When the Finish Line is the Starting Line Deuteronomy 12

Shake it off, wake up a little bit.

You are not who I think.

I'll pray you a good one.

I'll say you are just a friend.

But I'll say you are God.

You are my God.

I will ask and say you are near.

And I will let you know you are mine.

I'll sing a song of love and your greatness.

You are my God.

I will ask and say you are near.

I know that it's yours on the side now.

You saved all of life for me.

I know that you are the only way.

Because you are God.

You are my God.

I will shout and say you are near.

And I will let you know you are mine.

And the world will know you are great.

And I will ask and say you are near.

Because I will ask and say you are near.

And I will let you know you are mine.

I will love the world and your goodness.

That I live a life that shall be.

That I live a life that shall be.

Jesus, by your side, to live a life that shall be.

Jesus, by your side, to live a life that shall be.

Jesus, by your side, to live a life that shall be.

Jesus, God of Spilot, God of Wмотри

Alright, good morning, good morning.

Obviously we are here to worship the Lord and to learn from his word.

It's been a little time together doing things that God has ordained for us to do.

I'm excited about the message today because it's really, really took me something to process it and accept it for what it is.

And I'm excited to bring it to you. I hope that it will be the same thing for you.

I know I've seen the teachers prepare and they're excited for kids' lessons.

So it's going to be a good time that we have here together today.

I want to remind you, it will be here before you realize it, just a month away.

It's the Hall of the Lot of Fun, the Fall Fest, it's on Halloween.

And it will be opposite trick or treat. So it is our alternative trick or treat.

We'll do games all the way down the hallway, back and forth all the way down the hallway.

And then go through and then go through again around the other side.

But that means we need all the people we can possibly get to come up with games and to run games.

Last year when we started right on time, and there was a middle section of the hallway with like four games.

And there was somebody that had to go boom, boom, boom.

And like one of our workers had to run all four of those games.

So we need all the people to show up and bring the games.

And in the meantime, we're donating candy.

So if you have individually wrapped candy or when you get to the grocery store and you're buying groceries,

it doesn't hurt you to pick up a bag of candy and bring it to church.

We'll do the next week and donate it.

And that'll be an honorarium, if you will.

With that started, we'll have lots of candy, lots of fun for the kids on Halloween.

And then just a couple quick reminders, just because I have your ear right in the middle.

And remind you that you are entitled to a free right now media membership.

If you don't already have that, if you haven't looked at that, that's over 2,500 kids shows

and over 20,000 Bible studies earlier on every topic you can possibly imagine.

So their video, they're good teachers, it's safe material.

It's not the kind of thing where you're going to get some whacked out church guy somewhere

teaching you something that don't make any sense.

So you're going to have to question it.

You can and you should always question any teacher, including me.

So you should always do that and look at what you're being taught.

Make sure it lines up with scripture.

By that being said, that's free to you.

And the code is in the bulletin and I can give it to you again.

You just text it and you download it and it's on your phone.

You can watch it on your phone, on your tablet, on your smart TV, whatever.

And it's free.

And then a reminder that we're doing spiritual discipline emphasis right now is on prayer.

So we're asking you to pray, pray for one another, pray for our community, pray for our government,

which is essentially elected by us.

We vote and that's how it's done.

So pray for our leaders, pray for Tony.

He's back in New York, upstate New York today.

He'll be home tomorrow evening.

Had to drive all the way back to New York to pick up the rig

as he wasn't allowed to bring it home.

And so he'd come back to New York to pick up the rig.

And so then he couldn't be here today because they made him do it today.

So because they want to use the rig for something else tomorrow.

You know, it's always when you're employed, you got it.

You kind of got another master in your life.

You got to sort those things out.

And Brother Tony loves the Lord and misses you today and praying for him.

Sure, he's driving to him from New York.

All right.

So we'll pray for him.

Also pray for Miss June.

She's still facing some health things and really needs a surgery that's a pretty big deal.

And she can't get that until she can quit smoking.

She's trying real hard to do that.

So pray for her.

And then you may have some others.

Is there someone who's name you'd like to call this morning before we pray?

Yes, Carrie.

My sister Connie.

Connie, okay.

My whole family.

Connie and family.

Yeah, because we're going to get saved.

Okay.

We should go all close to the Lord.

Amen.

Amen.

Good stuff.

Connie.

My name is Boss at Conrad and she tested positive for COVID this week and she has some serious health concerns.

This is what we're doing.

Yeah, and I just saw on commercial and they mentioned how COVID goes after people who

have other health concerns and that really is what we suffer from during the height of

the pandemic was people who had other health concerns mixed with COVID really suffered badly.

Caitlin.

Not much has happened.

I had an appendectomy the first day so she was a bit worried about that.

Okay.

My friend Clyde from Pothi just had an appendectomy like a month ago.

So apparently being old, you can suddenly your appendix just decides to leave and it's

like I'm done and then take it out.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter your age.

It's not a kid thing.

Used to be a lot of times they say it only happens to kids but it doesn't.

It doesn't happen to anyone.

Thank the Lord.

Here.

Mike Brister.

I know his knee is pretty messed up right now.

He's in a lot of pain.

Yeah, so they're waiting to find out the full results of that but he was stepping off

the bleachers and wrenched his knee really bad and so pray for him.

Absolutely.

Because that could be anything from you know they got an MRI if they do that it could be torn.

It could be these can be might have to be replaced which are really good at that now

but it's something you never want to have happen.

James said nothing's broken but they're saying to a surgeon.

Yeah.

So that's probably yeah.

It's probably.

Yeah.

Okay.

Any others?

All right.

So Tony Tate, brother Tony Tate.

I have you listed to pray and then you can call on one person after you to pray after you.

Okay.

For sure.

All right.

Okay.

Lord, the designer is crossing the heart.

God, I thank you for this time and Lord, I'm thinking about that that God love is that

that there wasn't a heart over that cross God.

It wasn't for your love even before we messed up in the garden throughout the whole Bible God.

It's always your love profoundly proclaiming that you're going to save us and rescue us.

God, that we were destined to for greater things with you and God no one understands all that.

It's not supposed to be because it was your love.

It's your understanding.

It's your hope.

God, we thank you for your love, your truth tonight and for today you can speak through our

pastor, you can speak through our praise team that are already here already at the classes.

And no matter what God, even though there's just a bunch of noise going on,

we will we will hear a whisper that gentle whisper that you love us and we are loved.

And we find out what that love is and who that love is and how we may follow that love through

your trust in Jesus name and promise.

I call on someone to say a prayer.

Call on Sherry.

Where you suddenly father, we thank you for this day Lord, I thank you for all the people that are

here for the young people.

Lord, I ask you to be with those that couldn't be here today for whatever reason.

There's a lot of health concerns.

Lord, lift them up, help them to be strong, give them comfort today.

God, it says we worship you.

We love you in Jesus name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, we're going to stand up again.

I'm not going to sit down long today.

Yeah, we're going to stand up again.

All right, so these next two songs are call and response songs, which simply means we're

going to take turns singing.

Okay, it's really simple.

They teach you how to take turns in kindergarten.

Not everybody's good at it.

That's okay.

We're going to learn.

So we're going to split the room right here in the middle.

So Becca and Tommy are on separate teams.

We're going to split right in the middle.

This side is going to follow me and this side is going to follow Amalia.

And you guys are going to go first.

Okay, here we go.

And then the second time we will do it the other way and we'll go first.

Okay.

God our salvation be in God's hand.

The Lord, the Lord, the Son, and the Son, be the rock and the rock.

God our salvation be in God's hand.

I will follow, I will follow, I will follow, I will follow, I will follow, I will follow,

in my dreams, will be quenched, will be quenched, and I'm reserved from all myary,

and I will walk all alone.

The Lord, the Lord, the Son, and the Son, be the rock and let the God our salvation

be in God's hand.

The Lord, the Lord, the Son, and the Son, be the rock and let the God our salvation

I'm gonna make you hear my voice

Alright, this is gonna be a little more complicated.

The kids can come to the front.

We're gonna do motions and call and response at the same time.

Stand up, come on! Come on, children, stand up, let's go!

Alright, we'll stay here and wait for you then.

Come on! You need to stand up!

Alright, so, while we're doing the motions,

children are gonna follow Amalia, adults are gonna follow me.

Which means, children, you have to sing words and do motions at the same time.

You can do it! You can do it!

Okay? We'll go first so you can echo and it'll be fine.

As the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in Him.

This is the day, this is the day, as the Lord has made.

Alright, we're gonna go first, here we go!

This is the day, this is the day, as the Lord has made.

We will rejoice, we will rejoice and be glad in Him.

This is the day, this is the day, as the Lord has made.

We will rejoice and be glad in Him.

This is the day, this is the day, as the Lord has made.

Thank you, guys!

There is something about doing motions along while you're singing.

First of all, it's hard and somehow it's kind of extra fulfilling.

I don't understand why it is that young people can do motions and sing at the same time.

And I struggle with it so bad. I guess I'm just like stuck in a path or whatever.

But I don't have good rhythm either, so I just do what I can.

Alright, so we're at the moment of our inspirational moment.

And we're gonna talk briefly about prayer, because that's our spiritual discipline.

In November, November 22nd, we will switch spiritual discipline between now and then.

So that's all the month of October, and the first 22 days of November,

and the last couple of days of September, our focus is on prayer.

We've talked about prayer probably a dozen different ways now.

And you've noticed that we started doing the bulletin where somebody would pray

and then somebody would call on somebody else to pray.

In the Bible, in 2 Corinthians 5.17, it says something specific about prayer.

Tommy, do you know what that is?

2 Thessalonians 5.17, what does it say about prayer?

Pray unceasingly.

Very good, that's very good, that's correct.

So it says pray without ceasing or unceasingly, that's right.

So we pray all the time.

So if somebody calls on you to pray, and if you are praying all the time,

then it really shouldn't be that hard.

You just start saying out loud what you already think you're feeling in your head.

Obviously, if you're called on to prayer, you're a unique individual,

so you're going to pray a little bit differently than anybody else.

It should be conversational between you and God.

If you talk to God like He's a complete stranger, it's probably because He is.

And if God is a complete stranger to you, then that's not what Jesus died for.

He died so that we may enter the holy of holiest places.

So we may go directly into the throne room of God.

And Paul says this, he said, come boldly into the throne room of God.

There's a parable I'll share with you that Jesus taught.

It's about a widow and an unjust judge, a man who didn't really follow the law.

He didn't care about justice.

In fact, in this parable, it's one of the only parables in which God is pictured as not the nice guy.

God's always the good guy.

In the parable of the prodigal son, God is the father who runs down off a porch

and grabs his son and kisses him on the neck and gives him the robe and the ring and the sandals

and kills a fat cat and celebrates his coming home even though he was disrespectful, right, and all that.

But in this story, God is pictured as the unjust judge, at least for a moment.

And what he says is there's a widow who needs justice, and she keeps coming to the unjust judge.

She keeps banging on his door and asking him, will you give me justice?

Will you give me justice? Will you give me justice?

And finally, the unjust judge says, not because I care about justice,

but just because this widow is going to tire me out with coming,

then I'll give her what it is that she's asking for to get her justice.

And then Jesus says, how much more will your heavenly Father, who loves you, give you of his Holy Spirit, right?

But don't stop asking is the moral of the story.

Sometimes we say, well, I prayed and God didn't answer, so then we just stop praying.

First of all, God never doesn't answer.

You may not like the answer, so you may not want to hear the answer.

Maybe a flat out no, or maybe we're going to do something differently, or I have another plan,

or I'm showing you something and you're ignoring it.

Nobody likes to hear some of those corrected things that God has to say.

But the bottom line is He's there, and He always answers.

If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, He always answers.

Now, if you say, well, God has never answered my prayer,

then the truth is you're probably not a follower of Jesus Christ, and you need to become one.

Accept Jesus as Lord, that means He tells you what to do.

It's Savior, that means He paid the price for your sins.

Admit that you need that, believe in Him for it, and commit your life to follow Him and be saved.

And there's a prayer that God promises He'll always answer.

And then from then on, He'll hear your every prayer and answer, and you can pray literally all day long.

They say that most people average between 160 and 320 self-words a minute.

That means you're talking to yourself even right now while I'm talking to you.

Your mouth isn't moving, but in your head you're thinking things, you've been thinking about whatever.

The whole time I've been talking to you.

Now you can just take 10% of that and turn it into talking to the Lord.

Then second, that's going to be 517, it'll be a reality in your life.

You'll be talking to God all the time that you're awake.

Alright, so that's about prayer for today.

What do you got? What did you see this week, or what did you hear from the Lord this week?

Jason first, and then here.

So on Saturday I was at home playing with Tyrell, and he brought up the fact that one of our friends, his name is Audie,

lost his father to a car accident when he was four or five years old.

And he's been depressed about it ever since, and I want to pray for him that God gives him something on his heart to help him feel better about it.

That's a good word, that's a good word.

Every tragedy that we hear about going right to prayer for that person, I'll never forget, I was a young Christian, I was only like about maybe saved a year, if that.

I was driving on the expressway, and I was driving past a terrible accident on 475.

I was going northbound, and they had that big grass median in the middle, and then there was cars going southbound,

and everybody was slowing down, kind of bottlenecking, and the accident was in the middle, between.

And there were like three or four cars, and it obviously was really bad, the cars were just destroyed.

And just as I was driving past it, the announcer came on the radio and mentioned it, said that traffic's backed up on 475,

it was a bad accident, well, there were four cars, and at least one person died on the scene and others injured.

And it happened to be a Christian radio station, and he said, so if you're out there driving right now and you're hearing this,

would you lift up a prayer to the Lord, would you ask God to use this terrible, tragic event, somehow, to bring somebody closer to Him?

And from that time on, I've always thought, every time I hear about bad things, or people trying to recover from illnesses, or whatever, I always think,

as much as we have a hard time understanding it, that tragedy can be formative in His life, in the lives of the people in His family, and so on.

And His dad may have gone to heaven, we hope he did, but he may not have, but the fact is that event can be used to bring lots of people to Jesus,

if God gets His way, that's what He wants. What was your friend's first name again?

Audie.

Okay, so right now, join me in prayer for Audie.

Audie.

Audie?

Yes.

Not Ardie, Audie.

Audie.

Okay, here we go.

Father in heaven, you know the situation for Audie better than we do.

And it's hard. There are already so many people in the world who don't have a human dad.

And sometimes it's because their human dad is irresponsible, or because he's in the military, because he's addicted to drugs,

and there are lots of reasons why a child might not have their dad in their life.

And here is Audie not having his dad in his life because his dad was killed in a car accident, or a tragedy in any case, when he was four or five years old.

That means he's going to grow up without a dad like that.

So we're asking the Lord to be his father, to take care of him every moment of every day.

We're asking the Lord to use that event, that tragic event, in a powerful way in Audie's life and the life of his family,

to draw them closer to you, that they might know heaven one day, and they might know the kingdom of God, your honor, or the prayer of the Son of Jesus' name. Amen.

Alright, who else? Audie, you have something?

So when me and you met on Friday, I told you about a song that I like, and unfortunately it's got a couple of customers hanging around to share the song,

but some of the questions, one of the things that I brought up was as we walk with God and as we're trying to get closer, there's always questions that rise up.

So we always ask questions, and sometimes a lot of those questions are why questions.

Like why does this happen? Why am I this way? Why is that person that way? Why am I being treated like this?

A lot of them are why questions, and my personal opinion, I think some of those are the hardest questions to answer.

And there's a song that I like listening to, and the song is called Dear God, and he's basically asking God these same questions,

and I read a couple of them, it says, Why do I hurt? Why is there pain? Why does everything good always have to change?

Why does everyone try to profit off another man's work, then destroy it just for monetary gain?

And when I told you about that, one of the answers is greed.

And a little bit further down, a little bit more, it says, Tell me what's real, tell me what's fake, why is everything about you a debate?

What's the point of love? Every time I've shown it, I was broken and it forced me just only want to hate.

So we try to show love to people, and I've asked myself that question many times,

like why should I have to love that person when all they do is hate me anyway?

And why should I show respect to that person? Because the way I was raised and the way I was brought up was,

You show me respect, I'll show you respect. And that is one of the biggest things I've seen the world try to teach people,

is respect earned is respect gained, or something like that, and that is not true at all.

That is 100% the opposite of what God tells us to do.

And so it's really hard for me, because like I said, that's how I was raised, so I have a really hard time respecting people.

So I ask God that question a lot, like why do I have to do this?

And the answer is extremely simple, because God said so.

And I think a lot of those questions that we have on like a lot of those why questions,

those really deep questions that pop up a lot, the answer is simple, because God said so.

And it's kind of like when we tell our kids something and they go, well why? Because I'm the parent and I said so.

God is our Father, and because He said so, therefore we have to do it.

I think it goes a little farther than that too, because God loves us.

Amen. Yeah, why are the stars in the sky? Because God said so. Why do you do that? Because He loves you.

Because He wanted to love you.

I have a Bible verse that deals with bravery.

Okay, let's hear it. Nice and loud.

It's first question is,

and it says,

Then you will succeed if you carefully follow the

statutes and

ordinance the Lord commanded.

Be strong and courageous. Don't be afraid for his courage.

What type of verse do you go?

I was looking through the Bible and I saw that verse, it's a God's being good.

It said, if you follow what God tells you to do, then if you be brave, God tells you to do it, He's going to help you get better at being brave at hard stuff.

That's very good. I'm going to stop right there before you steal my sermon.

Anybody else? Real quick, dad. I'll go ahead.

There was a movie scene that just popped into my head.

It's from, I think it's from Heaven Almighty,

where Morgan Freeman's playing God and he's sitting in the place.

And he says, well, does God give us courage or does he give us opportunities to be courageous?

And he said a couple more, but that one really stuck out.

When we ask for something, does he actually give it to us or does he just give us those opportunities to be that?

So I'm currently watching The Rings of Power on Amazon Prime.

And I apologize if anybody's watching this at this point.

I'm showing a clip from there because the clip's really powerful,

the message in it was about to be and I think the rest of us can get some ideas out of it.

Alright, let's watch the movie.

Hold on, before we start it.

Before we start it, I'll open the scene with, it's Durin, the prince of the dwarves, the Dwarven Nation.

And he is confronting his father because Durin did something and screwed up pretty bad

and he just got like four of their people killed in an accident.

And he's basically coming to him for forgiveness and apology.

Because through the wisdom of a great friend, he wishes to make things right with the king before it's too late.

Look, my bow.

Here's the sword.

Here's the bow.

Here is the sword.

Look.

Forgive me, Father.

I was proud and stubborn and I was wrong.

Can you not even look at me?

Our people believe that when a new dwarf king is crowned, the voices of all his forebears flow into him,

sharing with him their counsel, their wisdom, even their mistakes.

But you, you need not wait for that day to hear my voice.

Forever am I with you, my son.

Even in anger, sometimes in anger most of all.

There is nothing to forgive.

So, he puts the light out.

So, at the beginning of the scene, Duren is so full of shame, he thinks his father can't even bear to look at him.

Even though he didn't give his father a chance to respond, he immediately just jumped to the conclusion that his father wouldn't even want to look at him because of his shame.

The feeling of shame will chew a person up inside, even to the point where you begin to question other royalties and take an accusatory stance with them.

His father reminds him that he is not the first dwarf to make a mistake.

He reminds Duren that he is with him now and will always be.

The king's word or message that even when God's wrath was over us, no, especially that, that he loved us so much that he sent his only son to die for us.

A loving father does not forsake his child because the child acts against him or is disobedient.

The king sees Duren's shame.

He says, forever am I with you, my son, even in anger, sometimes in anger most of all, there is nothing to forgive.

He assures the prince that even when he screws up, he can always come to his father.

Just like Duren, we can go to our heavenly father.

Even in the darkest pits of our shame, if you give your life to Christ, then there is no more forgiveness required.

There is nothing to forgive.

Jesus has taken all of your guilt and your shame upon himself so that we may know that we can always come to the Father.

Okay, at this point in time we're going to pray and transition to tithes and offerings.

As I mentioned before, I think that Tony is probably not quite in New York yet, but he's on his way there, so I'll pray in his stead.

And then I will call on somebody at the end. Since I already fair warned you, it could be anybody.

Pray with me. Let's go.

Father in heaven, we praise you for who you are.

You love us and love us so much that you gave us everything, then forgave us everything.

We could sit here and list the things that we've done wrong.

Maybe that would make us more grateful for the salvation paid for.

But you brought us to a place where we're really supposed to let that stuff go and live for you from here on out.

The old stuff passed away. Everything new has come.

We praise you Father for your awesome willingness, all your power put to the task, saving us, those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

I confess we need that forgiveness because we do make mistakes.

Though as Ron and I think you through Ron reminds us, we will not be, never will we ever be, the first human to make a mistake, no matter how bad that mistake might be.

Many have gone before us and it seems like every mistake that's ever been made has already been made.

We made mistakes. We're just walking in the sins of our forefathers.

Please forgive us for the failure then and lift us up and thank you for the gifts that you've given us.

Thank you for even the tithes and offerings that are about to be given.

We pray that you'll use those things, use us, use our time left together today to glorify you.

Help us to remember that you are at work for us. You know, this laid out, you never stop working, trying to draw people to yourself.

We're grateful for that.

I ask the Lord that you continue to pray to bless your people.

I pray that you walk upright in your arms and that you feel that your needs are met.

I love you God, I thank you for your love and support. May you help us all.

May all the sick that call upon you God, may you heal them from their illness and their sins.

In Christ I pray, Jesus. Amen. Amen.

Put it away. Now.

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