What the World Needs Now

Well, hello today.

We're an excited crowd.

Yes?

Thank you for having me.

I am honored and grateful, so thankful that Pastor Robert allowed me to have an opportunity to share with you.

I do come burdened.

So I hope that I can draw you in and ask you to go on a somewhat of a journey with me.

Just some background for me.

I've been in a season, if I could be really honest, that's been a little more difficult.

And sometimes, especially, do I have any pink impact ladies here?

All the canvases.

Yes, I I love to see life through a lens of laughter and fun.

And I hope still some of that is communicated, but I really have been in a season that's been hard.

It's just a really open and honest time.

And so out of that comes a message that is very close to my heart.

But this is what I feel.

I feel like out of the season I've come from, a message that resonates with me is a message for the body of Christ today.

And so I am so grateful.

You know, it's one of those things where you'd say, I'd do it all over again if I could have where I am today.

And that is how I come today.

So if you would bow your heads and prayer, I want to begin with prayer.

It kind of seems fitting that a series on prayer, we would start with prayer.

So we're going to pray, and then I want you to lean in and listen and see what God can speak to you today.

Father, we are so thankful.

We're thankful that you come.

We're thankful that your presence is with us all the time.

We're thankful that we are children that can say, Teach me, Daddy, teach me.

I'm thankful, God, that you choose to love us even when we are unlovable.

And so, Father, would you uh have your spirit come, meet us today.

Holy Spirit, draw all men to you.

Be in us and through us, among us, with us.

Holy Spirit, we welcome you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

If you would turn to Isaiah 43, verses 18 and 19, and while you're there, I'm gonna introduce a little bit of where I'm going.

Isaiah 43:18

The word shift came to my heart a lot.

There is a shift happening.

I think even with Pastor Todd, it's funny to call him that because he's my husband, but even with Pastor Todd speaking about where we are in the world, I saw everybody understand, shaking heads, clapping, that sometimes when we look at the world today, it does feel like we don't recognize it.

I even heard people say, I don't recognize the world we live in.

Is this a feeling that resonates?

It feels like things in our world are shifting.

But I have some good news for you today.

There is also another shifting that is taking place.

And if you read in Isaiah 43, it says, Do not call to mind the former things or ponder things of the past.

Behold, I am doing something new.

Now it will spring forth.

Will you not be aware of it?

The shift that's happening today is that God is drawing his people into deeper presence with him.

And the reason my the title of my message today is What the World Needs Now.

Now, depending on your age, you might you might fill in the blanks.

What would you say if I say what the world needs now?

Is love, sweet love.

It's the only thing that there's just too little love.

And know that is true.

Today, my heart for you is that I would communicate that what I believe the world needs now is a passionate pursuit of God's presence in our lives.

If we passionately are people pursuing God's presence in our lives, guess what we find there?

We find love.

We find peace.

We find the things that the world is longing for, we find that we can give those to the world.

So what the world needs now is a passionate pursuit of God's presence.

And I believe God is doing a new thing.

He's calling his people to deeper presence with him, he's calling people deeper.

I know as believers, we're always wanting greater measure.

We're always wanting to go higher with the Lord.

God, what do you have for me and how can I make the greatest impact in the world?

And today I believe he's saying that the higher you want to go, the deeper you must go with the Lord.

The higher you want to be called, it's the times of the deeper presence that you must go.

His presence is such a privilege.

I don't know if we realize what a privilege his presence is, but I'm gonna give you some history into the presence of God.

See if we go all the way back to Adam and Eve, of course, we know that that was perfection.

So he walked and communed with them in the cool of the day.

But then sin entered the world, so that no longer was an option.

So through the Old Testament, we see how God set up that they would have his presence in the tabernacle with the Ark of the Covenant.

Even when Solomon built the temple and the ark resided there, we know that there were a lot of rules and regulations to get to the presence of God, some do's and don'ts, and only certain ones could enter the Holy of Holies.

It was very behavior-based.

God could keep his presence from a culture that was disobeying him.

And yet today, as we know in John 1.14, it says, And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory.

God made a way for us to be able to commune with him through his son Jesus.

Dying on the cross for us, made a way that we could commune with him.

And then when Jesus went to be with the Father, he said, I'm sending my Holy Spirit to be with you.

This is good news.

It is the easiest, most simple time to have the presence of God in our lives because it's not based on our behavior, it's not based on the things we do.

God is present and willing to be present in your life at all times.

And yet, when it's as easy as it can be, I find that many of us don't make time to be in the presence of God.

He is beckoning us, and I felt so strongly that because this was where I have been, that I wanted to share my journey with you because what happened to me is I answered a call for the Lord from the Lord to go deeper.

He beckoned me into a deeper place with him.

And I want to tell you how it changed my life.

So then you might receive the invitation yourself to go deeper.

Pursuit to me looks a lot like hungering and thirsting.

Matthew 5, 6 says, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness may be filled.

To crave something, I'm just gonna make a comparison here.

If you're craving something, a craving can be satisfied or not.

I mean, you can you want a craving, but you can live without a craving, okay?

See, I was pregnant, I have three children, and so I understand cravings, right, women?

They are real.

Men, if you don't understand the craving struggle is real.

Like we don't make that stuff up.

And and if you deny a pregnant woman a craving, you've brought that wrath on yourself.

No other way to say it.

And so with my firstborn 15 years ago, I craved hot, salty French fries, the whole pregnancy.

Like I literally ate my way through Idaho in that pregnancy.

I just, I needed some hot, salty French fries.

And the perplexing thing is I had her, and I still crave hot, salty, the craving did not go away.

So sad.

But the difference in a craving and a hunger and a thirst.

See, when you hunger and thirst for something, we we don't fully understand that in our culture because uh very few of us really have to know what hungering and thirsting for something daily is.

We have so much abundance and excess where we are.

So we lose sight of what it means to hunger and thirst.

But in the physical sense, if you hunger and thirst for something, if you are not satisfied, there is potential that you could die.

And I believe what God is saying to believers, he's asking us the question: spiritually, are we hungering and thirsting for him that if we do not get the nutrients, if we do not get satisfied from him, spiritually, we could die.

Do we feel that compelled to be in his presence every day that we hunger and thirst for it?

Jeremiah 29, 13 says, seek him and find him when you seek him with all of your heart.

I love that promise.

If you seek him, you will find him if you seek him with all of your heart.

Now, if you are 30 years old or younger, I feel like a clarification might need to be made.

When the scripture here says, seek him and find him, it is not talking about Pokemon Go.

That hymn right there is God.

Seek God and find him.

I don't understand this Pokemon Go thing, but it is like overtaking our culture all of a sudden.

Like, and people, when they do it, they're like running into walls or not even looking where they're going.

I don't understand it.

And if you are 30 and over and you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm not gonna explain it to you.

You're welcome.

You don't want to know, it doesn't make any sense.

You know, I really do think, really, if people would seek God in the way they're seeking Pokemon Go, we may never have another war ever.

But seek him and find him when you seek him with all of your heart.

Does our current pursuit of God make the enemy take notice in your life?

Does it make the enemy be on guard because this person has decided to passionately pursue God with all of their heart, and it makes the enemy take notice.

So pursuing God presents itself in three ways, and we're gonna talk about those three ways today.

The first way is dwelling with God.

When you pursue God, what that looks like is you dwell with Him.

Dwelling means to cling to, to abide, or to remain, as in John 15, 5.

I am the vine, you are the branches.

If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.

But apart from me, you can do nothing.

Apart from me, you can do no thing.

You just can do nothing.

Do we really believe that?

See, for me, what I realized is if if dwelling means that you abide or you remain, that really becomes a trust issue for me.

Because think about living in a home where you dwell.

Living with God would be the same.

It's like living in a home, and you would not live somewhere where you don't trust who you live with.

It's the same thing.

And for me, in the personal place that I've been, God very gently showed me that I had a trust issue with him.

Being very honest, it was a moment where I didn't realize that over time I began keeping part of my heart away from the Lord because I didn't trust a part of him.

So of course I was thinking I was, in my terms, growing with the Lord, of course, spending time with him, but it only got to a certain depth with him, and I didn't understand why, and I didn't even understand that this freedom was coming.

The Lord beckoned me, and I just answered the call.

That's all I had to do.

I felt him beckoning, and I said, speak to me, Lord, what are you saying?

And he began peeling apart the layers of my heart, and this is my personal testimony, so I'm not saying this would be for you, but um, for me, there's a lot of characteristics of God that are super easy for me to love.

And of course, because he's the most, I mean, he's God.

There's everything to love about him.

So his kindness and his faithfulness and his forgiveness are super easy for me to love.

And of course, I love his love.

I love how much he loves me.

I loved all those things, and I had no issues with that.

But then there was this one little part of God that I didn't understand.

And instead of trying to understand it, I just began to lock it away.

And when you do that and you hold off parts of your heart, there's a part of you that begins to not trust.

And he revealed to me that I had an issue with the sovereignty of God.

I'm not even saying what I'm about to say is super theological.

This is Belinda talking, this is in my headspace, how I felt, is that in the world we're in today, there's a day, not a day goes by that you don't hear of something tragic happening.

Maybe broader in the scope of the world, but even personally, especially with social media, it's so easy to be uh all the time aware of a family that's going through a struggle or something that's that's happening that's hard.

And you know these people are loving the Lord and they're still not seeing their miracle.

And every time that would happen, somebody would say, Well, we may not have answers this side of earth, but we know God is sovereign.

And you hear that enough times, you begin to see that the answer to everything you can't understand on earth is that God is sovereign.

I began to think, I don't think I like his sovereignty.

Because for every answer that you didn't have an answer for, but everything that seemed kind of bad that happened, it was his sovereignty.

And I didn't realize it, but I didn't, I just wasn't sure that that was a part of him that I trusted.

Thank you for letting me be this vulnerable, it's not super fun.

And then this is what happened: he beckoned me in and he began to show me.

Belinda, do you know that every breath you've ever taken in your whole life was because of my sovereignty?

Do you know the fact that you had children in your womb that are living and breathing healthy today because of my sovereignty?

My supreme power is the one that gives us life every day.

There is actually nothing that you could point to in the world today that isn't because of my supreme sovereignty.

And in that moment of depth with him, I began to love the sovereignty of God.

I began to be thankful for the sovereignty of God.

I had been misunderstanding what the sovereignty was because I was only equating it to some things about him I don't understand.

And today I can say I still don't ever ever understand everything about him, but what I know happened in that moment is an indescribable peace came over me that made me feel so safe with the Lord that even in the things I don't understand, I was able to accept that there is a peace that passes understanding, and his sovereignty became one of my most favorite things about him.

I don't know what that might be for you, but I believe that there are people here who have hidden part of their heart from the Lord because of a trust issue.

Something in your life maybe happened, and you began to think that maybe God caused that, or maybe God wasn't there for you in that way.

And it has become very hard for you to dwell with the Lord.

But the first place to start and passionately pursuing him is that you have to be able to dwell with him, which means you have to trust him.

So I'm asking that you would even now begin letting the Holy Spirit reveal to you if there's parts of your heart that you can't trust the Lord with.

And that some of those dry bones would get fresh breath in them even right now.

In Exodus 33, 15 through 16, Moses is taking the Israelites into the promised land.

And if you know the story of the Israelites, you know, they ran in a cycle of they loved God, then they would disobey God, and they would make idols, and then they would repent to God, and then they would be in this continual cycle of coming back to the Lord.

And so Moses and God are having this conversation, and God basically says to Moses, okay, so this is the deal.

I'm gonna take you, I'm gonna let you go into the promised land because I've promised that.

And I'm also gonna protect you from your enemies because I told you I would.

But as you go, I'm gonna send an angel with you.

I am not going to go with you.

And here we find in Exodus 33, 15 through 16, this is what Moses said to God.

Then he said to him, If your presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here.

For how then will it be known that your people and I have found grace in your sight, except that you go with us?

See, for Moses, it was not enough that he just got the promised land that was promised to him, and it was not enough that he got God's protection.

He wanted God's presence.

And if God was not going to give him his presence, he did not want to go.

And I want to ask today have we gotten so comfortable in our lives that absolutely we want God's protection, and absolutely we want all the promises that God has for us, but we can live without his presence.

And I want to be like Moses.

I want to be the one that says, I don't just want your protection and I don't want your provision.

I want you.

I want your presence in my life.

I want to be like Moses.

Do we have that desire to move further in our relationship from just petition to passion, from request to relationship?

It is not bad to petition the Lord.

There's so many numerous times in the scripture he tells us to ask him.

But can we move to a deeper, passionate relationship with him?

So not only do we dwell with him to passionately pursue presence, to passionately pursue him, we also have to have devotion to God.

We dwell with him, and then we have devotion to him.

The analogy I want to use today is the husband and wife analogy.

Okay, so if Todd and I, um, if every day before he went to work, I gave him a kiss on the cheek, and then I gave him my honeydew list, and I said, I'd really appreciate it if you could get all this done, and I'll see you back tonight.

I don't know what kind of marriage that would be.

Anyone think that would be a good marriage?

I mean, I would have really all my things done, so that'd be kind of nice.

But it would not be a marriage.

There's no intimacy in that.

Now, there's times that of course he does my honeydew list, but that can't be the basis of my relationship with him.

See, a husband and wife, what happens is in the way that God intended, we are to be the most intimate with that person than we are with anybody else in the entire world for our whole life.

And he creates space and time for us to have that kind of intimate time with our spouse.

So if you're if you're in a time where there's an intimacy where everything is laid bare as God intended, physically and spiritually in every way with your spouse.

And then as life happens, because life does call and you go to work and you have to go tend to the children and that sort of thing, but throughout the day, you send little texts to each other.

Just, I love you, and and this is you know, that was so fun to be together today.

And all of those things, just the little text throughout the day, what that does is it keeps you connected through the day.

But how are you able to do that?

Because you're drawing on the time of intimacy that you just had, and you're able to connect and draw from that until the next time that you're together, and your hearts stay connected.

So people ask me, you know, how do you stay in the presence of God all day?

I would love to just be washed in his word all day long and worship, and it would be amazing to just have that kind of time all day, but that's not practical.

Well, of course it's not practical.

And do you think God understands that?

He knows us, he knows what he's called us to do.

So then there must be a way that he understands intimacy that goes beyond just those depth times.

And I want to say it's in the same way as you would your spouse.

Because you are spending time really giving priority in your day to prayer, to worship, to really knowing him in an intimate way, as you go through the day, you're able to draw on that connection.

And you're able to draw, and it fills you, and it fills you, and you're able to draw on it.

And you know why that's important.

Because when you go out into the world, into the workplace, into the schools, into wherever you have to go, when you have had that kind of intimate time with the Lord, there is a residue on you.

There is an overflowing residue of peace, of love, of kindness, of gentleness, that you can have the right gentle word at right at the right time.

You can offer the hug at just the right time.

You can be the reconciler at just the right time, and that's because you have the residue of him on you from your time and presence with him.

We have to be devoted to him in our lives.

That's what pursuing his presence looks like is that we choose to steer our hearts in devotion to him.

Recently, I had my niece staying with.

Me.

I have a 10-year-old daughter, Evelyn, and my niece is eight, so they get along really well.

And so I had Georgia come and stay with me for a couple of days.

And this particular day I needed to go to Walgreens, and I brought them with me because that's just the fun ant that I am.

Girls, let's go to Walgreens.

Woo! And so I felt badly.

I was gonna be there about 10 minutes, and so I thought, well, maybe while they're there, I'll just make it fun.

So I said, girls, you each have five dollars to spend in Walgreens.

So about five minutes goes by.

I don't know what I was thinking to say that to an eight and a ten-year-old.

Within like five minutes, they each had$40 worth of things.

Who knew?

Walgreens like has Barbies, and I mean they found stuff.

I'm like, is this a toy store?

Where did you so I had to redirect them?

Okay, let's just go to the candy aisle.

That's where we'll stay.

So they go to the candy aisle, and the candy aisle is filled with candy.

I mean, filled.

And my daughter finds the one thing that is out of stock.

She wants the cherry sours.

I any but cherry sours right here on the second row.

What is up with the cherry sour craze?

I mean, completely out of stock of the cherry sours.

I know like three people who like cherry sours, and they're all in Todd's family.

Just a really strange thing.

So anyway, she says she says she wants the cherry sours, and there are none on the shelf.

And so I ask a nice gentleman who works there, can you check the back to see if you have any cherry sours?

So we wait a few minutes, and he comes back and he says, I'm I'm sorry, we don't have any cherry sours.

There's been a run on cherry sours.

So I have to direct Evelyn to pick a different candy.

And it made me think, how often do we have our shelves stocked?

And people come and they they draw, they take from the shelf.

And as believers, we have something to give them, they take from the shelf.

But then there's going to be that time when the lat the last person comes and takes the very last thing on the shelf from us.

And then we have nothing else to give.

Because we have not been backstocking our inventory.

See, we have to keep the inventory stocked so that it can continually being replenished so that when the world needs something, we're able to continually give it to them out of our overflow.

But when we don't keep it stocked in the back, see the stocking in the back is a very private thing.

That happens, you don't see the people stalking in the back.

That happens in private.

But I'm telling you, the world is longing that we have overflow so that they can withdraw, they can take from the shelf, and then we still have more to give.

And when we don't, I'm telling you the world will go to the part of the shelf that has plenty to offer them and they will take from another place.

We have to be the ones who keep it backstocked enough that the world can withdraw and take, and we always have something to give them.

And that only happens when we choose to be devoted to him with everything in our lives.

I'm reading a book right now by Jack Hayford, Dr.

Jack Hayford.

We love him here at Gateway Church.

It's called Manifest Presence, and he talks about the difference between manifest presence and personal presence, and this is really where I was because who doesn't want the manifest presence of God to fall in our lives?

As a corporately, wouldn't we love to see the tangible, visible presence of the Holy Spirit fall among us?

And of course, his presence is with us at all times, but this is kind of that specific manifest presence.

And then I was reading, and you know when you read something and you already have it stirring in you, and then you read something that is like, and you're like, yes, I couldn't have said it better.

And it's even more exciting when that's with Dr.

Jack Caeford, and you're like, I am like this with Dr.

Jack.

And he says this in his book.

Our focus is to be more interested in the personal presence of God than in the greatest display of his power.

We want a great display of his power on this earth.

Would you agree with me?

We want that.

How much more, if we were honest, would we say that we really want the personal presence of God in our lives?

See, this is what's amazing, is what we're asking for, that manifest presence, that greatest power of display, he allows us to have that personally with him every day.

And yet we wouldn't do it.

But our desire should be that we desire that more than we ever desire to see him move great among us.

But I believe one begets the other.

Can you imagine if every person in every seat at every campus was personally devoting their lives to personal presence with him?

What that would look like corporately, that would be awesome.

That would be amazing.

So one of my favorite characters of the Bible is King David.

Now, what they say about King David, we know is he's a man after God's own heart.

One commentary even says a man according to God's own heart.

And I love that because that really explains a lot.

Because as we know, which is probably why he's my one of my favorites, he was far from perfect.

He was an adulterer, a murderer.

So like he was like the really, really, you know, like murderer.

That's like a that's a sinner.

I mean, we all sin.

So they're all equal, I know, in God's eyes, but that's like no no laughing thing.

Like he killed a dude, right?

And yet he still had the title of a man after God's own heart.

And you think, how does that reconcile to each other?

And when you think about it, especially in comparison to King Saul, see, David had a heart that wanted to do everything according to God's will.

That's what that means.

He knew God's will, and his desire was to do it according to God's will.

God's way.

Was he perfect?

No.

But see, in comparison to King Saul, King Saul was a king who really thought his way was best.

And he would try to do it, do the things that God asked him to do, but really always wanted to do it his way.

And there's such a big difference in the heart in God's eyes.

And if you read the Psalms, it is riddled with things that King David wrote about.

And he was such a great person who showed us how to repent.

He showed us how to be thankful.

But he also showed us what presence meant, how to desire God's presence in our life.

And he says this in Psalm 42, 1 through 2.

As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When he teaches us about pursuing God, he says it this way.

I pant for you.

My soul longs for you like a deer would pant for water.

When we look introspectively, can we say that we are people who long for God in that way?

Can we say that we have that kind of devotion to God?

So not only do we need to dwell with God and be devoted to God, pursuing his presence means that we are dependent on God.

It shows itself by dependence on God.

See, dependence on God has three little words to it that are really hard.

Death to self.

Those are hard words because we really don't like the dying part of anything.

We don't like when we have to die to self.

But prayer is proof that we are dependent on God.

Prayer is proof that we are dependent on God.

The more confident you are in your ability to navigate your own life, the less you pray.

The more confident you are in your ability to navigate your own life, the less you pray.

And God is saying, I am beckoning you to come deeper with me, but you have to give up yourself.

We have delusions of self-reliance that we have to give up.

And he's asking, Will you do that?

See, this is what I love about being dependent on God, is this word today is for every person, no matter where you are in your walk with the Lord.

If you're a new believer and you're just learning how to read your Bible and you're just learning what it means to pray, he is saying to you, you can passionately pursue me and you can go deeper.

There's more for you.

But if you're a believer who's been in the word your whole life, you can't even remember a time that you weren't in the in the word.

I'm telling you, the mysteries of God are so amazing.

There's so much to unfold.

You could spend time with him every day of every minute of your life, and you can still not unfold all the mysteries of God.

There is more.

There is more.

You can go deeper.

So all of us have to ask the question about dependence.

Have we ever in a space of our life become dependent on our own abilities and not on God moving and thriving and being in every moment of our life?

See, the thing about passionately pursuing God's presence is what you'll find there.

That's what I want to convey to you today.

The invitation that I want to give you today is because I found something so amazing when I began to pursue Him at a deeper level.

This is where my faith was restored.

This is where my hope was built.

This is where I began to love in a way that I hadn't loved before.

This is where I had wisdom and clarity and direction that I was longing for.

This was a peace that passed understanding.

All of these things happened in a pursuit of him in a deeper way.

So why would I not want to tell you about that?

And why would I not want to extend the invitation?

Because it changed my life.

And I believe that in the world we're living in today, God is rising up.

He's calling out people who will pursue him passionately because he sees a world who needs people who are dwelling and dependent and devoted to God at every level.

It says this because he holds fast to me in love.

Okay, hold fast there.

It means to bear down.

This is God's promise.

Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him.

I will protect him.

Because he knows my name, when he calls to me, I will answer him.

I will be with him in trouble.

I will rescue him and honor him and show him my salvation.

This is the promise we get when we are dependent on God.

Deliverance, protection.

He answers us.

So I want to ask you today if you would close your eyes, bow your head.

I want to extend an invitation.

That was the word I got from the Lord.

I felt him say, invite them.

And really, it's because it's exactly what the Lord did to me.

He invited me to come and hear his heart and to explore parts of my heart I didn't know that needed his love to cover.

And that invitation for me changed everything.

And so today I want to invite you.

Are you able to evaluate your heart?

Hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to you.

Is he beckoning you to deeper things?

Is he calling you to a place that's deeper?

Can the desire in you rise up for more of him?

Because you are called of God to be a minister of his love to a hurting world.

But you have to be filled with his presence before you can give to a hurting world.

Would you accept that call today?

He's beckoning you to answer.

Father, do your work deep today in the hearts of all of us.

Holy Spirit, move in the hearts of the people that they would have ears to hear what you're asking and calling them to do, because it is for their good that you are near to them.

God, we are so thankful.

We feel you here moving.

Thank you, Father.

Your love is so precious.

God, we love you.

Do a work now in Jesus' name.

Amen.