside
the camp.
Israel, they were a nomadic people.
They moved about in tents and they lived in tents and moved from place to place.
He took his tent far from the camp and called it the Tabernacle of Meeting.
A tabernacle, by the way, is a habitation for worship and it's a mobile habitation for
worship.
Your spot can be mobile, by the way.
And it came to pass that everyone who sought the Lord went out to the Tabernacle of Meeting,
which was outside the camp.
So it was whenever Moses went out to the Tabernacle that the people rose and each man stood at
his tent door and watched Moses until he had gone into the Tabernacle.
And it came to pass when Moses entered the Tabernacle that the pillar of cloud descended
and stood at the door of the Tabernacle and the Lord talked with Moses.
And the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the Tabernacle door and all the people
rose and worshiped each man in his tent.
So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend and he would return
to the camp.
But his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, did not depart from the Tabernacle.
The Holy Spirit wasn't dwelling on the earth at that point.
He wasn't in every believer's heart.
That would take place after Jesus came to earth, died, was crucified, died, rose from
the dead and actually went to the right hand of the Father.
He sent the Holy Spirit back.
But here, Moses would go to a spot.
He would go to the Tabernacle of meeting and he would meet and he would hear God.
And I know some of you are going, well, that's Old Testament.
It's different now, right?
The Holy Spirit's here.
You're right.
But let's go to the New Testament to the greatest leader of all time, Jesus, because Jesus had
a spot.
He did.
At the beginning of his earthly ministry, Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist.
And immediately after he's baptized by John the Baptist, he goes out into the wilderness
to spend time.
He says this in Matthew 3, 16.
When he had been baptized, he just came up immediately from the water and behold, the
heavens were open to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and a lighting
upon him.
And suddenly a voice came from heaven saying, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.
And Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
And he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights.
If you read that whole account, Jesus is in the back side of the dead or out in the wilderness
and he's praying and he's fasting.
He's getting connected with the father.
He's hearing the father speak to him, which he always did.
And the devil comes and tempts him three times, tempts him in every way that we would ever
be tempted.
And Jesus overcomes the temptation.
And it's his spot.
He's in the wilderness.
Just fast forward just a bit in his ministry, Jesus is about to make the decision to choose
his 12 disciples, the 12 men that would carry the gospel to all the world, literally.
And out of a group of his disciples, Jesus is praying.
And in Luke 6, 12, it says, now he came to pass in those days that he went out to the
mountain.
He went out to the wilderness.
He went out to a spot and continued all night in prayer.
And when it was day, he called his disciples to himself.
Among them, he chose 12 from whom he named and he named the word of God names the apostles.
He chooses 12 in Luke 5 and 12.
Jesus heals a man from leprosy, tells the guy that he heals, go to the priest because
when a leper was healed, they had to go to the priest.
They had to be okayed by the priest that they were actually healed so they could go back
into society and amalgamate back into normal life in society.
And Jesus says, don't tell anybody.
But the news gets out, the word gets out that Jesus heals and crowds show up and Jesus begins
to teach and he begins to heal.
And the word of God says that after this takes place, that he withdraws into the wilderness
to pray.
It actually says in that verse of scripture, so he himself often withdrew into the wilderness
to pray.
Jesus had a spot.
He had a spot.
Always in a different town, always in a different location, but in the wilderness going away
to a spot.
Always going to here.
This is Jesus.
This is God's son.
This is Immanuel, God with us.
And he had a prayer spot.
He had a place to go.
You can argue with me, you can argue with Bishop Mitchell Toll, you can do that all
day long.
But if Jesus needed a spot to pray, I'm thinking maybe we do too.
Amen.
I'm going to ask you to stand this morning.
Hearing from God, we want you to hear from God.
As you stand at this campus and prepare your hearts really to hear from God this morning,
maybe as you're standing at the East Shore campus and Pastor Eric's coming there to lead
you and closing and maybe actually response to this message.
And if you're listening online, this would be a great time for you to go to a place and
maybe that's right where you're sitting.
Maybe that's not.
Maybe you go to another room, pull over the car, drive some to some other place or location
that's good for you.
But we want to take my opportunity and time for you to pray.
We want you to hear what God's word has to say, because here's the thing.
God's looking for people who are willing to go to a spot.
And actually, he's looking for people who have a want to to pray.
He wants to speak.
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.