Living the Be-Attitudes - Matthew: Kingdom of God Revolution

I don't know about you, but sometimes in my worship experience, if I if I can't get myself to not be distracted and not focus on these other things and truly worship God instead of.

Come on, you guys know exactly what I'm talking about.

We are distracted by so many things, and not the least of which are the thoughts that are in our minds, the things that we have to do, the pain we're going through, all those things.

And our inability to put that stuff aside and really focus on him is really what gets in the way of our truly failed, understand, and live up what true worship really looks like.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message.

Okay, the title of the message this morning is Living the Beatitudes.

Now, I don't know about you guys, but every time I read the Beatitudes, I get a little intimidated.

What about you?

You get a little intimidated reading the Beatitudes?

How many of you think you're doing great, good living all the Beatitudes?

There's no problem.

No, it's really hard.

It really is hard.

And so when Steve asked me to speak a few weeks back, I thought, what can I do to really blend in with the kind of messaging we've been getting about the Beatitudes?

And I really thought about what is the secret or what is the key to being able to live the Beatitudes.

Finish this sentence.

We were created to worship God.

In the prayer time this morning, we had a couple of them, pre-service prayer, and we had a group prayer on the platform for all the people involved in the service.

And I mentioned to the team this morning that in all of my years of experience, there is no possible way I can live the beatitudes in my flesh.

It just doesn't work.

And if I had to look back at what I believe is the secret to being able to live the beatitudes, it's all wrapped up in that one word, worship.

To the extent that I become a worshiper, to the extent that I really know what worshiping God is all about, and I'm able to enter in and do it and experience his presence, that's the only way that I can find myself being able to come close to living what Jesus is calling us to live.

And uh I got a picture this morning in prayer time that I got to share with you about the Lord.

You know how the Lord uh how people need dough, they take a big pile of bow and they need it, and they they're they're they're mixing things into it.

And when we were praying this morning, uh that a lot of different people had a same kind of a vision about needing and that the Lord would use our worship experience today and our words and our teaching to knead the life and the truth of this message uh into our hearts and into our soul.

And I was reminded in our prayer time this morning that you can also knead into bread a lot of raisins and nuts.

You know where I could go with this, okay?

Because there are a lot of raisins and nuts here.

Somebody asked me earlier which one it was I.

I I said I was a nut.

Somebody said I was a raisin because I'm so old.

So I don't know what that means.

But anyway, uh the idea is that uh and here's a little history, okay?

If you look at history, God uh really resides in the real world.

How many of you know this is not the real world?

This is the world God created.

The real world is world is where God is.

He's always been there and he's got beings all around him.

But the way God designed things, the beings around him had to have a free will.

If they didn't have a free will, then he'd just be God and everybody be subject to everything that he does or says, but that's not the way God designed it.

As a result of that, uh these some of these beings fell, and we so we have good and evil that's been around for a long time.

So what God decided to do is to create man.

He created man in his own image, and he plopped him down in this on this place called earth.

He created the natural realm in order to have fellowship with man.

He wanted to have fellowship, but he still had to give man uh free will.

So Adam and Eve had free will.

That's what caused them to decide to go with their pride and sin and walk away from God.

So God still desires to have this connection with man, but now he doesn't have it.

It's broken.

So what does God do?

He institutes uh the law and sacrifices so that he can get reconnected with his creation, with his beings.

And along the way, if we follow history, a man came, Moses, uh a man named Moses came along.

And here is what happened.

And Moses uh comes along and asks the question, Lord, because God is asking Moses to do things, and God, and Moses is saying, Who am I, Lord?

In other words, how in the world could you use somebody like me?

How am I worthy?

Who am I?

And if you look at Exodus 3, 11 and 12, here's God's answer to Moses.

Here's what he says: God said, I will be with you, Moses, and this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you.

When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.

You will worship God on this mountain.

In a very real sense, dear ones, what God was saying to Moses is, here's who you are, Moses.

You are a bringer of my people to the mountain.

That's who you are.

And what happened at the mountain was profound, guys.

What happened at the mountain were was the tablets and the tabernacle.

The tablets indicating the law or the truth of the word of God, and the tabernacle indicating the idea of worship and the whole spirit, worshiping in spirit and truth.

They, as a result of that, they they experienced God.

And then as time went on, we all know the rest of the story.

We just celebrated the fact that God then sends his son to become the ultimate sacrifice, to die and be raised from the dead, to once again reunite us with him, so that now we don't we no longer need the tabernacle.

The tabernacle is where now?

The tabernacle is now, we don't need to go to a physical place, he's right inside of us.

And this that's a profound truth we'll unpack a little bit more here in a minute.

So now the natural and the supernatural are together again, but guess what, guys?

They're in us.

We have everything we need in us to be able to move on.

Okay?

Uh now, what does God word God's word uh reveal?

In John 4, 23 to 24, it says this yet a time is coming and has now come when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.

You've heard Steve say that we are a word and spirit church.

I really believe that, except I think it's actually flipped.

We are a spirit and word church.

I believe the Bible makes it clear that we don't sometimes understand the truth until we first worship God in spirit.

It's the spirit that makes the truth come alive in our lives.

But sometimes it's hard for us to get in contact with how do I really worship God in spirit?

And that's what I want to unpack for you today, because worship is the key to everything and the gateway to living the Beatitude.

Worshiping God in spirit in fruit.

So we're called to worship God, we're called to obey God.

And in fact, in Ecclesiastes, well, in Solomon, by the way, wrote the entire book of Ecclesiastes.

I don't know if you knew this, but he wrote the entire book whining.

I like to say it's too bad I wasn't around in Solomon's day.

I could have probably taught him how to be a better whiner, you know.

But he wrote the entire book whining, chasing after wind.

I mean, you can go over and over and over that book and you see all this futility and all that stuff.

But when he gets, but it but Solomon was the wisest man in all of history, was he not?

In fact, the Italians would, you know, we were reluctant to say, but he he was the original wise guy.

Did you know that?

Solomon was the wise guy, the original wise guy.

He wrote the entire book whining.

But at the end of the book, in fact, if you go to Ecclesiastes, if you've got your Bible with you, go to Ecclesiastes, let me see if I can find it here.

Chapter, I think it's 12.

He does all this whining, and then in chapter 12, the last chapter of Ecclesiastes, he gets down to the very end.

Now remember, this is the wisest man in all of history.

He says this at the very end.

And I'll kind of paraphrase here because I'm reading out of the NIV, which is the new Italian version.

Oh, look at that.

A bunch of Italian jokes just came up.

Anyway, he says, Now all has been heard.

Now, now that I've done all this whining and all this complaining, here is the conclusion of the matter.

In other words, what he's about to say, it all distills down to this fear God and keep his commandments.

Fear God and keep his commandments.

Well, what does fear God mean?

Does that mean cower in a corner and be afraid of God?

No.

Fear in this context really means be in awe of God, to revere God, to worship God, and then ultimately to obey what he's calling us to do.

He goes on to say, for this is the whole duty of man.

In other words, dear words, this is what it all boils down to: to fear God, to worship God, to be in awe of God, and to obey his commands.

Now, what gets in the way of us being able to enter into this?

What gets in the way of us being able to be true worshipers of God?

Because I know this can be very, very controversial.

I want to unpack for you what I call three barriers to worship.

Three barriers to being able to be a worshiper.

The first one is what I call a shallow or cavalier understanding of God and his majesty.

And kind of demonstrate that, let me just try something here real quick.

Um, all of you know what this is.

This is a, they call it a smartphone, cell phone.

This particular phone, I don't know if you realize what this phone does, but honestly, it is absolutely amazing.

This this cell phone, when I back in the 70s and 80s, early 80s, I was a vice president of a major corporation, and we had a computer in our in our uh uh building that was probably as big as this entire platform.

It was on a raised floor.

Some of you guys are old enough to remember that, had air conditioning underneath, had tubes in it and stuff.

It was a huge, spare Univac, they called it.

Big, huge computer.

Back in the late 70s, early 80s.

Do you know that this cell phone, this this right here, has 10 times more power than that entire computer had in the early 80s?

Do you realize what this thing does?

I mean, I can I got my friend Jeff over in Singapore right now.

I can hit a button, and Jeff can be on the screen right here in front of me, and we can talk back and forth.

I've opened up conferences where I've been in another part of the world, and I'll call Cindy and have her open the conference in prayer just by putting this up to my microphone, and she's there with me, present.

It'd be absolutely amazing.

Any piece of information that you could possibly ever want is where?

It's right here.

You don't need volumes of encyclopedias.

It's right inside this phone.

Every appointment that I've ever had and ever will have is right inside this phone.

I can tell it to make appointments.

If I'm hungry, I can say, hey, I won't do it now because she'll answer me.

I'll say, I'm hungry, I want some Italian food.

And she'll say, I'll say, What's the closest Italian restaurant?

They find it.

They not only find it, they tell you how to get there.

And they don't only tell you how to get there, they give you a number you can call, and you can on the phone, you can reserve a table.

I mean, really, honestly, guys, think about this.

This is absolutely mind-boggling what this thing will do.

We don't have to think anymore.

And a lot of people don't, by the way.

They just run their phones.

Okay?

Now, imagine all the things that this little thing does.

Now, many of you young people, uh you're thinking, well, of course.

Everybody knows that.

You don't have a clue what it was like before.

I mean, so you have no context for what I'm about to say.

But for those of you that are a little older, imagine going back to the, you know, the even the mid-80s, okay?

There was nothing even near this.

And and you're walking down the street, and this exact device that I just explained to you is actually present in the mid-80s.

Now you have your mid-80s mindset, it's laying in the gutter, and you see something down there flashing at you, you go down and you pick it up, and you intuitively realize everything that this thing does.

Now, with your 1980s mindset, what's the first thing you're thinking?

I'll tell you what I'm thinking.

What alien?

Right?

Because there's no way that this thing is possible.

Not possible.

What alien being made this?

Keith, can I bore you for just a second?

Everybody say hi, Keith.

Keith, you can stay down on the floor.

Makes me feel bigger.

Everybody, everybody, uh this is Keith.

Keith is a is a representative of the being who made this.

Keith represents man.

We made this.

We designed it, we put it together, we created all the technology for it.

Yeah, hang on one second.

Ooh, I gotta root.

Can I get one of those back?

Hang on just one second.

I'll glue it back in.

Okay, now.

Here I have one little tiny piece of hair.

This is the being who made this, okay?

One tiny little piece of hair from this being who made this, okay?

Now, you can't even see this, but this little tiny piece of hair, listen to me, technologically blows this away.

At the cellular level, we still don't understand what's going on in that little tiny piece of hair.

Whoa.

So it begs, it begs the question.

Where did this come from?

Some people are asking that question, by the way.

No, no, no.

Seriously.

Think about this for a second.

Are you getting this?

You understand how much bigger our God is than we can possibly fathom.

Okay?

That's the God who is awesome.

That's the God.

Do you think he might be worthy of our worship?

What do you think?

Okay?

He's the God who who gave it all.

Say this with me.

He gave it all.

He's the God who gave it all for you and me.

That's the God that's worthy, okay?

Listen to this.

Job 26, 7 to 14.

He spreads out the northern skies over the empty space.

He suspends the earth over nothing.

He wraps up the waters in the clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their weight.

He covers the face of the full moon, spreading the clouds over it.

He makes out the horizon on the face of the waters for a boundary between light and darkness.

The pillars of the heavens quake, aghast at his rebuke.

By his power he churned up the sea.

By his wisdom he cut Rahab to pieces.

By his breath the skies became fair, and his hand pierced the gliding serpent.

And it says in verse 14, and these are but the outer fringe of his works.

In the New King James it says the mere edges of his ways.

The Living Bible says some of the minor things that he does.

And the good news says only hints of his powers, only whispers.

Who can know how truly great our God is?

This is the God who is worthy of our praise.

So we, guys, we got to raise our understanding of the majesty of who this God is.

He is so deserving of our praise.

Second barrier is what I call a narrow theological perspective on worship.

And what do I mean by a narrow theological perspective?

Well, everybody's got, when you say worship to people, everybody's got a different idea of what worship means.

Oftentimes, what we think worship is the 20, 30, 40 minutes that happens before a church service.

That's not worship.

It is worship.

It's a help in worship.

It's creating an environment for us to worship God, and it's very special, no doubt about that.

But that's not truly I I've asked this in pastor conferences where I've had groups of pastors, and I say, Pastor, if you take away all the instruments and all the people on the platform, all the accoutrements and all that stuff, what would worship look like?

And honestly, in pastor conferences, sometimes I get deer in the headlights.

It's kind of like, well, I'm not sure what you mean by that.

And then I ask the question, what about, what if there was, uh, what if before me was a table?

We just partook of communion, did we not?

What if before me was a table with the communion elements on it?

What do you think?

Is that worship?

What you just did a few minutes ago was the most profound form of worship ever represented on planet Earth.

Get this, guys.

Worship, we've got to expand our view of what worship really is.

We'll talk a little bit more about this in just a moment.

Worship is much broader than we think.

But here's typically what happens to us.

We think worship is somehow really meaningful when I'm in an environment where it's hot, man, the music is loud, people are up and down, there's tambourines, they're waving flags, they're uh flipping off shoes and doing laps around the church, and I mean it's very charismatic.

And people would say, you know, that that's what we're that's what real worship and praise is all about.

Then there are other people that would say, no, no, no, no, no.

That's not real worship.

Uh real worship is very reverent, it's very quiet and very subdued, head bowed, or even if our head's up with God and it's very quiet and very reserved.

Now, let me ask you a question.

What do you what do you think?

They're both worship, aren't they?

Whether they're worship or not has nothing to do with our outward expression, as it has everything to do with what's in our heart.

Because I want to tell you something, guys, and you guys, many of you have experienced this.

I've been in places where it's been rowdy and and really uh filled with raucous and people running around doing a lot of things, and I've actually walked away thinking that was a lot of form and very little substance.

And it was more an idea of people drawing attention to themselves than really drawing attention to the person that we're trying to worship.

Okay, and I've been in in both of those situations, I've seen both extremes take place, and it has nothing to do with the outward expression.

That's why what happens on this platform, guys, is just a way of creating an environment and creating a mood for worship to happen because the real connection with worship is between each and every one of us and our God.

It's not what happens on the platform and all these other things.

It oftentimes can be a distraction.

And when that's what happens, I don't know about you, but sometimes in my worship experience, if I if I can't get myself to not be distracted and not focus on these other things and truly worship God instead of, you know, oh, you know, look at look at Mary over there raising her hands today.

Oh, look at that.

Come on, you guys know exactly what I'm talking about.

We are distracted by so many things, and not the least of which are the thoughts that are in our mind, the things that we have to do, the pain we're going through, all those things.

And our inability to put that stuff aside and really focus on Him is really what gets in the way of our truly being under being able to understand and live out what true worship really looks like.

And then the third one is uh what I call a reluctance toward surrender.

And this is a big one, guys.

And we Steve talked about it, I think, last week or the week before.

It's a reluctance toward surrender.

It's the it's the idea that we are not able to put ourselves aside.

I I'm finding out the older I get that my my proximity to God is in direct relation to my distance from Vince.

The further I get away from me, the more I put me aside, the more he is able to fill up what is not in me because of me, because of my pride and because of my tendency to want to control things.

So the the word worship is taken from the Greek word proscuneo.

And of course, that's where we get the word prostrate, to really bow myself down, to empty myself of everything that's my own ideas, and just give myself totally to my Lord and Savior.

If there's a reluctance ever since the fall toward surrender, it requires an overcoming of our pride.

It requires not worrying about what other people might think of me if I simply abandon everything and just worship God.

That's the kind of surrender God is looking for.

Okay?

Psalm 51, 17 says, The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Now, why is this so important?

I want to draw your attention to probably, guys, what I would consider my favorite verse in all of the Bible.

It's found in 2 Chronicles 5.13.

If you've got a Bible and you want to turn there, you're welcome to do that, or the verse I believe will be up on the screen.

Here's what it says The trumpeters and singers joined in unison as with one voice to give praise and thanks to the Lord.

Now get this the trumpeters and singers.

I was thinking about this when I was putting this message together.

Who are the trumpeters?

The trumpeters are the skilled Musicians.

They're the people.

They're the people.

They're the musicians, singers, they're the people that are on the platform.

But who are the singers?

What do you think?

Come on, who are they?

It doesn't distinguish between the two.

We are in this together.

The trumpeters and singers joined in unison.

And we tend to compartmentalize, don't we?

To think, well, maybe they're the professionals, maybe they're the ones that they're the ones that really do the worship.

No.

What God is saying is that we're all in this together.

Thank God we have trumpeters.

Thank God we have skilled musicians and singers.

They help us.

But we're in disguise together.

It says, again, that they joined in unison as with one voice to give praise and thanks to the Lord.

Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals, and other instruments, they raised their voices in praise to the Lord and sang, He is good, his love endures forever.

I stopped there for just a moment because the very next word is the word then.

And I love it when then appears in Scripture because then is always a transitional word.

What it's trying to set up is as a result of what has just been described, here is what happened.

Well, what happened?

It said, then the temple of the Lord was filled with a cloud.

What was the cloud?

It was actually the presence of God, was it not?

And we know in the old covenant where did God reside?

It was in a physical place.

We just talked about it.

It was the tent, the tabernacle, the ark, the temple.

God would reside in a physical place.

But then what happened?

When he gave it all, when Jesus came and gave it up, it says the temple curtain was rent.

What does that mean?

Did the temple leave planet Earth?

Hello?

Where is it?

Point to it.

I I don't know about you guys, but this is this is it's an it's a mystery, yes, but it's an incredible truth.

He has come to live in us.

I remember years ago, uh I was praying, uh, and it was a really tender time in my life.

I was praying for God's perspective on something that was going on in my life at that particular point in time.

How many of you would like to have God's perspective in your life right now?

As clearly as I've ever heard his voice, this is what he said.

He said, Vance, you'll never have a greater understanding of my perspective until you first experience a greater awareness of my presence.

Now I know that had to be God, guys, because there's no way my mind would have thought of that.

That's a pretty profound statement.

And I thought, wow.

And I knew exactly what he was trying to tell me.

That I need to, I need to spend more time cuddling up with my God, spending more time with him, getting, uh crawling up in his lap, worshiping him, telling him how wonderful he is.

And unless I do that, I'm never going to understand.

When we do that, it invites God's presence.

How does this look?

What happened to man?

In Romans 1.21, here's a kind of a description Paul writes about what is happening today.

He says, For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their fuelish hearts were darkened.

Guys, I can't think of a better verse to describe what's happening today, sadly, in many of our churches.

In the uh the message translation puts it this way: what happened was this.

People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn't treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion, so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives.

And guys, honestly, I again, I think this is what is happening today.

We are called to worship God, to worship him.

That's worship God in spirit and then worship him in truth.

By the way, did you know that for 75% of the history of the church in our culture, there was no Bible?

No Bible.

Well, what are you saying, Vince?

Is there something wrong with the Bible?

No.

I don't know about you.

Thank God we have the Bible.

We now have available to us things we never had before.

But it begs the question what did they do without the Bible?

They knew how to worship God.

They knew how to pass on story.

And I could make a case that we're dealing with people that without the Bible that had kind of depth that only we could think about and long for oftentimes today.

So, in some ways, we've almost intellectualized our worship.

Instead of abandoning everything, worshiping God in spirit, asking him to help us reveal what he's trying to teach us now through his word, that's what we're really supposed to be doing, guys.

And it's hard for us to do that sometimes.

Now, how do I live out this message?

Well, in truth, we live it out by reading the word, by getting in the word every day.

In Romans 12, 1 and 2, it says, Therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.

This is your spiritual act of worship.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Then, there's that transitional word again, you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will.

You will then have God's perspective as you worship God in spirit and worship God in truth.

Guys, if if if we're not doing this and it's not a daily practice in your life, it's going to be very, very difficult to live this out.

So let me give you just three practical things that you can consider if you really want to take this message to heart and actually start applying it in your life even today.

Sanctify a place.

When you go home today, think to yourself, okay, I really want to be a worshiper.

I want to understand what that means more.

Uh, I want to really drill down, I want to be able to worship God.

I want, and that includes a lot of different expressions.

I want to be able to sanctify a place in my home where I go every day.

I have that in my home.

And by the way, we just moved, Cindy and I, and we had such tremendous help from so many people of our church.

But pretty much the whole Holt family came out and a number of volunteers, and they moved most of our stuff in one day.

It was just such a blessing.

But we're now in a new home, and I'm having to do that in our new home.

I'm uh in my old place where we rented, I had a place, but now uh I had a place downstairs.

Uh my dog is afraid to go downstairs right now, so I had to move it upstairs.

Uh and so I'm in my office upstairs, but it's it's sanctified.

Lord, I'm going to meet you here every day.

And guys, look, Lord is everywhere, I know that.

But there's something about having a special place where you go every day, and you can keep your materials that you read in your devotional or your prayer list, and you go there every day.

You sanctify a place, and that's what I've done.

I've got a place, and and by the way, I just also walked my property the other day.

Did I ever share with you guys the uh the four pillars that I establish around my property?

Did I ever stare that with any of you guys?

Why are you guys staring at me?

If you don't talk to me, I'm gonna go home.

Did I ever share that?

I I especially as a man, I highly recommend as a man that you consider doing this to be the spiritual head of our homes.

Uh, and Cindy loves it when I do this.

I walk the four corners of my property.

I've done it for like 30, 40 years.

I got it out of a book by Jack Cafred called Glory on Your House.

He wrote it a long time ago, and he talks about establishing pillars around your property.

And so I walk the four corners of my property.

Let me just tell you what my pillars are.

You you can you uh ask God for your own pillars, you know, or you can use mine if you want to.

It doesn't make any difference.

But the I went to the back corner of the property, the first thing I do is I say, Lord, I want there to be a pillar right here of prayer and praise.

May we always be a people in our home that believe in the value of worshiping and praising you and that believe in prayer that's very important.

And I anticipate, I think of this pillar as being probably as big around as this whole stage area right over here.

Huge pillar, 500 feet in the air, with a huge warrior Italian angel on top with a flaming sword.

That's my vision of the pillar.

So I prayer and praise.

Then I walk to the other corner of the property and I kind of draw a curtain.

I go over here and I say, I want this to be a pillar of humbleness and humility, Lord.

I want us, as a result of our prayer and praising you and our obedience in this area, that we become a people that are humble and that we display humility before other people, that you sensitize our hearts to be able to do that.

And then I went down this driveway side of the house to the front, and it just happened to be the driveway.

I didn't realize this at the time, but it was kind of symbolic.

I said, I want this to be a pillar of warmth and welcome.

That Lord, as a result of all of this other stuff, that when people come onto our property, even driving onto our property, that they feel your warm and welcome spirit in this place.

And guys, I you probably some of you have experienced this in your own home.

We've had people come into our house and say, Yeah, something feels different here.

Sitting now just look at each other and we think, oh, we know what you're sensing.

You're sensing the presence of God.

I believe you can really sense that as a non-believer.

And so we pray for a pillar of warmth and welcome.

And then the final pillar, I draw a curtain around all of them, is a pillar of protection and power.

Protection in the form of a canopy that would extend to all the other pillars that would protect us from the fiery darts of the enemy when he's trying to attack us.

And as a result of all of our obedience, power that would emanate forth from this place and do battle.

Every place we go is a couple, or whether we go to work, wherever we go, to do battle for the Lord as a result of our obedience.

Those are the four pillars.

And it may sound like just kind of a superstitious kind of exercise, but believe me, guys, it's not.

I believe God honors stuff like that.

I really do.

So sanctify a place.

Sanctify the place where you live.

Okay?

The second thing, build an altar.

Build an altar there.

You know, guys, in the old, in the old covenant, they what they used to do is they went around and they gathered up large stones, big rocks, and they would assemble them together and they'd make altars out of them.

And there is something symbolic about that.

Rocks are hard.

They're hard, hard things.

And guys, um, we've got a lot of hard things in our lives.

We've got a lot of rocks in our lives.

We got a lot of tough stuff.

Look at it.

You could you can take those rocks and you can you can put them in a sack and throw them over your shoulder and you can you can drag them through life and it'll wait you down.

Or you can take those same hard places and you can arrange it before the Lord.

Some of you who were here last year when I shared the story, the miraculous story of Cindy's healing, when the doctors gave us the news that she was gonna die.

There was no question about it, with zero chance for survival.

This was back in 2010.

That's a hard place to be.

That's hard news.

But it reminded me of of Senechareb in his message to Hezekiah.

When he told Hezekiah, hey, read it and weep, Hezekiah, here's the hard news.

You're gonna die.

None of the other uh kings, none of their gods protected them.

You're you're toast.

Same kind of an idea.

Hezekiah had the news, had the data, had the hard places.

The Bible says he he took that letter that uh that Sennacherib wrote, and he went and he arranged it before the Lord.

He went to the temple, and I love that verse.

He arranged it before the Lord.

And he basically said, Lord, this is what the world says.

This is what my circumstances dictate to me.

You all remember this whole illustration I did a while back.

Nobody remembers what I talked about, though, but they always remember my circumstances, God.

I'm seeing God through my circumstances.

The great exchange.

I simply put God here.

I worship God, I go to Him first, I take the hard places to Him, and then He allows me, my circumstances didn't go away, but I'm now seeing those same circumstances through His eyes.

And how many of you know that's a much better way to do it?

Okay, so the whole idea of building an altar, having materials there or whatever you want.

I'm not talking about taking physical rocks and doing it.

Although I've been places where people do stuff like that.

I mean, I worked for Dick Eastman for years, and he has a prayer closet I'm very familiar with in his home, where he goes, and I mean, it's really set up, it's really cool.

Man, I mean so that what's that movie where that woman had a prayer closet?

The war room.

I mean, same kind of an idea.

I mean of that scene in that movie where that guy walks in, didn't know about it.

Remember, he kept walking in, walking out, he says, something feels really different about this war room.

I believe that people sense that the presence of God in those kind of situations.

So anyway, sanctify a place, build an altar, and though, and then finally worship there daily.

Guys, worship there daily.

The next thing I experienced with God in my prayer time was not too long ago when I was I was praying, Lord, the tagline for our ministry, many of you know we've had a men's ministry for many, many years.

The tagline is becoming the man God intended.

And I remember uh asking God one day, I said, Lord, am I becoming the man you intended?

And again, as clearly as I've ever heard his voice, he said, No.

Now, again, uh that couldn't have been me.

I mean, I would have never said that to myself.

Okay.

So it's like, okay, Lord, what do you what are you trying to suggest?

And I didn't get a sense that he was angry or not pleased with me.

I I had a sense that he was encouraging me, that I'm making progress, but he said, There's still something missing, Vince.

And he began to deal with me.

He said, I listen, Vince, listen carefully.

And by the way, what I'm about to say is for each and every one of you as well.

For each and every one of us in this auditorium or in the sound of my voice right now, this is a word for you.

I have given you a platform, listen, from which to share the life and love of my son Jesus to other people.

Now, guys, make no mistake about it.

A platform doesn't mean being up here, being in front of thousands, tens of thousands, football stadiums.

That's not what he's talking about.

Each and every one of us have a platform, and the bigger the platform, the more people is just as important as being in your living room with two of your kids or your small family.

Every one of us has been given a platform from which to share the life and love of Jesus with other people.

And this is what he said to me.

I've given you that platform, and you, sir, are not taking that responsibility seriously enough.

That's what he told me.

And immediately when he said that, I had flashbacks of thinking about being more concerned about the form of things and the substance, more concerned about my schedule or how things are getting taken care of.

I mean, a whole bunch of things started flooding my mind.

And he said this: he says, if you're going to share my heart with other people, Vince, you need to know my heart.

And you are not spending enough time with me to truly know my heart.

That was pretty convicting because at that time, guys, I was probably spending a minimum of 45 minutes to an hour every day along with God.

And if you're anything like me, sometimes those are really sensitive, wonderful times.

Other times it's almost like a rote exercise, like checking something off my to-do list.

But what happened is a result of that word, probably five years ago now, I made a commitment, and I made a commitment to all the men in my men's group that I'm going to start getting up at five o'clock every morning and spending from five to eight o'clock every day worshiping, praising, reading the word, spending time with God every day.

And from that moment to today, I've done that almost every day.

Now, I do admit there are some days when I have early morning schedules, I might miss it, but I try everything I do to stick to that.

I average between two and three hours every day alone with God.

And I'll tell you something, guys, it's changing my life.

It's really changing my life.

Listen, how many of you know you cannot outgive God?

You cannot outgive God with your time or your money.

The more we give to Him, the more we invest, the more He pays it back.

And I wouldn't trade that for anything else.

That's all.

Am I suggesting you should do that?

No.

Why does it take me three hours?

Because of this.

Because of my mind.

It takes me that long to get this thing to shut up, to be quiet, to really sense his presence.

For some of you, that may take 15, 20 minutes.

You need to decide, dear ones, what it is that you need to do to have the kind of connection that I'm talking about here.

The kind of connection with God that's going to allow you to truly live out these beatitudes.

Worship there daily, giving thanks.

Always start by giving thanks.

Thank God.

Even when Cindy was in the hospital and it looked like she was going to die, I started thanking God, praising God for the good things.

And I'm going to tell you something.

It's pretty hard to whine and to be thankful at the same time.

So I think there's something really special about that.

That when you would go to God and we're thankful, when we start our being thankful, he loves that.

So be thankful.

Abraham in Genesis 14, 22, you know, I'm sorry, I'm ahead of myself.

Giving thanks.

Number two, praising with words and song.

In Psalms, there's 15 references in the New Testament alone of praising God with song.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking, uh, you know, I'm not sure God wants to hear me sing.

Uh I know the people around you may not want to hear you sing, but let me tell you, God doesn't care.

He would love for you to just break out in song, and if you don't know a song, make something up.

He loves that.

Paul and Silas, remember, were singing and praising God and spiritual songs, and the and the very the prison doors were shaken loose.

There's something that happens when we praise and we worship God, even with song.

And then it says here also lifting up hands.

You know, sometimes we get um a little intimidated about lifting hands.

And I've I've always wondered about that.

When I became a new Christian and I went to a pretty charismatic check church for the first time, it kind of freaked me out that people were raising their hands.

And that weekend before I uh I went to church, I just happened to be at a Rams football game.

Uh unfortunately, I was a Rams fan back in those days and they didn't win very much.

But I remember what they say they actually scored a touchdown in this game, which is really a miracle.

And so I'm up there uh shouting and raising my hands, and the pastor reminded us of that we don't have any problem doing that at a football game or a soccer match or whatever, uh, you know, praising our players or the team or whatever.

Why do we have a problem raising our hands and praising God and thanking God?

And uh remember that stuck with me when he said that.

But Abraham in Genesis 14, 22, raised his hand as a confession to the Lord.

Moses in Exodus 17, 11, in spiritual warfare, as Aaron and her held them up actually through that time.

It was a powerful illustration.

David in Psalm 63, 3 and 4, in face of death, says, I will lift up my hands in your name.

Solomon in Kings, uh uh 1 Kings 8, 54 and 55, in reaching out to others.

It says, When Solomon had finished all these prayers and supplication to the Lord, um, he rose from before the altar of the Lord where he had been kneeling, which I didn't recommend, with his hands uh spread out toward heaven.

He stood and blessed the whole assembly of Israel in a loud voice.

So raising up holy hands, sanctifying a place, building an altar, worshiping there daily, being more expressive in the way we approach God are all important things for understanding.

And of course, corporate worship is important, which we're gonna enter into here in just a few minutes.

But before we do, I want to just finish with one little uh illustration.

Some of you are probably wondering, I don't think, was anybody any of you wondering what this is?

Amen.

People have been staring at it probably, what are they gonna do with that?

Would you like would you like to see what I'm gonna do with this?

I'm so sorry.

They don't want to see it.

Ask them again?

Okay.

Would you like to see what the illustration is with the puppy?

It was June 1994.

I was emotional.

Uh, was the executive vice president of Every Home for Christ, and we were considering leaving Every Home for Christ and starting on target ministries, but City and I were scared.

And we uh were really seeking God.

And uh I remember I was in my basement, and we had just taken delivery a little puppy at that time.

Her name was Katie, and this little stuffed animal, by the way, looks just like what Katie looked like in 1994.

And by the way, this particular little stuffed animal has been with me everywhere for the last, well, since 1995.

Been all around the world, literally all around the world, every country you can imagine never seems to get dirty.

Uh just it's been a miracle, but this occasion was really an important lesson for me, and I hope it blesses you.

I was by my back door.

We lived in a big house on a golf course, and we were looking out over the golf course, and I was praising God.

Um, I had tears running down my face.

I was emotional.

I was pleading for God, Lord, I love you so much.

I just want to have your perspective.

I want to know what we should do.

And little Katie was there, she was so Wandering around somewhere, and I was wearing my pajamas and my slippers, and so the next thing I felt in the midst of praising God was an impression on my left slipper.

Little Katie had come for wherever she was, and she came over to my left slipper, put her little paws up on the slipper like that, and uh put her little head up on the paws like that, and when I looked down, this is what I saw, and that is what I felt.

If this were all women, they would go.

Anyway, so that that's what I was so in the middle of my praising God, here's what God said.

How does that feel?

That's all he said.

And so I'm already kind of weeping, and I said, Well, Lord, oh my gosh, that feels so good.

Here is this little puppy lying on a foot that could crush her.

She doesn't care.

I'm as far as the east is from the west from her, and I'm she just wants me.

It's unconditional love.

She just wants to be close to me and cuddle up with me, and I'm going on and on and on.

And he interrupts me in the middle of that.

And he says, Vince, I want you to know that doesn't even come close to how I feel when you do that with me.

Whoa.

Listen, guys, I I do not know how this works.

I don't.

I don't know how God can love us like that and feel that way about us when he does it, but he does.

The closest I can come is this silly little illustration, but there's not a person right now in the sound of my voice that you don't know what I mean.

That you don't know what it's like when that little puppy or that little kitten or that little baby just wants to crawl up in your arms and love on you.

God is saying that doesn't come close to how I feel when you do that with me.

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