SUNDAY - MAY 31, 2026 (SPECIAL GUEST: DUSTIN TUTOR) 2nd Chronicles 7:14

Good morning again.

Uh it has been a tough week in the life of our church uh with uh Miss Sherry Vinings passing.

Uh we had her funeral yesterday, and uh Brother Grant is out today because his mother uh passed away this week as well.

And so I just want to remind our church that we are to be praying for them uh today as they get ready and prepare to uh to do their services this afternoon, be thinking about them and be praying for them.

And it's weeks like these where uh we call in people to help uh carry that burden with us and for us.

And so we have a good friend, uh Dustin Tudor.

He is here with us today.

He is uh the um BSU director at Northwest, and so I want to invite him.

He is going to share uh the word with us this morning, Dustin?

Well, good morning.

Hey, I want to I want to start with this.

Now, my name is Dustin Tudor.

That this that's not a lie.

Not a soul calls me that.

Um most people call me toot.

All right.

Now, I I share that because my wife doesn't even call me Dustin.

All right.

My my mother is the last person left on earth that says Dustin.

Um so you're welcome to.

That's what she named me.

You're more than welcome to call me Dustin if that's what you want to.

Most people will not.

Uh most people will call me toot.

And if you want to be really formal, brother toot.

Um, but I'm glad to be here.

I hate it's under these circumstances.

Grant and I spoke in February, and he said, hey, get a sermon ready.

Uh mom's not doing well, and and and I want you to preach when I have to be out, which I'm grateful for.

Um that him trusted me with this.

And then he called me this week and said, Hey, I think it's gonna be this week, and called me yesterday.

Uh I I knew Miss Dot.

That is a sweet, sweet woman.

Uh, and and and going to be praying for Grant and Clay and be with them this evening, but I want you to remember your pastor.

Loves you, uh, wishes he could be here with you, um, and you're gonna have to suffer through me.

And I I hate that for you.

I really do.

If you got your Bibles, hope you do.

We're gonna be in 2 Chronicles chapter 7.

2 Chronicles 7 · chapter mention

2 Chronicles chapter 7.

2 Chronicles 7 · chapter mention

Again, privileged to be with you today.

This is this is the third time I've been at DeSoto Hills.

You, fourth time.

I just remembered one other time.

Uh I came almost 20, probably 22 years ago and was a small group leader for a D now here.

Um and I remember that D now fairly well because the house we stayed in was ridiculous.

And I don't I'm from Pontiac.

I want to, I guess I should have started with that.

I also am from Pontock, graduated from South Pontock High School.

Uh and so I've known your pastor literally my whole life.

Um and and but I came here and stayed at a house that I thought that 10 people, 10 families could have stayed in, and never forgot that house.

I'm just gonna never forgot it.

Came back about 15 years ago for a service or 10 years ago, maybe, and it happened to be the Sunday before VBS, uh, and I believe y'all had like a Parthenon backdrop, and Grant was dressed as the Apostle Paul.

Um, I won't forget that as long as I live.

And then walked in this morning and realized, hey, we're back at VBS.

And I'm gonna tell you, if I'd known that y'all were gonna be wearing t-shirts, I have a Macho Man Randy Savage t-shirt in my truck that I would have thrown it on and uh and been a whole lot more comfortable than I don't wear coats.

I just want you to know that this is this is for bearing and death.

I don't I don't put these on.

I was so shocked when I put it on this morning that the buttons touched.

I was like, man, it's been a while.

I don't know what happened there.

Um most things shrink in the dryer mine and the dry cleaners, they did something nice, but um anyway, glad, glad, glad to be here.

Excited to be here.

Sometimes we do silly things.

We spend a lot of time focused on anything and everything around us, and we fail to pay attention to what's right in front of us.

We're quick to notice everyone else is doing wrong.

We're quick to notice the problem in society, we're quick to notice the problems in our workplace, we're quick to notice the problem in our families or our friends' families, and if we're not careful, we can become experts at diagnosing everybody else's heart while neglecting our own.

Uh I want you to know that when I was growing up in Pontiac, my dream, my dream from probably 12 or 13 years until I got into probably my sophomore year of college or my first or second sophomore year of college.

I don't know.

I would have a sophomore for like three years.

But my dream was I was going to graduate high school, I was gonna go to Itawama Community College, then Ole Miss, and I was gonna be a teacher and a coach.

That's what I wanted to do.

A teacher and a coach.

My passion was for teaching history.

I love history.

I know y'all probably just said this dude is boring, but I loved it.

I studied it for three years before I surrendered to ministry.

Love history, and then I love coaching.

And what I've learned as I've grown older is that I am still really good at coaching.

I do it now from my chair, but I'm fantastic at it.

I am a huge Ole Miss fan, and I can diagnose Ole Miss every week they play.

Doesn't matter what they play, baseball, football, basketball, tell you everything they've done wrong and what they should have done to make it right.

I can do that.

I'm gifted at it.

No one listens, but I'm good at it.

All right?

I am a New Orleans Saints fan.

I like the Saints.

I and I want y'all to know that I'm a glutton for punishment.

I don't I don't root for anyone that wins anything ever.

But I can tell you exactly what's wrong with the saints every week and what they should do.

No one listens, but I could fix them if they would just listen.

That is how we tend to be in life.

We can fix each other, right?

I can tell you exactly how to fix your issues and your problems, and I can tell you exactly what to do to make your life better.

Uh but I often find it pretty difficult to fix mine, to figure out me.

I am better at spending time diagnosing you.

In sports and stuff, we call that an armchair quarterback.

In life, we might just call that judgy.

I don't know.

But there is a scripture that goes along with this that tells us, do not judge lest you be judged, for the way that you judge others is the way you'll be judged.

And it goes into this sweet little part where it says, stop worrying about the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye when there's a beam in yours, that goes along with this, that we are often quick to look at other people and tell you, hey, this is what you need to do.

This is what you need to do.

Do you remember when you were, this is for the parents in the room, only for the parents in the room.

Do you remember when you weren't a parent?

And what kind of parent you were going to be?

Do you remember ever saying things like, When I have children, I will never.

I would never do that with my kids.

I want to tell you, I am married, which is usually shocking to people, and she's pretty, which is doubly shocking to most folks.

But I am married, and I have a beautiful wife named Beth.

We have three children Henry Reese, Blaze, and Annabeth.

All right, we're the weird one, named our daughter after her mother, Annabeth.

All right.

And I can remember when we were dating and engaged and getting married, we would talk about our children, and we would say things like, they are never going to sleep in the bed with us.

They are never going to sleep in the bed with us.

And I want y'all to know, for me, it wasn't some scientific thing.

I've heard people say, like, you know, like it's unhealthy for your children to sleep in the bed.

I genuinely thought that, not because of some weird whatever, but daddy's huge.

And I was like, I'm gonna roll over on a baby, that baby's gonna be dead.

And so for our boys, never slept in a bed with us.

Not once did they come into our bedroom.

But then come that baby girl.

Right?

Then come that little girl.

She's five years old.

She has never spent a night outside of our bed.

Not one.

I put her in her big girl bed every night.

By two o'clock in the morning, every day she ninja kicks my door open.

Like a SWAT team going on a drug bust.

Rolls up in there and jumps in bed.

I I cannot tell you the list of things that I could say where I said I would never do that.

I wouldn't be like those people.

I wouldn't, I am quick to look at others and their mistakes and say, hey, I'd never make that mistake, but I have a laundry list of my own of things that I need to fix.

I want you to know that today is a self-evaluation day for all of us.

What is it that is going on in our lives that we need to turn over to the Lord?

What are the things in us that is hindering us from being who God has called and created us to be?

Now I'm going to preface with 2 Chronicles 7.14 is often often used to talk about how to fix our nation.

Now, hear me.

100%, if we would obey 2 Chronicles 7.14, we would be in a good spot to move forward as a nation back towards God.

But today we're going to use it just specifically to look at us individually.

How do we get back to where we should be as believers, as children of God, as people who love the Lord?

So if you got your Bible, 2 Chronicles 7.14, it says this if my people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven.

I will forgive their sins and heal their lands.

Let's pray.

Father God, thank you.

Thank you for your word.

Thank you for the truth that's found in it.

God, thank you for this blueprint.

That if we would just be wise enough to follow, God, that it would save us a lot of heartache and a lot of hardship.

God, I pray this morning, Father, that you would fill me with your spirit, that you would calm my nerves, that you would speak clearly through me today.

God, I do pray for Grant and Clay and all the Stigals as they prepare to lay this dot to rest, God, that you just give them a spirit of grace and peace this morning.

And God, you just know that they are loved.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Many people quote this verse when they talk about the condition of our nation.

I'm going to start and just tell you, I don't love the condition of our nation.

I don't.

I'm not fond of where we're at.

I get less fond every time I fill up with gas.

I, in January, made the stupid decision of buying a pick.

I had a minivan, but this is not a minivan body.

I just want y'all to know this.

When I get out of a minivan, most people look at me weird.

And so I was like, I need to get something that matches my soul and my spirit.

So I went and bought me a ram pickup.

It was a bad time to buy a ram.

I'm going to tell you, I went from like, hey,$30 would fill up my 13 gallon tank to I spent half my day standing at a pump now, just wondering will it end, right?

I don't like where we're at.

I'm not a lover of where our country is at.

I started ministry in 2003.

I was 19 years old when I took my first church at River Bend Baptist Church in Aberdeen, Mississippi.

I'll never forget it as long as I live.

I walked in for the interview with a guy by a gentleman by the name of Dr.

Roy McHenry.

I love Dr.

Roy.

He was my first pastor I served under.

And he said, Dustin, they did call me Dustin back then.

I had not earned Toot as the title until a couple years later at GBA.

But I walked in and I said, hey, he was like, we want you to come be our student minister.

And I said, I've never done this before.

I'm going to be really bad at it.

He said, it won't matter.

They've never had one.

They won't know the difference.

That's how I started in ministry 2003.

I'm telling you now that the students that I had in 2003 did not face the world that the students you have now do.

It's just different.

School's different.

The things they go through at school's different.

The things they have to deal with is different.

In 2003, I didn't have a single student with a cell phone.

I had a cell phone only because my mom wanted to talk to me.

I would never have bought one then, but they were really expensive, and you got like three text messages.

It was like$170 for one line.

I was like, I ain't doing that.

Poor.

None of my students had cell phones, none of them.

And even then, when you did have a cell phone, all you could do on it was text, call, and play snake.

That was it.

There was no internet.

There was no supercomputer in your hand.

Different world today.

Different things that they face.

Alright?

And so the nation we live in now, I don't think is getting better.

I do think it can.

But I think it starts with us individually.

And when I say us, hear me, I don't mean the nation uh America.

I mean us.

People in this room, brothers and sisters in Christ, faith family, the church.

It starts with us being who we were called to be and doing what we were created to do.

And so we hear that and we think the condition of our nation, but this verse is, and but before the verse is about the nation, it's about God's people.

Notice how this begins.

If my people, God is speaking to his people.

He's speaking to people who know him, people who worship him, people who belong to him.

And his message is a simple one.

If we want to experience the blessings, presence, and power of God, it begins with a heart that is humble before him.

This morning I want to see three truths in this passage.

Not about what everybody else needs to do, but about what God desires from each and every one of us.

And the first one is this God desires a humble heart.

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves.

Humility is where this starts.

It may be that we need to humble ourselves to the point of saying, hey, I've got some problems.

And I don't mean like worldly problems, I mean like problems in my relationship with Jesus.

Maybe it's lacking.

Maybe it's not where it's supposed to be.

Maybe it's humbling ourselves to get to the point where we reach out and say, hey, I need you, Lord.

That's hard for us.

You know the hardest place in the world to do ministry?

I firmly believe this.

Right where we're at.

The Bible Belt.

Used to say we're in the Bible belt and we're the buckle.

Right?

Every corner has a church.

I was driving up Gatewell this morning.

I live in Sinatobia.

I was driving up Gatewell this morning and I was like, dead gum, there's churches every mile, and they all seem pretty new.

Right?

We have churches everywhere.

Everywhere.

But it's hard here to do ministry.

Why?

Because we don't have a lot of need.

We don't have a lot of need.

There's not a lot of us that need anything.

And so it's hard for us to understand why we're desperately in need of Jesus.

So maybe we need to humble ourselves to get to that point and say, Lord, I need you.

I'm going to tell you about one of the most humble experiences I've ever had in life.

When I was growing up, I told you I grew up in Pontacka.

I tell people I'm from UCLA, the upper corner of Lower Algon.

I'm specifically from a little community called Midway.

All right?

And I went to Midway Baptist Church.

That's where I grew up.

And when I grew up, I had a mother that when the doors of the church opened, the tutors were at church.

Now, if it was Thursday afternoon, we were out of school and the senior adults was going to have some sherbet and play dominoes.

They were going to do it with the tutor kids.

You feel me?

My youth minister got the bright idea when I was a teenager that every Friday night of summer we would get together and play softball and cook hot dogs.

Let me tell you who didn't want to be at church on Friday nights all through the summer.

Me.

But I'm going to tell you who was there.

Me.

My whole life I went to church.

First 12 years of my life went something like this, though.

I would get up, my brother would get up.

I have an older brother's name's Nikki.

He's a federal postal inspector out of Oxford.

I have a younger sister named Stephanie who still lives five minutes from my mama and never move any further.

We would get up and we would get ready.

My mom would get ready.

And my dad would get in his chair.

And we would go to church.

My dad was a functioning alcoholic, drank every day of his life.

Not a mean one, happy as he could be, but he was gonna get up and he was gonna drink beer and he was gonna go to bed drinking beer.

Did it every day of his life.

First 12 years of my life, we all go to church.

Every Sunday, my mom would get out of the pew at the time of the altar, and she would go down, she'd pray for my father.

Friends, that's humility.

That's humility.

To get in front of everyone every week.

Every week to say, hey, we've got a problem.

It ain't all together.

Life isn't perfect.

I need you, Lord.

She also needed her faith family.

She did it every week for 12 years.

She didn't have to do it any longer than that because on August 10th, 1997, my father went to church for the first time.

Now Midway Baptist Church got 70 people that go to church there.

The same 70 go there today.

All right?

Same people.

Sixteen people got saved on August 12th, 1997.

My brother and my father were two of them.

Alright?

My mother didn't have to go to the altar the next week unless it was to say, Thank you, Jesus.

Humility.

Humility is where it starts.

Will you humble yourselves?

Can you humble yourself long enough to look at your life and say, hey, God, what's some areas of my life that needs to be fixed?

What's some areas of my life that need worked on?

God, what's some areas of my life I need to turn over to you and I need to let go of?

Humility.

Humility.

Pride says, I've got this.

Humility says, Lord, I need you.

Pride points fingers.

Humility looks in the mirror.

Pride compares itself to others.

Humility compares itself to a holy God.

The problem with pride is that everybody can see it except the person who has it.

Someone once said that pride is the only disease that makes everyone sick except the person suffering from it.

Proverbs 16, 8 says, Pride goes before destruction and haughty spirit before fall.

God has always honored humble people.

Think about the tax collector in Luke 18.

When the Pharisees bragged about himself, the tax collector simply replied, God be merciful to a sinner.

Are we so prideful that we can't take a look at our own life and say, God, what do I need to turn to you?

God, what in my life is hindering me from being who you have called and created me to be?

God uses humble people.

God does his greatest work through people who know they desperately need him.

The greatest obstacle into experiencing God is not, is often not our weakness, but it's our self-sufficient words that need to be spoken.

Self-sufficiency.

Humility is the doorway through which every blessing of God enters our lives.

So humble yourselves.

God desires that in you.

He desires humility.

Second, he desires a hungry heart.

Pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways.

Notice the progression here.

Pray.

Seek the Lord.

Turn from your wickedness.

Prayer is acknowledging our dependence upon God.

Prayer says, Lord, I cannot do this without you.

One preacher said prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance.

Prayer is laying hold of God's willingness.

God says, pray.

I have found that many of us, when we talk about having an active prayer life, our prayer life looks something like we're going to, dear Lord, say all the things we need to say and then move on as quick as we can to get about our day.

Why do we do that?

Well, one, we're not super comfortable with the silence that comes after it.

Just to sit there and wait and listen to the Lord.

And then I'm not sure that we always want the answer to what God has to say to us.

God, I've got these issues, I've got these problems, I've got these burdens.

Fix them.

Okay, amen.

What is he calling you to fix?

What is he calling you to turn over to him, to lay at the feet of Jesus?

Are you willing to give it up?

I heard a guy recently say that when it comes to salvation and it comes to God healing us, often the thing that we desire is to be well spiritually, emotionally, physically, but in that comes change and we don't like change.

Maybe we don't want to give it up.

Maybe you don't want to give up that sin, that burden.

Maybe we don't want to give up that addiction.

Maybe we don't want to give up that thing that we're clinging so closely to that's not Jesus.

I says, listen, pray.

Pray.

And you have prayer's a conversation.

Now, you may be like me.

My wife told me this morning on my way over here, I want to point out, my wife and mother could have came with me today, but my best friend's preaching in Columbus, and that's where they went, so they'll tell you how good they think of my preaching.

She called me a while ago when I was coming up and she said, You on your way?

I said, Yes, ma'am.

She said, Slow down.

Speak clearly.

I was like, okay.

Last week I was preaching at Water Valley.

This little old man came up to me afterwards, and you may have caught this by now.

I talk fast sometimes.

But he came up to me, he's like, Man, you can preach.

I just wish you'd slow down so my hearing can catch up.

So I'm trying this morning.

I want you to know for y'all trying.

But prayer is a conversation.

You can't speak so quickly through prayer that you don't listen for the response.

If you're going to God with questions and concerns and burdens and worries, listen to it.

Wait for him.

God is not an absentee father.

He wants to speak into your life.

There are ways that you can hear him without just the prayer conversation.

If you're going to pray, mix in scripture with that.

Pray and read scripture.

Delight in the Lord.

Spend time with him.

Listen for him.

Pray.

Pray.

Then he says, Seek my face.

There's a difference between seeking God's hand and seeking God's face.

Many people seek God's hand.

Most of us seek God's hand.

Lord, bless me.

Lord, help me.

Lord, fix my problems.

Lord, open this door.

Lord, close that door.

But seeking God's face means wanting God Himself.

David said, Your face, Lord, do I seek.

The greatest gift God can give us is not something from his hands, it's his presence.

It's his presence.

You get to be in the presence of the living God.

He walks with you and he talks with you.

Remember that old hymn?

It's a promise.

God is with you.

Pray and seek his face, not his hand.

Not his hand.

I think about that when I think about the prodigal son.

That's the attitude of the prodigal son.

Give me what's coming to me.

I don't want you.

I want your stuff.

Lord, I want your salvation.

Lord, I want your blessings.

Lord, I want everything but your time.

I think of God as father often.

And that's become a whole lot clearer to me now that I have three children.

And I'm going to tell you right now the thing that I love most in life is when my kids just want daddy.

My kids are getting bigger and older, and I do mean bigger and older.

I've got an 11-year-old, his name's Henry Reese.

I want it so bad to call him Hank.

That's why I named him Henry.

My wife won't let me do it.

Henry Reese is 11, he's 5'5, he's 190 pounds.

He's big.

And he still wants to crawl in Daddy's lap.

Now, when he wants to, I have to move to the couch and get out of my chair because I ain't sure my recliner can handle the both of us.

But he'll come and he'll say, Daddy, I'm snuggle.

Which sounds weird coming out of him because again, he's he's he's 11, he's going through puberty.

His voice is deep.

Daddy, I'm snuggle.

Okay, buddy.

My middle child's name's Blaze.

He's been Daddy's boy since he was born.

I want y'all to know I have found that whatever you name your kid, they live up to.

So if there's anybody in here finna have children, name their children.

Don't name them Blaze.

It sounds cool.

It's not cool when they're hanging from the raptors and climbing roofs.

But he'll come and he just wants to crawl in Daddy's lap.

And I love it.

My little girl, Annabeth.

And I tell y'all, my boys are my pride.

That's my pride.

Henry Reese looks just like me.

God bless him.

He does.

Blaze, that's my son.

That's my pride.

That little girl's my joy.

I walk through the doors and them little arms go up and she says, Daddy, I want to snuggle.

She calls it snuggle puddle.

I don't know where she got it from.

She said, I want to snuggle puddle.

You know what I'm gonna do?

I'm gonna snuggle.

I don't care what's going on, I don't care what I need to do, I don't care what in the world I think is on my agenda.

I'm spending time with them babies.

The Lord is the same with us.

Not once is he gonna reject your affection, your time.

He wants to spend time with you.

Seek his face.

Pray and seek his face.

Desire fellowship with him.

He wants to know us.

Jesus said, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Many Christians today are spiritually snacking when God wants them feasting.

A verse here, a prayer there.

I'll go to worship on Sunday.

And then we wonder why we're spiritually weak.

God desires hungry hearts that seek him daily.

And then he says, Turn from their wicked ways.

Repentance is not simply feeling bad, it's not being sorry.

That's not repentance.

So he says, Listen, pray to me.

Spend time in conversation with me, seek my face, be in my presence, and then turn from your wicked ways.

What are the things that you need to turn from?

What are the things you need to repent from?

And again, I just want to throw it out there.

We think of repentance as I'm sorry.

That's an apology.

Here's the problem with that.

I would bet most husbands can agree with this.

You have to apologize quite often for some of the same stuff over and over again.

I cannot tell you, I'll tell you one of the things right now at my home that I'm having to apologize for.

We have multiple dogs.

Multiple.

I don't know if it's like one's too many for me, but we have multiple.

We have a Yorkie, which I'm not sure is real.

We have a Yorkie.

Then we have a German Shepherd puppy.

I don't know if you've ever had one of those.

That's a lot.

Just those two dogs.

And then we have a boxer.

And my wife has asked me for months to put up a fence so when she leaves the house, she can let that Yorkie out.

I have bought the post.

I have bought the wire.

I have bought the cables to tie it.

I just ain't done it.

It's one of those things where it's like, I'll get it done.

Y'all been there?

Honey, will you?

Yes, ma'am.

I'll get it done.

We're three months in, honey?

My bad, I'm sorry.

Does that mean I'm going to put that fence up tomorrow?

No.

It doesn't.

That's not repentance.

Repentance is not, I'm sorry.

Repentance is I'm done with that mess.

No more.

I run from it.

What in your life do you need to repent from?

Now hear me.

Sometimes it's not the most monstrositous act in the world.

It's not like I am addicted to all things.

Sometimes it's just I'm I'm apathetic.

I need to repent from my apathy.

What do you mean you're apathetic?

Well, I don't I don't really care that the Lord's called me to do things I'm not doing.

I don't really care that there are things in my life that I'm not living up to.

Maybe it's time that we repent of that.

God, I'm sorry for my apathy.

God, I'm sorry for what you've called and created me to do, and I'm just not doing it.

True repentance always produces life change.

What happens when we do these three things?

Well, God responds with grace.

Then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

I love the word the end here.

When God's people respond, God responds back.

Notice what God promises.

First, he said, I will hear.

Sometimes we wonder if God hears our prayers.

I want you to know that he does.

I'm living proof that God hears our prayers.

I told y'all earlier I'm married.

I did not think that was going to happen in life.

For a lot of reasons.

One, it took me forever to do school and I never did it well.

Right?

So I didn't leave like with a great degree and good job.

I was in ministry too, so I don't know if you know a lot about ministers that are young without degrees.

We're poor.

All right, just poor.

When my wife met me, I was making$400 a month.

A month.

I was still eating.

Never lost my figure.

I was living in a one-bedroom apartment in Fulton.

I was the associate BSU director at ICC, making$400 a month.

I did not have a lot to offer her.

I had a 97 Dodge.

It was a Dodge back then.

It was a Dodge Ram, not a Ram.

Right?

They had been smashed in on one side, so you had to get in from the driver's side always.

Right?

I was living it up.

That's who she met.

And I am thankful, thankful that God put whatever blinders on her he needed to.

I'm thankful for his provision.

I'm thankful that he looked at me and he said, Hey, I hear you.

I hear your prayers.

Son, I got you.

I tell people all the time, ministers' wives are their grace and their reward for ministry.

I've never seen a minister whose wife was uglier than him.

Ever.

You ain't never done it.

Every time you've ever met a minister's wife, you thought, she's better than he is.

Brother Johnny Flint was my boss when I was in Oxford at North Oxford, and he would always tell me, and when they walk up, and their wife was clearly, clearly out of their league, he'd walk up and he'd say, Son, you outpunted your coverage, didn't you?

I clearly did.

I always tell people though, that's God's reward for all the things you have to deal with in ministry.

At least you got something pretty to go home and look at.

I'm thankful God hears our prayers.

I can remember when we were having children.

I prayed earnestly.

God don't give me daughters.

I don't know what to do with those things.

All I could think about was my little sister and how I was with her boyfriend.

Her first boyfriend that came in the house.

I'll never forget as long as I lived.

I knew him.

I went to school with him.

He came in the house and I sat on the couch opposite from him.

I didn't speak.

I didn't say hello.

How are you?

Any of that.

I just stared at him.

Right?

My dad stared at him, my brother.

And when she walked him to the car, we all just walked with him.

Right?

I was like, Lord, don't give me daughters.

I had two sons.

I was like, Lord, give me a daughter.

Please.

Please let this one be a girl.

I can't live through all this anymore.

God hears your prayers.

God hears your prayers.

When we humble ourselves and we go before the Lord and we pray, He hears us.

He promises to hear us.

He promises to hear those that cry, humble and repentant people.

Second, he says, I will forgive.

What a wonderful promise.

God does not say he might forgive.

He says he will forgive.

Our God delights in mercy.

Peter denied him.

Jonah ran from him.

David sinned against him, yet God forgave each of them when they repented.

The cross reminds us that God's grace is greater than any of our failures.

And third, he says, I will heal.

For Israel, the reference was to a national restoration, but God still is in the healing business.

He heals broken hearts.

He heals damaged relationships.

He heals wounded spirits.

He restores what sin is broken.

God specializes in restoration.

What we destroy in years, God can restore in moments.

What we destroy through a lifetime of disobedience, God can bring to restoration in seconds.

As we close this morning, the question isn't whether America needs God.

We do desperately.

The question is whether we, as his children, are walking closely with God.

Ask yourself these questions this morning.

Am I humble before him?

Am I willing to look at God and say, here are my problems, here are my issues, here are the things in my life, God, that I need to turn over to you, that I need to work on.

Ask yourself, are you seeking his face?

Do you want to be in his presence?

I'm going to tell you, being in his presence is sometimes tough.

It's hard.

It's not always the safest place.

But it's the best place you can possibly find yourself.

And I guarantee you it's the place that you'll be used most for his kingdom.

Am I seeking his presence?

Am I harboring sin that needs to be confessed?

Are there things that I need to confess and repent of?

Am I hungry for the Lord and his word?

God's invitation is simple.

Humble yourselves.

Pray, seek his face, turn from your sin.

And God says, I will hear you, I will forgive you, I will heal you.

Today, don't worry about changing somebody else.

Ask God to work in your own heart.

Because whatever God does, a great work, he always starts with one surrendered heart at a time.

The altar's open this morning.

The invitation is clear.

Will you humble yourself and pray?

Will you ask the Lord to start a great work in your land, in your own heart, and will you start this morning?

Will you pray for your pastor and your staff?

Will you pray for your family and your loved ones?

Will you carry the burdens of your faith family as they seek a mighty work of the Lord in their lives too?

Will you come this morning to the altar of the Lord and lay it all at the precious feet of Jesus and ask God to move and work in your life and in the life of this church?

Let's pray.

Father God, thank you.

God, thank you for your love and your grace.

God, thank you for your word.

God, I pray this morning, Father, as we enter into a time of response, a time of invitation, God, that you would move.

And God, as you move, that people would respond.

God, if there are those in this church that need to repent of sins, that God, they would come to the altar and do so.

God, if there are those in this church that need to come and pray for their family, their loved ones.

Maybe it's a husband that doesn't know you or a wife that's wandered away from you and their spouse just needs to lift them up.

Maybe it's a mom and dad who have a child who's the prodigal who's wandered off, and they just want to pray that God you bring them back.

God, whatever it may be, as your spirit moves, Father, let us be humble enough to step out and be led by you.

God, we love you, we praise you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Hey, let's stand.