Work Your Wait

Y'all like each other too much.

It's good to be in the house of the Lord.

Amen.

I say it almost every week.

This is better than any county jail you can find In any county.

I'm not saying this place will keep you out of jail, but it might help.

It's so awesome to be able to come together with a like-minded people and worship our Father.

Every Sunday to me is like Christmas For us.

For Christmas when we leave, leave and we go up to my moms and my dads.

We go up there and we get to see and we get to sit around with a bunch of people we hadn't seen in a while and we just get to bask in the atmosphere of family.

That's what a church is called to be.

We're meant to be a family of God.

I, I got some of y'all trained, y'all doing good over here.

Y'all doing good, y'all doing good.

If you'll stand for the reading of the word, if you don't have a paper Bible, I'm sure you can download an app.

Some of you that are still on analog may have a flip phone.

That's okay, we'll pray for you.

I'm just kidding, just kidding, just kidding.

Don't get mad, don't get.

I know you.

You don't have to guess who's got them?

They raise their hand proudly.

Those things are indestructible.

I don't remember a time when I had a flip phone that I had to get it repaired.

When they first came out with those Nokia bricks and snake was on it, I thought the world was changing and it was.

I could punt that thing or run over it with my car and it didn't matter, it was still going to be okay.

So today we're going to be.

If you want to look it up, I also have a slide up here for you James, chapter one, verse 22 through 25.

I love the book of James.

James starts off in his book man, he don't care, he just starts off kicking and biting and scratching.

He starts off Listen, this is only in the first chapter, the 22nd verse.

This is not far into it.

But be doers say doers, doers of the word and not hearers only.

And he backs in that with deceiving yourself.

Because if you're only listening and you're not doing, you're deceiving yourself, thinking that you know who God is.

Uh-oh, I'm sorry.

The spirit of James came on me and I started this service off with a kick 23,.

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror at his natural face in a mirror, for he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.

Anybody know who 10 Second Tom is Never mind, I know the cameraman does, he was that for Halloween last year but the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres being no hearer who regrets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

Let's pray, father, we thank you so much for your presence that is already so evident here today.

I pray, god, that every person under the sound of my voice, whether they are in a seat or they are watching on their couch online, that the Holy Spirit infiltrate and penetrate the stone hearts.

That your word transform us and leave us like we have never been before.

That everyone leaves here changed, renewed and restored.

In Jesus' name, I pray Amen.

I speak that over y'all every week, because if you come and you sit comfortably in a padded seat and you don't do anything that the word of God says, you are living in a malnourished Christianity.

Before we get started, before I get too far into it because I will lose my track.

I've got to follow my notes.

If you go to this church and you want to be a member of this church or you want to get to know our church better, we have what we call a Connect Growth Track, and what that is is you get to know our church better.

We have what we call a connect growth track, and what that is is you get to know what we believe fundamentally.

We get to know our core values, our core beliefs, where we stand on the Bible and what the word says.

You need to know.

If you come to a church, you don't need to just to come to consume, you need to contribute and to do that, you need to know what we're selling.

And then, on the second half of that, we do the spiritual gifts assessment, which is kind of cool.

It's one of my favorite parts because we get to go around and we take this little test.

I give you this booklet and you take it home.

Don't get overwhelmed.

There's 200 questions.

You don't have to write essays, they're just fill in the blank and it's a number system and it's kind of a rough estimate of where you are spiritually inside, because if you want to serve in a church but you don't like people, you probably shouldn't be in the kids.

If you don't like kids, don't work with the kids.

If you're not a praiser and you're not outwardly praising, you probably don't need to be on the worship team.

If you have a phobia of shaking people's hands, you probably shouldn't be a greeter at the door.

If you have a violent streak in you and your definition of laying hands on people and praying is a little bit different than mine, you probably shouldn't be on our prayer team.

So see how you're laughing and you're enjoying it for a moment.

That's what we do in our Connect group with the Growth Track.

We want you to understand who you are spiritually.

I was talking on the phone with somebody yesterday and they were talking about something they were going to and they were battling something, and I told her.

I said listen, let me tell you this.

When King David went to go fight the giant, he first went to King Saul.

When King David went to go fight the giant, he first went to King Saul.

And when he went to King Saul, he put on King Saul's armor and what happened was he went to a place to get something that he didn't need for the battle God had ahead for him.

He was trying to wear stuff and apply things to his life when God actually had been equipping him the entire time, and everything that he had in his possession was all that he needed to slay the giant that was coming his way.

You don't need anybody else's suit of armor.

You don't need to be.

You don't need anybody else's blessing.

You don't need their vehicle I promise you'll be okay getting from A to B.

You don't need their clothes.

You don't need their shoes and I love shoes.

I'm just hint hint, baby.

You don't need other people's preparation for the battles you're about to face.

Where you are and who you are is exactly what you're going to need to face the giants that's coming your way.

The things that he was trying to put on him was weighing him down.

So you need to know spiritually where you stand, what gifts you have, because when you have those gifts, the Bible says that it's not for you, it's for the body, because a hand cannot be a foot, an ear cannot be an eye, a mouth, even though sometimes we want it to be ears.

You have two ears, one mouth.

Hear more, talk less, he said.

I wish I could do that.

Well, the Lord's still working in the house.

Amen, come on.

You ain't the holy one, brother.

So you need to know who you are spiritually, and that's what we're trying to do with this growth track.

We want you to see you.

That's one of the hardest things in life to do is to be able to see yourself clearly.

Because, look, david obviously didn't see himself clearly, or he would not have went to put on the armor If he would have seen that what God was preparing him for in the field of waiting was preparing him for the battle to come, and that, in between, was not for him to go and get the armor that didn't belong to him.

So you need to know how to prepare in your spirit for the battles to come, because it rains on the just and the unjust.

The battles are coming, no matter how much you close your eyes and wish they wouldn't.

So you need to be properly prepared in your spirit, because we wrestle not against flesh and blood.

I don't care who you like or who you don't, they're not the enemy.

There's things that we can't see, and we can't fight spiritual battles with fleshly tools.

So we also have, besides the Connect group, everything.

Not this week, but next week there's going to be a sign-up sheet.

We have a continuation, probably going to start in May, a continuation of the growth track and this is the history of the church of God.

This is a deeper walk and step on what we believe as far as details, and it's going to be a continuation.

I mean the book is that thick and it's about that big.

It's one of them old school books and it's got some good meat in there.

Brother Howard up there in the sound booth if you don't know who he is by the end of the day, make sure you do.

We're going to have a sign-up sheet and it's going to take you deeper into what we believe, and that's actually what it's called deeper, because we need to be going deeper in the Lord, we need to be.

The last will and testament of Jesus Christ, before he ascended to the Father, was to go and make disciples.

Before he ascended to the Father was to go and make disciples, and I believe with all of my heart that is still our mission today to find people that don't know Jesus, bring them to salvation, lead them to the Spirit and let them get to know God better and more, so that when they have their own storm and battles.

They already have their weapons that they have been forging in our classes weapons that they have been forging in our classes, because if we send people out and we have not properly equipped them, their blood is on our hands.

If you know, anything that I've been saying is that I believe in discipleship.

If you want a weak church that will eventually wither away, no matter how new the building is, no matter how happy the people are, if we do not disciple, we will die.

So everything that we say in here will be out there in the foyer, in that far table out there.

So normally I start my sermon off with telling a story and I give you some sort of life experience.

But we're going to skip that today.

We're going to go right into the doer.

Skip that today.

We're going to go right into the doer.

Today's title is hear and do, hear and do.

We're really good at hearing.

We're not that great at listening.

We're even worse at doing.

So I want you, throughout this message today, I want you to ask yourself am I just a listener?

Self-examination, you know I'm big on that.

The church has to be looking at ourselves before we tell other people how to get their house in order.

We need to be looking inward at what's going on inside of us.

A doer, are you a doer?

And if you are not, for a low $19.95, I'm just kidding Are you willing to do what it takes to become a doer?

Now, what that's going to charge you with is stepping outside of who you normally are.

We call that the comfort zone.

Anybody know the twilight zone?

Sorry, there's like three people in there.

Did nobody else watch TV, my goodness?

So to give you a little bit of context from the verses that we just read, if you back up just a little bit I didn't give this to the team, but I want to back up just a little bit and we look at verses 19 through 20.

And James says this.

It says understand this, my dear brothers and sisters, you must all be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow, slow to get angry.

I'm pretty sure when they were writing this, james was like can we put like four O's in there, right, just so they know to slow down and don't get so angry, because a lot of times before we get upset if we slow down and think it's not really that big of a deal.

I have a policy for me personally.

You can do whatever you want, but when I get upset with somebody, or someone texts me and they, for lack of a better term, rip me a new one and try to just ruin my day, I wait 24 hours before I respond because I do not want to tarnish the ministry that is God's in my life.

I don't want to tarnish the witness that is the Lord's in my life.

So if I wait 24 hours, I have time to pray.

I can even skip a meal and fast.

So now we're getting serious.

I can talk to God and read the word and see what he is trying to tell me before I tell them something.

Because guess what, when I do that, all of a sudden I put the spirit in the driver's seat and I take the control of the flesh out of it.

Slow to get angry Verse 20.

Slow, that probably be the only thing I'll remember all week.

Slow, I don't know.

The pastor's saying he was slow, I don't remember.

Verse 20 says human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires.

Hello, somebody, your anger, backed up with some scripture you read, does not make you righteous.

All right, I'm going to move on.

I'm righteous.

All right, I'm going to move on.

I'm going to move on.

I'm going to move on.

Don't use a scripture and hit somebody in the head.

All right, all right, all right, all right, let's go on.

We ain't going to talk about church hurt and church idiots today.

All right, verse 21.

So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save souls.

When you get rid of the filth in your life, it puts into action the power God has for you, and that power saves souls.

If nobody around you is getting saved, you're full of the devil.

Okay, let's replace it with the less hard word, flesh.

If the devil is your enemy, that will get you and lead you in the wrong path, and the flesh is the same thing.

Hello, hello.

That's why you have to be born again, because you've got to be reborn and get that flesh out of your system and pick up your cross daily, this power that is given to us through Christ Jesus.

Here's what happens.

We sit in the pews and beg God for miracles that we have the power to speak into.

Pews and beg God for miracles that we have the power to speak into.

We beg God for prayers to be answered when he has given us the authority.

Some of y'all ain't been walking around with authority.

So James is saying here be willing to listen, because listening is so important.

If you don't listen, you won't learn.

If you don't learn, you cannot do Pair with listening.

This is the key element here.

Don't stop at listening.

Start putting what you have learned into action.

To do, to do, say do, do you have to do something?

We get into a really good groove sitting in the pews, being all comfortable with the pads and the air conditioning on.

We get really good at listening, saying amen even louder than the person next to us, us oh, I got this.

And we become what I like to call idle listeners or, if you want to play on words and the letters, lazy listeners.

Laziness is the precursor for not doing.

If you didn't know, y'all ain't trying to shout me down, but that's okay, it's getting a little thick in here.

All right, let's keep going.

If we wonder why God isn't doing oh, come on, we're about to get real.

If you're wondering why God's not doing what he used to do, maybe those signs, those miracles, those wonders that we wonder God, where are you?

The listener is not putting into action the word that has been instructed for us to do.

Let me say that again the listener is not putting into action what the word has instructed us to do.

Turn to your neighbor and say do Now.

Turn to your second choice and say do Now.

Y'all know who you are.

We must be willing to do.

If we want God to move, we, as the vessels, have to be willing to do.

You know, a vessel is great but it is pointless if all it does is hold At some point.

At some point, the vessel that is willing to be filled needs to pour out so that it can be refilled again.

Because if you have something sitting in a vessel and there's no movement, it becomes stale, stagnant and it is the breeding ground for the devil's mosquitoes Mosquitoes.

I don't know what the point is, but it's got to be something of the devil.

I feel the same way about coconut.

Now hear me out, all right.

So when the devil was thrown out of this is just a little Stephen theology.

My wife loves coconut, so anything that she wants to eat dessert wise, and she don't want me to have some, she'll put coconut on it.

Her favorite is coconut cream pie, and she has convinced everyone else.

I believe that I like it, so that she can have it.

And so what this is?

I think that when the devil was cast out of heaven, he fell on that tree and it became a coconut tree.

That's just what I think.

I'm pretty sure it's in the Bible somewhere.

But if we want God to move, we have to accompany that with do.

We have to be willing to pour out so that we don't become stale and complacent and stagnant.

Now, why is action so important?

Why must James be so blunt here in this passage?

Probably because he was talking to a bunch of church people.

Hello, you ever think about that?

When they start getting real, they're not talking to sinners, they're talking to church people.

Because when we, when he was writing this and speaking to the people of faith, he knew that us in our faith, after being seasoned in our faith, we become lazy.

Statistically, it only takes about five years for you to lose that fire that you got when you first came to the Lord, and after that it's just you trying to maintain.

Can we admit together that when everything is going great, we seek God less?

Oh, come on, some of y'all are admitting this.

Some of y'all are scared.

I'm not going to call you out unless God tells me to, but we can get really lazy on the doing part until there's a dire need in our lives.

Until we need something from God, we start crying out to him oh Lord, where are you?

Oh Lord, I don't feel you anymore.

Oh Lord, save my brother, save my wife, save my husband, my father, my mother Go down the list.

Whatever you want to do, lord, I need this job.

Lord, where are you?

Show up in my situation?

And the fact is he's never left.

You've just stopped looking to him when all is well.

Our prayer life, our reading God's word, our doing family devotions.

Can I admit something to y'all?

We try, every Sunday night, to do a family devotion with our son.

He's 13.

God, help us, oh, my goodness.

Oh, y'all pray.

He thanks, he has all the answers and he's never paid a bill in his life.

I'm like kid, where do you think money comes from?

Anyways, I'm going to get off that.

So, since he's especially being 13 and a 13 year old boy, we want to protect, lead and guide him through life, to be able to navigate through life based on scripture, based on the word of God, and so we try to have a Sunday night devotion with him every Sunday, but can I tell you that sometimes we skip or slack because we're doing something, or we're in the middle of something or we have something else on our agenda for that night and we don't really get back into it.

Hardcore until he messes up.

Am I the only real person in here?

This is how we do our spiritual walk.

All the time.

We get so unfocused on God and get so distracted.

I don't know my phone's down there.

I was going to show you.

I didn't want it to make noise like like it did before.

But we have something You're welcome Sound people.

Call them the sound folk.

We have something that is always attached to us.

There's always grabbing for our attention and we say that we don't have time to read the word of God.

When it's not we don't have time.

It's that we don't have focus, that we lack in our priorities.

All right, all right.

Sharing the gospel with people.

When is the last time that you actually shared the gospel with people?

Now, the reason sometimes I think some of us don't is because we're not full of the gospel in our private time and we're not ready in the public time.

All right, let's go back to my notes.

It's almost as if God has to light a fire under us with some sort of tragedy or mishap for us to regain our focus again, or mishap for us to regain our focus again.

So we start slacking on the action part of our faith.

So all I can tell you is from my own experience Tristan I just said he was 13.

And the further he gets into his teenage years, if I'm giving him instruction and he has his phone in his hand or he is playing on a game in his room or he's outside playing with his friends, I can walk up to him in his little face and tell him exactly what I want him to do.

When I want it done, how I want it done, I will walk away and 30 minutes come back and he has no clue what I told him to do.

How many times does God hmm, how many times does God have to get in our face and say I'm trying to help you.

You can't see what's coming down the road.

I'm trying to help you get your focus back.

Stay looking to me, stay looking at me, stay looking at me.

Peter, we see he was so brave and had faith.

He had action.

He was a man of action stepped out of the boat and he lost focus and his action meant nothing because he lost his focus and he had to be saved at that last moment.

We have to keep our focus Actions.

So listen, how much more does God expect action from us?

If we talk this way to our kids and we're expecting?

Or if you're a boss at a job somewhere or you're over some people and you tell them to do something, you come back an hour later and it's still not done, or they did it.

It drives me nuts.

And they have to do something Like don't even do it.

If you're going to make me have to do the rest of it anyways, that drives me insane.

I would rather you say I'm not going to do a good job you probably should find someone else than to try to do it.

Try to do it and you just don't care anyways.

Get off that soapbox.

But action requires follow-through.

Follow-through requires faithfulness.

You see, we want the blessing without I said this last week we want the blessing without the burden.

We want God's blessings to rain down on us, but we don't want to be bothered.

Let me explain how our flesh works.

We say with our mouths pour out your spirit, god, but won't empty ourselves out for him to fill us.

You ever heard of analysis or paralysis of the analysis?

I have an online store that sells shirts and hats and whatever else, and if you this I researched this it's a psychological thing If you give too many color options instead of purchasing something, they will wait because they don't know which color to pick.

They will not pick because there's too many options.

We have so many options.

We have so many things.

We have so many things.

We have so much knowledge being poured into us constantly, both good and bad, and then, when we try to study the word, we get sidetracked all the time.

We don't see the results of God pouring out His Spirit like we used to, because we aren't willing to spend time with Him privately.

Here's some truth If you're hungry for God, you won't wait till Sunday to eat.

If you are truly hungry for God, if you're truly hungry for revival, if you're truly hungry for a move of God in every single service, in every facet of your life, every single thing that you touch and speak, it happens.

Things move, mountains move when God's children speak.

If you want that to happen, you got to stop eating only on Sundays.

We won't submit our minds.

We won't submit our hearts.

We won't submit our agendas, our lives, to his will.

We allow.

Listen, let's get real for a second.

Let's just right here, take a snapshot.

We allow politics, worldly culture and celebrities to dictate the truth for us.

We get the truth from them and say that that's what it is.

I watched a celebrity the other day and they were talking about they were a Christian and they were like well, that's what it is.

I watched a celebrity the other day and they were talking about they were a Christian and they were like well, it's just my truth.

There's no my truth.

There is only one truth and it is the truth from the word of God and there's no getting around it.

Romans 3, 4,.

It says this even if everyone else is a liar, god is true.

Your level of commitment should match your words.

We live in a day where people will fight online faster.

They don't want to face problems.

They want to Facebook them If something's going wrong in their life.

We want to post pictures and write a 15-parag paragraph page about what's going on.

By the time I get done reading, I could have came over and solved your problem.

If you do that, don't feel convicted.

That's just a me thing.

But listen, what are you investing your time in?

Instead of actually solving problems, we prefer sympathy.

All right, let's go back.

Your level of commitment should match the words that you speak.

There was a day in time where when you shook a man's hand and you said words out of your mouth, it meant something.

Today, you got to get it in writing, because everybody's a liar and they will backstab you and manipulate.

Your words should have value.

We need to get back to the place where our words that we speak have value.

That's why people aren't pouring into the churches, because there's so many words coming out with no value.

There's no substance because it's not based on scripture, and your thoughts and your heart should not be manipulated by external sources that have no business speaking into your life.

I'll say it one more time your thoughts and your heart do not allow an external force to manipulate what God's trying to do inside of you.

You got to cling to what you know is true the word of the living God.

There is no other truth.

The biggest trick of the enemy is to get you looking at something that almost looks like the truth.

It's just so close that you think it starts making you question what you know.

And it gets you in your feelings and your thoughts and all of a sudden you start wavering just a little bit.

And all of a sudden you're over here doing things you never like.

Other people think you're weird.

We've got to cling to truth and, like James says, it can be like you looking at a mirror, walking away and forgetting what you look like.

That's what truth is today.

Almost.

It's that sense of oh, this must be true.

So you go over here and all of a sudden you don't even remember what you read, because the devil's out to manipulate you.

And Luke, jesus says this.

Now listen.

Chapter 6, verse 46 through 49.

I think Luke and James had a lot in common.

I mean Jesus and James had a lot in common because the way that they spoke, when they spoke, it was real.

Verse 46, in Luke, chapter 6, it says so why do you keep calling me Lord, lord, when you don't do what I say?

Luke 6 · chapter mention

Can you imagine if you were the one he was talking to?

Can you imagine if he was here today?

Would he be saying it to you?

Let's go back.

Verse 47, I will show you what it's like when someone comes to me, listen to my teaching and follows it.

Action, action, action.

Verse 48,.

It's like a person building a house who digs deep and lays the foundation on solid rock.

When the flood water rise and break against the house, it stands firm because it was well built.

Verse 49, but anyone who hears and doesn't obey are you hearing a theme?

If you hear and you don't obey, it is like a person who builds a house right on the ground without a foundation.

When the floods sweep against that house, it will collapse in a heap of ruins.

Now ask yourself do you only hear or do you also obey?

Are you a Christian by label or are you a Christian by definition?

There's a big difference.

One of those things will define you.

The other thing will just make you feel better about yourself.

Matthew, chapter 7.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

If you want to write this down, you can look up later.

We also have it on the screen if you want to take a screenshot or a photo with your phone.

Matthew, chapter 7, 21 through 27.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

We're going to read some scripture.

It's all in the same thing Hear and do hear and do hear and do.

You have to hear it and you also have to apply it.

Verse 21, this is why it's so important.

Not everyone who calls out to me, lord, lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.

Only those who actually do say do, those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter.

Have you been come on, self-examine yourself?

Have you been following the will of God, or have you been wrapped up in your own business and your own agenda and doing what you want to do without the stamp of approval from God?

So what we do?

We like to put our plan out and get God's stamp of approval Instead of seeking after his will.

God, what do you want me to do?

Verse 22, it says on judgment day, many will say to me now listen to this, this is serious.

Many will say to me Lord, lord, we prophesied in your name.

They were actually speaking prophecy, real prophecy, in his name and cast out demons in your name and perform miracles in your name.

They are listing all kinds of action that they have been doing in the name of Jesus.

Verse 23, it says but I will reply.

I never knew you.

Get away from me, you who break God's laws.

Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock.

Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won't collapse.

It is built on bedrock.

But anyone who hears my teaching and does not obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand.

He's repeating himself the same again in Matthew.

When the rains and the floods come and the winds beat against the house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.

If you're not following the principles and guidelines that Jesus is telling us that we need to be listening to, he will say depart from me.

I don't come up with this.

This is not a pastoral thing that gives you a list of things you need to do.

This is a teaching from the word of God.

This is outlined for us by God.

If you are not listening and following what God has for you in your life, you are listening, you are following sorry, you are living only in a portion of what he has available for you.

If you're only living out the little bit, you're not doing the whole, but you're doing a little bit.

You're cherry picking from the word what you want to follow.

That fits how you want to live.

You're only living in a portion of the destiny, the divine destiny that God has for you.

You're only living in a small portion, a fraction of what God has and is available for you to live in.

If you don't know, you're about to know.

We're a Pentecostal-believing church.

What does that mean?

That means that we believe there's something beyond Christianity.

There's something beyond accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

There is something that a lot of people in the pews lack, and it is that power.

You need to be seeking, in the fullness of God, what that power is in your life.

If you want to speak and cast out and all these other things, you better get the full power, because you're only living in a portion of what God has available for you, only a portion.

You got to do, you got to do, you got to hear.

You got to do, you got to do, you got to hear, you got to do.

This is why a big part of the challenge of 17, five minutes of prayer, five minutes of reading your word, five minutes of praising him is so important.

To do that before you start your day.

It's your field of preparation before you go out to your battles.

I don't know about you, but I can't tell what's ahead.

I can't see the future.

I don't know what's going to happen when these idiots in traffic try to run me off the road.

I've got to prepare myself so that when I say this a lot, but when you're on the fast side of the lanes, if you're going 30 and it's a 55 or a 70, if you're going 30 and it's a 55 or a 70, find Jesus and get over.

That's all I'm saying.

That's all I'm saying.

I'm going to leave that right there.

The Holy Spirit will convict you.

But the rest of that, five, five and five, five minutes of prayer, five minutes of reading your word, five minutes of praising him and these can happen simultaneously at the same time.

The thing is, once you start dipping into the word and you start really getting a taste of who God is, you get so hungry that you want to start connect groups, that you want to start doing things in the church house Instead of being a consumer.

You want to start doing things in the church house instead of being a consumer, you want to contribute.

Every person has a role to play.

Every person has a part.

Even if it's praying every week for this body of believers, that will be more powerful than anything.

And then we add two more things the five.

Five and five makes 15.

One more is invite one person to church every single week.

You need to be spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to people around you and if you have that joy in your life, maybe people's not coming to church that you go to because of the way you act.

Whoa, whoa you.

Okay, let's land it softly now.

Let's come back in Circle back around.

I found the landing zone All right.

But this other thing is faith.

The reason I made it up to 17 is because you need sorry, you need this prayer.

You need this praise.

Have you ever?

We've talked about this a little bit some of the people on the worship team before service started.

We know people in our lives we're not saying it's our wives or anything.

We know people in our lives that they don't wake up in the best moods anybody else.

You wake up and you're like I ain't ready to see the world yet, I don't need to get up.

If I see somebody, I'm gonna go to jail and then I will come be visiting you in County.

But there's things that we do.

There's things we need to do to prepare for the day, because sometimes we could just wake up.

It could be a bad dream.

One time Jessie woke up to me and she was like you, jerk, in her dream I cheated on her Like baby, you can't hold that against me.

Go get your five, five and five on, girl.

But there's things like that.

We can be manipulated in our sleep and wake up in bad moods.

Or before we leave the house we can have a spat with an aunt, an uncle, a mom, a dad, a sister, a brother or a husband and wife.

Doubtedly not in this church, but it's possible that maybe you got to get resaved by the time you get to church on your Sunday morning drive in.

But there's things that we got to prepare ourselves for in our spirit.

If not, we're fighting without weapons.

You got to have that small act of faith because with the prayer and the praising and the reading, without the action, if you're not being a doer and only a hearer, you are slacking in your walk.

There is so much more that god has available for you.

There's so many more blessings he pours out into his word that are available to you.

All he's asking for is for you to do, being available to him saying god, we went.

I don't know if I said this last week or not, but last weekend we were in a hotel because we had backup in our plumbing.

It threw a wrench in all the things that we had planned.

I come to church and my mind was 20 different places, besides all the other stuff.

I even came in.

We came in extra early today, so I can make sure my mind was right before I started and we were at the house before we left.

We packed up everything and Sister Jessie was upset.

I started off upset but I stood in my office for a few minutes and she was in the kitchen and she was not happy that we had to unplant our lives, and in the same town.

It was not a vacation, the same town.

We didn't get to see any new scenery, nothing.

And we had to go and spend two nights in a hotel room that didn't have all of our regular stuff in it.

Y'all know I like things the way I like things and none of my things were in there and we packed a little bag, her and I, we put our same stuff in the same bag.

I didn't know where nothing was and it was only this big.

I was getting frustrated.

This is stupid.

They wanted $800 to come and unplug a toilet or go down in the roof on a Saturday.

She was like we can go spend a hotel room, get a hotel room for two nights and not waste that money.

So we did and I walked in the kitchen and she's upset and I grabbed her because I'd already been praying about it, because what I'm trying to make myself do is to check myself and my spirit so that my flesh don't run the bus.

Too often times we have to do the cleanup business after after.

We allow our flesh to already do what it's going to do and then we ask God to fix the problem that we created in our flesh.

Hello, I went in there and I grabbed her by the arms and I said are you okay?

No, I knew she wasn't okay.

You know, like Jesus, he asked questions.

He knew the answers to trying to be Christ-like in the house.

You know what I'm saying.

And I said, baby, let me ask you this.

What I was like?

All right, calm down, tiger.

I said what if?

What we're doing and what is happening is God paving a path that he's asking us to walk down so that we can be a light to somebody.

What if you started looking at every circumstance in that way?

What if you started looking at every circumstance in that way?

What if you stopped getting upset?

Listen, I'm number one on that list of people that get upset.

When my routine is messed up, I get angry and I get aggravated.

You'll probably never know it, but just know that I'm stewing on the inside and I felt this release in my spirit.

That's like you know what, if my life belongs to the Father, if my life belongs to God, if who I am is supposed to be a mirror image of who he is?

I cannot even name all the uncomfortable places Jesus went and was fleeing for his life the entire time, but he went there because there was a purpose and a reason.

He had a calling to fulfill.

What have you been putting your calling on the back burner and you've been walking around not fulfilling your calling Because we become excellent hearers, lazy listeners, and we don't do.

I want to challenge you today as a piano player comes the reason faith is so important, the reason this challenge of 17, five minutes of prayer, five minutes of reading your word, five minutes of praising God and invite one person to church, is because the sheep need to be birthing the sheep Some of y'all literally doing that Good job and also you need to be walking in faith every single day.

That sounds like a lot, but listen, little, small steps lead to great gains in the spiritual world by you stepping out in faith and just saying hey, guess what?

When someone's mad and they are your waiter or waitress, you don't have to have an attitude back.

Oh, you can say look, it looks like you've had a bad day.

Can I pray with you?

I guarantee you the atmosphere will change.

The atmosphere changes when we act in faith.

God honors our faith.

When you start exercising that muscle of faith, start exercising that muscle of praise and prayer and reading, you become stronger.

And all of a sudden you're the one speaking to the mountains and you're not begging God for anything.

You speak it into existence and if he doesn't do it, you trust and believe anyways, because you're seeking for so important to be put into action.

So faith, so also faith by itself.

If it does not have works, it is dead.

That's pretty extreme.

That's pretty extreme.

So if you're not actively working in your faith, your spiritual walk is dying.

Verse 18 says Now someone may argue Not in church.

Come on, james.

Someone may argue Some people have faith and others have good deeds.

I have faith.

Others have those deeds to do.

But I say, how can you show me your faith if you don't have any good deeds?

I will show you my faith by my good deeds.

Action you must do.

God has called us to be more.

God has called us to do more than what we are currently doing.

How do I know that?

Because I'm the pastor of the church and I got places to work on.

So I know you do.

Are we not all in this together?

God has called every single person in here to be a hearer and doer of the word.

You must hear.

You must hear your intake, listen.

Your intake is equally as important as your outtake.

Whatever's going into you will soon come out when you're pouring in your 15, and you will get to 15, and I promise you it won't be enough If you apply this thing.

I listen to stuff going down the road.

Sometimes I'll just turn the radio and worship off and I'll just start praying.

You never know.

You never know, when God lays somebody on your heart, what your prayers are putting into the atmosphere around the person God's put on you.

I believe that when the children of God speak and we pray, it doesn't change some things, it changes everything, because I believe that his word is true and he is faithful, but we have got to do our part.

He shows up and shows out when his people believe and receive what he has for us.

Where you are right.

This is so awesome about God.

The word is the same way.

In your spiritual walk, there's always growth to be had.

And the word of God, brother, is so awesome about God.

The word is the same way.

In your spiritual walk, there's always growth to be had.

And the word of God.

Brother Howard was talking about this.

He said man, I have studied the four gospels and I look back and there's something else that I missed, because it's alive and active.

Allow it to be alive and active in your heart, because when it outflows from you, it will penetrate the stone hearts of the sinner.

That is the power of the word and that is the authority through the spirit.