Maximizing Maturity

I didn't do it, they did it.

I'm just saying, if y'all don't know, if you ever have an idea or you know of another ministry, it is our job to serve the community.

She is our outreach coordinator.

So if you have an idea, if you don't know her number before church is over, get it.

If you're watching online and you have some ideas, find her on Facebook.

So it is vital and important that we show our children how to serve others.

Can anybody else testify that we have lost that a little bit?

We're very self-serving.

I mean, there's a generation of selfies.

If we don't know what to do with it, we'll just make up a word Selfie.

Anybody have a selfie stick, don't lie.

My mom's got one, but it's just a little stick that plugs in your phone and you can push the button.

It takes your photo from far away.

She thought it was the coolest invention.

It was like somebody reinvented the wheel.

It was amazing cheap, cheapest, cheap, cheapest $10 Christmas I ever spent.

So, yes, get involved.

Go out there, find those boxes.

Get involved with kids.

If you don't have kids of your own, you can borrow mine.

I got a couple of good weeks so you can take them.

Baby, when are we going on vacation Just kidding, only a week.

So, if you don't know, yesterday was Brother Lewis he was one of the board members here Gaspard's funeral service.

It was over in Louisiana and we know that not everybody could travel over there.

It was a four-hour trip.

So we are going to this Saturday at two o'clock we're going to have a memorial service, just like we did for Richard.

Everybody can come in here.

We're going to Pastor Phil's going to come and he's going to kind of do the message and everything kind of what he did over there, and so it's going to be a time of rejoicing because he beat his home.

Is that not the goal?

It's very easy to get caught up in our lives and we forget that the real end goal is to make it into the father's arms.

Anybody ever get distracted before by making money or anything here?

I mean you can get distracted with life so easily.

Right now.

We have little devices in our pockets that the distractions come and find us.

They're called notifications and they aggravate me.

Yeah, I went through and started.

I was like I don't need to know what you're posting on YouTube when I want to come and find you.

I'll come and find you and see what I want to see.

But that is the world we live in.

So what can you do?

What can be done in your life right now to eliminate or to disarm the distractions in your life?

So Saturday, the 23rd, which is this coming Saturday, at 2 pm, we're going to havea memorial service here, and it's a good day to be in the house of the Lord.

So, if I know you just sat down, but if for one moment you'll stand, we're going to read a verse that is going to give you a little bit of foreshadowing into my message today and, if you want to turn with me, it's in 1 Corinthians 13.

And this is a well-known verse.

It's one that my dad quoted to me many, many years of my younger life.

When my dad couldn't get in my head, he would start quoting scripture and let God do it.

Can I get it?

Amen.

Verse 11 is where we're coming from.

When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child.

But somebody say but, but when I grew up, I put away childish things.

Let's pray, father.

We thank you for your presence that we have already felt here in the worship.

We ask God that we continue to feel your presence throughout this service.

Use your servant today, speak through me.

Let the words not be my own, but let it be directly from the throne room for your people here today.

Let us leave here transformed, renewed and ready to tackle the day.

In your name we pray Amen, amen.

So if you follow us on social media, you probably have seen that the title of my message is Maximizing Maturity.

Like maturity Anybody that doesn't like mature stuff?

Especially when you're the immature one?

So I want to start today telling you a little bit of a story.

I always have stories and a lot of them involve my father beating me.

But today is not about beating, it's the before part, like the correction part.

Yeah, that was education, right, correction.

So this is when I was a kid.

My father was a role model of correction.

Like I remember the pain in the pit of my stomach when my mother would utter the words wait until your father gets home.

There is not a winter storm that I have been in that has sent a deeper chill down my spine that when she would say those words to me wait until your father gets home.

Even if she just got done spanking me.

That's double jeopardy right, punished for the same crime twice.

Jesse and I, we talk about this because sometimes I'll get on to Tristan about something he does.

And then, jesse, she's like, well, let's kill him, or you know whatever.

Let's say sorry, if you take his phone away from him you might as well be killing him.

And she's like I'm like, baby, I already, I already got him.

You know, let's not get him twice for the same crime.

Let's get him an opportunity.

Give him five more minutes.

He'll do something else.

And so we both have the opportunity to dish that out.

I love you, son, if you're watching, all right.

So he was the role model of correction.

My mother did correct, but it was more verbal.

My dad was the thunder a little bit of thunder, a little bit of lightning and he would come in the house.

Like when I heard his truck pulling the driveway, all of a sudden I had to go to the bathroom.

Am I the only one?

When I heard my dad's diesel, I could hear it coming down.

We lived on a short street because it was dead-ended and they were going to fill it out with the rest of the houses and then connect to the street that was over in the other neighborhood and it had not been done yet.

So there was only one way to come in and we were about the third house down and I could hear when he pulled around that little turn.

I could hear the diesel.

And when I heard the diesel I knew that my destruction was at hand.

And this is what happened.

You may not understand this, you may not even get this, but I, as a kid, was a smart mouth.

I know it's hard to believe I could shoot my mouth off faster than you could pull a trigger on a gun.

And when I would do this and I would do things and actions that would be the same category, such as my dad would say go out into the yard and pick your own switch.

Any parents know about those mind games.

Y'all are evil.

I do the same thing.

I'm not gonna lie.

I do the same thing.

I mean, if you get in their head, you won.

My dad said go get your own switch.

So I went out there and I got a.

It was like that big.

And he said like this.

This is him telling me years later.

He said when you brought that in here, I almost lost it with laughter, because my dad's a comical guy.

If you talk to him for a little bit.

He's always laughing, he's always cutting up, and so for him to be the disciplinary, it was a little tough for him, because I would do stupid things that would make him want to laugh, and then he would say I'm going to give you one more chance, go out to the yard and you find a better one that I could use on you, or I'm going to go pick one.

And I knew my dad that he was raised on peach tree switch religion and he knew how to go pick good switches, so I wasn't going to let him choose it.

So I walked out there and I found the heaviest and biggest log In my head.

I'm thinking if I'm struggling to pick it up, he can't.

Can we all agree that when we're children, we don't fully understand what's going on?

We don't really have the maturity to make the wisest decisions?

I lacked maturity, but he would always find a way to correct me.

Never once did I think, though.

Never once did I say you know, dad, I think if you'd spank me a little more, I'd probably get it better.

I was a smart mouth, I wasn't stupid.

Never once did I say did I say you know, dad, if you ground me a little longer, it'll probably stick better.

Or when I was a teenager, I never said dad, you know, if you take the keys from me, at least another week, I probably won't do this again.

Has anyone ever said that to their parents?

No, you don't.

You do not want to make your punishment longer, then you suffer greater.

I never had these thoughts beyond the right.

Then.

I could not see with my immature mind and eyes that what he was doing for me now was to create a better man for later.

Beyond the pain that I felt then, beyond the suffering, beyond the discipline, beyond the spankings, beyond the taking of car keys, if my dad, my kids the same way, and it's so funny, like things that your kids get from you and you're like God, please no, like when I was a kid, like when I was a kid, I would get hurt and laugh.

I rarely cried, I don't know why.

When Tristan was about, he was standing up, he was walking a little bit.

So one one and a half two, I would pinch his little cheeks on his butt as hard as I could and he would giggle and giggle and giggle because he laughed.

He had not learned this yet.

Giggle and giggle because he had not learned this yet.

He didn't know that when I was a kid I did the same thing.

But we get things from our parents, whether we like it or not, and we give things to our children, whether we like it or not.

I could not grasp the punishment I couldn't receive and understand the correction, all the things that were meant to help me, teaching me how to be responsible, to put a value on character, about being who you are by yourself, the same as you are around other people, and even more so.

Let's get all up more in your business, even more so around the church people.

Has anyone ever been guilty of putting on a brave face walking in church when your world is falling apart?

It's not a sin, okay, but you need to start letting people into your destruction or you will remain devastated.

But as I aged and as I grew in maturity okay, we're going to be hearing that word a lot I begin to see things not from my childish perspective anymore, but from the perspective of a mature man.

I was talking to Pastor Phil yesterday when we were over at the funeral Brother Gaspar's funeral and he was talking about his kid, the one we pray for and at the end of the service.

Do not let me forget, we're going to join together and we're going to bind that and we're going to believe that he's going to be healed before the doctors will be dumbfounded.

Because I believe prayer works.

I'm going to preach on that.

All right, we'll do that another time.

But he was talking about, like his kid Garrett, when you have teenagers.

Tristan's about to be 13, thinks he's about 24.

And I'm about to knock him back into six.

Back into six.

His mouth.

His mouth is connected to a bank account with a negative sum of money and he's trying to write checks and he can't cash it.

He thinks that what he knows is truth and facts.

And the boy hasn't even paid a bill in his life yet.

Like child, you've been here 12 years and probably three or four of those you can't even remember.

And you're about to not remember the next five.

If you don't stop, and you're about to not remember the next five if you don't stop, sorry, I'm going to get back.

So, brother Phil, pastor Phil said that he and his child, now that his child is in adult ages, now that his child has worked a job and saw that people at that job where his father got him the job, that his father was kind of a legend and that maybe, just maybe, his dad wasn't as dumb as he thought he was.

Has anyone ever been a teenager?

If your parents are in here, you don't have to confess.

Have you ever been the teenager and you thought that your parents were stupid?

No, of course not you no, not at all.

He's watching you, just seeing what your head's doing.

There are times in your life when you are receiving correction and something that's actually better for you in the long run that you think is stupid.

There are times when I was a young person that I thought my dad was stupid.

I know We've talked about this Because the older my child gets, into the years of being a teenager and his mouth is writing those checks he can't cash the more I realize that, oh, my goodness, what have I done to my father?

Because once I'm in his shoes and I'm at that level of maturity now, I'm understanding that I actually, from a perspective of maturity now, can recognize better what immaturity is.

Maturity now can recognize better what immaturity is.

So I also talked to my dad about this.

I said we've actually become really close and it was like the light bulb come on when he's like yeah, I remember when you blah, blah, blah and I'm like that's exactly what Tristan is doing.

Something he's never seen me do is now something that he is doing.

Be careful who your shadows are.

They're absorbing, they're watching and they're taking in what you're putting out, even involuntary, which is scary Kids.

Has anybody ever asked a kid something and they gave you an answer that you didn't even know?

They knew how many people's in here and that's happened to probably everybody who's had a kid and you're like where did you get that answer?

When I was a kid, my parents were always pastors growing up, so obviously there was no cursing in the house and there was not a whole lot of outside influence except for public schools.

In a very small town, like K through 12 was all in one building, two stories and very small town, and I tripped as a little kid I tripped, walking in the house over the door jamb.

I tripped and I'm not going to say the word, but if I go, oh, you can probably put in the gap of what I said and my dad went.

Where did you hear that?

I didn't know what he was talking about.

I was messing up in an immature state and didn't even understand what I was doing.

Has anyone ever messed up before?

There's a reason the Bible tells us to confess and to get out just every single day to pray to him, ask for forgiveness, because there may be something you're doing that is sin, that you don't even realize.

But all of a sudden your parents the issued correction.

They aren't so mean anymore.

They're not as stupid as we once thought.

They were the rules your parents made.

Now that you've walked in their shoes a little bit, now they don't seem so crazy.

Was there something that your parent had as a rule when you were a kid and you thought was the dumbest thing in the world?

And now it kind of makes more sense.

Watch it.

Don't say yes too loud.

He's sitting right there.

My dad would not let us go to the movies ever when I was in high school.

Let's see, I wasn't in high school when this came out.

Anybody remember the movie Flubber with Robin Williams with that green goo thing?

That was the first movie I ever saw in the theater.

The next movie I don't remember what it was, but it wasn't a bad movie and I snuck out of the house.

I didn't sneak out because that was stupid.

I didn't sneak out of the house.

I walked out, but I said I was going somewhere else, so I lied.

Might as well have snuck.

You didn't sneak out of my dad's house.

Once you're gone you can tell him whatever.

But I had to lie to go to a movie that wasn't even a bad.

It wasn't like it was R-rated.

I don't even know if it was PG-13.

My best friend, he wanted to go to a movie and my dad would not let us go to movies.

He said if I can't preview at first to know what you're intaking, you're not going.

Now, some of y'all this may be a foreign concept, but back in the day, in a Pentecostal church, you ain't going to the movies, you ain't going to the dance.

I had to listen.

I'm a mama's boy, okay, my mama knows that I'm her favorite Brother if you're watching.

I'm sorry but I am.

Everybody knows it.

She knows it, and I used that advantage to be able to go to my junior and senior prom, the only dance I could go to.

This is how dumb it was.

Okay, not the rules, but what I did, like I would go for a walk in the neighborhood down to the school when they were having like Valentine's dance and they had big glass in the uh in the cafeteria that you could see in there from outside and we would watch other people dance while we stood outside and watched them Talk about deprived.

But when I got older and Stephen started going to the club, all of a sudden I realized why I shouldn't be there.

They were protecting me from something.

See, it's not always, we don't always see the end result.

That's wallowing in the sin.

It's the small steps that gets you there, but maturity will allow you to see them before you get there.

Having kids in my own household, I really understand what my parents were trying to say.

But it was through the pruning that I found progress.

It was through the correction that I found the comfort.

When this revelation hit me like a ton of bricks, I started making different choices.

My decisions were not based on assumption anymore.

As a child, my father corrected me.

My parents corrected me to help me grow, to help me mature, to build my character, to have integrity.

All of that correction was molding me to become mature so that when I was on my own, I could make mature and rational decisions.

On my own, I could make mature and rational decisions.

My father that once corrected me when I became a father myself and when I matured in my way of thinking.

He wasn't the corrector anymore.

He was actually my encourager when I actually started seeing things from the way that he saw things, from mature eyes, and I saw things in a different way.

I could then make healthy choices, not only for me but for my family and for my spirit, and I went through the process of maturing and then my father became my friend.

You see, when we come to know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, he is first our salvation, but then the Bible also teaches that he's our friend.

We first receive and submit to his correction and salvation and then we come alongside him as our friend and being led by his spirit.

He is not our corrector anymore, but now he is our encourager.

And even though when he went he came or he then sent the Holy Spirit to then become our comforter, to lead and guide us in all things that we do.

And it was more between me and my father.

It was first parental, but then it became more partner, like now.

I go to him for wisdom.

Now I know that when I ask him something, what he's giving me is not stupid but in a lot of times can be my salvation.

There has been things that us being ministers, full-time, being the pastor of the church in the last what 45 days, or whatever it's been, I've had to call him and say I don't know what to do.

The church in the last what 45 days or whatever it's been, I've had to call him and say I don't know what to do.

I have never seen my dad through the eyes that I have seen him through now.

My parents and I.

Now we see eye to eye because I've reached a level of maturity that they wanted me to have all along.

The same goes when becoming spiritually mature, when we first come to God, we don't fully understand.

Have you ever read the Bible when you were a new Christian?

And you start reading the Bible and you're like what in the world does this mean?

Some of us may be there now.

We don't appreciate the correction.

You ever been in a bad situation and you open up up the Bible and it's exactly what you needed, but not always what you wanted to hear.

You ever had someone come up and speak to you or you're doing something.

Let's just call it blunt.

You're doing something stupid, you're being ridiculous, you're being immature and someone's like hey, man, you know, just calm down a little bit.

And then you go immediately to justification.

When we're messing up, when we're being immature, that immaturity immediately goes to justification, because we don't want anyone to tell us that we're wrong.

We don't want anyone to correct our path because we're grown.

Am I the only one that feels that way, sometimes Like, stay in your own lane, I'm driving this bus.

But without the pruning you can't have the progress, a big part of becoming spiritually mature, and this is the number one thing on the list.

We have prayer and we have the Word of God.

When you start to understand prayer, your life will change.

When you start to understand the access that God has given you to the throne room through prayer, you will not be complacent and you will not stay in your comfort zone because you understand that the God that we serve is a God of movement and he is on the move here in Longview, texas.

Spiritual maturity has anyone here ever had questions about prayer?

Let's see recently, let's sit home a little bit.

Has anyone had questions about recent things?

And you're like God why didn't you do something, god?

Why did it happen this way?

Everything was going good.

Everything seemed like it was going in the direction that we wanted it to go.

Can we sometimes get selfish in our prayers and pray that God's will match ours instead of the other way?

That's hard.

It's our human nature to do this.

We want God to move the mountains, but he's saying first you need to start traveling through the valley.

Did you know that when the children of Israel came up to the Red Sea, god did not remove the sea, he parted it.

They didn't go around, they didn't even walk over.

God actually spread it out.

Think about this Now.

I love to put myself in Bible stories because I'm like, oh my goodness, if this was me I'd be freaking out.

Look, if you were going in the middle of the ocean, all right, you got spread.

The sea is spread.

You have walls of water on both sides of you.

You can literally look in and see the fish swimming around.

Would you have the faith to walk through it?

A miracle in front of you God spreading the sea.

He's being faithful once again.

But would you be willing to have the faith to walk through it?

Some of y'all?

God has moved the mountains in your life, but it's created the valley.

He has spread the mountains and said if you will walk through, I will part it.

He has spread the mountains and said if you will walk through, I will part it.

We can see the miracles in front of us, but our immaturity.

Spiritually, we want to pray selfishly and then, when God answers, we're scared to walk through what he provides.

I didn't know that for me to get to here, god was going to allow me to be an idiot.

You didn't expect that answer, did you?

That wasn't so biblical.

I'm telling you, sometimes God will allow you to be stupid and be an idiot so that then the blessing when he pours it out on you will stick.

If you have your cup so full of other things you will not be ready to receive when he pours.

Sometimes what you have in your cup is not necessarily a bad thing.

But let me explain it to you as simple as I can.

Our cups are to be empty before God, and what he decides to fill it with we receive it.

I have been guilty of having my cup even just a little full.

Listen, either you are with God or you are against God.

If you are lukewarm, he will spit you out of his mouth.

You are with God or you are against God.

See, we don't like to get so this and that with it.

So matter of fact, listen, I'm not talking about your process, completely different.

But you can't live the way you want to on Friday and expect God to forgive you Sunday and then you go back to the next week.

That would be to me called gluttony of sin.

We like to get fat and happy and then say, god, make me skinny, spiritually speaking.

Seriously, this is what we like to do.

You ever heard, you've seen a commercial?

I know, especially if you're a little bit of an athlete, they have those infomercials where this buff dude's doing something, he's doing a workout.

It's like this works, you can have abs in six days.

And you're like I know that's a lie from the pits of hell, but I'll buy it in 1995, three easy payments.

And so you get this thing and you're like, wait a minute, this magic pill didn't make me skinny because you won't stop being ice cream.

I love ice cream, I love ice cream.

Sorry, inside joke, but listen, we want the scriptures of god to be the magic pill that we consume every now and then to get our spiritually selves fit.

It takes effort and it takes serious, serious repetition to get yourself spiritually fit.

And this prayer that we pray and we say God move, god, do something.

And God is saying what are you doing?

God do something and God is saying what are you doing?

I told y'all I will never preach something from the pulpit that I have not been dealt with myself.

We have immature spiritual eyes.

God is doing something in our midst right now.

Even through loss, when you have mature eyes, even in the lost, you see gain.

Even when you don't understand, you have an understanding.

Even when everything around you is crumbling, you still have a firm foundation because you know where your help comes from.

You understand that God, everything in the hands of God, will work together for my good, because that's what his word says and my God is not a liar.

He will not contradict himself.

We start asking questions.

We start to wonder if God's even listening.

Have you ever been in the depths of your valley?

And you say God, where are you?

You pray the same prayers.

You get serious with God and you say God, where are you?

Why are the answers not coming?

And then I felt his spirit say have you ever been so close to me he loves you so much to not answer your prayer to where you seek him.

That's mature eyes.

That is not what we want to hear.

There is a reason microwaves were invented.

We don't like to wait, we want it now.

You know what that reminds me of.

If you've ever had I was gonna call them brats, but I guess kids could always be brats if you've ever had a kid in the store, that was yours.

And here's the thing, I'm gonna tell you two stories.

You're gonna be like, oh, my kid wouldn't do that.

And then your kid's the one doing it yours.

And here's the thing I'm going to tell you two stories.

And you're going to be like, oh, my kid wouldn't do that.

And then your kid's the one doing it, but you can't see it because you're blind, because it's your kid and it's your pride and joy, but you're the one throwing the fit, anyways.

So you have this kid.

That doesn't get what they want right now.

What do they do?

You ever had a two or three year old?

They're immature, they're kids.

All right, let them stomp it out a little bit, that's right, girl, get it in there, do devil's head like that You're teaching them.

Okay, you get a spanking when we get home, but immaturity will make you act that way and we got people in the church doing the same thing with God.

Well, I want the pews a different color.

I want the carpet this color.

It's too hot, it's too cold.

Anybody ever heard that before?

No, why aren't you answering my prayers?

And we are immaturely praying to God while we're stomping our little feet, having a fit.

I'm going to let it sink in.

Then we start asking these questions that are valid questions.

Okay, pastor Aaron and I was talking about this.

He's like God.

Am I praying wrong?

Am I doing it wrong?

Is there some secret formula that I have not figured out, or found in the Word of God that maybe I'm missing it or maybe I'm just too dumb to get it?

Lord, what in the world can I do to make my prayers mean something?

Is my faith weak?

And then we do this?

Now listen, this is a very immature thing.

I know none of y'all do it, because everybody's maturing here.

This is for the people online.

We can't see them, but they're there.

Do you ever start blaming other people's faith because something didn't happen when you prayed?

If you're around any different type of personality or the same personality as yours?

If you didn't understand that.

I just said all personalities and you get together and different people get together, there's going to be friction Every single time.

You will learn real quick on a church project who is immature and who is mature.

My wife laughed a little too hard at that.

Sorry, that Sorry.

And we so desperately want these definitive answers.

God is it or isn't it?

Do it or don't?

What is happening?

Are my prayers just going up and hitting the ceiling Like what can I do different?

But when we start having a deeper understanding of prayer, you start praying different.

When you have a deeper level of maturity in Christ, our prayers become really, really selfish sometimes, actually a lot of times.

I mean, think of it this way If all of your prayers were answered, let's just do a little survey.

Don't raise your hand, don't want to embarrass anybody.

If all of your prayers were answered, let's just do a little survey.

Don't raise your hand, don't want to embarrass anybody.

If all of your prayers were answered, who would benefit?

Would it be you or someone else?

Think about it.

When you start thinking in those terms, you realize how selfish maybe you've been praying.

This is not something to try to point my finger at you.

This is something that we all need to work on.

All of us, at some point in time, have been standing in these shoes that we have been praying selfishly and then saying God, why, why are you not answering?

Well, you don't need a Corvette, we want God.

Our prayers become less selfish when we start becoming more mature in Christ.

We start to see as God would see, we start to hear as God would hear, we begin to pray differently than we did when we were kids.

The relationship isn't just surface or superficial with God anymore.

When we start to really be friends with him and have that relationship, then your prayers begin to bear more weight.

Our prayers begin to have more meaning.

Have you ever seen somebody like you, anybody hate to pray out loud in front of other people?

I don't like it, and I'm a pastor and it's kind of with the job description, because this is what happens.

I start overthinking what I'm saying, my mouth runs too fast and I apologize if anybody has issues understanding what I say.

Sometimes I get excited and start talking super fast.

I apologize, add HD, whatever it is.

All the letters I got it.

Apologize, add HD, whatever it is.

All the letters I got it.

Listen, we get in this superficial, very surface, and so we think that our prayers need to be a King James version prayer, the these and the thous.

And everybody understands.

You know, we want you ever see.

I love like the older ladies.

When they pray, man Woo, I mean, they got, they got.

God stands up and like, oh, she's praying.

What do you need?

You know, what are those types of people Like?

They have the right words to say, they're quoting scripture and I'm like Habakkuk, that's not a, that's not a chapter of the Bible.

Is it Esther?

Is she saying Easter?

Where's that?

Is that in verse?

Never mind, I'm not going to say that joke, but those people right.

And then you have the medium ground people.

You're like Lord and they get really good and then it's like all right, you're kind of dragging a little bit and then it's your turn and you're like I don't know what to say.

They just covered everything.

I'm one of those people that sometimes I'm called to pray on out loud or I'm supposed to pray in front of other people, especially with the microphone in my hand, and I don't know what to say.

You know what I started doing.

This will solve.

Don't take this personal.

This will solve your issue.

When you start really praying Not at the church in front of other people, but behind closed doors when you start getting serious with God and you start really praying, you start doing it different.

When you start listen and this is what I feel and multiple times throughout the Bible, you hear God pulling back from his people.

Multiple times throughout the Bible you hear God pulling back from his people.

He hides his face from his people to where they can't find him.

You know what happens.

We start seeking.

Life is really good when everything is going perfect, but life finds more meaning when we don't know where God is, when we don't understand what God is doing and everything doesn't look like it's supposed to look.

All of a sudden, we get serious.

And so when we start to understand prayer in this way listen, prayer is not a thing you do.

When you get serious and start maturing, it becomes who you are.

So I'm going to give you a practical example.

Look when you deal with money.

Okay, anybody like money.

Money's good.

Get that nice fresh cash.

Crisp off the print.

Ways to invest the most return from your investments is the way you want your money to work for you.

That's simple logic.

If I invest something in stock or growth stock, mutual funds or retirement fund.

I want the maximum amount return for what I put in, because the return when we begin to mature in the spirit, our minds start to think this way what return are you putting in in the kingdom of God?

What return are you putting in the lives of people around you?

See, we get in a very consumer-minded state and we live our lives this way and we forget to contribute.

Because here's what happens we start consuming so much and then there's no room for God to pour into us.

We get so full of the things that we enjoy that we like.

And guess what?

Look up the lives of the disciples.

95% of them died, but they changed the world.

A place of being uncomfortable will bring you more fulfillment when you're doing it for the kingdom.

Prayer.

Pray without ceasing.

You start looking at things differently.

Pray without ceasing.

How am I supposed to do that?

If you think that you're too busy to pray or read your word, you're losing it.

You can't afford not to Always pray without ceasing.

1 Thessalonians 5, 16 through 18, it says this always be joyful, never stop praying, be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.

Number one you learn how to pray.

You learn the importance of prayer and you pray always.

This will bring joy to your life and you will have a deeper understanding.

Number two the word of God.

Fall in love and hide it in your heart.

Psalms 119.11 says this I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

Pray without ceasing.

Study his word.

This combination will set you up for success and it will begin to maximize your maturity.

If you're still on the milk and you've been in church for an extended period of time, you are going to starve.

You need the meat of the word for sustenance.

If sunday mornings is the only time you feed, you will starve.

You can't go one single day.

I keep putting this out on social media.

I keep reminding people.

I say it every single service, because it will change your life.

It's changed mine.

I've talked to people already and it's changed theirs.

15-minute challenge, five minutes of prayer, five minutes of worship, five minutes of reading the word and I promise, do it when you first start your day.

Your day will never be the same and 15 will not be enough.

Who doesn't like good food?

That's good.

Your soul will be satisfied.

Your relationships will be different, your marriage will be different, your children will be different, because you will be different.

If you want to change the things around you, first you have to start changing yourself.

You can't pray for God, for change, if you're not willing to.

God is the one who is supposed to stay the same, not you.

God is the one supposed to stay the same yesterday, today and forever.

He is the same God.

You are not supposed to stay the same.

Jesus Christ came so that we can be transformed and be renewed in our minds, that we do not live in ourself as sin anymore.

We are not supposed to stay the same.

We are supposed to stay steadfast, we are supposed to stay rooted, but we are not supposed to stay who we were, because we have a destination, a divine destination and divine revelation from the word of God that says we are.

It literally says that we are going to be transformed before we go to heaven.

Isn't it so cool how God is the God who never changes, but he's about change Because none of us are good enough, None of us have reached it, we have not made it, none of us are worthy, but yet God calls us unto himself to be covered and washed in the blood of his son, and we then are righteous in the blood of his son and we then are righteous in the sight of God.

We are meant to change, to grow, to mature.

Mature is not a bad word.

Study, pray.

Now listen right before.

In 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5, 16 through 18, we just read that Paul is about to end the book, he's about to wrap up this book, and here he sandwiches pray without ceasing between verses 15 that says see that no one pays back evil for evil, but always tries to do good to each other and to all people.

1 Thessalonians 5 · chapter mention

It did not say do good to only people who follow Christ.

Do good to only people who follow Christ Because by our witness, a lot of that witness entails us showing love to people who do not deserve it, because at one point we did not deserve it and guess what?

We still don't.

We are human, we are fleshly beings.

Then he goes on to say this I'm going to get my page To pray without stopping and immediately following up those verses.

19 says do not stifle.

Do you know what this means?

This means suffocate or to smother out.

Remember when the tongues of flames came on the people in the upper room.

It's saying do not suffocate, do not snuff out the Holy Spirit.

Verse 20 says do not scoff at prophecies, but test everything that is said.

Hold on to what is good, stay away from every kind of evil.

We, on a sometimes a daily basis, are consuming poison and wonder why our spirits are dying.

We consume more of this world than we do of God and of his word and our lives in prayer, and we wonder why our spirits are off balance, because you're trying to feed your spirit worldly things and it will choke and die.

So here's the thing.

Here's what I want us to stop doing as Christians.

Okay, you may be guilty of this now.

You may be guilty of it 10 years ago or five years from now.

All of us at one point will do this.

We, uh, we group things together like a TV dinner.

Remember TV dinners?

Yeah, you get it.

You open the little cellophane thing a little bit, you crack it and put it in the microwave and we have these things compartmentalized, separated.

Each one is a piece of the entire meal.

We do God the same way.

We try to put him in one of these little spots in the TV dinner to be included in what we got going on in our lives for the day.

He wants to be your entire dish.

He wants to not be a part of your life.

He wants to be your life and listen.

When God starts to really shake up your world and you start being able to understand who God really is and you have eyes of maturity to see God and understand what he's actually doing for you.

Even when it doesn't look good, you know that you can trust him because he has never failed you.

Yet you start to be a witness to strangers.

Let me tell you something.

If I'm not up in your business already, I'm about to get there.

If every single person was telling people outside of this church what God has done for them, this house could not contain them.

Amen.

We let God to be a part of our life and we don't want God to be our life.

We compartmentalize our lives.

We have church life.

We dress up nice, we come to church, we have a smile on our face and no one knows the destruction or the pain we're feeling in our hearts.

And we have a home life.

We capture the highlights of our family.

We put them on Instagram.

Nobody ever puts stuff on there about them losing their home or their car got repoed.

That's not on there.

They post the highlights.

You post the good stuff because you want everybody to think that your life is in order and going good, always wearing a smile.

While divorce is on the table every day, while your kids are getting kicked out of school, while you've lost your best friend.

In our prayer life, we constantly tell people we'll pray for you.

Has anybody ever been guilty of this?

I've been guilty.

I'll pray for you.

I forget about it before I leave this presence.

I don't do it on purpose, like when you have a regular life and you got things going on.

It just slips your mind.

It's not on purpose.

Jesse and I, if somebody texts us and say we need to pray about something, her and I grab hands right then and we start praying and touching heaven, because we both know that we'll probably get busy and forget what's your prayer life like.

Or I'll pray about it or I'll pray for you and you never pray about it again.

Do you know that it's time for us to get serious, because God's coming soon.

The time for games is over.

We better get serious about seeing the salvation of this lost land.

It is not the sinner's job to tell other sinners about God.

They can't do it and they won't understand it.

Matter of fact, they probably won't understand you, no matter what you say.

But love conquers all.

God wants to be your life.

He does not want to be a part of it, he wants to be in it, and the best way that I could think to describe how God wants to be a part of your life is saturated.

Have you ever procrastinated going to the store and you had no choice but to go?

But the day that you had to go, or your family would starve or the pandemic of no toilet paper would be in trouble.

And the one day that you have to go, it is pouring rain and you can't do anything about it but park your car because you're by yourself and you have to run inside as fast as you can.

But it is raining.

Hell-sized rain drops down, mess up your hair and your makeup and everything, and you go in looking like a crazy person, but you can't do nothing about it.

It's raining.

You didn't think like, let's say, you forgot an umbrella because it wasn't raining when you left the house.

And now you're there and I ain't going back home, I'm just going to have to go in here and get this stuff and you get out and you run and you get to the inside and you're like you go like this, but there's no point because you're closed.

Every inch of you is saturated.

This is how God wants to be in your life.

This is how God desires us to have the Holy Spirit come upon us and completely saturate every inch of who you are, completely indrenched and engulfed and covered by God.

Completely covers every area of your life.

The things that I would believe when I was once immature, as a gullible child.

Now I have the wisdom and maturity to discern.

Has anyone seen anyone, on any platform, that doesn't really know right from wrong?

They're parading around as wrong is right.

When you have eyes of maturity and you start being mature in the spirit, you can spot these things.

You can see right from wrong.

You can define good from evil, holy from unrighteous, truth from lies, spirit from flesh.

Sister Barbara, if you come and play on the piano, so I came up with this.

You've heard of spam, right?

I want you, through mature eyes, to start noticing and start recognizing spam, stuff posing as maturity.

There are things that parade around as truth.

There are lies that people try to cram down our throats on every avenue of news, social media, whatever that.

Whatever you feel like doing is fine.

It's not y'all and you can be mad at me all you want, but it's not my standard.

I am not the one saying that sin is sin.

God has a standard of righteousness that we have to come up with to measure up to, and we can only do that through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

We cannot do it by works.

We cannot do it by being a good person, because the heart of man is deceitful.

Why do you think people end up in bad relationships?

Because love will blind you, it will make you stupid and you will see something that may not be there, or you will want to see something that isn't there and you will overlook it.

Red flags going up everywhere and you don't care because we're in love.

No, you're in the valley of stupidity.

Six things to look that can easily look like maturity.

Six things to look that can easily look like maturity.

Not only do you need to look at things, of what things are, you also need to understand what they're not.

Uh, was it you talking about the dollar bill?

Who's it talking about?

Yeah, so these people?

They didn't.

They were supposed to spot counterfeit money.

They did not study different types of counterfeits and way to counterfeit.

They studied the truth.

They studied the actual money and when they knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that they could spot a real one, that gave them the ability to then spot the counterfeit.

The same applies with maturity.

When you become spiritually wise and mature, through the Word of God and having an inner circle of people that were in a seed for you and really touch heaven on your behalf and you have their wisdom pouring into you, you can spot the counterfeit.

We do not measure things in this world according to our standards.

We measure it according to God's, and if you do that, you are wrong.

I told you I was going to get up in your business.

We do not measure things in this world according to us.

We measure them according to God.

So six things.

We often mistake intelligence for maturity.

Somebody can be smart, but they may not be mature.

We mistake giftedness for maturity.

We mistake giftedness for maturity.

Read some of Paul's letters to the church.

They had gifts like crazy, but they had no idea how to use them.

Giftedness does not mean maturity.

We mistake confidence for maturity.

We mistake savviness for maturity.

Making good judgments on the fly says all the right things.

Some of you ladies know the first hand about that.

Right, you dated that dude before that shouldn't have been in your phone number at all, in your phone at all, and he knew all the right things to say.

And he and guess what you found out later.

You wasn't the only one that he knew all the right things to say to.

He'd been talking to everybody like that.

He was so suave but he wasn't mature to know when he had a good thing.

Some of you single ladies, holla holla.

Not always maturity.

We make mistakes, ambition or passion.

Peter was a prime suspect for this.

The guy was a go-getter.

He had no maturity to know when to shut up.

He even cut off a guy's ear.

He didn't know how to stop himself from just shooting his mouth off.

Oh Lord, I'll never forsake you.

Oh Lord, I'll never leave you.

He did it.

It wasn't very many paragraphs later.

He did it.

He could not preserve himself enough until until he allowed the Holy Spirit to fill him.

See, the Holy Spirit is not just a tool for us to use, it's a way of life for us to live.

We have the availability, the power and the authority, through the infilling of the Holy Spirit, that we sit on the sidelines when it should be the star quarterback.

That was for all you sports people.

I don't watch sports, so I got the right reference, I hope.

And we mistake influence for maturity, as we've seen governing positions, power, influence but no clue.

So let me ask you how long have you been with Jesus?

So let me ask you, how long have you been with Jesus?

And I want you to really examine yourself.

How long have you been in the way a Christian serving God, and you are still acting on immature impulses.

That's tough.

I can help you out all day long, but for me to help me out, I've got to really do some self-examination, because sometimes I can be selfish, I can be immature, all of us can at some point.

We can be selfish and immature, doing it for personal gain.

But and I love Paul's writings they're all about becoming mature.

Read Paul's writings.

I love what he says.

I mean, he starts off his book you saw how he ended that chapter or that book.

He starts off his book every single time with affirmation and blessings and saying good things about all the people that he knows, and then he starts in the correction.

He understood that people receive better when you start with honey, that people receive better when you start with honey.

He understood that what you feed grows.

If you're feeding immature thoughts and desires, you will grow immaturity.

If you are enabling immaturity in others, stop it.

Examine yourself.

I feel that church people should be the number one, people who are willing to examine themselves, because we know how low we have been in the private moments of our lives.

And God still sent his son for us while we yet were sinners.

He still came to son for us While we yet were sinners.

He still came to die for us.

We must be willing to self-examine so that we can grow in maturity, spiritually.

And listen, maturity is not attached to age at all.

Anybody ever met a person that should be mature and they're kind of the opposite?

Or you've met a younger person who actually was pretty mature and you're like y'all two need to get together and teach this person.

God desires for us to be mature Christians.

We also call it growth, spiritual growth.

The key thing to becoming mature and spiritually growing is praying and reading the word of God, and with these two things every single time in the Bible.

They were baptized in water and they were baptized with the Holy Ghost.

If you don't understand either of these, come and talk to me because we've got some learning to do.

These are vital to your Christian walk.

We are a Pentecostal church.

I don't know if you know, but we believe in the infilling and speaking in tongues of the Holy Ghost and we will not back down or feel awkward when God decides to move, because this is.

We are labeled Church of God, but this is God's church and whatever the Spirit wants to do here, I will step back, submit my message to Him and he can do His work.

If we are people who desire revival in the church again, it starts in the private times at home.

We have to be willing to submit ourselves privately and God will pour out publicly If everyone will bow your heads.

I'm going to give two opportunities.

The first one is going to be a call that I am immature or I have struggles, or I'm dealing with something right now and I don't even want to handle it.

If this message today was for you and you're dealing and you're struggling with immaturity or your spiritual walk and you've been in the way, you've been in the church for a while, but you are still acting as if you got saved last night.

We all can sometimes do this.

I want you to just lift up your hand and say I need prayer.

Pastor, pray for me.

I need to get better.

There's things that I focus on that are so petty and small and insignificant.

Just lift your hand up and lift it right back down because I want to specifically pray for you.

This is a step in the right direction.

God wants us to be spiritually mature so that when we begin to grow, we will be mature enough to handle the growth that God is going to give us.

And all it takes is for us to self-examine and say God, I just want you to be the center of everything.

Get rid of everything that I am and pour out who you are on me.

God, fill me up.

Empty my cup of everything, every selfish ambition, every bit of immaturity.

God, I only want you.

It is my policy from the beginning of service, when we start, to the end.

If you need to come to the altar for anything at all, someone will meet you here and we will pray.

Don't hold back from something that you need because of pride.

Take that step out Right now I want to give a call to salvation.

If you do not know God or you have been running from God or you.

Today the message has spoken to you and God has said something to you and you're like I need to rededicate my life, I need to get baptized again.

I need the infilling of the Holy Spirit.

I don't even have that power in my life.

It is available for every single person under the sound of my voice.

God does not hold back himself from anybody.

If you need salvation of Jesus Christ, lift your hand up and lift it right back down.

I don't want to embarrass you.

I'm not going to call you out, but if you need to come up here, I will meet you here and we will pray and we will touch heaven on your behalf.

Father, I pray for everybody that is here and online.

Lord, we ask the message that was preached today that God, you help us, as a church family, to become mature Christians that do not fight or bicker with each other, that do not hold petty grudges, that will talk to each other, that will communicate and we will hash things out in a loving, biblical manner.

Father, I speak life over these people.

Right now.

I speak a restoration and a transformation that they have never known, that a divine revelation from the Word of God and the Spirit of the Lord will come down in their household right now.

That, god, you help us to turn only to you and away from who we were and our wicked ways, and we come to you.

I pray God, over these people, a special anointing that every word they speak, every person they come in contact with, that their lives will be changed forever.

That we can be a true testimony of who you are and the goodness of our God, and that you have always been faithful In your name.

We pray Amen.

Right, quick, you can turn off the cameras if you want.