Are You READY to Heal?: A Few Good Minutes with God - TWCC 8-9-26 10:30 am

[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Way Community Church Podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our mission is to show people the way to life with Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: My name is Darahal and I am the pastor of the Way Community Church.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you would like to join us as a member or of you simply need prayer,

[SPEAKER_00]: Or if you want to worship through giving, you can find the links and the transcription of this podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: Today we're going to introduce two people from scripture who both exemplify what it means to live, and to healthy rhythm with God.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to look at Daniel who's a prophet and Anna who's a prophet test.

[SPEAKER_00]: And our goal is to learn from their experience, the value of spending, quality time with God.

[SPEAKER_00]: So grab your Bibles.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can follow along the notes in the transcript of this podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's study God's Word together.

[SPEAKER_00]: May God be praise and may God be glorified.

[SPEAKER_00]: I greet you this morning in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and there are two passages today that we are going to consider.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know that usually we start off reading those passages, but today we'll read them as we move throughout the message, but I do want to encourage you to go ahead and grab them.

[SPEAKER_00]: The first is going to be in Luke chapter two.

[SPEAKER_00]: Luke chapter two will be the first passage we'll consider.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then Daniel chapter six will be the second passage that we will consider.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you grab those and if you follow along with me on the screen, you can also find those notes on the Bible app.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you go to the Bible app, search events, find the way community church.

[SPEAKER_00]: You will find these words for you and they are.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's pray together.

[SPEAKER_00]: God, we honor you, we thank you for the sacred space we share it together.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're grateful for this, this church, this community, this congregation, which you are doing in our midst, is quite frankly amazing and we're grateful to be a part of the move of the Holy Spirit and Congress Georgia to the ends of the earth.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so individually, we give our lives to you and also collectively.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, may you do through our life when only you can do, and may you do through this church, where only you can do.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for these few minutes, make it to spend together with each other and with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Would you be glorified and made these or people be edified?

[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus, let me pray.

[UNKNOWN]: Amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: You may be seated in the presence of the living God.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to continue our series.

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you ready to heal today, I want to preach?

[SPEAKER_00]: With this thought in mind, a few good minutes with God, a few good minutes with God.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you've never heard the name, Cornelia,

[SPEAKER_00]: Joe Hanna, 10 Boom, I want to introduce her to you this morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's known better by the short and example of her name, abbreviated version of her name, as Corey 10 Boom.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was a Dutch Christian Holocaust survivor.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she was so amazing that during World War II, her, her sister, used their private residence in their sphere of influence.

[SPEAKER_00]: to protect those who were fleeing from captivity through the Holocaust.

[SPEAKER_00]: She ended up being thrown into a concentration camp and surviving the concentration camp.

[SPEAKER_00]: And after her survival of the Holocaust, she became a renowned speaker and author and she began to influence the thoughts and minds of Christians like us for many years pass her terrible experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: She said that if the devil cannot make you sin, he will make you busy.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was skilled with her hands.

[SPEAKER_00]: She took up the trade from her father of being a watchmaker.

[SPEAKER_00]: And interestingly enough, she was the first female licensed watchmaker in Holland, the country where she lived.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it will make sense to me as she would design these armed pieces and intricacies inside to help people mark time minutes and seconds and hours throughout the day that she would receive the revelation that the time we spend with God is what makes all the difference, which is why Satan works double time to keep us too busy to slow down.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to say this to the person in the room who is working so hard to make a living that you don't stop to actually live.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is this, I am more than just a tool of production or a cog in a money-making machine.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are more than what America has tried to make you.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to encourage us to see healing in the area of being too busy that we can't spend quality time with God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so this question of, are you ready to heal?

[SPEAKER_00]: Is really a question of, are you ready to stop over functioning so you can start flowing?

[SPEAKER_00]: It is not God's design for you to over function.

[SPEAKER_00]: His God's design for you to live in a flow.

[SPEAKER_00]: the flow of his spirit and from that flow to give your best gifts and best self to the world of what it requires is a knowing of self, it requires a sinterness in God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we've been in this conversation about emotionally healthy spirituality now for the month of May and now also for the month of August.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we've considered concepts like know yourself that you may know God, that we look at the life of David and the woman at the well.

[SPEAKER_00]: We looked at the concept of going back in order to go forward and we gained wisdom from the lives of Joseph and Esther.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then we looked at journeying through the wall, these blockades in our journey that try to keep us from becoming our phenomenological sales or who got us this ironed us to be and we consider the lives of Abraham and Sarah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then, last week, we rehashed a conversation about enlarging your soul through grief and loss.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we looked at Jesus because Jesus is the way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And today I want us to continue this conversation looking at what it means to discover the rhythms of the daily office and Sabbath.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to do my best as your pastor today to introduce to you another lady and another

[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to look at Daniel, the prophet, and Anna, the prophetess.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, when we say daily office or when I say Sabbath, this concept of a daily office originates in the Jewish tradition of praying at fixed times throughout the day.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so Jews would stop at a certain time every day and offer prayers to God and what they called it or what it's become in these days now is daily office.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's marking time with God.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a daily quick appointment between heaven and earth where I pause whatever I'm doing to refocus my mind and recent to myself on God's divine presence.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then the concept of the Sabbath,

[SPEAKER_00]: is a 24-hour period of rest that originated with God in Eden.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you've ever heard the term Sabbath, chances are you probably heard it in a religious context, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you got friends who attended a seven-day Adventist Church, and they can't do nothing from Friday night to Saturday night.

[SPEAKER_00]: I remember when I was in high school, one of the girls in our friend group was a seven-day Adventist, so she could never go to the scary ring.

[SPEAKER_00]: because from Friday at 8 until Saturday, nothing could be done.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you've heard this concept, Sabbath, maybe it's made you question, well, Rev, if Sabbath is on Saturday, while we're in here on Sunday.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we suppose we keep in the Sabbath.

[SPEAKER_00]: If those of your thoughts about the Sabbath, let me impress upon you that that is too low of an idea of the Sabbath.

[SPEAKER_00]: For it is not a religious restriction of what we can and cannot do and what they we can and cannot worship.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wanna elevate your appreciation for the Sabbath to understand that the Sabbath started long before religion was ever organized.

[SPEAKER_00]: People did not create the Sabbath, God created the Sabbath in the first week of creation.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Sabbath is rooted in creation, and is outpouring is from liberation.

[SPEAKER_00]: The first Sabbath was taken by God, which means the Sabbath is not something you do just cause you tired, because God is eternal.

[SPEAKER_00]: He can't get tired.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Sabbath is when you stop just to enjoy.

[SPEAKER_00]: is when you say for six days, I've been producing it for one day, I'm going to stop and enjoy what I work hard to produce for six.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to encourage you to begin a daily office and implement a Sabbath.

[SPEAKER_00]: Peace because Arrow says that this way is stopping for the daily office to be with God is the key to creating a continual and easy familiarity with God's presence for the rest of the day.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Sabbath, he says, calls us to build the doing of nothing into our schedules each week.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing measurable is accomplished.

[SPEAKER_00]: By the world standards, it is inefficient, unproductive and useless as one theologians state it to fail to see the value of simply being with God and doing nothing is to miss the heart of Christianity.

[SPEAKER_00]: What you're saying, Ria, I want to encourage us about the end of this message to build regular times with God every day.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when you need him, you don't have to go look at it.

[SPEAKER_00]: If your prayer life sounds anything like this, hey God, it's me, it's there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know it's been a minute, we ain't talking.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I need that red by the first to self-tember.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you could please help me out, I would appreciate it.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is not the will of God concerning you.

[SPEAKER_00]: The will of God concerning you is to be talking to God so frequently, so regularly that if it's something good, something bad, something scary, or something wonderful, it just happens in the context of the natural flow of your dialogue with the divine.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the daily office.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then a Sabbath is to put on your schedule 24 hours of doing nothing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if somebody tried to get you to do something, you say, I can't do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they say, why?

[SPEAKER_00]: You say, because I already got something to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: They say, what do you already have to do?

[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing.

[UNKNOWN]: That's it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm saying somebody free in the room, right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody like praise the Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't do something, because I'm already doing something.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the something I'm already doing is nothing.

[SPEAKER_00]: in Jesus' name.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the big idea, and I want you to think about this, and then if you have the courage to say it with me, and that is this, I'll know I am ready to heal when I'm willing to spend unhurried time with God.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to hear me from the depth of your soul.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you cannot spend unhurried time with God, then chances are you're using busyness to cover up what's unwell in your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Satan will let you do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the name of religion, he will let you work yourself to death so you can't heal and be well.

[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're willing to pause for a few minutes every day and pause for one day every week, you will start to cultivate the health that God has designed for you to have from a soul-deep place.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if your courage is enough to say it, you can repeat it after me or with me on the count of three.

[SPEAKER_00]: One, two, three.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our no-I am ready to heal when I am willing to spend on hurried time with God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so my hope has been in this conversation for us to consider both a female and male from scripture that we see this rhythm or this example in their life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so today we're gonna look at both, gonna look at the lady and we're gonna look at the gentleman, a prophet and a prophet test.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what they show us is that a regular experience of a few minutes with God.

[SPEAKER_00]: can make all the difference for the health of your soul.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the first thought we'll consider as we look at Anna's life is this.

[SPEAKER_00]: I need time with God when my home life is broken.

[SPEAKER_00]: I need time with God when my home life is broken.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to look at Luke chapter 2, verse 36 through 38.

Luke 2:36–38

[SPEAKER_00]: The word of the Lord says in the New American Standard Bible, and there was a prophetess Anna, the daughter of Fanniewell, of the tribe of Asher.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was advanced in years and had lived with her husband for seven years after her marriage.

[SPEAKER_00]: and then, as a widow, to the age of 84.

[SPEAKER_00]: She did not leave the temple grounds, serving what church, night and day, with what church, fast and prayers.

[SPEAKER_00]: And at that very moment, she came up and began giving thanks to God and continued to speak about him to all those who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

[SPEAKER_00]: here, we meet Anna, and from these few verses, we learn some key things about her story, Anna is a woman, Anna is a prophetess, Anna is a daughter, she's a Jew, she's an elder, she's a widow, but most of all, she's a worshiper.

[SPEAKER_00]: Which you mean, prophets, whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, she's a woman to whom future events or things hidden from others are divinely revealed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that revelation comes either by way of dreams or visions so that she can interpret and declare the oracles of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's a prophetess.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what happens in Lutu is God reveals to her, his son Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus was just born a week in one day ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's eight days old.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Joseph and Mary bring him to the temple to circumcise him and dedicate him back to God as the first born of Mary and also of Joseph.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they bring their first born son and Anna is there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because she's been there all her adult life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she's spending time worshiping the Lord, regardless of all these other layers of her identity, and God reveals his son to her at eight days old.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when she sees the revelation of who Jesus is, she continues to glorify God and to speak about Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not just her as a worshiper is her widowhood that moved her into this place of worship.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can only speculate, but the Bible says that she had been married seven years.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you could imagine that Anna is just a good Jewish girl.

[SPEAKER_00]: She wants to honor God, keep the covenant, honor, grandma, Sarah, and Rebecca in the army.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so she's a little girl at the playground and she sees a little boy picking his nose and it discuss her.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then a few years later, she turns 13.

[SPEAKER_00]: and her first cycle is near, and she goes to a bottomist fund, her coming-of-age celebration as a young Jewish girl.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, at this bottomist fund, she learns from her father that she's already been promised to marry the little boy who she saw picking his nose at the playground.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's been betrothed to him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so now frustrated that she got to spend her life with a little boy that discuss her,

[SPEAKER_00]: She adjusted the fact as a younger her that she's so little be a young bride.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so she gets married.

[SPEAKER_00]: She says I do wonder if she will.

[SPEAKER_00]: A few years go by and the boy who used to discuss her becomes a man she now respects and he grows on her.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's more than Jess Hartford do Sherry duty as a Jewish girl or a good daughter.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now she wants to be a wife.

[SPEAKER_00]: She begins to love this man, to respect this man.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then she starts to get self-conscious because she doesn't have any children yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: She understands the weight of barrenness and her culture, and she starts to get frustrated about the fact that she ain't got pregnant yet, and then she comforts herself by telling herself, I'm not gonna trip, I'm not gonna worry, we got all the time in the world to have a baby.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then time gives way to tragedy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we all know how, we all know why, we all know when, we just know by year number seven, a wife had to come a little.

[SPEAKER_00]: Any dream she had of a bound to for life with this boy, she didn't like who became a man who grew on her, is now gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't know if Anna now and her mid 20s would ever want to be a wife again because the Bible didn't tell us that.

[SPEAKER_00]: What we do know is, is that her home life became broken by tragedy through death.

[SPEAKER_00]: And after she experienced this unspeakable tragedy, she left her home and went to God's house.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a major key, and that is this, brokenness in our home life is an invitation to find our true home in God alone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us don't need Emma's story to talk about brokenness at home, do we?

[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody under the sound of my voice has experience in one season or another brokenness in your home life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe like Emma, you buried a family member years before you planned or thought you ever would have to.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you grew up in a dysfunctional home that made you wonder why God had you to be born at this time in this place, and why God would give you to these people.

[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe you grew and got so far away from the brokenness that you're gonna remember it till you go back to the family reunion and be like, oh, that's why I moved.

[SPEAKER_00]: For almost 60 years, Anna refused to allow her status as a widow to supersede her status as a worshiper.

[SPEAKER_00]: What you mean, Ra, a Jewish widow would experience brokenness on so many layers.

[SPEAKER_00]: The first layer of brokenness she would experience is relational intimacy.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's broken in her life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then the physical ecstasy, just to joy and happiness of being a wife, a mother, a grandmother, all of the above, she would not get the experience.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then the financial stability would be broken, which is why when Jesus was dialed on the cross, he told his mama and John, hey John, this your mama and mama, this your new son.

[SPEAKER_00]: And John, pay my mama bills for her.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what Jesus was saying, dialed on the cross.

[SPEAKER_00]: Still provided.

[SPEAKER_00]: As a widow, this was her reality, but as a worshipper, she would discover that relational intimacy is not based in my human covenants, but it starts with my relationship with God then my relationship with myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: Physical ecstasy has its place, but even the best love and still leaves you wanting something only level only God can fulfill.

[SPEAKER_00]: financial stability is found in the provider more than the provisions and the worship her in her over or outweigh the widow who she faced.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the Bible says she did not leave the temple dwells and she served night and day with fast and prayers.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think what's amazing about her commitment to a regular relationship with God is that she was willing to be uncomfortable just to be close to the Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: And those days, the House of God, then function like it does today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right here at the Wake Community Church, we got women sitting on the front row.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have women on the pool of people.

[SPEAKER_00]: We got women ordained as deacons.

[SPEAKER_00]: We got women on the board of directors who govern the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is, it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: Men and women brothers and sisters serving together.

[SPEAKER_00]: But in that context, that's not how it was set up.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a matter of fact, the temple had a most holy place that only one man could go and he could only go once a year, the high priest.

[SPEAKER_00]: Outside of that most holy place or the holy of Holies was just a holy place.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then outside of that was a veil where there was an inner court.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then outside of that inner court was another court that's just the court of the Gentiles.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then outside of that court is another court that's the court of the women.

[SPEAKER_00]: What you're saying around.

[SPEAKER_00]: out of for 60 years came to God's house even though she couldn't get close enough to get into the holy of holdies.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was comfortable to say even though y'all won't keep me out here and stiff on me because I'm a woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna get as close as I can get and then at 84 years old God showed her Jesus that one who would bring the women justice closest he brought the man.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not only did she become a worshipper, she was willing to be uncomfortable just to stay close to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here we are with all the accouture months we have, all the comfort we have, you got the Bible printed in multiple translations, you got multiple apps and web sites, you got online and you got all these opportunities to draw close to the Lord, but yet you wanna remain so busy, like you don't have time to stop and spin with God when you can come right into his house and right on the front row lift up holy hands and they know about it gonna start.

[SPEAKER_00]: You see, she's sorry, night and day, because she kept daily office with God.

[SPEAKER_00]: What you mean, Ralph, because she's sorry, night and day, God didn't have to go looking for her when he wanted to reveal something to her.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whew.

[SPEAKER_00]: What if the Lord wanted to give you a revelation?

[SPEAKER_00]: What if God wanted to show you something that he was only going to show a few people?

[SPEAKER_00]: What have God wanted to reveal a deep mystery to you?

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you close enough to the Lord on a regular basis that hell have to come looking for you first before he reveals something to you?

[SPEAKER_00]: Or does he have to come looking for you re-establish your relationship?

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, I'm God, I'm the one who created you and sent my son, the die for you who woke you up this morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: You ain't say thank you, but it's cool because I didn't do it for you to say thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did it cause I'm good and I'm good all the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Matter of fact, I'm better than good.

[SPEAKER_00]: But anyway,

[SPEAKER_00]: If you could give me a few minutes of your time, I want to show you something.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, I had seen, I want to speak something to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: No ear has heard, I want to reveal myself to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a major key in that is this.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you give God your relational minutes, trust God to give you revelational moments.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes we so stingy with our minutes that we miss moments.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then you mad the Lord and you spoke to you, you mad the Lord and you answered your prayers, you mad the Lord and gave you what you deeply desire.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is it that you're so stingy with your minutes that God don't want to share with you his moments?

[SPEAKER_00]: But he says, if you just give me a few minutes on a regular basis, I promise you I'll make it make six for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll give you double for your trouble and give you moments only God can't give us any worship

[SPEAKER_00]: who can testify wherever you ain't the only one who's ever seen a divine revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a living testimony that if you give God of you, men is God, and give you some moments.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Can you imagine that just being revealed to her, the identity of the Savior made sense for the 60-year she spent in the temple?

[SPEAKER_00]: Can you imagine how she felt looking at the one who were resurrect the man who died and left her widow?

[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't even need to see him do it, just a revelation alone changed her reality.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that's because she was willing to give God her minutes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the first thing I need time with God when my home life is broken.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us know what it means to have a broken home life.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's an invitation to draw close to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the second thing, and I'll beat you with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I need time with God when my work life is burdensome.

[SPEAKER_00]: If it ain't home, it's work.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if it ain't work, it's home.

[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody asked me, how I know.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you need time with God on a regular, because on a regular you're gonna be home and you're gonna be home.

[SPEAKER_00]: You think I'm making this up?

[SPEAKER_00]: We just looked at Anna, a prophet test.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now let me introduce you to Daniel, a prophet.

[SPEAKER_00]: Daniel chapter 6 verse number 10, the word of the Lord says in the New American Standard Bible, now when Daniel learned that the document was signed, he entered his house and in his root chamber, he had windows open to war Jerusalem.

Daniel 6 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_00]: And he continued kneeling on his knees, watch arch three times a day.

[SPEAKER_00]: What was he doing?

[SPEAKER_00]: Praying and offering praise before his God, just as he had been doing when.

[SPEAKER_00]: Previous.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here we meet Daniel.

[SPEAKER_00]: Daniel lives five hundred years before Anna, but he serves God in the same way.

[SPEAKER_00]: What we learn about Daniel from the first six chapters of the book that bears his name is that Daniel is a man.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's a prisoner of war.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's a slave in a foreign country.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's a Jew.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's a great friend.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's down like faux flat tires.

[SPEAKER_00]: When Henanaya, Michelle, and Nazaraya, you may know them as Shahrak, and me Shahrak, and the bend to go.

[SPEAKER_00]: Them his pottenin' him.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's an interpreter of dreams.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's a prophet.

[SPEAKER_00]: But in this story, we gonna learn.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's a great employee with a good good men job.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, Daniel got him a good good men job.

[SPEAKER_00]: He write up at the top right under the king.

[SPEAKER_00]: He on the level with three other presidents who gave leadership to 120 people who of all the regions that were under an ancient individual Babylon.

[SPEAKER_00]: So with this good government job, Daniel never allowed his worship of God to be separate from his work in the government.

[SPEAKER_00]: He kept the two together.

[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't try to hide his private devotion from his public responsibilities.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that made him a great employee, but it also made his colleagues jealous.

[SPEAKER_00]: So because they would jealous that he didn't separate state from worship or from sanctuary, they used his worship against him to try to make prayer punishable by death in the den of lions.

[SPEAKER_00]: The question they end is this, what do you do when the pressure at work creates a real crisis in your personal life?

[SPEAKER_00]: Daniel goes to work and learns that if he gets caught praying, he's going to get fed to the lions.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now he's got pressure at work to stop being faithful in his life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And many of us have felt that same pressure having weak.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the pressure to get a promotion means you got to do something that lacks integrity.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the pressure to get that raise that you've been wanting means you got to turn a blind out of something that you should be looking straight at.

[SPEAKER_00]: The pressure to get ahead means you got to give a little of that, that character you've been trying to develop with God.

[SPEAKER_00]: The desire to be further along means you got to spend less time.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have time to move for a live group.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't really do my way of finding certification because I'm trying to get the bag.

[SPEAKER_00]: You already got the bag, you just won't.

[SPEAKER_00]: A big of a bag.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: What do you do?

[SPEAKER_00]: When pressure at work creates a real crisis in your arms, what do you do?

[SPEAKER_00]: When your livelihood is threatened by people who do not serve

[SPEAKER_00]: Daniel 16 tells us that Daniel retreated to a place of solitude with God.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is facing insurmountable obstacles to his faith and work, but yet he still went back to his regular time of prayer.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's amazing about this is the text says, when he learns that the law is signed, this is bad news.

[SPEAKER_00]: He could die.

[SPEAKER_00]: He goes home to his upper chamber with the windows open towards Jerusalem and kept praying three times a day as he had done previously.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's facing a crisis at work, notice what he did not have to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't get the work, find out the crisis, and then go home saying, man, I need so we're to pray.

[SPEAKER_00]: I need some weather to talk to God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let me move this stuff out of the way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let me clear a little space.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let me set it up right here.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no.

[SPEAKER_00]: He went home because it was already ready because he already talks to God even before he gets bad news, he already communicated with the Lord regularly.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder how many of us, if you got bad news at work tomorrow, could go right into a conversation with God when I have a new, reintroduce yourself.

[SPEAKER_00]: is it already set up for you to connect with the Lord?

[SPEAKER_00]: Cause I connect with the Lord anyway.

[SPEAKER_00]: Matter of fact, the bad news didn't catch me off guard cause I taught the God before walking in here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway.

[SPEAKER_00]: The word for somebody in here, especially those educators in the room, you got to get up early in the morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: You got to deal with our children with less resources than you actually need to help convey what you're trying to do as an educator or a teacher.

[SPEAKER_00]: Can I just give you a word of encouragement as I pray for you from afar?

[SPEAKER_00]: Before you get out of that car and you deal with the knuckleheads who act in that school, act in the food.

[SPEAKER_00]: How about you pause in the car, take a deep breath, and say, Father, I stretch my hands to thee?

[SPEAKER_00]: No other help I know!

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna talk to God before I walk in this good good men job because I don't know what's gonna happen, especially in this governmental climate when I get to work.

[SPEAKER_00]: I may not have a job tomorrow.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come here, T.S.A.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let me talk to the little before I clock in for the good men.

[SPEAKER_00]: Cause I don't know what the man had taught me to do to that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But this school, because I already talked to the one who was above him, who says how and who looks low.

[SPEAKER_00]: So whatever news I get.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm good to go.

[SPEAKER_00]: It makes me think about a box in the middle of a ring for the fight in their life.

[SPEAKER_00]: That box is the one we see fighting, but they didn't just start to prepare for that fight in the moment of the fight.

[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, the best benefit this box of has is the people in their corner.

[SPEAKER_00]: They got a corner man and a cut man.

[SPEAKER_00]: The corner man is the one who tells them strategy between rounds.

[SPEAKER_00]: The corner man is the one who sits out the chair for them to come between rounds and get a rest and drink some water and be wiped off and to think about what the enemy is doing.

[SPEAKER_00]: The cut man is the one who looks for injuries and begins to heal the injuries so they can get back in the fight.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the boxer didn't just meet this cornerman and cut man this morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: The boxer with the cornerman and the cut man have been in training camp for all these months preparing for this fight, which means the boxer knows the voice of the one who will speak to him or her and the hands of the one who will bring healing to him or her long before the lights come on in the fight start.

[SPEAKER_00]: So by the time the fighter gets in the ring, should the enemy land a shot they didn't see come in and they sustain an injury that they did not expect.

[SPEAKER_00]: They already know the voice of the one who's gonna coast them through and they already know the hands of the one who's gonna make them better.

[SPEAKER_00]: I come to tell you, you're in the fight of your life in the middle of the ring, and that ain't the time you want to get to know the voice of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: You want to know God's voice, long before the bell rings, because when the fight starts, it might be too late to go find him then, is there anybody who can give God praise for the fact that you survived or fight, because God was in your corner.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're just saying, wrap here's all I'm saying.

[SPEAKER_00]: When you stay close to God before the crisis, you increase your chances of victory.

[SPEAKER_00]: You got to keep the incense burning.

[SPEAKER_00]: to me around, and those days that were worshiping the Temple and in the most holy place that was incense, that was an aroma to God's nostrils.

[SPEAKER_00]: This incense represented prayers, and I want you to see what Exodus type of 30 verse seven through eight sins.

[SPEAKER_00]: It says that an air in must burn, fragrant incense on the altar, wind, church, every morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: when he tends to lambs.

[SPEAKER_00]: He must burn incense again when he lights the lambs wind church at twilight.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you see that?

[SPEAKER_00]: So the incense will burn what church regularly but for the Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Psalm this says, it is good to give thanks to the Lord, Psalm 92 and to sing praises to your name most high.

[SPEAKER_00]: To declare your goodness wind church and your faithfulness wind church.

[SPEAKER_00]: So in 19, 164 says, how many times a day, seven times a day?

[SPEAKER_00]: I praise you because of your righteous judgment.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm 141 versus two, made my prayer be set before you, like incest, made the lifting of my hands, be like what church?

[SPEAKER_00]: The evening.

[SPEAKER_00]: You ought to be talking to God in the morning?

[SPEAKER_00]: Two times in the middle of the day, you all never let the incense go out on your prayers because you want to keep an open line of communication.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm done church.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's my ask.

[SPEAKER_00]: How often do you stop to breathe the fresh air of heaven?

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you stop for a few minutes?

[SPEAKER_00]: A few times a day?

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you willing to stop for one day every week just to breathe God's fresh air?

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's an action line of all of us in the room, is that is this, and that is this, of few times a day, just stop, open the God's presence, close your eyes, and breathe deeply.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's do it even now.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just stop what you're doing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Put your phone down, put your notes down.

[SPEAKER_00]: Open yourself to God's presence.

[SPEAKER_00]: For some of us, that means put your feet flat on the floor.

[SPEAKER_00]: Put your hands in an open position.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can raise your hands, you can lay them on your lap.

[SPEAKER_00]: Close your eyes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just take a few deep breaths.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, we have met you this morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you let us see the night,

[SPEAKER_00]: We want to meet you again before we close our eyes to go to sleep.

[SPEAKER_00]: In Jesus' name.

[UNKNOWN]: Amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Give the Lord a hand up a praise if you would church.