Activate Spirit Growth Pt. 5 | 08/30/2026

Spiritual Growth, Godliness, Part Two.

This is part five of Spiritual Growth, Godliness, Part Two.

You can just hit the space bar on that.

Thank you, honey.

My sweet wife, she's my little helper.

That was some good praise and worship.

She just got back from Albany, New York last night.

She was up with Mario Marillo and the team leading.

Okay, they had a women's breakfast, right?

And Mario, he what, like three weeks ago said, hey, let's have a women's breakfast minister to the women, and 700 women showed up in Albany.

So she was up there leading worship for that.

That's really cool, right?

Well, listen, women's becoming conference is gonna blow that out of the water.

Y'all hear that?

Pastor Pete is preaching on submission.

Y'all sign up.

Hey, brother.

Yeah, come on.

We're not thinking of this good news.

And what do you done from me?

We're gonna have a men's became conference.

Been there, done that, moved on.

Men are all cool, you know, in church, but then you have a men's conference and now they're all hugging each other, crying.

Yeah, men have feelings too.

I know, because we don't do it around you.

We don't let you see our weakness.

Because we have none.

Thank you, Jesus.

So we're gonna talk on godliness part two.

I talked about godliness last week.

It's a very, very big topic, and there's so much I would love to say.

And so we're gonna just hit on this again.

We're gonna go a little bit further into this.

And so I just want to give you a heads up.

I was planning on even saying more about it today, and Holy Spirit restrained me and said, David, I want you to focus on one primary thing of godliness.

But I'm gonna tell you what that is in here in a second.

But just for a quick recap, just to help build a foundation, okay, in case you weren't here.

2 Peter 1:3 says, By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life.

2 Peter 1:3

Everyone say godly.

We have received all of this by coming to know him.

Now I want you to just catch this here.

These small details, they're very important.

How do we how do we receive, how do we learn to receive a godly life?

How to walk in what he's provisioned us?

We get to know him, and we can know him intellectually, we can study the Bible, but this is also we we learn to know him experientially.

The point of the word of God is not just to fill our heads with information, it's meant to lead us to a person.

And when we miss that link, that's the major link that really matters the most, is encountering the person.

You know what I'm saying?

And so it's it's it's it has both those aspects with it.

Godliness is not a set of behaviors.

Can I go ahead and challenge us a little bit?

Because it really sounds like it would be just a set of behaviors.

The behaviors is not the focus when Peter's talking about godliness.

Godliness is what happens to us when we behold or encounter God.

I want you to think about like this, okay?

We can't produce God, I can't just decide to be godly, okay?

This is that's the trick.

I just can't start deciding to do little things and all of a sudden to stay I'm godly.

It's like, you know, if you want to get a tan, now I'm fair skinned, I don't tan really well.

I actually tan very well in little places all over my body called freckles.

Yeah, that's right.

All the Irish said yes.

That was not an Irish accent, I think.

That was like a yeah.

I get mixed up on accents sometimes.

I can't make myself just get tan because I want to be tan, but what I can do is I can make effort to go get out in the sun.

And when I encounter the sun, yeah.

Becoming conference is cancelled.

Instead, we're taking the funds and having a barbecue.

I'm just kidding.

I would never do that.

But yes, I am.

But when we come, that's the idea.

Have you ever had to like have you ever noticed if someone like fake laughs at your joke?

It's usually kind of easy to have a fake, like you can tell, like that's not a that's not a real laugh.

But when someone really laughs, you know, you can't fake it.

They've encountered something that actually is funny to them.

Okay, it's kind of like this.

This is how godliness is.

We can fake godliness.

But that's not the point.

The point is encountering that thing that will cause it.

That's the focus.

And so the idea of putting effort to this is not trying to put effort to make certain behaviors happen.

It's the effort of what can I do to behold him?

That's the idea.

This is so encouraging to me.

It kind of like it takes the pressure off, but at the same time applies the pressure in the right place.

Because what happens is that the further you go in the word, is that you get beyond simple morality and you realize there's commands and expectations God has for us that is far beyond what we would ever think that we could do.

In those places, when I read the word of God and I think I could never do that, that's pointing to something where it's not just morality, it's not just good intentions.

We're gonna need godliness if we're gonna fulfill that.

We're gonna need to encounter him.

He is going to need to affect us to a point where something shifts and we're able to do that thing that we weren't able to do.

Okay, so let's get a little bit technical here.

I am an engineer by trade, so I like little graphs, charts, and all the things list, but let's just look at this really quick, okay?

Over here you have faith, trust, and all excellence, desire, and knowledge, learn.

You have these things, these first five things that are personal to us, okay?

As we're at as we're walking in space, as we're activating spiritual growth in our life, okay.

These first five virtues that Peter lists that we need to make effort towards is going to be us focused.

That's why I have the arrows over there.

It's inward focused.

I want you to understand something.

God is going to be focusing when we come to God.

The focus is work on me.

What needs to be changed, what needs to be developed.

A lot of times the mistake I make is I'm waiting to receive something from him when he's wanting me to respond to what he's already done.

And that'll lead us in limbo.

We think I'm missing something from my life.

I'm constantly waiting, waiting, waiting, and God's waiting for us to respond, respond, respond.

And so that's that inward thing.

And then once things start to be worked out into us, we start, we start learning his way, we start choosing his way, but then we remain, we don't quit.

And this is where so many of us, I this I get it.

It's so hard because God's gonna put you in seasons.

He's going to test the things that he's calling you to, he's gonna test the inner workings.

And I'm gonna tell you, the endurance seasons are hard.

But James would say it like this recognize when you're in those hard seasons that don't make sense.

Count it joy.

Peter would say, Don't be surprised.

This is how God operates.

He puts us in seasons and things happening that we never thought it would happen.

We never thought it would look this way, but yet we're in the midst of the storm.

James would say, Count it joy.

God is up to something.

But I want you to check this out.

This godliness is going to be the game changer.

Everyone say game changer.

I would say this is the most important one out of the whole list.

More important than love?

Yeah.

Because without it, you can't love.

We can have convictions.

Oh, hey, the church needs to love.

That's great.

But you can't do it until you can't have it until these things are formed inside of you.

I can care about love.

I can talk about it, how important it is, but I'm not gonna be able to actually love the way God loves until this is changed in me, until my focus is on him.

Y'all catch that?

Okay.

And then that leads to love.

So then all of a sudden we have this inward working.

We're focused on these things.

Okay?

I'm coming to the Lord not just to deal with my issues, my actions, I'm also coming to him to deal with my desires.

To fix these things.

And what he does is we're faithful, we don't quit.

All of a sudden, he recalibrates us to focus upward.

Our motivation, our focus is now on him.

And then all of a sudden, once that happens, then all of a sudden he starts to work through us.

That's the game changer.

We try to get to this one.

We start here, we give our life to Christ, and then we try to jump right here.

And then we fail.

Or we show our definition of love.

Okay?

God's saying, hey, whoa, let's take this one step at a time.

Okay.

And also, I don't want to create imbalance to this.

God, all these things are kind of working in all of us at all times.

Okay?

I won't I don't want to say, hey, you better not love anybody until you get your faith right.

Like, no.

Please love everyone as best you can.

Keep on doing good stuff.

Let God work on you behind the scenes.

Amen.

Okay.

Another aspect to godliness is that it involves training.

Okay?

If you're waiting just to receive everything from God, you sit down, it's like candy land just poured into your lap.

That's not how this works.

So Paul says, train yourself to be godly.

Physical training is good.

All my bros said, What's up?

So I have like one bro in here.

Did you say what's up?

Louder next time, my man.

I love you.

Train yourself to be godly.

Physical training is good.

All my bro Chacho said.

But training for godliness is much better.

Promising benefits in this life, in the life to come.

In order for godliness, we have to train.

Training is very interesting.

I want you to hear this, okay?

Training is repetition.

It's choosing a difficulty.

Listen to this.

It's choosing something difficult, choosing something that I naturally will not enjoy doing.

And I'm going to repeat it, and I'm going to continue to repeat it without immediate visible results.

Let me say it this way.

Endurance at work, okay?

It's doing the unremarkable thing past the point where it feels productive.

Whenever we initially start something, you know, like New Year's resolutions, y'all ever done this before?

Man, then 2027 comes around.

I'm going to change everything.

And we get inspired, we get excited.

Every time we make a change, we always get excited.

Okay.

There's always that initial, like, oh yeah, I'm doing this.

And maybe we do it a couple weeks, maybe we do it a month, maybe in a couple months.

But over time, all of a sudden, we we start lacking seeing those visible results that will motivate us, and we start to say, is this even worth it?

And then we back.

We backslide, we stop doing it, okay?

Training, okay, is going to involve that thing where you don't see immediate results to continue doing it.

Okay.

It's going to be all of a sudden where you're reading the Bible and you're spending time with God in the morning and your mood's not in it, and you don't feel a thing, and you're just all of a sudden you're just remaining disciplined, okay?

When it comes to training, what I would say is the days where you don't feel like it, the days where it does not feel genuine are going to be the most important times when it comes to training.

Because if you only train when you feel like it, you're not actually training, you're not training yourself in godliness.

You're just um you're just responding to your mood.

And your moods are gonna go like this ups and downs.

There's some days that I just don't feel you know, I'd wake up in a funk and I have no why I have no idea why.

I'm just like, meh.

We have to, there has to be something concrete.

I am doing this.

Amen.

Godliness, making an effort to put ourselves in a position to encounter him and behold him is gonna take intentional discipline.

And some days it's not gonna be fun, you're not gonna feel good.

I hear people all the time, I just don't, I just don't worship and read my Bible because I don't want to be feeling fake.

Because I don't, you know, I'm not really feeling that.

I'm like, you're being fake by doing that.

Because the Bible literally addresses this.

Amen?

Okay.

The next thing we need to know about godliness is that you can fake it.

2 Timothy 3 5 says they will act religious.

Now understand that many other translations say they have a form of godliness.

You can have a form.

Now, this is something that we can't actually create true godliness, but we can manufacture the performance of it.

One of the things that's disheartening is that true godliness is going to be invisible to others.

Why you say it all the time is Jesus talking about this?

He's addressing godliness.

He's saying, hey, when you give, don't let your left hand know what your right hand's doing.

You do your giving in private.

Then your father in heaven will reward you.

Your father in heaven who sees everything.

When you pray, don't just do it in front of everybody.

But what do you do?

You go to your the privacy, your prayer closet.

Then your father who sees.

Godliness, sometimes, you know, I'm motivated.

I'm gonna be honest.

I have I have multiple motivations, okay?

I'm not schizophrenic, I don't think.

You sure about that?

Maybe Catherine's like.

I love you, baby.

And so do I.

Too far.

Let's get a drink.

Let's reset that.

Totally lost my place.

What was I saying?

I don't know.

It all started when you interrupted me earlier.

Uh what was I saying, though?

Yes, invisible.

Don't remember.

Are you guys just reading it?

It's cheating.

I know it's there.

I put it there.

Lord help us.

This is gonna be one of those Sundays.

I love this, by the way.

I love goofing off and having fun.

Do you know God's a god of freedom?

Let me let me just take a tangent.

God is a god of freedom.

You know children like to come to Jesus.

Yeah.

Children don't really have to run after grumpy people, do they?

But when you're fun, kids are like all day.

Jesus was a lot of fun.

Carnival, why are you laughing, brother?

You got the joy of the Lord?

Down in your heart.

Where?

Where?

He's got the down in his heart.

Write that down, Pastor Pete.

Are y'all still going?

Lord, I love you so much, Father.

I thank you, God.

Thank you for the joy of the Lord.

So we can fake it.

I don't know where I was going with the invisible stuff.

Sorry about that.

Maybe the Lord did that.

So what's interesting is that when I look at this verse, this is one of the mistakes I make in my pursuit of godliness.

Is I just read hard verses and I just automatically assume that that's not me.

This is dangerous.

And the Bible, do you believe it or not, it actually tells us not to do that?

It's the idea is that Paul said it like this.

He says, I don't trust other people's judgments of myself.

Okay?

He goes, I don't even trust my own judgment.

And we make judgments on declaring things guilty, but we also make judgments of declaring things innocent.

And this is a lot of times what really hurts us.

We make conclusions and we read hard things in scripture and we just say, Well, that's not me, instead of saying, Lord, is this me?

So the Bible gives some a couple verses before this, and the Lord's been working on my heart because I think because I'm charismatic and I like the prophetic and healing, deliverance, all the things, shana non, that I like that I don't reject the power, but the power is actually talking about the thing that's going to make us godly.

It's not about the equipping thing to do the ministry, it's talking about the power of us responding to the word of God, the leading of God, working in our life.

So Holy Spirit was like David look in the mirror.

And so I started to, and this is what's really cool, is I started to see some of these things in myself.

So this is the precursor.

This is this is kind of long, but let's go ahead and read it just really quick.

For people who love only themselves and their money, they will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents and ungrateful.

Let's pause right there.

This is this is written to the church.

This is written to Christians.

Like, think of us here today.

This message is for us.

It's not for the world, it's for us.

That's what's scary.

And this is talking, it's talking prophetically about the future.

It's talking about the future, the the last days is going to be very difficult.

And this is why, because the church is going to have a really good performance of godliness, but they're going to lack, they're going to reject the very thing that could cause them to become godly.

And what is the very thing that Peter tells us?

It's knowing him.

We're rejecting things that could put us in a place to behold him.

It's not just, it's not just rejecting the ability to do good things.

It's, Lord, what can put me in a position to encounter you?

When I make a face step, I was talking about giving.

I'll give you, I'll give you a hint of how to practically put this into operation to behold the Lord.

And we all can do it.

When we're lacking, okay, and we feel the Lord calling us to give sacrificially, we can have one of two choices.

We say no and we respond to fear of lack and we try to handle it ourselves, or we say, Lord, I trust you and I take a step of faith and I obey and I give.

And then all of a sudden I experience my provider come through.

My wife and I, this is this is what we do, standard across the board, for every ounce of income that we get, even gifts, we give a 10% gross of whatever that is.

Now that's a little bit painful, okay?

Gross is your pay before taxes, benefits, and all the stuff's taken out.

Y'all know what I'm talking about.

We give 10% on that amount.

I'm not I'm not here to try to brag.

I want to let you know about God's faithfulness.

This is a testimony, okay?

Anytime I get some birthday money, we're tithing on it.

10%.

And that's never a discussion.

That's not a felt thing.

And that has nothing to do with what the size of our bank account is.

We get we get we have little projects and little things we're trying to do all the time.

That's never, if there's anything that's going to be cut out, hey, if we can't eat, then we're not gonna eat.

We're gonna tithe.

Okay?

That's a step of faith.

And what has happened from that?

That when we were in times of crises, the Lord has always come through.

The Lord has been very generous to us, the Lord has provided for us.

I'm not saying that we're millionaires, okay, because we're not.

But when we've needed things, there's been help, there's been unexpected money that's come in or not.

I mean, I'm just telling you, the Lord is faithful.

So that's how we encounter him.

I can take faith measures and take steps of faith, and then I behold him.

But when I reject doing that, I'm rejecting the power that can make me godly.

Following that?

Another great example.

When I read the word of God, first I choose to read the word of God.

I don't leave it up to Pastor David to explain me all the intricacies of everything because A, he does not know, and he forgets stuff easily in his message.

So it's very important that you read and know this for yourself.

But when I read something, something hard, a command to do, I do it.

I make effort, okay, and I put it into practice even when it hurts.

And all of a sudden, I see the life.

I see the life of God starting to infiltrate my life, starting to work through me.

Okay?

It'll work if you work it.

That's right.

Okay.

They will consider nothing sacred, they'll be unloving and unforgiving, they will slander others and have no self-control.

They will be cruel and hate what is good.

They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God.

I want us to see this, that this begins and ends with love.

Wow.

Problem is not a lack of love in the church, it's love that's not focused in the right place.

A love of self is when I calculate everything based on the cost or reward for me personally.

I'm only going to do this, and I'm gonna, it's always gonna go through the lens of what is the cost for me or the reward for me.

These things become so habitual.

This is what the Lord's showing me.

The Holy Spirit is I is showing me things in my life.

This is the main thing that's changed, okay?

I'm having massive spiritual growth.

I don't know if y'all can notice or up here, but I'm having massive Tina's like, yeah, I'm seeing it.

The halo's forming over your head.

I'm just kidding, about the way.

If you're new here, I'm sorry, I'm not that prideful.

Not all the time.

I'm having massive spiritual growth.

Do you want to know the main thing that's changed?

Is that I started, I made myself willing to come to the Lord and say, I am wrong and I don't know what I'm doing.

I haven't arrived, and I'm willing to you to point out anything that offends you.

There's things in my life that I'm not willing to allow the Lord to say, Hey, you're wrong there.

I got pride, I got selfish ambitions, okay?

I have good things operating in me, but I also have a not good thing warring against those good things.

That sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Galatians 5.

I'm finding out this is true.

And I'm and I'm I'm allowing him to speak to whatever he wants to.

David comes the Lord and he says, Okay, I want you to search my heart, Lord.

And know my anxious thoughts.

You know why he says that?

It's not because David thinks the Lord doesn't know.

Hey, God, okay, I give you permission.

I know you're curious.

He knows.

Why does David say that?

Because I don't know, and I need you to show me.

I play judge and I just assume that's not me instead of saying, let's wait a second.

Is this me?

And what I'm finding out is the Holy Spirit saying, Yes, you're guilty.

And you've been rejecting the power.

You do, David, there's so many good things you do.

And yes, there's there is a sprinkling of my love, and there's a sprinkling of my motivations, but there's lots of filth that you've not allowed me to touch.

And I want you to see this last thing here.

And love pleasure rather than God.

This term rather actually means more than.

It does not say there's no love of God in these people.

It's saying there's a love of pleasure more than a love of God.

Well, that got me.

I love pleasure.

That got me, that hit me hard.

I'll do sacrificial things, but I'm always going to make a cost and reward evaluation.

Yeah, I will be sacrificial, but I want to make sure that people see it so they know that I'm godly.

That's personal gain.

Okay.

I highlighted ungrateful because I feel like the Lord wanted me to talk.

Just focus on contentment.

And I'm not going to take too much longer.

I see it's 12.01.

Just give me like 30 minutes.

Why is that funny?

I'm kidding.

I'm not going to do that.

I appreciate you.

Touche on that.

Okay, full transparency.

I have been asking the Lord to help me with timing.

Like, Lord, please help me because I just get excited.

I'm an engineer, so I think that I have to say everything in one message.

You know what I'm talking about?

I'm a technical person.

I'm learning to not do that.

Thank you, brother.

There has been scientific study that shows us that our brain has different mechanisms when it comes to wanting something versus liking it.

Wanting something we don't have versus liking and enjoying something that we do have.

Think of it like this: the pursuit of something versus having gratitude.

Two different things in the brain.

Two different parts.

Wanting is called incentive salience.

And this is the idea behind this is that this matters to me, so I'm going to go get it.

When we have this thing, we have a drive for something we don't have.

This is so convicting to me, by the way.

I'm just I'm preaching to myself.

Why are you laughing, Apostle Pete?

You mock my pain.

What?

Oh, you're relating.

You're welcome.

This idea of this matters, go get it, okay?

I want you to hear, please hear this.

This triggers something in our body, okay?

This is a neurological thing, and our biology is actually made for this.

It releases dopamine to desire and pursue something.

Dopamine is a chemical, it's the reward, motivation chemical.

It's what motivates us, okay?

Do you know that energy when you're working towards something?

You haven't achieved it yet, but do you know that excitement, that thrill?

Oh my gosh, I'm gonna get it.

And you have this expectation, you're like, oh, I can't, and you're dreaming about it, I can't wait till we have it.

You have dopamine, it's a feel-good chemical in your body.

Yeah, yes.

This is crazy, y'all.

I was blown away when I looked at this.

They make video games like this.

It's a reward-based system.

You beat one level during the pursuit of getting to the ending the level, you've got this drive in dopamine.

It's a rush.

Then you get to the level, and you're not sitting there just thinking, okay, I'm good now.

You're thinking, where's the next level?

And it works like that.

And there's another level, and then there's a download pack, and then there's this, and that's how it keeps people hooked, is that they're dopamine junkies.

I'm getting that feel-good high because I'm pursuing something that I don't have.

This heavily involves the mesolimbic dopamine system, including projections from the VTA into the nucleus accumbens ventral stratium.

Write that down.

No idea what that means.

But liking something, being grateful for what we have, enjoying what we already have, is a different part of the brain.

Completely different part of the system.

Liking his hedonic pleasure.

It means this feels good.

I enjoy this.

I'm I'm grateful for this.

And that involves smaller hedonic hotspot networks, including parts of the nucleus accumbens and ventral pallidium with opioid opioid and endocannabinoid signaling.

That endocannabal, I can't even say it.

I practiced it like 20 times.

Endocannab endocannabinoid.

Thank you for the clap.

This is what's involved with liking something.

This is you know, I this is all fun and stuff, but this is what happens in marriage.

The thrill of pursuit is so fun.

So much life.

Then you get married, and all of a sudden.

That's the thing that makes your life hard.

It's the thing you're bitter about, the thing you can't stand.

That wants that great love that you were pursuing.

Do you know our natural biology and makeup is designed to not have gratitude?

We're made.

Our brain is made.

When I I want to pursue something I don't have.

You know what's even crazy is that we can actually feel more of a rush wanting something versus the rush we feel when we finally get it.

And this is me.

I've always got to be having something I'm pursuing.

And if I don't, I'm like, where's the meaning of life?

Y'all know what I'm talking about.

I just don't even have anything I'm working towards.

There's not anything I want to buy, there's not even this.

Life's just, I you might even think you're depressed.

You have this all of a sudden this decrease in dopamine, these chemicals you've been getting high off of because you're always wanting, wanty something.

You go get a house.

You know what?

All of a sudden you're in that house a couple years, and what do you want?

Another house, a bigger house.

And all of a sudden it's the dopamine, it's the rush.

We're looking, we're looking.

We've gotta have it because it feels so good.

1 Timothy 6, 6 says, Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth.

Contentment here it means a state of peaceful happiness with one's circumstances.

Circumstances means this, I have enough.

It's not.

Why does the Lord tell us to ask for things?

Right?

What happens with contentment, the balance is is it's the idea of, hey, I have what I I'm satisfied with what I have and I can want things, but if I don't get that, I'll be okay.

If that never happens, I'll be okay.

This is why contentment is so profound.

And I'm telling you, if we could get this and understand the biology, just because we want something doesn't mean that God wants us to have it.

Any lack of gratitude looks at the gifts of the Lord, the very gift of life and everything placed in it, and all of a sudden no longer sees it as a gift, but it sees as something that's owed to me.

Did y'all hear that?

A lack of gratitude is this idea, oh, this was owed to me.

The Lord's been working on my heart because I pray and ask for stuff all the time.

And he's rebuked me.

The Holy Spirit has rebuked me personally.

And maybe he's been rebuking me for years.

I just didn't have my ears open to it.

David, you're not content.

You're a lot of the fire in your life is just trying to get things that you don't have.

Why can't you just enjoy what you have?

Why can't you slow down?

It's okay to ask for and want things, but it's not meant to be the things that we worship.

Godliness turns to us and it puts us to the source that's fully satisfied.

All these other things I can want it, but if I don't get it, it's okay because I'm satisfied.

It really is a great wealth.

What if you could have the perspective of the richest man in the world today by all of a sudden seeing clearly?

Oh my gosh, Lord, you have been so faithful.

Oh.

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Lord.

My wife was out of town.

I watched our little son Hayden.

He's like almost 19 months old, right?

And when mama's not there, mama is his security blanket.

Okay, as long as she's around, he's fully, okay, I can go play.

When she's not there, he needs a little bit more attention.

There's it's like a you know what I'm talking about, it's like a vulnerability.

Like, you know, mama's not here, dad, and he wants to be held a lot when she's not around.

Dad, hold me.

I don't fully understand all the you know the psychology of that, but I'm sure you moms get it.

When she's not home.

So I'm watching him yesterday, and I'm trying to like do some stuff around the house, you know, and while he's playing, but every couple minutes he just needs to be held.

And so I'm like in the kitchen trying to do something, I'm trying to cook, and he comes up, uh, and there was a moment where I was a little bit like I got slightly frustrated.

And that was a moment I took that thought captive, and I said, wait a second, and I was like, Lord, thank you for this wonderful gift of a son.

And there's gonna be times, probably years from now, that I would give anything to have one day like this again with him.

Because one day he's gonna be too big to hold, one day he's gonna have a house of his own, and I'm gonna say, I wish I could go back to that one day where I was watching my son trying to do dishes or whatever, and he wanted to be held, and I would just be like, Come here.

So I was like, Thank you, Lord, for this.

And I picked him up and I said, Whatever I'm doing can wait.

And I was almost like this.

I was still, and I recognized the blessing of God in my life.

It's contentment, realizing how blessed we are.

When you look at your spouse, look at them with fresh eyes.

They say one of the things that keeps a marriage healthy is a continual curiosity.

Don't assume you fully know them yet.

But instead watch them.

Learn what is that thing?

What is that thing that they really like?

Always remain curious.

I was standing outside.

Why are you laughing?

She watches me like a hawk.

She watches Apostle Pete.

It's not because she's curious, it's because she's like, what's he gonna do now?

I'm just kidding.

Keep that guy in line, okay?

That's not low I'm talking about, ladies.

Bunch of critical spirit people.

I'm just kidding.

That was mean.

Lord forgive me.

Damn, sorry.

I was joking.

I I go really hard.

Catherine was telling me, she's like, you know what, Dave, whenever you talk about marriage stuff, you always go way harder on the women than you do the men.

That's not true.

Thank you.

Tell my wife that.

Because I'm too afraid to she's pregnant.

Apparently, you get pregnancy brain.

You know what I'm talking about?

You start forgetting stuff.

She just said, I'm about to get pregnancy brain.

Okay, I love you, honey.

Let's talk about forgiveness real quick.

Okay, let's let's hone it in.

This thing of uh of contentment, this is a big deal.

God has already provisioned us everything that we need to be godly.

Okay?

That's how all the virtue thing starts out.

You already have everything you need.

A lot of times what happens is that we're trying to spiritually grow and we don't think I don't have what I need.

I'm waiting for God to do something, fill in the blank.

The enemy, as okay, when I say enemy, I'm talking about demons.

Right?

The enemy loves to hijack that moment where I think God hasn't done whatever, fill in the blank.

God hasn't done this, he hasn't opened the door, he hasn't provided this, I don't have that feeling pulling me into godliness.

Fill in the blank.

The enemy's gonna jump in right there and give you and sow this seed of that God is withholding from you.

And it's gonna take, it's gonna, it's gonna attack affection, trust, and devotion, and love to him.

And it's gonna put you in a place where you're now a victim.

And all that spiritual growth that you were doing is all of a sudden gonna go backwards.

It's gonna decline.

For your heart hardens.

God is withholding.

You want to do something great in life, promotion comes for the Lord, wait on him.

If the door doesn't open, don't try to kick it open.

You're just gonna hurt people and hurt your own reputation.

Wow.

Okay.

If you need God to provide something for you, if you're looking for a spouse and wait for that, you know what?

Trust the God who made you, that he also made the one who you're destined to be with.

You can trust him with that.

I think he's able to.

Enjoy what you have by putting your eyes and being satisfied on him.

This is what's beautiful is that God knows how he made us.

It wasn't an accident, it wasn't a mistake.

The way that we were motivated to desire, we find pleasure in desiring, but we also find pleasure when we continually choose to enjoy something that we already own.

We make it new, we thank the Lord for it, we remember it.

You know what I'm talking about?

It's an intentional decision, but I want you to catch this.

God knows how he made us.

Why did he do this?

This is this is amazing.

Why did he do this?

Because he intended for that that drive, okay, that desire for pursuing something, but also the pleasure of enjoying something to all be focused towards him.

Psalm 63, 1 through 5.

Oh God, you are my God.

I earnestly search for you.

My soul thirsts for you.

My whole body longs for you in this partial land where there's no water.

Notice what's happening right here.

I am searching for you.

I'm desiring you.

My dopamine high, the way you created me, is getting satisfied in my pursuit of you.

Then it says, I have seen you.

I have gazed upon your power and glory.

The unfail your unfailing love.

I'm tasted of your love, and it's better than the finest of feasts.

You see what's happening right here.

Do you see this mighty God that we serve that is able to satisfy every aspect of our life, not just from the pursuit of what we desire, but also from the fulfillment of what we have.

He satisfies all of it.

And the end of this verse says, You satisfy me more than the richest feast.

He was meant to be that primary thing.

All I need is you.

If I have you, I have enough.

The Lord's been working on my heart with these things.

It's okay to want things, it's okay to aspire to things, but is there a place that's settled in our life where I can delight in the Lord?

Delight in the Lord says, make me your desire.

You know that verse, I think it's Psalm 43.

Delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

People misunderstand that and they think, oh, I just became a Christian.

God's going to give me whatever I want.

That's not at all what that means.

What God is saying is, when you make me the desire of your heart, I will fully satisfy that.

Did y'all hear that?

He will fully satisfy that.

So please stand.

Garner, we're not, we're not gonna do that.

Sorry, brother.

I told him something before service.

None of us have arrived, okay?

But I do want to encourage you, church, when it's very easy to take these types of messages the wrong way.

The goal here is not to be religious or simply have a performance.

My heart is that we will all encounter him and realize the richness of his love that actually changes us.

Okay?

You can put that instrumental on back there, please, Gary.

Thank you, sir.

So, Father, I just thank you for your love and I thank you for your kindness, Lord.

I thank you for your presence, Lord, that changes us.

Is that my little buddy?

Here, bring him, bring him up here.

Let Daddy hold him.

My little gift.

The Bible says that children are a blessing, a gift.

You want Daddy to hold you?

Thank you, Father.

Thank you, Father.

Lord, we thank you for our wonderful spouse, that gift from the Lord.

We thank you for our children.

We thank you for our family.

We thank you for our church.

We thank you for all the blessings, God, that you've given us.

You've been so faithful.

Forgive us, Lord, for just overlooking these things, moving beyond these things, becoming familiar with these things, Lord.

Help us in this, God.

Help us to see you clearly.

In your mighty name.

Amen.

Amen.

Church, listen, we love you.

I want you to go have a really good week.

Listen, I want you to do this.

Start looking at your spouse with fresh eyes.

Go back to the days before you had them and you were asking God to give you a spouse.

Go back and remember those days.

My gosh.

I love you, Catherine.

Love y'all, church.

See you later.