The Illusion of Greener Grass: Lessons from Psalm 23

And that's Psalm 23, but I'm not going to speak on that whole

psalm.

But I want to lift a little phrase out of there for the message

tonight in Psalm 23.

How many of you have ever been driving down a road, maybe probably

a country road, and it was in the spring and the grass was green

and tall and look great?

How many have you ever done that and see a cow or a horse standing

in grass and trying to get through the fence to get some grass

about six inches from them?

Anybody ever seen that happen?

Some of them, I tell you what, they try hard.

I mean, they're standing in grass, bright green, sweet, juicy

grass.

But there's something over there.

You heard the expression, haven't you?

You know where I'm going with this?

The grass always.

What's the next word?

Looks.

That's important, you understand that, because looks can

be deceiving sometimes, right?

Sometimes the grass looks greener on the other side.

I'm going to ask you to raise your hand, but some of you probably

have wondered, well, looks like if I went to another church,

grass would be a lot greener.

I think maybe I need to just go to another church, or maybe I

need to go to another house, or maybe I need to get another job.

It looks like everybody working over there, their grass is

a lot greener than my grass.

Well, not too long ago they put some new.

It's not grass, is it?

Right outside this building for the daycare.

And it sure does look good, but I don't know if anybody'd want

to eat it.

I don't even know if they call it Astroturf anymore.

That's kind of an old label they used to have, but it's not real.

But it looks good and it's safe for the kids and.

And you don't have to mow it and all that kind of stuff.

But I'm talking about in the Bible, in Psalm 23, he leadeth me.

The Bible says.

You know what it says?

He talks about the shepherd.

It's coming from the great Shepherd.

And the Bible says, he maketh me to lie down.

In what?

Green pastures.

Green pastures.

I hope you'll listen to me tonight and not just turn it off.

Because you think, yeah, I don't ever worry about that.

I don't ever envy other people.

I don't ever wish maybe I had what they have or could go where

they go or make the money they make or this.

And I know probably nobody here would ever have a problem with

that.

But a lot of Christians wonder What it would be like.

Must be nice.

You ever heard anybody say it must be nice?

A lot of times they're actually.

They wouldn't admit it, but a lot of times they seem to make an

implication like it's not very nice where they are.

Must be nice to have what they have.

I'm not telling you anything new, but the grass does sometimes

look.

Satan is very good at counterfeiting.

He's very good at deceiving.

He's a good artist.

He can make things, always make things look better than what

they really are.

The grass always looks.

Well, we don't live by looks.

We live by faith.

We look at things which are not seen.

We don't look at things which are temporary.

And there's nothing wrong with wanting maybe better things if you

want to use them for the glory of God.

If you're not complaining about what God's given you and why

he's given you.

And the Bible says we ought to be thankful for what we do have in

everything, give thanks.

It may take some faith to do that sometimes.

Bible doesn't say it's easy.

It takes faith sometimes to say, well, just thank God.

Go forward, see what happens.

Living one day at a time, trusting God, he's going to take

care of us.

He promised.

He always has.

There's not anybody here tonight that say that, would stand

up and say, well, most of the time, God's taking care of me.

I don't think anybody would want to make that statement, at least

not publicly.

There have been some times when we thought, boy, this is getting

close.

But here you are.

God brought you through.

You got, well, a lot of people.

It's not God's will for them to be healed or get well.

He wants them in heaven.

And sometimes that's his cause, not ours.

But here you are.

God's not through with you yet, and God's brought you so far,

and he's taken care of you and he's going to continue to do that.

The grass looks greener on the other side.

But what about this side, the side you're on?

You are on God's side, right?

What about this side?

Are you over there or are you over here?

Sometimes we're over here, but our heart's over there.

Looks sometimes our vision, our spiritual vision, you know.

Can you get spiritual cataracts?

You think.

You think sometimes we can get our sight spiritually?

Can get a little blurry.

You get older, you go to the doctor a little more often and say,

I think I'd like to get another Pair of glasses, a little

bit stronger looks.

We're on the edge, as you well know, of AI artificial intelligence.

And it's going to probably turn out to be like television and

the cell phone.

There'll probably be some good things maybe about it.

But overall, we better be very careful.

Very careful.

I personally believe, and you don't have to agree, but I think

AI could possibly play a very leading role in Satan's plan for

the Antichrist.

Because the Antichrist is going to have a great power to deceive

people.

He's not going to look bad.

He's not going to look like Antichrist.

He's not going to come on the scene like that.

In fact, the Bible says the whole world's gonna go, wow.

And he's gonna have powers.

He'd be able to perform miracles, the Bible says.

And you have Satan, of course, and then you have the Antichrist,

and then you have the false prophet, and they're already at work.

But this AI thing, in regards to what I'm trying to say tonight,

something.

Sometimes AI can create something that looks very real and

very good.

I want you to think about that tonight.

I want you to think about the grass on his side, which you should

say.

You mean our side?

Yes, if you're on the side of Christ.

Jesus said, if you're not for me, you're against me.

But he said, take up the cross and follow me.

And if you are a follower of Christ, I think we can say, if we're

careful and think it through and don't be hasty to sometimes verbalize

things and just say, wait a minute.

They may look happy, but I wonder how happy they really are.

They may look like the perfect home, but I wonder what goes on behind

Clyde's closed doors.

It may look like the perfect job, but I wonder what they had to

sacrifice to get that job.

You with me?

We just need to be reminded of this every once in a while.

We live in a changing world.

This other side depends on which side you're on.

Go ahead where you're in Psalms 23, but go over to chapter

95 of the Book of Psalms, chapter number 95.

Stay with me a little bit longer.

I'll give you a few things to write down that I hope will be helpful

and practical to you.

But in Psalm, chapter 95, verse 6.

Psalms 95:6

Oh, come let us worship and bow down.

Let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for he is our God and

we are the people of his pasture.

There's a lot of pastures out there.

Satan is.

He's the master counterfeiter.

He counterfeits Bibles, he counterfeits the gospel, he counterfeits

gospel music, he counterfeits churches, he counterfeits preachers.

We live in a world of a lot of counterfeiting.

Satan is the master of deceit.

He's a liar, but he's very convincing.

If Christians are not grounded, if they're not just told

what to believe, but why we believe it, you ought to be able

to write down some things that you're not sure why you believe it

and find out.

Amen.

And don't assume that your kids, just because they follow you,

that they agree.

Maybe they need someone needs to explain to them how come we don't

go over there or how come we don't do this?

Or how come we can't have a big Christian rock concert in our

church.

All my friends have theirs, and boy, they have a blast.

They have a ball.

Why can't we do that?

We don't do that.

Son, be quiet.

That's not a good answer.

It's not a good answer.

It takes time to find good answers.

The Bible says to study, to show thyself approved unto God.

The answer's there.

I believe that.

I really do.

But a lot of people don't realize.

They don't understand.

They don't take time to find out.

It says, we are the people of his pasture.

We're not in the world's pasture.

And the sheep of his hand today, if you will hear his voice,

harden not your heart as in the provocation.

That's a big word.

When they provoked God, they pushed him until he has poured out

his wrath.

Provoking.

Harden not your heart as in the provocation, as in the day of

temptation in the wilderness when your fathers tempted me, proved

me and saw my work.

40 years long was I grieved with this generation and said, it

is a people that do err in their heart.

And they have not known My ways, unto whom I swear in My wrath

that they should not enter into my rest.

Underline that word.

Pasture.

His pasture.

People of his pasture.

If you're saved, you're in his pasture.

Or at least we ought to stay in the pasture.

Don't turn to this, but in Ezekiel 34, because I want to get

into this quickly.

But listen.

Just listen to this.

Are you listening?

Jot it down if you want to write it down.

Or if you're quick, go ahead and turn.

Ezekiel 34, verse 14.

Ezekiel 34:14

But you could jot it down and read it in the morning in your devotion.

Or maybe when you get home tonight, lying in bed and taking

a verse of scripture before you sleep.

But in Ezekiel 34, verse 14, God says this, I will feed them,

Ezekiel 34:14

Talking about his people in a good pasture.

And upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be.

There shall they lie in a good fold.

Watch this.

And in a fat pasture.

The word fat in the Bible always speaks of especially blessed

running over.

In a fat pasture, not a lean one.

They shall feed upon the mountains of Israel.

Let me give you these things very quickly.

Number one.

The grass is always greener where the shepherd is.

It's ridiculous for us to think that our great shepherd, our

chief shepherd, our Lord Jesus Christ, our shepherd, would lead

us, his sheep, into a brown, dead pasture.

Am I right?

I mean, it just doesn't make sense.

It's not logical.

The great shepherd follow me.

He leadeth me in paths of righteousness.

The grass is always green where the shepherd is.

You say, ah, it's too simple.

Well, God never designed it to be confusing.

Stay close to the shepherd and you won't be envying other people

and wish you had what they had.

You won't be grumbling, uh oh, why'd you have to go there?

We won't be murmuring, we won't be complaining.

I know that's the nature of the sheep.

But when the sheep are close to the shepherd and he's holding

them and he's protecting them and he's watching over them, and

he strokes them and he calls them by name, God is the great shepherd.

Christ is the great shepherd.

And he didn't want our life to be constantly confused.

I don't know where to go.

I don't know what to do.

I don't know what to say.

You may have times like that, but the Christian life, God didn't

give us a Bible and dwells with the Holy Spirit.

So every day we can say, I don't understand it.

I don't get it.

I can't figure it out.

That's not the God of the Bible, you say, oh, well, Brother

Weatherby, you know it all.

No, I do not know it all.

I don't even know half.

I'm still learning, reading, growing, seeking, trying to understand,

praying about the sermons that I preach and the.

The lessons in my daily devotions and trying to understand.

Lord, teach me and show me.

I want to get this.

God is not the author of confusion.

Chaos and confusion is always a red flag.

What do I mean by that?

You're going to have some times like that, but if your life

is Just constantly.

I don't know what to do.

That's a red flag.

That means stop, don't go anywhere or do anything else until

you understand and figure out what's going on.

What's God doing in your life?

Don't just keep going down the road.

Confusion.

God's not the author.

Sometimes we rush into something and we don't want to wait.

That's my nature and probably some of you, you know, years ago.

In fact, I've heard several preachers.

But I'm thinking right now particularly about Dr. Barber.

Raymond Barber wrote a book and he did a long series of sermons

that I have.

It's called Back to the Basics.

I haven't heard it in a while.

Haven't heard preachers preaching on that in a while.

That doesn't mean they're not.

They may have a different sermon or a different title.

But don't you think maybe it would be good to get back to the

basics of preaching, praying, singing, giving and telling others

about Jesus instead of trying to figure out all these new ideas

and what's the latest thing that's going on and what is the big

church doing?

Do what the big churches are doing.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to have your church grow.

And it doesn't mean if it's a big church, they're doing things

wrong.

I didn't say that and I wouldn't say that.

But God's word will do the work and we don't need a new plan

or a new idea.

That's why we call ourselves fundamentalists.

Are you comfortable with that word by the way?

Because the world is fed up with fundamentalism.

Why is because they're so stupid and narrow minded and judgmental.

That's the world, that's the nation, that's the average person

out there in the world outside as they're saying.

You better watch out for those fundamentalists because they're trouble.

They're always wanting to rock the boke.

But the book, the bokeh, they're always going to rock the

boat.

They're so narrow minded.

Let me tell you something.

Back to the Basics is not a step backwards.

It is a step forward.

I'm not telling you anything you haven't already been taught and

preached here for years.

But this progressive movement, by the way, why would any Bible leaving

Baptist church want to brag about being progressive?

Because that is the telltale sign of liberalism.

All the liberals want to be progressive.

They're proud of it.

We're progressive.

Those conservatives are holding us back.

Those conservatives are problems to our country.

That's basically the state.

We don't hang out with those kind of people most of the time.

And so we don't know of it.

We don't think about that.

We think, yeah, there's some different opinion, but it's not that

bad.

It's worse.

And yet every day Christians are saying we want to be more progressive.

That sounds like a good word.

Pro, forward, progress, go forward.

Who wants to go backwards?

Well, I don't want to go backwards.

The Bible doesn't say to go backwards.

Jesus talked about going forward, but he said, follow me.

And he said, hold fast those things that you have learned and

been taught.

Don't let go.

But it's going to cost you.

It's going to cost you family, it's going to cost you friends.

It may cost you a job.

It may cost you a lot of things that you never dreamed it

would cost you.

But it has always cost to take Jesus literally and follow him and

be like him.

And Jesus made it so plain.

If they hated me, they're going to hate you.

Most people if they're not.

Now don't.

Again, don't reword this.

Make me say something I didn't say.

But there's a lot of people that have this idea if you go back

to the basics, you're going backwards and you need to leave all

that old stuff.

Well, the devils don't have to worry too much about it because usually,

unfortunately, today, I'm gonna give you some positive things

in a second.

Just hang in there.

Hold with me.

Cause I'm talking about green pastures.

I'm talking about the real stuff.

I'm not talking about stuff that looks good or looks green or

tastes pretty good.

I'm talking about the real good stuff.

But there are a lot today that say, well, once the old guys die

off, we won't have to worry about that fundamentalism stuff anymore

because they're not passing it down to the young ones.

This church would be an exception to that rule.

But most churches, the young ones are waiting for the old guys

to die off so they can quit singing those old songs and doing

those old things and reading that old Bible and doing it the old

way.

And most people think the old fashioned is silly, ridiculous, stupid,

dumb.

The only reason I'm saying this tonight, ladies and gentlemen,

is because unless Jesus comes soon, and I believe he will, it's

going to start getting more and more where if we're true to this

book and true to our Savior, we are going to be mocked and we're

going to be made fun of and we're going to be called names and

we're not.

We're going to be rejected.

And most people I know can't handle that very well.

Rejection.

I'm not saying I love to be rejected.

I'm not saying I can't wait for somebody else to reject me again.

Jesus was despised and rejected of men.

Is.

I'm spending too much time on this.

Is our nation progressing?

Somebody tell me, are we progressing?

Is America getting better and better every day?

They want to be progressive and they're telling us out with the

old and in with the new.

New ideas of families, new ideas of morality, new ideas of,

of what this is and what this is and what this is.

And you would think we'd all be, hey, it must be working.

Our country's really getting right.

I mean, it's really getting good.

Do you watch the news?

And by the way, that's another thing.

Fundamentalists are tagged with judgmental, negative, always

criticizing, down, down, down.

I don't think Jesus was a negative.

Down in the mouth, always complaining, in a bad mood and running

around causing problems.

That's not the Christ of the Bible.

We're not going to go out there and make enemies.

But you follow Christ and you live like Christ and you talk like

Christ and you treat people like Christ and like Christ taught

other people.

You quote his words.

That's why the Bible has been rewritten so many times as trying

to take the sting out of the words of Christ, the early church,

the enemies of Christ.

Two thousand years ago, when Jesus would preach, you go back and

look it up.

Some of them would get together and say, man, this is hard.

They called him the hard sayings of Jesus.

Does Bible preaching have to be negative?

No, no, it doesn't.

And I don't even know that it should.

It should be positive.

But that doesn't mean we give up the doctrines of what we believe

and what we've been raised on and what our family's been raised

on.

We don't throw all that away just so we people will think we're

positive.

I don't know why I'm getting onto all this stuff.

I really wasn't planning on it.

We have a little.

I think it's still there, honey.

In the porch you had on that thing on the little piece of saying

that's sitting in a window out on our back porch.

It says, never let me see how it goes.

Never, never assume or I can't remember how it goes now, but never

assume that the will of the majority is the will of God.

Something like that.

Never confuse the will of the majority with the will of God.

The pressure is mounting quickly and strongly.

To conform or be categorized and judged is backward and dangerous

to progress and narrow minded.

And on and on and on and on it goes.

But it's absurd to think that our great savior and chief shepherd

who laid down his life for the sheep would lead us to lie down in

brown pastures, Die of starvation.

What I'm saying is, stay close to the Savior and you'll be amazed

at how green the grass really is.

The Bible warns us to be careful that we don't envy the unsaved

and envy the wicked.

God may put us in a place.

Oh, okay.

You want to try it out?

Well, I can arrange that.

God may put us a place to wake us up of how good we really have

it in Christ.

There's a song.

I don't guess I have time to look it up.

Ufi sang it not long ago.

It is wonderful to be a Christian.

People don't look, they don't act like it's wonderful.

But oh, it is wonderful to be a Christian.

It is wonderful to be God's child.

It is wonderful to be redeemed, reconciled forever.

Take that hymn book sometime and slow down a little bit and read

the words of that song.

It's rather a relatively new song.

It's not an old song, but it's in our hymn book.

The modern church is desperately trying to lure people

into an artificial green pasture.

That's all I'm saying.

Why didn't you just say that and go on to number two?

The modern church is desperately trying to lure people

in.

Look what we have.

An artificial green pasture.

The grass is greener.

Where the shepherd is, the grass is also greener.

When you're in the will of God, you get out of the will of God.

It doesn't look so hot.

It doesn't look so green.

You say, it's not working.

The prayers, my prayers aren't getting through.

I'm not enjoying church like I used to.

The choir, they got some problems.

I mean, we start criticizing because we're not really in the will

of God.

You say, well, will you please tell me, how do you know you're in

the will of God?

Yes, I will.

And it's very simple.

You are in the will of God.

When you are in fellowship with God, you say, well, there you

go.

Another one of them simple answers.

How can two walk together except they agree?

If you and God are in fellowship, I mean fellowship you

can't lose your relationship if you're saved.

You are born into the family of God forever.

You will never be kicked out of the family of God, but you can't

lose your fellowship.

But if you can say tonight, yeah, we all want to be closer and

closer, but if you can say, not being self righteous and bragging,

but say, well, I've enjoyed God's fellowship this morning and

today and I've walked with him and we had some good times together

today.

You can't do that and be out of the will of God.

The will of God is not a place, it's the person of Jesus Christ.

In the will of God the world passeth away and the lusts thereof.

But he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.

Every time I read that verse, I remember as a teenager coming out

the door to shake hands with my pastor and I was the church's

first preacher boy.

And he would always stick a little note in my pocket, handwritten,

little handwritten note.

And I couldn't wait to get out the door so I could get it open and

see what it was.

And there was more than I can count and remember.

But every time I read this verse, I remember that one.

I looked at it one time as a teenager and I was going through

the things teenagers go through and wondering and this kind

of stuff.

And he put that verse, the world passeth away and the lust thereof,

but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.

Boy, that stuck in my mind and in my heart and in my life.

He said, have you ever gotten out of the will of God?

Yes, yes.

Jesus said, I am the door.

By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved and shall go in and

out and find pasture.

That's what we're talking about tonight.

We're talking about green grass, we're talking about green

pasture.

We're talking about something that doesn't just look good, it is

good.

The world doesn't look very appetizing to the sheep when they're

quietly eating green grass at the feet of the shepherd.

They feel safe, they're calm.

I've got a picture of that in my office at home of a shepherd sitting

on a rock brook.

And the sheep, some are lying down right real close to him and

others are pretty close and they're eating.

It's just a beautiful picture.

You've seen pictures like that.

But you get away from God, you get away from the shepherd.

You go wandering off, you go, wow, this looks a lot greener than

Where I've been, this looks a lot better.

I wonder what else I've been missing.

I'm not saying you laugh every day.

I'm not saying you don't have problems.

Jesus is coming.

Heaven is getting closer all the time.

And we're going to have a great time.

And we're going to have a life that's so far above what this life

is, we can't even comprehend it.

The grass is greener.

In the will of God, the grass is always greener.

Always.

Not just looks green, it is green.

It looks green.

It doesn't look green to the world.

The world feels sorry for Christians that are really seriously

about following Christ.

But the grass is always greener.

In the field of contentment, when you have contentment, do you

have contentment tonight?

On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 is as content as you can be.

Where would you grade your contentment tonight?

Because if you don't have contentment, you start looking somewhere

out there to find something that'll satisfy and bring contentment

in your life.

The Bible says godliness with contentment is great gain.

My sheep hear my voice and they follow me.

The grass.

Are you always thinking, looking, longing for more, longing

for something better?

You sound like looking over there once in a while and feel sorry

for yourself.

We all have that.

We all can fall into that very easily.

We don't want to, we don't mean to, but pretty soon we start

wondering and the devil says, I've been trying to tell you, you're

trying to be a good Christian.

Nobody appreciates, nobody even knows when you're there.

You're there every time the door is open.

The half, the church, they're not there.

They don't know.

What good does it do?

What does it pay?

You could be sitting home, doing other things, enjoying yourself,

resting.

There's not anybody here tonight that's not tired.

But what about the rest you have in Jesus?

What's that worth?

What is it worth to lay down at night on a pillow and feel the

rest that.

That only the shepherd, the great shepherd can give you.

The grass is greener always in the Scriptures.

You know, Job said one time in Chapter 23, he said, I esteem thy

word more than my necessary food.

Chapter 23 of Job, verse 12.

More than my food.

Too often we snack on the Bible, but we spend hours at the

World's buffet.

I'm just.

I'm not hitting on you tonight.

I'm trying to help you to say, you know, sometimes I forget that

that's all a big.

That's fraud.

That's a joke.

It's a deceitful picture.

The television makes it look so easy and so much fun and so good.

And by the way, I'm going to say it again, I already kind of said

it.

But it's so important that our children can see that we are not

unhappy being a Christian, because they notice, they hear us.

If they don't see much laughter and real honest to goodness,

joy and peace in our life, why in the world do they want to grow

up and be like us?

You know, my wife has a.

She don't like me saying this, but she has a knack for decorating

and she's good at it, and I'm proud of her.

And that's one of the many things that she's good at.

And she doesn't think so, but sometimes she'll drag me.

No, I'll go with her to the store, to the Home Depot, which is

her favorite.

She'd rather have a Home Depot visit than a pair of new shoes or

a new dress or anything else.

She wants to go to Home Depot.

But sometimes she takes me there to look at.

They call them paint chips, these little cards.

And she wants something green, for instance.

And I said, well, there's 35 green cards right there.

She says, well, I got them right here in my hand.

There's 10 of them.

They all look green to me.

She says, you're no help.

There's a lot of different shades, isn't there?

The grass looks greener on the other side, but sometimes it's a

shade off or sometimes it's white.

Way off.

Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path.

Because of mine enemies, he said, that's interesting.

Because of my enemies, he said, lord, I don't want to guess

and feel pretty good.

And I think I'm on the I, Lord, make it plain.

Lead me in a plain path because my enemies are watching.

And I want to be a testimony for Christ.

And I want to show them that it pays to serve Jesus.

A plain path.

That would be a good thing to add to your prayer list.

Lord, teach me.

Lead me in a plain path.

Because sometimes the colors run together and sometimes I find

myself guessing instead of knowing.

You know, I did a little thing today.

I'm done.

I did a little word study.

Actually, it was last night on discernment.

Most of us here, I know what discernment means.

Wisdom to make a right decision.

But you know something?

I didn't know this.

The root Latin word.

I'm not Trying to impress anybody.

I took two years of Latin and it didn't take.

And my Latin teacher loved failing her students.

She laughed when we failed.

She thought, man, you made my day.

F. Fail, fail, fail.

She was just like that.

But I did take two years of Latin because I thought it would

help me.

Maybe in the ministry.

But the word, the Latin word for discernment actually means separate.

It means pulling apart what is true and important or real so you'll

know that it's not fake.

You're pulling it apart and looking at it carefully.

That's what it means.

Discernment, not a quick decision.

Sometimes we need to act and speed up what.

You know what I'm saying?

Sometimes we take too long when God's already made it clear

this is what we're supposed to do.

But sometimes we need to stop and pray and say, lord, give me discernment.

Help me to pull this apart so that I understand and feel good that

this is definitely what this means and what God wants me to do.

It means the God given ability to judge.

Well, you say what we're not supposed to judge.

Where'd you get that?

Well, it says judge not lest ye be judged.

Jesus was talking to Pharisees and he was talking about judging

people by their standard instead of by God's standard.

In fact, the Bible says he that is spiritual.

Are you listening?

He that is spiritual judgeth all things.

Did you know that?

So quit telling people I don't judge.

You're supposed to judge everything by the word of God.

I got one amen on that.

But it's true.

It's true.

We don't go around judging people to condemn them.

That's God's business.

We're not here to condemn people and we're not here people

to if they don't agree with us on everything, using ourselves as

the ruler.

That's not what the Bible means.

But he that is spiritual, that's another sermon.

But we're to judge everything.

What we look at, what we listen to, where we spend our money,

who we spend our time with.

We're to judge all things.

If we're spiritually minded.

The God given ability to judge well, distinguish truth from error

and what aligns with God's will.

And here let me say this.

It also included in that meaning it's rooted.

Discernment is rooted in honoring God.

Not to prove that I'm right, but to honor God, to make the right

judgment for the glory of God, to honor him, not look at me, look

at him.

That's what it means, lord, give me discernment so that I can

honor you by the choices that I make.

Kind of an unusual sermon for a Wednesday night.

I was up quite a while last night, writing and praying and reading

and.

The grass is not greener.

It looks greener.

That's different.

Don't trust your eyes.

Don't trust your ears.

Don't trust your feelings.

Trust this.

Would you stand with heads bowed and eyes closed?

We're going home.

The Lord willing.

I'll give you an opportunity if God's spoken to your heart.

Tonight he spoke to mine while I was preparing.

And he spoke to me again tonight.

We're surrounded every side.

We're surrounded by fake grass.

This world's not our home.

We're aliens.

We're not of this world.

We've been born and we have a citizenship in heaven.

Let me pray.

And if God set your heart, you come.

And if not, just pray where you are.

Pray for those around you.

Heavenly Father, I thank you that you've given us a Bible and

thank you for giving us the Holy Spirit.

Thank you Father, for a church that understands how important it

is to hold fast the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

And help it to humble us, Lord.

Help us to not get cocky and proud because we think we know more

than everybody else.

Lord, the more we know, help us to be more humble and realize

we still got a lot to learn.

Touch our hearts tonight, Lord.

We need the every hour.

Pray it in Jesus name.