Voices

Our world is filled with a never-ending cycle of activity.

It is increasingly hard to escape the noise.

Hearing his voice allows us to grow in maturity as believers.

When we quiet the noise and listen, he can speak to us.

Hours before his crucifixion, Jesus prayed, Father, if you are willing, take this cup for me.

Yet not my will, but yours be done.

Amidst being in the final hours of his life, Jesus did not become distracted by his circumstances.

Instead, he looked to the one who he knew had the answer.

God is speaking to you.

Are you listening?

Are you listening?

Are you listening?

I don't know, y'all been out of practice for a while.

Y'all want to stand for the reading of God's word?

Man, I tell you what, it's good to be back.

But we got exactly, I got I don't know what my wife got, I never asked, but I got exactly what I needed.

Sometimes you just gotta get away.

Seclude yourself.

This won't sound very spiritual or very pastoral.

But while we were gone all those days, I didn't open my Bible.

I didn't really respond to my phone.

I definitely didn't get on social media.

I didn't really answer any emails.

I wasn't in a hurry to do nothing except do nothing.

And so I've been reading a book.

I'm not gonna tell you what it is until after we're done with the series.

I don't want you to get all my material beforehand.

But but the something that God kept pouring into me, and it's funny because even sometimes, like I have a Bible app on my phone, and so on this Bible app, it's uh something that a megachurch, life church put out, they do it for free, where you can kind of pace yourself and do Bible plans, and it reminds you daily, hey, you haven't done your reading, and then when you do it, you get a little check mark and thumbs up, and it's all great and good.

And sometimes even that can be a distracting from actual true study of the word.

So if you look with me to Matthew chapter 6, verse 24.

Matthew 6:24

And this really doesn't have much to do with the rest of the message, except I want you to understand the context of what this is saying, and I want it to be in your mind as we go through some word today.

Verse 24 says, No one can serve two masters.

For you will hate one and love the other, you will be devoted to one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and be enslaved by money.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for your mercy and your grace.

We thank you for the worship service.

Today we thank you, Lord, for the people that are here.

I pray, God, in a very real way, that everything that is blocking these people from getting what they need from you be ripped from their soul today.

I pray that everything that has been pulling them in all sorts of directions, that their mind find clarity and their soul find freedom and their hearts find joy again.

Only that can be found in you.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

So if you follow on the sign uh out there in front, we try to I try to put the title on every week out on the sign on our social media.

So this week is called Shut Up.

Matter of fact, this is week one of the series, Shut Up.

Now, the church we come from, the pastor's wife is an old school teacher.

She's very organized, she's an administrative mindset.

And so around her, you don't say shut up.

Some of us in the older school generation, you didn't say shut up, and there's a lot of other things you didn't say that were like church curse words.

I'm not gonna say them because I don't want some of you to leave the church, but you know exactly what I'm talking about.

My father raised me on you do not say them, or you will burn and go to hell.

But today, I'm giving you permission as your pastor to look the devil right in the face and tell him to shut up.

We have allowed so many voices in our inner influential circles that speak into us daily, and we allow it to speak and continue to speak and continue to run its mouth, and we wonder why we're bitter, why we're unhappy, why we're seeking what we never are actually satisfied for.

It's because we're not telling the devil to shut up.

The devil does not, if you are a servant of the one true king, if you are serving the correct master, if God is your master, everything else is subject to him, and it is only you that allows the other things in.

You are betraying your king by allowing things to speak into your life that have no business living there.

So the subtitle in a softer voice is voices.

Now, we in the church, I'm gonna get up on your business for a second.

We in the church have allowed the culture to influence us and what we do and how we believe instead of the other way around.

We are meant to influence them of what is morally right and morally wrong according to the word of God, not our feelings, not how we see things, not our truth, which is not actual truth.

It's made up to fit in whatever mold you want to fit it in.

The word of God busts that mold wide open.

We should be influencing them.

So, in this shut up series, we're going to be facing head on the lies and the deceit of the enemy and the world.

There comes a point in your spiritual walk and in your lives.

Listen, I could preach until I'm blue in the face of what you need to do, but until you actually study for yourself and begin to apply the word of God and not just hear and let it fall on deaf ears and be pearled before a swine, or you keep making stupid mistakes and it's like the dog returning to its vomit.

You've got to start hearing the voice of God.

But you cannot hear the voice of the Almighty God if you do not shut up the other voices that's speaking into you.

You cannot.

They will drown out the voice of God.

Everywhere throughout the Bible, when God speaks, it's very soft, it's very calm.

It reminds me of a father talking to his child.

We all know that we can get upset with our children, but it seems to really take hold when we stop and we really communicate, not just talk at.

There's a difference.

Your pastor cannot do it, your pastor's wife cannot do it, the board members cannot do it, your husband, your mom, your dad, your sister, your uncle, whatever.

Cannot, cannot tell the enemy to shut up talking to you.

It has to be from your mouth, seated in your heart.

When I was when I was gone and I didn't really do anything of focus.

You know, when you go out of town to fan friends and family, they feel like they have to do something because you're there.

I told him, I said, we don't have to do anything.

We did a few things, but most of the time it was just kind of sitting around.

But I asked God for one thing during this trip.

That He would give me a word for myself and for the people that when I go back to the pulpit will be something that will penetrate your hearts and it will not change your year.

See, we wait till the new year comes to start making all these resolutions.

And oh, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that.

No, you won't.

That's why you get a gym membership and three months later you cancel it, or you pay the entire year and never actually go.

Because, all right, calm down.

Because we don't actually want to do anything, we want everybody to think that we are.

We actually will try to convince ourselves that we are going to and we will tell ourselves, oh, I'll go to the gym tomorrow.

Is anybody else guilty?

Come on now.

Can we can we speak some truth in the house today?

We love to convince ourselves that we are going to be different.

Oh, if I just had this relationship, I could really shine.

If I just had this type of jewelry, if I just had these types of shoes, if I had that kind of car, oh, if I had that job, oh I'd tithe more.

Liar.

Ten percent is ten percent.

And when you make more, that money gets bigger.

It's harder to let go of more money.

Oh, well, if I had that marriage, oh, I'd be happy too.

Or if if I if I was single, I would be happy too.

And we convince ourselves that it takes something outside of in here to make us happy, fulfilled, and really have joy.

But true joy only comes from the Father.

Because everything else in your life is a synthetic of the actual true joy of God.

Everything else is man-made of what they try to label as love, but it is not true love, has nothing to do with acceptance, it has nothing to do with gender, it has nothing to do with nothing.

They're making it up so they feel better, like they're gonna do some good.

And they're not going to heaven.

I'm sorry.

Because hell still exists, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.

I can go out and stand in the street.

Nope, 18-wheeler ain't gonna touch me until it is right in my face, running me over.

I can proclaim until I'm blue in the face and dead smudge on the street, it will still knock me down.

Proclaiming something over and over again does not make it actual truth.

But the word that God gave me for me, and I believe for you, is focus.

What?

That's your word for the year.

Somebody else told me the same thing Tuesday.

Focus, focus, focus.

I try to tell Tristan, and I did the same thing when I was a kid.

I would do my homework by the window so I could see if kids were playing on the street.

I would have music going in my room.

I was like maybe eight, nine.

My mother would tell me over and over again, you cannot focus with all that on.

Oh, yes, I can, it helps me.

I never finished my homework.

Ever.

But I convinced myself that if I had the proper thing, if I could see, just in case there was a kid, because I love to go outside and play.

If somebody was out there doing something, I was gonna be in the middle of them.

I had music on, I loved music, it was my thing.

So all these things that I love are surrounding me, but I couldn't actually focus on what I had to do.

Good things in my life still robbed me of the focus I needed to complete the task in front of me.

If we want to get spiritual in this church house where we see miracles again, where we see signs again, where we have wonders that the Bible says will follow those that believe.

Do we have some believers in the house today?

We have to get our house in order.

How do we do that?

By regaining our focus.

Why is focus so important?

There's three reasons right here.

Focusing on God is so vital to your heart, mind, and soul's well-being because the enemy wants to try and steal your focus.

The enemy wants to try to steal and rob your peace and rob your joy.

The Bible says he is roaming around waiting just for somebody to devour.

He wants to rob you of the gifts God has given you.

He wants to distract you so much that you forget how much he has blessed you because you can't stop focusing on what is wrong.

Three reasons on God, focusing on God.

Number one, focusing on God gives you a sense of hope and belief when you are suffering.

Has anyone in the house today ever suffered before?

Have you ever been through a season where you feel like you would never see the other end of it?

Even like King David did in the Bible, where he would cry out and say, God, where are you?

God, I am alone.

I am, I am, I'm not even seen by God anymore.

I can't see him, he can't see me, I am alone in the valley.

But if you keep your focus on God, David constantly would say things like I just said, and then right booking with it at the end, talk about how good and great God was.

See, we sometimes close up everything inside of us and we wait for a moment where we snap and we explode, and all of a sudden we're oozing out on everybody else, all the hurt and all the pain and all the suffering and all the seasonal issues that we go through year after year after year, and God is okay with us talking about our issues.

That's why the Bible, it's so so important.

If you miss church, that's great, but do not forsake the gathering because you need people like-minded to keep you strong and to help you focus.

One of the most, I guess you would say, common uh tricks of the devil would be to get pick people off from the herd.

Because if he can get you by yourself in your own thoughts, he can speak into you whatever he wants.

Because most of us are not strong enough to battle the devil, or we try to do it on our own with fleshly weapons, and it's a spiritual warfare.

Focus on God gives us a sense of hope and a sense of belief, even in suffering.

What is belief?

It is tied directly to hope, and hope is tied directly to faith.

If he can rob you of your belief, if he can rob you of your hope, he can rob you of your faith.

And when you focus on God through the pain, through the suffering, through the issues, through the season, you find that there is a constant joy still in your life.

That even though the season is dark and gloomy, joy is still there.

How is that possible?

Because you are focusing on the source of where it comes from.

Has anybody ever been manipulated on how you let things affect you because of what it feels like or what it looks like?

That is hard not to do, especially with the street family right now.

You get something back from the doctor that has the worst news, and all of a sudden things are supposed to go south quick.

God, what am I supposed to do?

You pray, you trust, and you believe, and you stay focused on God because if the enemy can get in your mind, he has got you defeated.

Why?

Because your life moves in the direction of your strongest thoughts.

The thoughts you allow to be repeated, the whispers in your ear you allow to be repeated in your ear and manipulating your thoughts, that is where your actions will follow.

Every time.

Number two, it helps you maintain perspective on the best way.

That's one of the fruit of the spirit.

Number nine.

Self-control.

When you stay focused on God, it helps you maintain the perspective of how you should actually conduct yourself.

In church of eating our own quick.

We do all the cutting.

The devil don't have to do much.

When somebody messes up, when there's an issue, oh, done.

And then the enemy just has his playground.

And that blood is on your hands.

Number three, it reminds you to look up, not out, for your help.

You regain or you begin to have a real understanding and a real clarity of where your help comes from.

If you understand who's got your back and whose name you carry with you, there is no demon in hell that can stand against you.

There is no sickness that can stay at the mention of his Almighty name.

But we don't have the faith to actually speak and pray this.

And then we wonder why we don't see healings, why we don't see miracles, because we're not speaking as if it is already done.

Then when the enemy comes and tries to whisper in your ear, you can look back at him right in the face and say, Shut up.

Turn to your neighbor and say, Shut up! Some of y'all enjoyed that a little too much.

Shut up, devil! Some of y'all, you know what real estate is?

It's a place where people live.

Some of y'all are giving the enemy too much real estate in your life and wondering why the community is in haywire.

We've got to begin to serve the devil eviction.

Notices that he does not have a place in our mind, in our hearts, in our church.

I belong to the one true king.

And as such, nothing is going to make camp here unless he says so.

That includes what you watch and listen to.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Oh man.

Isn't that a beautiful slide?

You see, we want God to come in and do a work in our lives, but we won't spend the time to get the junk out.

And you know what I know about God?

He loves you so much, he'll give you the tools to do it and make you do it yourself.

It means something different.

My son is learning this.

We have him a little attached to our Chase account, we have him a little, it's a kid's debit card.

And so when he helps me through the summer when he has time off, or anytime he goes with me on the weekends to do photography stuff, I pay him a little bit of money every time.

So instead of giving him cash that you can lose, I explain to him it goes into the bank, you lose the card, you can replace it, the money's still there.

Oh he's beginning to understand as he's buying things for himself how quickly money goes out and how slow it comes in.

Because when you have a stake in the ground in the situation, you spend different.

When you have a stake in the ground in someone's life, you pray different.

When you have someone in your life that does not know God, and if they died today, they would die and go to hell, you pray different.

When you have a season in your life when you have no answers but a whole lot of questions, you begin to ask different questions.

You begin to turn to the one who can only supply the answer that you need in this season of your life.

And I belong to the king.

Say it over yourself.

I belong to the king.

That means what I hear, my mind, my soul, my very words, my attitude, my home, my family, my job, my very thoughts, everything in my life belongs to Jesus.

Saying this gets me fired up because that means that everything that I have is in his hands.

And why won't he bless what is his?

I told y'all before when I, y'all, it was maybe a year and a half, and we got a in 2020, we got a new truck.

I'm not driving it now.

Some of y'all know the story, it doesn't matter, not a part of the story today.

Within a year and a half about of getting that truck, we paid it off.

But when I first got that truck, I sat out at the old house over on Lake Palestine.

I sat out there.

And Tristan was home, and I had my anointing oil out.

I was sitting in the truck, I had worship music on, and I'm praying in the truck and I'm anointing it.

Now, this is before I paid it off.

Granted, this was a debt that I signed for, that Jesse signed for, and that we agreed to.

And so I'm sitting there, not asking for it to be paid off.

I'm not.

All I'm doing is taking what God gave me that I loved and felt was a blessing, and I gave it back to him.

How many times do we ask God to bless things that we have not yet put in his possession?

We say, God, we want you to do this, but let me hold on to that.

When you start to really self-examine and begin to pour out your heart to God and say, God, whatever is in here is yours.

You know what happens?

Now the enemy knows he has to try harder.

That's why it is called spiritual warfare, not spiritual patty cake.

It's real work that you have to put into to sustain your soul, to make sure you stay safe, because there's so much grabbing that the devil is cunning.

He is smart, he's been doing this for a few years.

In the Garden of Eden, it only took one fruit.

Think about it.

How easily are we allowing fruit to dangle in front of us and we partake?

And then wonder why God is throwing us out of the garden.

So be ready for war.

When you begin to pray specifically and you get intentional and you regain your focus on what God wants you to focus with, the real war begins to happen.

Because the devil didn't have to try so hard because you were just doing whatever.

He didn't really have to work on you.

But now that you've got your focus again, he'll come after your kids, he'll come after your spouses, he'll come after your relatives, your job, he'll even try to get in your church.

But we have the authority through Christ Jesus and the power of the Holy Ghost to look him in the face and say, shut up, get out.

You do not belong here.

Because this is what happens.

You cannot fight against the enemy if you don't understand the enemy's tactics.

So you need to understand that the enemy is going to try to come after you, and what you need to do is self-examine what am I least able to fight on my own.

For instance, there's no kids in here.

Some of you may have issues with pornography.

You may have to unplug your internets to protect you from what God is trying to do in your life.

Because the enemy knows it takes one pop-up, one picture on Instagram, one YouTube short, something that pops up on your feed, and all of a sudden you've ingested it and you didn't even mean to, and now you're thinking about things you shouldn't be thinking about.

If you can't stop lusting with your eyes, you better have a home gym instead of going to the real one.

Because they got all kinds of things up in places that shouldn't be.

That's all I'm gonna say.

There's certain gyms here in Longview that I heard about.

I said, I'm never going there.

Thank God I've only seen guys mostly at the gym that I go to now.

Yeah, I'm one of the ones that got a gym membership, but I am going.

Okay, I am going.

I ain't gonna be able to fit in my shirts.

Sorry.

I'm gonna praise the Lord and rip the sleeve out.

Whoa, come on, Jesus.

But we have to recognize the enemy's tactics, we have to understand what he's trying to do.

If you are a drama queen, he's gonna try to introduce some drama.

If you like to get mad, he's gonna give you reasons to get you angry.

If you're like me and you can mouth real good, he'll try to get you in situations where you lose your cool and just shoot your mouth off.

He knows where we're weak.

He has been watching you, he's been having people, spirits following you around to see how he can hang you up in whatever way he can.

Some of y'all need to start casting the spirit out of your house.

Some of y'all need to get that Crisco oil, whatever you want to do.

Pop that cap off and start pouring that joke until everybody's slicked up.

I told uh, she's not here today, but I told uh Trisha.

She was talking about anointing her complex.

I said, put put that oil in a in a water gun and start shooting the whole place up.

God didn't say nothing about how to, he just said apply.

You think it's funny, but how serious are you to get those demons and those voices out of your life?

We've been playing patty cake and playing footsie under the table while sitting at the king's table with the devil.

We want to date him.

Oh, it's not serious.

We just want to date the devil just a little bit.

Oh, no, no, no, I'm not gonna bring him home with me.

Guaranteed you have an assignment on your life that the devil, come on, that the devil, he knows your potential.

He sees the angels following you around, saying, Come on, baby, come on, baby, just one more step.

I know it's been heavy, but come on, come on, one more time.

Get back up, dust yourself off, dust yourself off.

He knows, he knows the potential that you have, and the devil is busy because if he can distract you, he can rob you of your destiny.

There are three voices if you're taking those today.

I'm gonna go through it quick.

Number one, external voices, the news, social media, politicians on whatever side, they're all a bunch of morons, and they're worried about themselves.

Celebrities.

We have kids today that look up and will argue.

You may do it too.

If you are, I'm calling you out.

Argue on behalf of someone they've never met, saying, Oh, they wouldn't do that.

They lie and pretend to be somebody else for a living.

Shut up.

Shut up.

Sorry.

Celebrities, artists, musical artists.

I was talking with somebody, it may have been just this morning, I think, or yesterday, said, I've been holding on to things and I'm not I'm not in that life anymore.

Why have I been holding on to it?

God is doing something and regrouping our focus in this house.

Someone that you admire or influences who you are.

These are external voices outside of your house, outside of your church, people you will never run into.

So it's very difficult to discern the good or the bad because you don't have anything to go off of.

Just what you see at face value on the TV.

You really know, and you can't really know or see if they are who they say they are, which in return gives you more confidence in the knowledge that I'm sharing with you, I hope.

Because you can't see who they really are.

External voices in the distance.

And then we have local voices.

Now, these are some of you have mentors, people you've looked up with, people that have brought you up as you've grown up, parents, church friends, mom, dad, wife, husband, sister, whatever, a pastor, a boss at work, pretty much anyone inside of your immediate circle is local.

This would be someone who is directly in your circle of influence.

They are the people you interact with and allow to speak into you daily and weekly.

And then we have number three.

And this is the one I want you to focus on because every single one that I've just named, external, way out there, internal, I'm sorry, uh local, that is in your immediate sphere, they all manipulate, control, and speak into the internal voice.

And that's number three.

Internal voices, thoughts that you have inside your head.

I said it a minute ago.

Whatever you are thinking, whatever you think over and over again, if you say, I am nothing, I am nothing, I am nothing, guess what?

You will begin to believe that you are nothing and God could not use you.

This is pretty self-explanatory, but every single layer back into this internal voice.

For let me give you a real world example.

Some of y'all probably laugh at this.

And listen, if you think of a person and it's like the person that you're sitting next to or in the church, just keep looking forward at the screen, please.

So let's say, this is just a random example, has nothing to do with anything around here.

Let's just say something happens on TV.

Let's say it's political.

Maybe some sort of political nonsense, and well, then brother so-and-so, he watches it in his house.

Okay.

Well, he comes to church and he pushes it on you.

Notice I use the word push, pushes it on you when he sees you.

Now listen to this.

So now your thoughts, your internal, have been affected by someone local who was feeding off of something that was external.

You are being infiltrated, manipulated, and forced to consume something that you never actually saw for yourself.

Do you see why very quickly, if you don't tell the voices to shut up, that they can manipulate who God wants you to be?

We do this all the time.

It begins to plant seed in your heart and in your mind.

And it can make you, it can make you angry, it can make you bitter, it can make you upset, and it could be something that was lost in translation that wasn't even actually said.

That's also scary because you're getting it through the filter of a person that's telling you the story that happened, and then you go and research it and you're like, wait a minute, I've been mad for three weeks and that didn't even actually happen.

Hey, 2% of what this person said was the only story part of it, and they they just went off and put their own two cents in it.

But things like that constantly infect us when we never come in direct contact contact with those external voices.

So it's easy to allow things that should not have a home in our minds and our hearts to be allowed to grow in the gardens of our hearts.

This is why it is so important for us to shut down and shut up the voices trying to speak into our lives.

We live in a day of mass distractions.

We have distractions.

These voices can be a key root of that bitterness, anger, lust, envy, coveting.

Before we as followers of Christ, we have to keep our focus on him.

Look at John chapter 8, verse 47.

John 8:47

And it says this anyone who belongs to God listens gladly to the words of God.

But you, he's not even asking a question, but you don't listen, and you don't belong to God.

There's a verse in the scripture that says, and it talks about how people that will call God Lord, they won't even actually know who He is.

No matter if it fits my narrative, makes me feel better, makes me look better, makes me feel good, makes me feel justified.

I want all the nonsense between me and God to be clear so that I can clearly hear what he has to say for me.

The cool thing about God is that he loves us so much, he's looking to specifically talk to each person in here to show how much he cares and loves you.

He's so attentive to the father role in our lives that he will speak in a way that you hear.

It won't be the way he speaks to me because it won't be the way that I listen.

But we want to turn our ear to God.

Why?

Because we want our faith to fuel that we believe in him.

But the Bible just said that if we don't even listen to him, we don't belong to him.

For far too long, we have allowed outside external noises to just fill the air around us and consume our time.

We're going through this fast right now.

And Sister Jesse and I, we we decided, she decided it first, and then she she got me with one and she didn't even know it.

She said, mindless scrolling.

And then realized, oh my goodness, why do I keep picking up my phone?

And I didn't realize how much time I have been donating, I give it freely, free of charge.

That I've been donating my time and effort on something that does not do anything but feed me nonsense and clouds my mind and my very soul.

I hear you, God.

Josh, I think last year he decided to say, Man, I signed off.

I didn't do nothing.

Driving down the road.

Hit a stoplight.

My phone's on the thing on the dash in front of me.

What do I do?

I grab my phone.

You see, and this is kind of a nice way to put it.

On on every cell phone, a smartphone at least, you do this thing and you call it called enabling push notifications.

And we have invited into our lives distractions that even boldly say they are pushing us, and we just let it happen.

We have allowed ourselves, our time to be consumed and then say, we don't have time to do this for God.

We've allowed distractions, influences, and voices to be so loud in our lives that we have literally lost our focus on what actually matters.

It don't matter if this thing errs or not, it matters if people find Jesus.

I want you to ask yourself this.

When was the last time that you felt deep in your spirit, in your soul, that God spoke to you and told you to do something or not to do something?

And did you listen?

Or do you continue to make decisions in your life and you never even ask for his opinion?

Like we said in the beginning, you cannot serve two masters.

You cannot say you love God but embellish in the world.

I want to see miracles again.

I want to see dead people come back to life.

I want to see legs to be regrown.

I want to see the very life that has been robbed in someone's life to be restored, to joy to come back.

Where in this very moment, in this dark season, for some reason, they won't stop dancing, they won't stop laughing, they won't stop praising the one true God.

It's not because of what he's done for us, but because of what he's done in us.

We know that he is the author of life.

He takes and he gives, he restores and he rebukes.

But we love him, even though he may slay me, we still cling to him because we know that in everything he is working it together for our good, even in the bad.

This is why some of you are new here today, but I say this almost every Sunday.

Challenge of 17, five minutes in prayer, five minutes of reading a word, and five minutes of worship.

These are very small amounts of time, and you can even overlap them and do them together.

But this is so you get a taste of what God can do when you give Him a little.

And then one small act of faith every single day.

I've said it before, I'll say it again.

Some of y'all it's just waking up.

You may be so deep and dark and depression, some of you is just even putting your feet on the ground and going and doing what you gotta do.

So you can get back and go to bed and shut the world down again.

Some of you it may be in your own house.

Some of you, it may be with your children, it may be in your relationships.

But one small act of faith, wait, if you're if you went like me and you went back, started going back to the gym, man, after the first day, I could barely walk.

I didn't want to go anywhere out in public because it looked so stupid because I was all sore and weird.

It's like places I don't even know I was supposed to be sore.

Like I didn't even lift a weight there, and I'm like, why is it like that?

And I didn't do a whole lot.

Because I got bad shoulder.

Sorry, I got bad shoulder.

So when I lift a certain weight, like right there, there's pain shooting through my shoulder.

So I have to be very intentional and careful.

Some of us feel like we're doing something in life just because we're swinging around a bunch of weight, but you could hurt yourself or somebody else, and you end up damaging the very thing you were trying to grow.

Small little steps are huge if you are headed in the right direction.

And invite one person to church every week.

Five minutes in prayer, five minutes of reading, five minutes of worshiping.

You have to exercise that faith muscle.

If you don't, your faith will be weak.

You ever read how many times Jesus said to the disciples, You've little faith?

Where is your faith?

I'm sure in Hebrew or Greek it probably says dummy in there somewhere.

Or moron.

I'm pretty sure that was more accurate.

Over and over and over again.

You know why?

They were never exercising any, they were just following.

I do not want a church that just follows, but they exercise their faith.

That will go into hospitals and lay their hands on the sick and they recover.

That we understand and we know here that when we bind together and we pray and we agree any on one thing, God will move heaven and earth for his children.

This 21 day fast that we're doing, it's been my prayer for us in our house, and for you and yours.

That God begins to show you things not in everyone else but in yourself.

Now, listen to me.

This is Proverbs.

No discipline seems pleasant.

At the time.

But everything that you allow the Spirit of God to take out or put in will be for your good.

Some of the things that the Spirit needs to take out of us, the roots are so deep, it will be painful.

But we have to be willing and allow the Spirit of God to do it, not our flesh.

If you try to use fleshly things to get that out of your heart, it will only produce more flesh, you'll end up with weeds.

You ever had a garden and you go out there and you're like, well, I didn't plant those weeds.

You never do.

They show up uninvited.

The same happens in your heart.

If you do not intentionally every day tend to the garden of your heart and be led by the Spirit of what you need to do, what needs to be grown, what needs to be removed.

If you do not allow God that place in your life, you do not know Him.

God wants us as a church to get our focus back.

Now I've been saying this since I've been filling this pulpit full time.

That I my vision for this church is to grow mature Christians.

That they do not need a pastor to come hold their hand to take care of something.

Because one day there's going to be people out of this congregation that is going to rise up and we will be sending out as pastors.

That we will be sending out as evangelists.

That they will do something in Longview, Texas that will affect the rest of this world.

But we have to be good stewards of what God has given us today and be available to see for the vision of tomorrow.

And that starts with maturity.