Offline With God | Trenten Petri | Wednesday Night Service

FA Admin: Welcome to the Faith Alive Sermon Podcast. This is a replay of a past sermon from Faith Alive Church. Whether you missed it, want to hear it again, or share it with someone you know, we're glad you're here. This sermon is by Trent Petrie, worship director at Faith Alive Church. How are you guys doing tonight? I'm getting my breath back. Worship was a lot of fun tonight, I'm not even gonna lie to you. It was ⁓ it was moving. Yeah, I'm just gonna lay that down. Works better that way. It's always when you're ⁓ it's when you're needing it, is when it gets to be a pain, right? So I got the privilege to bring the message tonight. And throughout this week, there was just there was a series of things that kept happening to me. And I'm like, God, what do you want me to preach on? What do you want me to bring to your people? What do you want me to talk about? And you know, it's it's such an important thing to relinquish that to God because if I try to do it, you're gonna get a bunch of ADHD blabber up here. I'm not even gonna lie to you. I have it bad. And those of you that work with me, you know that I am like if there's a squirrel running by, I'm gonna be in a meeting going, It happens. So I just wanna bring that to you. But speaking of that, how many of you guys feel like distractions are getting crazy lately? Like I can tell you that much. This thing goes off like crazy. It's bright orange, so I don't lose it, but it goes off like crazy. And I know I'm sitting in my office and I'm like trying to focus on something, then all of a sudden, bam, a notification pops up. Bam, my phone goes off, bam, my music's playing, and I'm like, What what just happened? I didn't even click any of those, but it's my mom texting me, you know, or it could be pastor reaching out and like, Okay, but right now I need a distraction-free zone. And that's exactly what I want to talk about. It seems like distractions are getting worse in our lives, right? It seems like distractions are beginning to take over who we are at times. And it seems like distractions are pulling us from God, from the important part of what a Christian is. Amen. So I got a little story for you guys to start off here. And you guys know that trend stories get a little crazy, but this one's not crazy as much as like I didn't even know this was a thing. You ready? Christmas came about two years ago. And I don't know if you guys know who my mom is, but she loves candles. I remember living in Cairo where before we moved to West Branch and you would open up the cover below our counter and there was like thousands of candles. And most of them were like bath and body works. And you just you weren't allowed to touch them. You were not. Because I kind of got grounded. You've heard the story. I ⁓ played with the nunchuck candles, you know, the ones that are stuck together and created a problem. But my mom loves candles. She loves the house smelling nice. I don't see a problem with that, but candles, okay? So Christmas comes and my dad was like, you what, I want to get I want to get her a lighter that'll light these candles that she doesn't have to deal with the flame, that it won't burn her hand, and it's gonna be perfect. So he got her like this plasma lighter. You guys know what those are? Comes with like two forks and then a volt, a like beam of electricity shoots between the two prongs, and you get lightning, right? And you it's not a taser, it's different. Okay. You can't get shock from it, but at the same time, it'll light something. Well, it was funny because when my mom went to test it out, this ear piercing ring came through, and I'm sitting on the couch going, And I'm like, what is that noise? And everybody's looking at me like I'm crazy. I was the only one that could hear what this plasma was making, like the noise. And I'm like, you don't hear that ear piercing like noise coming through that? And my dad of all people, he's like, No, here, let me try it again. And he hits me again. I'm like, ⁓ So out of all things, just to prove it, he goes upstairs. And our house has two levels. You can look over down into the whole living room. And my dad hits it again while I'm talking to people. And it makes me do this. And I'm like, ⁓ I can hear that. He goes, No way. Right. It's the same same thing, same frequency happens with furnaces, I've noticed, as I can pick up on it and it really hurts. But the point being is the distraction, right? It would take all of my thoughts away. I wouldn't be able to focus on what I was talking about. I remember I was in a full conversation with my mom when dad set that off upstairs. I didn't even remember what we were talking about. And it might have been the anger of stop setting that off, but it also could have been like my brain turned off for a minute. But it was a distraction on what was going on there. How many of you guys have distractions that are strong like that? Now you might not hear a plasma lighter go off, but distractions, big or small, they go off, right? They get in the way. They catch your attention. And you know what? Distractions are like the number one thing that the devil uses to try and pull us away. Because if he can't get you to sin, what's he gonna do? He's gonna distract you. He's gonna try and pull you away from the important thing, right? The Bible, his word, his voice in those moments. So what I want to talk about today is distractions. I want to take a minute. And I know i this message is something that it's heard a lot, but it doesn't matter if you're a new Christian or if you've been a Christian for years, distractions are still gonna come your way. They're still gonna get in the way. And even if you're a new believer, you're not even gonna realize that it's a distraction at times. You know, we'll get into that. There's gonna be times where I don't even wanna admit what the distraction is, but it's a distraction. So as that brings me to my first point, recognizing the noise, right? Recognizing the noise. What I mean by that is kind of explaining, looking for what is the distraction in my life? What's taking my focus from God and pointing it to whatever this is? What is making me look in a different direction? So if you have your Bibles with you, open up to Mark chapter four. We're gonna go through verse ⁓ thirteen through twenty. Now, while you're looking for that, and we're gonna kind of paraphrase what happens before this. The parable of the sower, right? The sowed, the sowed seed on the soil. As we go through this, and what I love about this is how Jesus has to break it down for the disciples. He would have to do the same for me. You tell me a parable, I'm gonna look at you, and it's gonna take me years to figure it out. But I love that Jesus explains it and slows it down. So he talks about how a seed sower was throwing seed out on the soil and some of it was growing really well. Then there was others where it was rocky soil and it didn't last very long because the seed kind of grew and it didn't stick. And then further on from that, there was he would throw it out in weeds, and the weeds would grow up and overtake. The seed and the thing that they were trying to grow, right? So Jesus just explained this to like thousands of people up on a mountain somewhere, and he's trying to tell his disciples, and it picks up from verse 13. Sounds like the Bibles are done moving there. Verse 13 says this, and ⁓ you'll have to forgive me. I try to read, and that's the key word. You ready? Then Jesus said to them, Do you not understand this parable? Right there. God's like Jesus is like, All right, let me explain it to you. How then will you understand any parable? I'd be getting this same lecture from Jesus. You didn't get this. How are you going to get any of the parables that I tell you? Right? He's like, okay, I'll just explain it. He's thinking, like, you know, that conversation you have in your head all the time. He's like, okay, I'll just slow down. I'll explain it to him one more time. Here's what he says, 14. The farmer sows the word. Some people are like seeds along the path where the word was sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. So they throw the seed out, and as soon as it's out, as soon as it hits the ground, those birds come and they take it away. Satan pulls that seed away. He tries to get it away from that new believer. He tries to get it away from the old believer. He tries to get it away from you so that you're not hearing what's going on. The next verse 16 says this others like seeds sown in rocky places hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they only last a short time. Okay. God Jesus is kind of pointing a little to the new believer, but not all of them. He's saying some of the people that catch my word, it hits this rocky soil, and I want it to be growing there, but before they allow it to grow, distractions come up and they pull it away. Those rocks, that soil, before it can get a deep root, it's gone. It begins to wither. It's not getting fed because distractions come in. It's not getting the word of God. It's not getting the water. It's not getting the sunlight because it can't get the root. It can't get the water. So the next verse, we'll keep moving there. When trouble or persecution comes, because of Because of the word, they quickly fall away. Right? So now eighteen says, Still others like seeds sown among thorns hear the word, but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things to come, ⁓ come and choke the word, making it unfruitful. So sometimes it gets going, but other things grow in the way. And then they they kind of cut it off. So now we've talked about the root where it can't get the water. Now we're talking the surface level where the roots and the The weeds are growing over it and they're creating a problem. They're taking away the sunlight. They are distracting that seed, right? Moving on, and then it says, Other seeds, other like seeds sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce crop. Some 30, some 60, and some hundred times what is sown, right? So I was reading through this verse and God kind of revealed something. I love that God reveals something to you every time you read a new word. But those are distractions. And there's more to this. There's more to more to this if you dig into this. But the thing God wanted me to focus on in this moment was the distractions that grew in there. I love how it says in 18. Still others like seeds sowing among thorns, hear the word, but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, right, the desires for other things good come and choke out the word. The distractions come and they choke out the word. Right? What am I getting at? What are you trying to explain? What I'm trying to explain is. If you don't read your Bible and you allow those distractions to come off, if you don't have that moment with God and you allow those distractions to come over you, right, you're gonna lose it. It doesn't matter if you're a new believer, it doesn't matter if you've been a believer for your whole life. Distractions can kill your relationship with Christ. They can because you see it, I've seen it in my own life, you know. A short story. When I stepped away from being a youth pastor, I got so distracted with my job that I wasn't reading my Bible. And soon enough I was like, God, where are you? Where have you been? And God's like, I haven't moved. Okay. I'm still here. I haven't been gone, but you haven't been with me. You've allowed distractions to cut it all off, right? So moving in that, sometimes we don't want to admit what that distraction is. How many of you guys get that? God's trying to explain to you what a distraction is, and you're like, I that's that's my distraction, okay? Let me deal with that, God. I don't want you in that, I don't want you touching that. For me, I can tell you there were three things that I found in my life that have distracted me. Beyond anything. You ready for the so first one for me was the gym. I loved the gym. There was a period in my life where I got down to like a hundred and sixty-five pounds. And I look in the mirror and I'm like, Yeah, looking good. Love that. Go this way. I got pictures of my phone to prove it that nobody will ever see. But that distraction got so deep because it wasn't the gym. The gym wasn't the problem. Being healthy wasn't the problem. The problem was all of my time went to the gym. Every bit of my life went to the gym. I was trying to deal with hard Heartbreak, I was trying to deal with loneliness, and I was trying to deal with so many other things that I poured that all out to the gym instead of to Christ, right? So God reset that in my life. I still go to the gym, I love the gym, but it's not my sole purpose in this world. It's just something I get to enjoy. The next thing would be dirt bikes. You guys know I love dirt bikes. I talk about if you know me, I love dirt bikes. Every weekend, if I can be out bropping, I'm on my bike, right? But there was a season in my life that dirt bikes overtook Christ. And it was right about the time where I was transitioning out of being youth ministry. I was like, well, I got all this time in the world to ride my bike, right? And I rode and I rode and I rode. But you know what? I never reached what I wanted to reach on that road. And that was because Christ was what I was trying to reach, but I was doing it behind handlebars. That's not the point, right? The distraction was something that I loved, but I let it overtake. And the last one for me would be a new one that I've had to deal with. And that's why I love that God's showing this. So I started this YouTube channel, and I'm not going to do anything to plug that. That's not the point here. I started this channel because I wanted to learn. I was like, this looks fun. Why not? Why not create videos? Why not do this? But soon enough, God was like, hey, this is becoming priority over me and I don't like it. That was the one recently where I'm like, God, but I like that. But I like doing this. But I like doing that. And God's like, I know you like doing it. I allowed you to do it, but don't let it be over me. Sometimes we don't like To give God the distraction. Sometimes we don't like to admit what is creating the noise in our lives. Whatever gets your attention eventually gets your affection. Whatever gets let that sit in. Whatever gets your affection, whatever gets your attention, sorry, too many A's, eventually gets your affection. Right? I love that. When I was reading that, God kind of revealed that I'm like, ⁓ okay. Hurts a little bit. I'm dealing with that, God. I'm sorry, but take this distraction. So, where should our attention be pointed? I want you to ask that in your life as we continue on, where should we be pointing our attention? So, this week, something I can give you is I want you to redirect that attention. Allow God to show you, allow him to be in that moment and say, okay, this distraction, it's gonna hurt. You don't have to necessarily get rid of it, but you definitely got to give it to me. Okay? He didn't make me get rid of any of those distractions, but he did make me surrender it to him. And it wasn't one where God came and swooped in and said, That's mine. It was me saying, Okay, God, I understand. Take this back, put it under you, and let it fall in line to what it's supposed to be. So take this week and have that. My second thing that I want to talk about is returning to the quiet, getting away from that distraction, taking a step back and saying, Okay, I found the distractions. Now what do I do? So if you got your Bible with you, let's open to Mark chapter six, verse thirty and thirty two. So while you're looking for that, what's happening in this is Jesus is teaching a lot, and the disciples are doing a lot of things, right? They're going everywhere. And you'll hear it in this verse, but Jesus is recognizing a couple things that they need to be kind of addressing in their lives. So I'll wait till those. It sounds like we're we're turned there. And it says this, verse 30. The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all that they had done and taught. All that they had done and taught. Picking that up. How many of you guys start your verse? God, I did this today, it was so cool, and I taught this person. God loves to hear that, especially when you're sharing the gospel. Don't get me wrong. He loves to hear that. He loves to hear that you've shared the gospel. 31, it says, then because so many people were coming and going that they didn't even have a chance to eat, he said to them, Come with me by yourself to a quiet place and get some rest. So we're going to stop there in that verse. We'll continue there in a second. But I know you guys have all heard this, but how many times I I feel like I got to tell myself to rest like hourly. Maybe even every minute because it does I I can't turn my brain off. I remember we were sitting at Staff Workaway. You can you could probably talk about this one, but I got to sit up on the stairwell, right? And we're talking about some really good stuff about the church. I love Staff Workaway. But my brain, ADHD, about every 20 minutes I have to say, look back. They're over here. Because I'm wandering. I even have hit myself in the face with a rubber band because I was playing with it, just I zone out. But how many times I gotta tell myself to rest and reset minutely? Second, every second, it feels like, because God's calling me back to that rest point. So the first thing is Jesus knew that we needed to rest. Even he knew he needed to rest. Luke five, sixteen says, but Jesus then often withdrew to a lonely play place and prayed. If Jesus knew he needed rest, he created us like him, we need rest. So I want to continue in that verse because there's another thing that God brought to me in this one. Verse thirty two says So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place. But many who saw them leave recognized them and ran on foot ahead of them to get to where they were going. I read that a little bit backwards, but you get the point there. The distraction always follows you. Have you noticed that? And I'm not calling the people that Jesus was discipling to a distraction. What I'm saying is in our daily lives, how many of the distractions follow us? Right? For me, I go to get that in that quiet place and my phone buzzes. So I set my phone over here, right? I set my phone away and then all of a sudden my watch goes off. Okay, so the next thing I do, I take my watch off and then my computer goes off. The distraction's going to follow you everywhere you go. But until you deal with it, there's another point I want to bring here. Until you take it and deal with it in a certain way, it's still going to be there. But even when you deal with it, it's still going to be there because we are distractable humans, right? We're very distractable. My ADHD is a squirrel. I've told you that many times. All of a sudden someone will walk in the room and I'm like, I'll be up here worshiping. I'm like watching them. I don't know why, but that's what my brain does because I get so distracted. Right? But how many of you have noticed that in your life? That your distractions just seem to follow you, right? We can only get as far away as we allow ourselves from the distractions. What do you mean by that? What do you mean we can only get as far away as we allow? If you're not willing to set your phone down, take your watch off, and go to your quiet space, then that distraction's always gonna be there. And that quiet space doesn't mean sitting on the couch where everybody can come to you, right? Cause I've tried studying. I've tried studying right there. I've tried studying right there. I've gone out of this room, sat in the lobby. My brain can't do that. I have to leave almost and find a spot where nobody's going to find me for me to be able to zone in. When I wrote this message, I found the only office that nobody really bothers throughout the week. And Jim Beck told me he's like even further, if you put this do not disturb sign up, they'll think you're in a meeting and they won't come in. Right? Not that he does that to get away from things, but that's his personal quiet spot. You know what mean? Totally out of them there, but he knows what I mean. So how do we get away? How do we get away from those distractions? How do we step back from those things that try to catch us and get in the way? Well, first, maybe it means leaving all technology out of your quiet space. Right? You know, these phones have gotten so bad. They've gotten so bad for us, okay? They started with noise, then they started with buzzing. Now the screen turns on. And if you lay your phone down just right, the screen turns on again. You're like, ⁓ notification. I gotta check that. Facebook went off. There's a new deal on marketplace. I need it. How many times does that happen to you guys? It's daily for me, okay? It's daily. As soon as I set that thing down, it goes off. I'm like, and then I'm back. Like we'll be in a meeting and I have to check myself because it my watch will go off and I'm like, but it's bad. I've had to take my watch off because I have to get away from those things. So my quiet space means my watch is off. My phone's either off or not in the room. And I'm using my physical Bible. Because this doesn't have notifications. I mean other things from God. You know what I mean? Right? But this doesn't have notifications. This doesn't vibrate unless you drop it. Right. It doesn't do anything because you're the one that has to open it and enter into it for it to do anything, right? So maybe it leads leaving that out of there. And that leads me to the second thing you can do. Get into your Bible. Use your Bible rather than your phone. I love the UVersion app. I use it for a lot of things. If I'm looking up verses, if I'm looking up scripture, if I need like a devotional, I mean, me and Shobby, we try to do our best to do the verse of the day every morning. I love it. It's an awesome tool. But catch that. It's a tool. If you let the tool use you, it's a problem. If you use the tool, it's not a problem. Okay. So putting your phone down and using the physical Bible again, there's no distractions. The last, the couple of things I want to do is discuss that quiet place with your family, spouse, or workplace. For me, I got to discuss it with people in the workplace because they need to know that I'm in a quiet space so they don't come and ask me questions. But on top of that, maybe you're married and you want to have that quiet space and your spouse relies on you for certain things. You can communicate with your spouse that you need a moment with God. If your spouse is a godly spouse, they're gonna say, I love that, go do it. And they're gonna support you in that 100%. And if they don't, pray for them. Pray that they see it in those eyes. Pray it for those moments where there's breakthrough. But you can talk to your spouse. And guess what? You can talk to your family. Now I bet the youngs, because I'm not quite there yet. It's a little harder. So probably have your husband or wife around to kind of help with that in that moment. Or maybe you need to get up early and do it the morning. Or maybe you need to do it before you go to bed. Could be, could not be. I don't have kids yet, but I know it's going to be something for me someday that I gotta learn and I gotta adapt, right? But it's important. And the last thing is ask God to help you with that. Ask him to help you with the distractions. Ask him to turn your mind off and help you to enter in. Cause if the thing is, if he really wants a relationship with you, he's going to do that. And I can guarantee you, he wants a relationship with you. So he's going to help you with those distractions. So the last thing I want to talk about, we've talked about finding that noise. We've talked about getting away, finding the quiet. The last thing is retuning your heart. You know, these distractions tend to tune our hearts away from God, right? Maybe it's the phone. I'm using the phone a lot tonight. I don't don't worry. I love my phone. I don't hate technology, but I know that technology is a distraction. And it's the easiest thing to kind of bring here is the point, right? But the point I'm getting to is that pulls me away from God and untunes my heart from God. And I want to retune my heart and with Christ. So if you're looking, let's go ahead and go to John chapter fifteen, verses one through eight. Now, this verse, I was at ⁓ we went to family camp, did worship, got this awesome opportunity, and there was this amazing message that was brought up called abide. And he used this verse in there, and it blew my mind what I'm about to bring to you guys. Maybe some of you have heard it, and just need a reminder, but I loved this part of it. So I hear those Bibles are starting to slow down there. Here's what it says. And I want you to count the amount of times it says remain or abide in this message. Ready? So from verse one through eight ⁓ I am the true vine. And my father is the gardener, he cuts off every branch that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it can be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Here we go, remain, there's one, remain in me also as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself, it must remain in the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine and you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers. Such branches are picked up and thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done. This is this is my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourself to to be my disciples. How many times do you guys catch remain there? I'm like, you could catch me if I'm wrong on this, but I let I read it at least eight times. Right? Eight eight times. Sorry for the microphone. Eight times that remain was in there. Some of you, if you have a different like version of the Bible, it's gonna say abide, which means the same. Remain, be with, be in, be of, remain, abide. Used eight times. It seems like God wants us to remain or abide in him. I don't know if you weren't catching that, but it seems like he wants us to remain or abide. So how do we retune our heart? How do we find that? We begin to remain in his presence. We begin to slow down our week and we begin to say, God, I want to give you this time. You find that quiet space, you communicate with your family, you communicate with your kids, you communicate with your work. If you have that option and you say, I just need this moment. I want to abide in my father. I want to remain in my father. I want to be in his presence for this time. I want him to love me as much as I love him in these moments. So before we get too far, I got this little analogy that I loved, and I couldn't get a sponge up here in a bucket in time. But this is the coolest analogy that I've ever heard. You ready? How many of you guys know what a sponge is? Like that simple question? I've been told I ask simple questions. It's because I'm that way. A sponge, right? It soaks up water. Its main purpose is to hold water. Hold soapy water. Maybe dirty water, depending on where you left it, but it holds water. Could hold oil, but it holds liquid. Let's go there. Holds liquid. But the main thing they use a ⁓ sponge for, or at least me, I wash dishes or cars with sponges, right? I use that little like, I think it's like Mr. Clean. No, that's a different guy. What is that? Mr. Scrub, Dr. Scrub, whatever it is, that little smiley face in my house. I have that scrub daddy, that's what it is. I have that scrub daddy in my house, right? But I've noticed if I leave it out of the water, it gets super hard and crusty. Right? Not dirty. Okay, I cleaned it. I did wash it off, but it gets crusty feeling. It gets stiff. But that's because the purpose of the sponge is to remain in the water so that it can clean. It has its purpose. Without that water, it cannot do what it was supposed to do. You guys ever tried to scrub something with a dry sponge? Of course not. I have, but of course you guys haven't, right? It's I get a lot of that just me. Yeah, I know. But if you ever tried to scrub something with a dry sponge, just think about it. It's not gonna sound like a di it's gonna sound like you're scraping like your nails on something like this, you know? It doesn't do its purpose. It can't wash because it's dry. Matter of fact, you're gonna, if you go to wash a car that's dirty with a dry sponge, you're gonna scratch it. And you're gonna hurt my heart because I do body work at times, but you're gonna scratch it. So the whole point of that sponge is to remain in that water, to have that water so that it can do its purpose. Without the water, it has no purpose. But with the water, it has purpose. Without God, you have no purpose. But with God, you have purpose. Without God, you cannot do what you need to do. But with God you can do what you need to do. Without God, we are not who we were designed to be. But with God, we are who we are designed to be. Amen? I loved that analogy. So my favorite thing that I put or not my favorite thing, but the thing I pulled out of that is this without the vine, the crop withers and dies. So without his love or his spirit, our spirit withers and becomes weak. Without abiding in Christ, without remaining in him, with untuning, without tuning in our heart to Christ, we can't do what we were supposed to do. Right? That's why distractions are so easy. That's why the devil uses the distraction if you're a new believer, if you're an old believer, if you've been around for a while. And he tries to pull you away. He tries to pull you out of that water so that you can dry out, become dry, and then ask, Where are you, God? Where have you been? Why aren't you speaking to me? Why aren't you loving me? And I guarantee Christ is talking to you. He's trying to love on you, but he's trying to speak to you, and you're not letting him speak to you because the distraction has gone ahead and covered it. It's like putting headphones on and trying to listen to my mom tell me something. It doesn't work. It's cutting off that communication. It's pulling me away from what's trying to be said. So this week, I kind of want to I want to take a minute here, but this week I want you guys to really be looking for those things in your lives that distract you. Really be tuned in. Now that doesn't mean you have to cut it off right there, but it means you need to evaluate what is that distraction and allow God to show you where it belongs, if it belongs in your life. Right? Just like my three distractions, and there's so much more, let me tell you. God has aligned them to where they belong in my life, where they belong under him in the flow of what God has said. God, family, ministry, other things. Let them fall in line to what God has. And if you put those distractions in order, in line, if you get a hold of those distractions, God's gonna be able to speak to you on a new level. If you begin to find that quiet space, He's gonna love you in a new way that you never understood could be. New believers, let me tell you something. If you allow distractions to pull you away from Christ, you're gonna be asking yourself in one month, who's God? You're gonna be asking him, Where's God? You're gonna be asking him, what was that feeling that I had on Sunday morning because I was in church and you talked to me, but then I walked away from the Bible and I got distracted with all the life happens. What was that? You're gonna be asking what it was instead of knowing what it was. So let me tell you, these distractions need to be taken care of. They need to be put in order, and you need to pull these in your life in the correct order, falling under God's time, falling under his purpose and loving him. I've had to go through this so many times in my life because of the distractions. I've had to let God Reset. So find that distraction. Let him reset. Something that God put on my heart this morning to say is if you can't carve if you can carve out time for something you enjoy, you can definitely carve out time for God. Right? If you can take that time, amen. It hit me so hard because I'm like, God, I carve out time for dirt bikes on my weekends. I carve out time to make videos for this channel. I carve out time to go to the gym, but where is that time that I carved out for you? Forgive me, Lord, for not carving out the time that you need, that I need. It's not that God needs it. We need that time. So shame on us for missing that. So I want to kind of take a few minutes. I want to take five minutes and I just as Johnny comes to play praise, I want us to just let God. Get into our minds, get into our ears for a second. I want to slow down. Take five minutes. And I want us to just pray, God, what is that distraction in our lives that we need to reset? And maybe you've figured out that distraction. Maybe before this, God was like, You're losing because of this. You're losing me because of this. Maybe you need to just have that moment and return to the quiet. Maybe we need to ask God, God, can you help me find a quiet spot? Can you help me find that place that's away from all these distractions that I can enter in? Or maybe you just need to retune your heart tonight. Maybe you've begun to put these things in line before you even heard this message tonight. And you're on that final step. Well, guess what? Tonight is that night to complete that final step. It's a night to start or start where you are. So let's just take a moment. Let's take five minutes and just begin to pray, God, will you reveal these things to me right where I am? Show me who you are, Jesus. Thank him for hearing him or thank you. Thank you tonight that you are the God of order, that you have created a way that we are supposed to line these things up, that you showed us that it's supposed to be God, family, ministry, and the other things fall in line, Jesus. We thank you, Lord, that everything we come up against, every question that we have, you have laid out a roadmap of what it is or how, or you've given us an answer. And if it wasn't an answer that we needed in this moment, you calmed us and gave us peace, peace to trust you, Jesus, with those things. We thank you right now that you are beginning to touch hearts and show them that you want a deeper relationship. Lord, that you want that quiet place, that quiet time with them, that moment where they just get to sit with you in your presence. They begin to just allow you to touch their heart in a new way. Jesus, I pray over this congregation, Lord, that you would just begin to work in them. Begin to have breakthrough in those moments. Begin to help their families know. Lord, let it be something that they start in their family that goes down from the person who starts it and begins to affect the rest of the family to the point of where they're having their own moments with Christ, that they're having their own aha moments with you, Jesus, that they're feeling your presence. Lord, wherever it begins, whether it's the youngest child in this, in a in a family or it's the husband or the wife, wherever it begins, let it be contagious among them amongst them, Jesus. Let it have breakthrough because we know that you love the family. And that is one of the places that the devil loves to attack is the family. But we know, God, that when we put things in order, when we prioritize your order, there is nothing that can break that. The devil has no chance. The distraction has no chance. It has no hold in those moments. And Father, even in the moments where we begin to get busy again and we have to reset, help us to see it ahead of time. Help us to reset before it gets too crazy. And even if it does, Lord. We thank you that you are the God that lets us come back and reset. We thank you that you bring that order and show us and that you call us out where we need to be called out. You love on us where we need to be loved on, and you refresh us where we need refreshing, Jesus. We just thank you for all that you do and all that you are, Father. I pray as the people leave here tonight, God, that you just go with them, keep them safe at their jobs as they go through the week. Lord, help them have a chance to spread your word in your blessed and mighty name. And all God's people said, Amen. Thanks for listening to the Faith Alive Sermon podcast. We hope this message encouraged you. If it did, be sure to subscribe or share it with someone else who may need it. If you want to get connected or reach out to one of our pastors, go to our website at faithalive.church. We'll see you next time.