David Pursues God | Jerry Harris

Well, good morning, Crossing Church.

How are you doing today? It is good.

And I'm not going to ask you this time, decide to try to get

you to do it louder. And there's a reason for that,

because the song that we just sang, I'm praying God come and

turn this thing around. I mean, that's kind of a

reflection of my heart right now.

I don't know about you, but do you feel a little bit like your

heart is under attack if you're watching the news, if, if you're

seeing what's going on in the world, whether we're talking

about the this what Hamas did coming into Israel.

I mean, we've got a group that was planning on going to Israel,

156 people the day after Christmas and all that's being

canceled and then, you know, rescheduled and going through a

we're going to have to go through a whole process there

because, you know, it's a war over there.

Now. The idea that people are all

over the world marching and and chanting Hamas slogans is kind

of beyond me as well. And I'm I'm trying to understand

the human heart. You you hear the story about a

guy that goes into a bowling alley in a restaurant and shoots

the place up and and kills 18 people and injuries more and

then goes and kills himself. What in the world is wrong with

this world? Right?

And it and it can really be like a weight on us, right?

Like, what do I do with this? What do I do with with, with

these feelings? Then I come to church.

I come into a place like this. We sing a song like that.

But then we see what God, and only God can do as person after

person after person, turns their heart over to the saving power

of Jesus Christ. And that gives me hope.

That's what that song says. All of my hope is in the name,

the name of Jesus. So I hope today that that's

what's happening in your heart, that you're you're saying, you

know, I know that these I'm not. I'm not shutting my my eyes.

I'm not covering my ears. I I know what's going on in the

world around me, but all it does is reinforce the fact that I

need to put all of my hope in the name of Jesus.

And this is exactly where you need to be to do that.

And we're thankful for everyone that's joining from all of our

locations all around this area in three states.

And if you're inside or online, we're thankful for you as well.

And last week we introduced a new series called Handle with

Care, and it's about the heart of David and the life of David.

And we explored his heart last week when we were talking about

how God formed it and and how God chose him and called him.

And we got a feeling of the raw material of a man that was after

God's own heart. And we learned some things about

David. I know I learned some things

about David. That that he was despised

probably because of other people's sin, not his.

That he was overlooked. That he was the least in his

family. That he was subject to harsh and

dangerous circumstances that the people that were supposed to

love him actually put him in. That he was in the most humble

of circumstances. And yet those were the

circumstances that God used to shape David's heart.

And what I see in David is that at that point in his life, he

doesn't curse his lot in life, but he embraces it instead.

And he chooses in that embracing, in that keeping a

positive mental attitude, he is choosing the substance of his

heart. And the substance of David's

heart, in a wide overview, is that it was humble.

David chose to have a humble heart.

Now that's a sermon I need to hear, because I really struggle

in this area, that this is a besetting sin of mine, that I I

tend to want to have a prideful heart.

Maybe you're where I am and maybe you're a little bit of a

control freak like I am, and and you want to have more of a

prideful heart. You want to depend more on

yourself. You want to have a sense of

independence. But what I see in David at the

core is a humble heart. And what is that?

When I say that, what does that mean?

A humble heart is a soft heart. It's a heart that is more easily

molded into whatever God wants it to be, and you can see that

illustrated in different ways. Like a humble heart finds

gratitude easier instead of being bitter, right?

It tries to capture the blessings, even if those

blessings are small. And it finds that easy to do.

How about you? Are you that way?

Are you able to capture blessings, or do you want to

concentrate on the bitter stuff in life?

And even if those blessings are kind of hard to find, you find

them easier with a soft and humble heart.

You know, a humble heart doesn't want to take the credit.

It would rather give the credit. And that's because a humble

heart is a generous heart. And that is generosity, when

instead of trying to take the credit for yourself, you'd

rather give it either to God or to someone else.

A humble heart is a teachable heart, and I struggle sometimes

having a teachable heart and a prideful heart's.

The opposite of that is he a prideful heart.

He can't learn anything because it already believes it knows

everything, right? But a humble heart is teachable,

and and this is where David's choice comes in.

You see, the raw material was there because God created

David's heart. And the raw material for

everything that God wants to do in your life, it's already

there. Do you know that anything and

everything that God calls you to do in life, He has already

equipped you with all of the raw material that you need to do

that, But that does not absolve you of making the proper choices

so that your heart is a conduit for all that raw material to be

expressed, glorifying God. When we come to David, it was

like, you know, he was, he had the raw material and was wired

to be a leader, but he became a good follower first, and that

was where his humble heart and his choice came in.

He was wired to be a champion, but his first battles against

the lion and the bear were never even noticed by anyone else

except him and God. He was wired to be this

incredible artist, this this musician, this songwriter, but

he found inspiration in the most normal, base, basic things in

life. He was wired to be this

incredible prophet, this foreteller and 4th teller, but

he never took advantage of that gift that God had given him to

manipulate people. You see, all of those choices

that David made were proceeding out of a humble heart, and we

are the ones who determine the substance of our hearts.

If we choose to be prideful, we'll be like Pharaoh in the Old

Testament, where, you know, Moses tells Pharaoh, let my

people go. But the Bible says that Pharaoh

hardened his heart. He made a choice about how he

was going to receive the message of God.

He had a prideful heart, not a humble heart, and so it he

hardened his heart. And then, after we get through

about half the plagues, it says God hardened Pharaoh's heart,

which means the effect that God had on a prideful heart was to

harden it rather than to soften it.

It was Pharaoh that made the decision of what the substance

of his heart would be. If it would have been the

substance of wax, it would have melted.

But because he chose for it to be the substance of clay, it

hardened under the light of God. See, a heart that's prideful is

a heart that God has to shatter before he can mold it.

But if we choose to be humble, our hearts will be pliable, and

we'll be able to see God's purpose no matter what the

circumstances are that we face. You know, Jesus talked about

this in the most famous sermon he ever preached, which was in

Matthew 5-6 and seven. We call it the Sermon on the

Mount. And the Sermon on the Mount

begins with the Beatitudes. And the Beatitudes are these

beautiful attitudes we're supposed to have.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of

God. Blessed are they that mourn, for

they'll be comforted, right? You know, he says all of these

things at the beginning. But when you look at this, when

you look at this, the first one, the first one is actually

talking about the substance of your heart.

What does it mean to be poor in spirit?

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God

or the Kingdom of heaven. It means that you recognize your

spiritual poverty. A humble heart recognizes

spiritual part of poverty, poor in spirit.

So I want to seek the Lord 1st instead of my own needs.

First, would we approach God and we approach God with a prideful

heart. It's like we have a cup in our

hands. OK, but that cup is already

full. Like we're asking God, Lord,

fill my cup. But he can't because it's

already full of your stuff. You know what I'm trying to say?

A prideful heart is already full of your own stuff.

And so the first thing that we have to do if we want to have a

humble heart before God is we have to turn the cup over.

And you have to pour that stuff out.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of

heaven is the process of turning that cup upside down and pouring

it out. It's actually something that we

do in our mind. We make a conscious decision to

do that. I understand the truth that I am

poor in spirit. And then it goes to the second

Beatitude, which is blessed are they that mourn, for they'll be

comforted. You know what mourning is?

That's emotional. So it isn't just an intellectual

idea of being spiritually poor. It's causing an emotional

reaction, which is I I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I filled my heart

and my life up with all my own stuff.

So it's your whole self. Not just your intellectual self,

not just your emotional self, but all of you.

So both of these realities happen as I'm I'm pouring out

this cup and making it empty. A humble heart is an empty cup,

which is beautiful, because then God fills it with good things.

Like when you go on and you start reading the rest of the

Beatitudes, there's some things there that you just can't have

on your own, like pure in heart, who's pure in heart?

Like none of us, right? That has to be imparted to you

by God because it's not something inherent to you or

inherent to me. So the things that God wants to

give us are only available if there is some sort of a

receptacle inside of us to put those wonderful things in.

And that's where David started. He started with a cup that was

poured out, lifted up to his Heavenly Father that then God

could fill with good things. If we want to have a heart after

God's, it begins with humility, and humility begins with our

attitude. It's not the circumstances, it's

how we interpret them. How do you interpret your

circumstances? Are you looking at the blessings

instead of the bitterness? Are we finding opportunities in

our circumstances instead of using them to make excuses?

Are we turning the cup over to empty out the things of this

world so that we can hold up to God, an empty cup and let him

fill it? And you know what?

Some of you right now, that was your sermon.

Like you can just completely disconnect from everything else

I'm going to say and just start internally processing that and

working on that in your heart. If I was sitting there and

somebody else was preaching that to me, that's probably what I'd

be doing right now. I'd probably be going OK, that

that that's a that's a plateful for for me today.

OK, God, you got you, got you got to help me here.

Have a humble heart. If we really do want that, and

if we really do have a desire to have a humble heart before God,

then God can shape that heart into ways that reflect him.

And that's what God did for David.

And you see this happening in David's life.

David had the heart of a stranger.

Well, what do I mean by that? Well, it means that he wasn't at

home in this world. Now, I told you last week that

there's 150 psalms in in the Book of Psalms, and 75 of them

David wrote. But the other 75 other people

wrote, but David was the one responsible for compiling them,

Right? And eleven of those psalms were

written by the sons of Korah. Some of my favorite psalms in

the Book of Psalms were actually not written by David.

They were written by the sons of Korah.

Now who are they? Who are the sons of Korah?

There's a whole sermon there that I have.

I don't have time to preach, but incredible sermon that actually

would connect the last week because they had a very

questionable lineage. There's a story about who Korah

was when Moses led the people out of out of Egypt toward the

Promised Land and what God did. Anyway.

They had a reputation, OK, that they had to live down of what

Korah had done and how God judged him.

So they had a questionable lineage.

Like I talked about last week, David had a questionable

lineage. But do you know what David did

for the sons of Korah? First of all, he made them choir

directors, songwriters, and singers.

He also made them doorkeepers in the temple.

I mean they have this these interesting roles and and so the

song that I'm going to use in a little bit is was written by the

sons of of Korra. And some people might think,

well, those are kind of not really manly, manly jobs, you

know, they're kind of different than that.

Well, you you've got those guys all wrong.

But before they were ever choir directors and songwriters and

singers, they were mighty warriors in David's inner

circle, the sons of Korah. So they had fought with David

and they wrote Psalm 84. And David loved these psalms.

Like David didn't have to actually write it.

Again, David has a humble heart, so he doesn't have to be the one

who writes the song to like the song.

Have you ever noticed there's some people that are so prideful

that the only things they like are the things they come up with

and they don't like whatever anybody else came up with?

Well, David wasn't that kind of guy.

He actually loved what other people produce.

Let me ask you this question. Have we ever sung a song at the

crossing? And it just connects with your

heart and it's like it opens up all the doors and windows and

you, you feel the the fresh air, the spirit of God just blowing

through your heart. Because when you sing that song,

it just touches you. But you didn't write it.

Somebody else wrote it, right? But that doesn't mean that it

doesn't connect with you. And I really believe Psalm 84

was one of those psalms that really connected with David.

It was a reflection of how he felt.

Let's read it together. The 1st 12 verses.

How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty, my soul

yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord.

My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.

Even the sparrows found a home and the swallow a nest for

herself where she may have her young, a place near your altar.

You notice David's not necessarily at home in a palace

or as a king. He would rather be in the House

of God. Lord Almighty, my king and my

God. Blessed are those who dwell in

your house. That's the heart of a stranger,

that they are ever praising you. Blessed are those whose strength

is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.

Like I will put in the time and and I will make the journey so

that I can be in the House of the Lord.

I might that might not be my home, but I want it to be my

home. As they pass through the valley

of Baca and make it a place of springs.

Autumn rains also cover it with pools.

This is him describing their way to Jerusalem, to the temple.

They go from strength to strength till each appears

before God and Zion. Hear my prayer.

Lord God Almighty, listen to me, God of Jacob, look on our

shield. O God, look with favor on your

anointed one. Better is one day in your courts

than 1000 elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper

in the House of my God than dwell in the tents of the

wicked. For the Lord God is a son and

shield. The Lord bestows favor and

honor. No good thing does he withhold

from those whose walk is blameless.

Lord Almighty, blessed is the one who trusts in you.

When David had the opportunity to sing that song that was

written by the sons of Korah, I'm sure that he connected with

it because it defined his longing to be in the presence of

God. But we all know reading about

David's life, he wandered. He wandered away from God.

He did it a lot. And Psalm 84 is is a reflection

of an intention. Have you ever, like sung a song

in it? And it's talking about how much

I care about God and how much I love God and all that.

And you kind of have a hard time singing it because.

You know that that's not actually true about you.

You know, it's like that's not, that's a little bit puffed up

for you. And maybe I don't have a right

to sing. It saw many force like that.

It's not talking about necessarily what is, but it's

talking about what I would want it to be.

Like my the intention of my heart.

This is the desire of my heart. This this is the kind of

relationship I want to have with God.

This is the kind of priority I would like to have with God.

Now David little different than the sons of Korah, because that

humble heart made him a very transparent man and so he writes

12 verses in Psalm 139. Now a lot of us, when we look at

Psalm 139, we concentrate in the middle section of it, where it

talks about being fearfully and wonderfully made.

And it all of my days were written in your book before one

of them came to be. And you knit me together in my

mother's womb and all that, right.

But look at the 1st 12 verses that David writes.

It says, you have searched me, Lord, and you know me now.

This is real. This is transparent.

You know when I sit and when I rise, you perceive my thoughts

from afar. You discern my going out and my

lying down. You're familiar with all my ways

that that should make you a little uncomfortable.

Do you really, God, do you really know all my ways, not

just the ones I want you to know before a word is on my tongue?

You know it, Lord, You know it completely.

You hem me in behind, and before you lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to

attain. Where can I go from your spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

You see, there's there's that human side of us that

necessarily want to be in the presence of God.

But I can't escape you. God, you're there, right?

If I go up to the heavens, you're there.

If I make my beds and depths, you're there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn.

If I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand

will guide me. Your right hand will hold me

fast. If I say, surely the darkness

will hide me and the light become night around me.

Even the darkness will not be dark to you.

The night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to

you. That is a deeper and more

transparent reality. Because what David is admitting

is that the presence of God is where the truth is.

Not just general truth, but the truth about David, The truth

about all of his inconsistencies, about all of

his hypocrisy. It's right there, and that's

uncomfortable for us, right? But when we know that it leads

you to the 23rd and the 24th verse, look what it says.

Search me God and know my heart. That's a scary thing to pray.

Test me that's even scarier and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way

everlasting. That is what comes out of a

humble heart. To have a heart that pursues God

is to be a person of constant reflection and repentance.

It's where the truth is revealed, and then it's

addressed with repentance. David had the heart of a

stranger, and it proceeded out of a humble heart.

He also had the heart of a warrior.

Now there's no doubt about that. There's plenty of information in

the Bible about that. Look at Samuel Second Samuel

814. He says it puts he put

Garrison's throughout Edom and all of the Edomites became

subject to David. But this sentence is the one I

want you to see. The Lord gave David victory

wherever he went. That's pretty powerful isn't it?

David had the heart of a warrior.

As long as he was in the presence of God, God gave him

the victory. Now, next week, Clayton is going

to be preaching about this epic battle, this epic battle between

David and Goliath. And I'm not going to spend time

on that and steal his Thunder, but I'm going to steal just one

verse that refers to the heart of David.

It's First Samuel 1747, so he's facing off with Goliath in the

with Goliath in the Valley of Elah.

And they're having this conversation, which is like this

hateful conversation. And this is how David ends it.

Before he goes on attack, all those gathered here will know

that is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves, for the

battle is the Lord's, and he will give all of you into our

hands. This is powerful because what

David is saying, his warrior's heart is saying this.

Whatever victory I receive, it's not about me.

It I'm not going to be the one who wins it.

God is going to be. It's not even a physical battle.

It is not a battle of of weapons like swords or Spears.

The matter of fact, God is going to be the one who does the

fighting. God is going to be the one who

does the winning. And God is going to be the one

who receives the glory. Now, you can't do that unless

it's not about you. You can't do that with pride.

You can't do that unless you have a prepared, repentant

heart, and all of David's victories depended on that.

And so do all of yours, all the battles you fight, all the

giants you face. Without it, even the things you

perceive as victories in your life really aren't.

They're still defeats. Unless the battle belongs to the

Lord. David had the heart of a

warrior, and it flowed out of a humble heart.

Finally, David had the heart of a father.

There's no doubt that when you read about David's life and the

tragedies of his life, you realize how much of A father he

wanted to be. He really did desire to have the

heart of a father. In a few more weeks, we're going

to be learning about David's biggest defeats, because the

biggest defeats actually happen in David's own heart.

Those are the places where he loses battles.

And we're going to also learn just how much it costs him.

You see, when David gives in to the lower story and the sinful

desires that are in his heart, not only does he become a victim

of it, everybody around him becomes victims of it.

There's a while ago I I preached a a sermon on the erosive power

of sin and how sin all begins inside the mind.

And there are 7 ES related to that.

And it's the way all sin comes to us.

It's the entrance of a thought. Then we entertain the thought.

Then we examine the thought like, well, you know how good

this is going to feel versus what's going to cost me.

And then we get to this fourth E, which is to enjoy the

thought. It's where we actually begin

sinning, because sin begins in your mind and in your heart.

So to lust after a thing, to want to do a thing, to defy God

is where sin happens, right? And then some of us believe

Satan's lie, that is. Well, since I'm already guilty

of this sin, I may as well go ahead and do it.

So after I enjoy the thought, I go to the to the 50, which is to

experience the thought. And we think that it's the same.

It isn't the same because when we're enjoying the thought,

there's only one victim of that sin, and that's you or me.

But when I experience the thought, then the rock hits the

water and the ripples go out and everybody else around me gets

affected by it, right? Because that's what Satan does.

He doesn't want to just destroy you, He wants to destroy

everybody you love and care for. Nobody knows that better than

David because there's a big shift between it being in my

mind and actually acting it out and the place where it hit David

the hardest was with his children.

David had the heart of a father, but he failed as a father.

He was defeated as a father. And the fact is, it was

heartbreaking and it was avoidable.

And your sin is heartbreaking and avoidable.

My sin is heartbreaking and avoidable.

And the truth is even though we want to always paint ourselves

as the victim, we are also the perpetrator.

We're both. We play both roles all the time,

both victim and perpetrator. And there's only one thing we

can do. Same thing David did in Psalm

51. John wrote about it the apostle

first, John 19. It says if we confess our sins,

he God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and

purify us from all unrighteousness.

We see David doing that in Psalm 51.

He wrote it down how humbling it would have been to admit that in

a song, and that's what he did. Now understand that that doesn't

mean there aren't going to be consequences and restoration.

Some people really have a really skewed view of what restoration

means. Restoration does not mean

everything goes back to the way it was.

Restoration means that your relationship with God is in the

process of of being restored. But you can still be

disqualified from a lot of things because of the

consequences of your sin or my sin, and that definitely

happened to David. It does mean that your

relationship is moving back into a right place with your Heavenly

Father, and David knew that. He wrote about it in Psalm 23.

Look at the second-half of verse three.

It says He guides me along the right paths for his name's sake.

Some of you may have memorized it as that.

He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's

sake. And one thing we need to learn

from David is that the path of righteousness never, ever, ever,

ever goes through fields of sin. I've talked to people before

who've said, well, you know, we did this, but I can see God's

hand in it. No, you didn't.

That's Satan's lie. God would never lead you.

He would never lead you through a field of sin.

There was always a better way. Like you hear Clayton say over

and over. God's way is the best way.

You see, David had the heart of a father, but he failed in many

ways as a father. Good warrior really wanted to be

in the presence of God, had the humble heart, but still needed

grace and mercy, didn't he? Just like we all do.

So all three of these characteristics that we see in

David's heart reflect the heart of God.

God is a stranger. You know that he's a stranger.

When God describes himself, or prophets describe God, they use

a word to describe him over and over again.

And that word is holy, right? Holy.

What does that mean? It means other than like the the

actual definition of that word means to be separate.

Other than that, God is a holy God.

Basically. It's a recognition that this is

something that God is that I'm not.

Any holiness that I'm going to ever have in my life isn't going

to be mine. Any holiness that's going to

happen in my life, God's going to have to impart that to me.

It's going to have to be the result of an empty cup that he

fills with holiness. I need to be holy.

I need to be separated from worldliness and pridefulness and

all that other stuff. But you see God, that he's truly

that he is a stranger, He is holy.

There is a distance between US and God, because even though we

were made in this image, sin has messed that up.

But God, and only God through Jesus Christ can close the

distance. And someday he's going to finish

that work and this world won't be your home anymore.

God is also a warrior. He has never gone into a battle

that he hasn't won. In Romans 8 it says we are more

than conquerors. Through him that loved us right.

He never loses a battle, but the greatest battle ever fought was

the one his son fought right here in the dirt on a cross with

his blood, when he defeated once and for all the power of sin and

death and proved it when after he died he rose from the dead.

God is also a father. And unlike David and his

failures, he's a good father, a great father.

And good is a Good is a great word and great is a great word.

But it's not the best word, The best word to put in front of

Father is this one. Ready.

Our Father. Our Father.

And unlike David, our Father will never leave us.

He'll never forsake us. He'll never abandoned us, be

lured away from us, deny us or fail us.

See, I don't want to be a man after David's heart, but like

David, I long to be a man after gods.

And I hope that's what you want to be as we move to a time of

decision. I have no idea what you're

dealing with right now. I have no idea what you walked

in to this room with. If you're online, I have no idea

what you're carrying with you right now.

And you really have no idea what I may be carrying right now

because although we might put a nice face on it, you know, clean

up, smile, and maybe we're actually having a good day or a

good season in life, that can change.

The circumstances can change at any given moment, right.

So some of you I know, might be in a, in a time of real

struggle, hurt, and maybe you feel isolated and alone, like

other people don't understand you.

They don't know what's going on, and maybe you're just reluctant

to dump the truck in their front yard and tell them the truth

about what's going on. It's kind of human nature, isn't

it? I don't want to burden anybody

else, which is also a prideful heart, by the way.

But if you listen to the scriptures from Psalm 139, God

already knows that God is fully aware.

Maybe you've never even spoken it before.

A word is on my lips. You know it, right?

Even though you've been running from God.

The thing is, you can't outrun God.

He's faster than you. And the fact is, if you would

just stop running for a moment and turn around, he's not in the

distance. He's right there.

And the Bible teaches us that we're two or three are gathered.

He's right here, and there's more than two or three of us

here, so he's here. So you've done good to this

point. There is a proximity right now

between you and Almighty God, between you and Jesus Christ.

But if you want him to do a work in your heart today, where does

it begin? Not in a stranger's heart or a

warrior's heart, or even a father's heart.

Begins with a humble heart, a heart that admits that I'm not

strong enough on my own, that I can't do it by myself, that I'm

just a child. And that's why these steps are

here. Because getting down on your

knees is at least some sort of visual representation of

humility, of understanding that God is greater than I am and and

he can do things I could never do.

And when we bring the hurts or desires or anything that's

filling our heart right now, if we if we realize that I've

already filled my cup with all my own stuff and I need to pour

it out, do it in a humble fashion.

And that can happen today. I have no idea what you're going

through, but God does. So why don't you deliver an

honest prayer to him? Maybe it's the Psalm 84 prayer.

Maybe you don't think that you can do it, but it really is your

best intentions, what you'd like to be able to do.

Maybe it's a more transparent prayer, like Psalm 139.

I don't know. But why don't you let him have

his way? Some of you have never come into

an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

And you might look at people that are getting down in that

water, the water of baptism, and you might think that's

embarrassing and that's humbling.

But do you ever see that on their faces when they come out

of the water? Do you ever see people that,

like, I'm so embarrassed that I did this?

I am I I feel so humiliated that I did this?

No, because it is a reflection of a desire to have a humble

heart before God. I can't take my sins away, but

Jesus, you can. I can't wash them away.

But you shed your blood and my sins are washed away in that.

I have no idea. I have no idea what God is doing

in your heart right now, but I will just give you 2 words

before we pray. Let him would you stand with me,

Heavenly Father, in Jesus name. I pray that we would let you.

We would let you do whatever it is you want to do right now.

I pray, Father, that you would help us to turn down the volume

knob of the noise of this world so that we can hear the still

small voice of our Father. In Jesus name, Amen.