Distractions 9-20-2026

Welcome to the Life Family Church Sermon Podcast.

If it's your first time listening, you can check us out on our website at lifefamily.com or on Facebook at LF.

Now let's get right to the message.

Glory to God.

Thank you, praise and worship team.

That was awesome.

Man, more than just musicians and singers, I really like these guys a lot.

They're really cool guys.

We have a good time and just enjoy Jesus together.

And man, it's just fun being in the house of the Lord with people who love Jesus.

Amen.

And how that we can overcome distractions.

But before I do that, since there's a lot of people here, and I want to remind you of something that's coming up shortly.

And I think it's very important and vital for our community, very, very important and vital for the region, very important and vital for the state, and for our country.

That each and everyone in here that's over the age of 18 go register and vote.

I mean that.

As your pastor, it's very encouraging when I know that people in the church are participators.

And they're not just falling for the lie of the enemy saying, Oh, there's no point in voting.

It's just a waste of my time.

Ah, this is just a corrupt state, anyways.

Don't worry about it.

No point in voting.

There's a point in voting.

The point is this you do what the word tells you to do.

You're a kingdom.

You have responsibilities in the kingdom of God, and that's to see to it everywhere you your assault and your light.

Amen.

So the way that you can do that is on, well, coming up here in September the 24th is early voting.

So immediately don't waste your time.

Go out there and vote and go encourage other people to vote.

Get a part of this because I'm telling you, um, this world system is corrupt, but we have a part to play and we can do that by voting.

Yes, ma'am.

Yeah, if you're going to the ladies' conference, you guys need to vote early.

Go ahead and take care of that.

So get with your county clerk and find out exactly what times they're open or whatever you need to do.

If you have never registered to vote and you want to register, one way to do that is go to the courthouse to the county clerk and they'll register you to vote.

You'll need two forms of identification.

So if you have that, go register.

Yes?

Something else?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, eight to four early voting.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay, perfect.

Awesome.

So, guys, I'm just wanting to encourage you as someone who, when I was 18, it was my first opportunity to vote, and I was so glad to do that.

It was it was awesome.

And you know what?

We don't always get what we vote for.

And at the end of the day, our position is we trust in God.

But don't let me hear you out there complaining and you haven't voted.

Amen.

Amen.

That's like take that's like taking a job and they agree you all agree on a price and then you go home and complain about how much money you make.

It doesn't make any sense.

Don't complain if you have not participated and made your vote.

Amen.

So praise the Lord.

Amen.

That's not the distraction I was talking about, but hey, we'll move right along.

Um, and and here we go, one thing that Satan is known as, and Jesus called Satan this, he called him Beelzebub.

Have you ever heard that term, Beelzebub?

The word, the term Beelzebub means Lord of the flies.

Lord of the flies.

One, I guess, historian believed this, that um they they sacrificed to an idol God, and as they would sacrifice this to this idol, what they would do is they would put food on the altar, or they'd sacrifice an animal, or even sometimes people.

And as they did this, there was death on the on the footstool of these idols, and what would happen is all these flies would just gather around because flies are attracted to that.

So they called Satan or Jesus called Satan the Lord of the Flies.

He is the Lord of the flies, and that's one thing I know about flies is they just tick you off.

It's like there's food on the ground.

Why are you on my brand new steak?

You know.

The other night we're at the camp out, we're having a good time, but I could not get rid of this one annoying fly.

Like I think it was the devil himself, just kept bothering me.

And that, I mean, I'm telling you, there's nothing more distracting when you're eating than flies trying to get on your food.

And there's nothing more nasty than letting them and still eating your food.

Come on, people.

My kids, when they were younger, well, not even that much younger, we we bought down this racket that has electrical currents flowing through the strings.

And they like to get out there where all these flies are and just whap at them, you know, and you hear the crack and you know they got one.

And in Oklahoma, we found out that there's a lot of flies.

I mean, one season is full of flies, and it is so bad, and they're huge.

And they get in your house.

So everybody in Oklahoma, when we got there, had this big old bug zapper in their in their kitchen.

But that thing was so distracting.

You would be sleeping in the middle of the night, laying down, peaceful at rest.

Ah, time to go to sleep.

Boom! You'd hear these things just, I mean, just tearing up these flies.

All night long, they're just zapping these flies.

And I just, I this morning I was thinking about that and just thinking, that's exactly what we need to do the devil today is we need to zap some of those distractions out of our life.

Just get them out of the way.

And if you're if you're a fan of flies, this is just not your day.

The ultimate goal of the enemy is to destroy you.

The Bible says the enemy comes but for to steal, kill, and to destroy your life.

But the Bible says, Jesus come that they may have life and they may have it to the fullest or the abundant life.

So the devil's main objective is to destroy you, to destroy your testimony, to destroy your future, to destroy your children, to destroy everything around you.

He knows that he lost you and he can't win you over to him.

But what he can do is he can distract you and get you off of your purpose so that everybody beneath you will be destroyed.

So he's after destruction.

That's what he's for.

But the method that the devil uses to destroy you is distractions.

You know, not everything that we do is bad.

Not everything that we go out to accomplish is a bad thing.

They're good things.

Um, let's talk, let's let's look in Hebrews chapter 12, verse 1 and 2.

Hebrews 12:1

It says, Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which does easily beset us.

And let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Now, a weight is not necessarily a bad thing.

There's weights in our lives that we don't even recognize.

Think about, I we were watching this guy one day.

He was running up a tall mountain, and he was, he looked like he was absolutely miserable.

But he had this backpack on.

And I thought, well, you know, maybe it's full of water.

No, it was full of rocks, full of weights.

He was trying to work out, so he was filling his backpack full of weights, and he was trying to run.

You know, a lot of people are running the race of life, and they're full of things that are weighing them down mentally, spiritually, physically, all kinds of areas in their life, they're weighed down by the burdens of this world, by the cares of this world.

All these things can weigh you down, but they don't call them sin because they're not sin.

I'm not saying the things you're doing are sinful.

I'm not saying that every iPhone in here is a sinful thing.

But I am saying this very thing that can be used to call somebody can also be a distraction in your life.

It really can.

It can steal your time and be a time waster, but it can also redeem your time.

So this thing is neutral, it's just how you use it.

Your body is neutral, it's just how you use it.

Amen?

Do you use it for the glory of God or do you use it for your own pleasure?

This is this is the difference in are you distracted by the weight of the world or is it a sin?

A sin is something that the Bible clearly states is sin.

We don't make up sin in our own judgment.

We don't just come up with, well, you know, that's a sin or this is a sin.

That's what created religion in the whole place.

In the whole, like religion is simply man-made traditions and things that they just handed down.

But we can be distracted by things and not realize we're carrying weights in our life.

One thing I I remember as a kid, uh, it was a big thing for people to get hamsters and and and put this big old wheel in the campster hamster uh cage.

Y'all remember that?

And that hamster would get on that wheel and he'd just go to running.

And that thing would just be he'd be running full blast, man.

And you know what?

That hamster, he probably was sweating.

He was probably like, boy, this is fun.

I'm going somewhere, I'm having such a good time, and he's running and he's running and he's running and he's not going anywhere.

And that's one thing that we need to be very cautious of in our Christian walk.

That we're doing a lot of running, we're doing a lot of things, but we're not going anywhere.

We're not accomplishing much.

It's one thing to go to church.

Church is a great thing, it's it's godly.

Jesus made it a custom to go to the synagogue, meaning Jesus made it a part of his habit to go to church every time the doors were opened.

Jesus was there.

And if the church was good for Jesus, come on, somebody.

If Jesus needed to go to church, I think we all need to go to church, right?

So he made it a habit to go to church.

But no, just going to church doesn't change you.

You can go to church all your life and still be a baby Christian.

Amen.

You know how I know that?

Because they still complain and gripe and argue about things that are not even needed or necessary.

Anyways.

Baby Christians, you've a lot of uh, you know, we we talk about how Jesus told the disciples to go to the other side of the river or the lake.

He said, Go to the other side.

He gave them the command, and they went to rowing.

The Bible says that they toiled all night long, meaning they were working hard.

They were giving it all they got to get to the other side, but they went nowhere.

They were stuck.

And I heard Brother Keith Moore say this: a lot of rowing, not much going.

There's a lot of things going in your life, but are the things going on in your life advancing the kingdom of God, or are they advancing what you believe is important?

You see, one of the reasons I think we get into ruts in our life is that we start placing the importance of things that we desire instead of placing importance upon the things that God desires.

We start focusing on everybody else in the culture of this world trying to obtain what they have instead of obtaining what God wants us to have.

Does God want us to have nice things?

I believe he does.

I don't think he's out to make us all miserable.

I don't think that's part of serving God that we're miserable.

But I don't believe things should ever dictate to us what we do in our life.

Things don't have the voice in my life.

The voice in my life is the word of God and what he says to do.

I'm hungry for his plan for my life.

I heard a minister say one time, stop chasing the American dream.

Chase God's dream.

And let the American dream chase you.

You see, putting the perspective on God again, keeping our eyes on him, the author and the finisher of our faith, because ultimately at the end, when we go to heaven, we're going to stand before a judge who's righteous.

And we're going to have to give an account for what we've accomplished on this earth.

What did you do with Jesus?

And I don't want it to be, well, I uh, you know, I saved up enough money to buy a brand new Corvette.

Praise the Lord.

I don't really care, and I don't think he really cares.

Is it wrong to have a Corvette?

No, it's not.

You can have 15 of them, it doesn't matter.

As long as the priority is upon the kingdom of God first.

It talks about it.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

Then all these other things shall be added to you.

You see, there is a there's a reason why God is asking us to focus on things above and not things down here on earth.

He said that the things on earth, rust and moth, will eat up and destroy.

But the things that are eternal, they will live with you forever.

That person that you led to Jesus, they'll be there waiting on you in glory.

And they'll come up to you and thank you for giving them an opportunity to receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

That will be something to celebrate.

You know what?

Heaven rejoices when one soul comes to God.

One soul, heaven throws a party.

Praise the Lord.

We've had, I don't know how many people this year have been born again.

We've had a few born again this year.

Praise the Lord.

Heaven had a lot of parties because of Life Family Church.

Amen.

I believe this will be a party house.

Amen.

This is gonna be like a dorm room on a Saturday night, and you're the University of Tennessee and you just whooped up on Texas next week.

Where's he at?

Just saying, I put myself out there by faith.

I know that y'all are gonna probably whoop us, but hey.

All right, I can't believe I just said that.

I'm gonna eat my words.

But if I win, praise the Lord, next week's gonna be a good time.

Some people are living their lives exactly like that.

They're running, working, buying, entertaining, comparing, trying to keep up, trying to look for success, trying to have what everybody else's has, trying to make everybody happy, trying to maintain an image, and after that, all that running, they look around and realize I'm exhausted, but I'm still in the same place.

I want to run with God.

I want to run with Jesus.

I want to be on course, following after Him, doing exactly what He's called me to do.

Amen.

Because ultimately that's going to be the thing when you look back, you're gonna say, I'm so thankful that I follow the Lord.

Amen.

It's fun to follow Jesus.

Don't ever think for a moment that being a Christian is boring.

Example.

Go to Walmart late at night and start witnessing to people in the parking lot.

It's fun.

It's fun.

I tried it one time.

I had a blast.

Talking about entertainment, it was entertainment at its finest.

Back then, Walmart stayed open until like one or two in the morning, so I was out there late.

I was getting people when they were coming out of their car.

Hey, hey, man, how you doing?

Hey, let me talk to you for a moment about Jesus.

And man, I'm telling you, it is fun to see demons manifest.

Because I had a guy standing on his hood of his car, screaming as loud as he can, cursing God at the top of his lungs in Walmart in South Knoxville, Tennessee.

That's fun.

It's fun serving Jesus.

You never know what's going to happen.

Amen.

God is a good God.

If you step out and you do what he called you to do, your life will take on value.

Amen.

Value.

You might be in here and you might be older and you might say, Well, I just can't get out there and do what I used to do.

Can you pray?

Can you seek the Lord on behalf of those who are doing the work of the ministry?

Can you get on your knees and pray and seek the Lord?

Let me tell you, there's awesome things that can happen in prayer.

Amen.

God's presence can fill that place and you can experience awesome things.

But you have to be willing to lay down everything and pick up what He's called you to do and run with it.

Now that's not to say that everybody needs to quit their job and just go into the ministry full time.

That's not what I'm saying, because your very job can be your ministry.

It can be exactly where God has you.

You might have people come into your business and you have the opportunity to speak life over them, to help them, encourage them.

But I will say it's time to really reflect on am I really doing what God called me to do, or am I just living life and breathing?

I want to be one who follows after God with all my heart.

Amen.

Now, you don't have to compete for a position in this world.

One of the greatest pressures in our culture today is the pressure of establishing a position.

Who has the nicest house on the block?

Who drives the nicest vehicle or takes the best vacations?

Who has the most friends or who has the biggest church for you preachers out there?

Who has the most followers on YouTube or Facebook?

Those are pressures that we put on ourselves.

God never put a pressure on you to say you have to have this, this, this in order to be happy.

How many of y'all?

I'm gonna say it, I know everybody knows.

How many of y'all know Dolly Parton?

Yeah.

We've heard a lot about Dolly Parton, and we learned a lot of things about her that, you know, through the years I've probably heard but just didn't think about.

But Dolly Parton's mother, um, well, even before that, Dolly Parton's grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher in that area.

And Dolly Parton's family came from a lot of poor folk.

She had 12 or six brothers, six sisters, or five sisters.

And one of one of them died at an early age, but eleven of them grew up to be older.

They grew up in a house that was 1,000.

Square feet.

And all she talks about is the loving home and how much she enjoyed her Tennessee home.

We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to have big things.

I have to have that brand new truck when it comes out, or that brand new whatever.

Everybody used to fight over these iPhones.

I think they finally got over that kind of stuff.

I don't know.

Do people still stand in line for hours waiting on iPhones?

I think that time's over.

But we used to stand in line for hours just to get the latest, greatest iPhone.

Listen, keeping up with the world will not bring you happiness.

It won't.

Your house and what you have will not bring you happiness.

You can have, the Bible talks about it, you can gain the whole world.

But if you lose your soul, what have you gained?

Now don't don't hear me saying that having nice things is a bad.

It's not, and it's not sin.

But those things having you can be.

And that's the difference.

You can have nice things, but don't allow those things to start telling you what you're going to do about God.

Don't allow the things that you have and the opportunities you have to tell you, oh yeah, here's an opportunity, but you can't go to church.

That's not a blessing of God.

I've been here over a year now.

Can I say some stuff?

I'm not being mean, I'm being honest.

God will not prosper you out of the kingdom.

It is not the blessing of God to make you so wealthy that you're refusing to come to church or to be a part of anything or to He wants you available for the kingdom.

The reason why He blesses us is to advance His kingdom, to continue to push the kingdom of God forward, to advance what He wants to do.

Following after God with all your heart, He says, lean not upon your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path.

He'll lead you and guide you.

And His pathway is pleasant and peaceful and pure.

And you won't ever look back and say, Boy, I miss God.

You'll know I follow God with all my heart and I did exactly what He called me to do.

Amen.

We're not to run anyone else's race.

We're to run our race with Him.

One of the things I told my daughter when she went to Bible college, I said, baby girl, you might meet this young man there at Bible college, and if you do, that's okay.

Nothing wrong with that.

It's not like I want her to be 35 years old, still living at the house without a husband.

I I don't want that for her.

But I don't want her to get married either.

I don't know how this thing works, but I don't like all this stuff.

They're getting, I don't want them to date, I just want them to.

Somehow I do want grandkids one day, but I don't know how all that happens.

So it's gonna happen.

But my daughter, I told her when she went to school, I said, Look, Emma, look, baby, you're gonna be running your race, and don't let anything get you off the path that God has for you.

And I'm saying this to you, young ladies out there.

Don't allow anything to get you off the path that God has for your life.

Don't look for a man for approval.

Don't look for a man to give you satisfaction or to supply all your needs.

That man can't do it.

You'll be so disappointed.

That's why a lot of people, women, stop trying to fix your man, just fix yourself.

Amen.

Men, stop trying to fix your wife, just fix yourself and allow God to do the work.

Amen.

So as you're running your race, I told her, as you're running your race, you'll be running as hard as you can towards Jesus, doing exactly what you're called to do, following hard after him.

And you'll look to your right and you'll see this dude right beside you and be like, wow, he's a good looking dude.

All right.

We're running with each other, we're just having us a good time in the Lord, praising the Lord together.

And I'm like, you keep running with me, we're gonna have to just hook it up.

We're gonna like hook up hands and just keep running together.

I shouldn't say hook up, that's not a good thing.

I know y'all call it that.

I call it that too in a godly way.

So the pure, all things are pure.

No.

Might as well join hands and run together.

That's how you meet your husband, that's how you meet your spouse.

Is you run your race to where God placed you and you do it with all your heart.

You seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

Go after him 100%, and God will have that person right beside you, running right beside you.

And you don't have to go looking, you don't have to go to the bar to find them.

One preacher said, you don't have to go to the hoot-nanny to find your mate.

I don't even know what a hootinny is.

I just think it's probably a bar or something.

You don't have to go looking.

God has somebody for you.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

Amen.

As you do that, you're running, they're running, God puts you together.

It's natural.

You don't have to try to fight it.

You just run together.

Amen.

Amen.

So it's good stuff for you younger guys.

You don't have to worry about it.

And if you're getting older and you're wondering, oh, I just can't find anybody, stop.

Don't look.

Don't go searching.

God still has a plan for your life and he will bring it to pass.

Trust him.

Trust him.

Real joy is found in purpose.

Real joy is found in purpose.

Remember when David went to the battlefield and he stood up to Goliath?

He said, Is there not a cause?

You see, there's a cause.

There is a purpose in your life.

Each and every one of you are called of God.

He said, You're a royal priesthood, holy.

And you're you're meant to be used for God's glory here on this earth.

You're not meant to be idle, you're meant to be moving towards his plan for your life.

One thing I know about David, the Bible calls David a man after God's own heart.

How many of y'all remember reading about David?

And God calls him a man after my own heart.

And you know David had a lot of problems in his life.

David was not a perfect man.

Do I have any perfect people in here?

I'm not raising my hand either.

I'm not perfect.

David wasn't perfect, but God said, This is a man after my own heart.

I love him.

Why?

Because David was quick to get right back in the presence of God.

He did so many bad things, but he also did exactly what God said to do: repent, just get right back in his presence.

And David was quick to do that.

David loved the Lord.

One of the things I was studying about David, and I was focused on the time when David fell.

And do you all remember the time where David, the Bible says that the men were supposed to be off for battle?

And David was the king, and he stayed back from the battlefield.

He wasn't involving himself in the fight.

He wanted to stay back.

He was tired.

He was like, I'm just, I'm over it.

We've won so many battles.

I don't, they don't need me.

Just let them go out and fight.

David found himself in the middle of the night, waking up, bored, so he started walking up on this on the rooftop, just looking around.

And he found himself looking into a window.

And he saw this lady named Bathsheba.

And he lusted after her and he went after her to be his wife.

She ended up pregnant.

So then he had to go and he had to kill her husband.

Put him at the front of the battlefield, and had everybody else run away and killed that man.

David was a liar, David was a murderer, and David was an adulterer.

But do you know the biggest problem David had?

Is David wasn't where he was supposed to be.

That's the biggest problem he had.

He was supposed to be in the battle.

He was supposed to be in the fight.

A lot of times we get ourselves in trouble when we're supposed to be doing something and we're finding ourselves just being idle.

We were not created to be idle.

We were created for a purpose and a cause.

Each and every one of you have a purpose and a cause.

And if you're not fulfilling that or pressing towards that, you find yourself in an idle place.

And the thing on the inside of you, God placed something on the inside of you that was made to crave.

You have a desire.

God placed a burn, a burning desire on the inside of each and every one of us for something.

Some of you also you might call it, I'm searching for something.

Here's what you're searching for.

Can I just go ahead and erase your question marks?

You're searching for God.

That's what you're after.

You're searching for a purpose that He and only He can give you.

So my encouragement this morning is this if you're a young man in here, don't allow yourself to get trapped doing idle things.

I remember my mom years ago used to say, um, living idly is the devil's workshop.

Young men in here, get a purpose for your life.

Your purpose is not to sit there and play a game station all day long.

That is not purpose.

It's not sin.

I never said it was sin.

I'm saying it's not a purpose.

You were designed, you were designed to go after God with all your heart and to seek after him, and he will give you a cause in your life.

And if you will go after him, you'll start to fulfill that call, and that's for everything else.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.

That's the life we all need to have.

That's the life he's chosen for us.

I don't know about you, but this is my personal life.

Every time I messed, messed up or made mistakes is when I stopped living with purpose, and I started looking for everything else to fulfill the desire in my heart.

Anytime I've ever messed up in life.

It's because my eyes started looking to other things.

And as I got my eyes off of Jesus and started looking to other things to supply that purpose in my life, that's where I found myself so empty.

And some of you here today are empty.

You're empty.

There's more teenagers today committing suicide than ever before.

Why is that?

They have more tools today to communicate than ever before in history.

But yet today, with all the instruments that they have that they can connect with people, they're still committing suicide.

So that tells me one thing: it's not just people that you know and and social media likes and all this stuff that brings fulfillment to your life.

What brings fulfillment to your life is when you live with purpose, live with the calls, live with vision, and your eyes are on Jesus.

That's what gives you purpose.

So if you're someone in here and you're dealing with that and you're you feel lonely, you feel like you're on an island by yourself and nobody loves you, I'm here to tell you this morning Jesus loves you.

And he has a purpose for your life, and he wants to lead and guide you to that purpose.

And you will find out 40, 50 years from now, man, I'm glad I started serving the Lord.

Amen.

Let's all stand up this morning.

I want to do something before we leave.

I had 11 pages of notes.

I really did.

And it's all dancing around what I've talked about.

I knew that I wouldn't be able to read all this because everybody in here would be taking naps.

But all this stuff I've said really sincerely.

It goes, there's a song, I'm trying to think of it right now, it just jumped in my spirit.

I have decided to follow Jesus.

No turning back.

And I I that song it means a lot because that that day when I was at camp meeting, I was about 10 years old.

And for no reason whatsoever, all of a sudden I realized I was a sinner.

I realized I was lost.

I was going to go to hell.

And I didn't want to go to hell.

I wanted to go to heaven.

I wanted to be with my family.

I wanted to be with the church.

And I was at a camp meeting, and this preacher was preaching.

And I don't even know if I don't remember a word he said.

All I remember is this: when he gave the altar call, I knew to go to the altar because I knew I was a sinner on my way to hell, and I needed Jesus to be my Lord and Savior.

I knew that.

I needed Jesus.

But that moment I got born again, although that was super important, it still rests true today.

I still need Jesus.

You still need Jesus.

From the day that you were born again, you need him today just as much as you needed him that day you got born again.

We need Jesus.

All these other things, they're good, nothing wrong with them.

But we cannot live life consumed with culture.

We cannot live life consumed with hurt, with regret.

We have to get our eyes back on Jesus.

And if you're in here and you've lost focus or you've lost your vision, and you at one time are running strong, you were running on uh seven brew or yeah, premium.

There you go.

That cost too much.

We'll just we'll go back to cast.

You're running on such passion, such desire, but you've kind of lost your zeal.

You're not sinning, guys.

If you if I'm if I get an altar call for this, this is not me saying you're a bad person or you're on your way to hell.

This is nothing to do with that.

This is me saying this.

I want to connect with you and I want to help lead you back to your purpose, your vision for what God has for you.

Because, man, I'm talking about when everybody has a fire and a passion for Jesus at the same time.

Oh man, we're gonna see some fun stuff in here.

We're gonna see some good stuff.

But see, the reason why we go to church is that we can connect and fellowship with one another, but most importantly is that we can make a commitment to God and we can make sure that I'm keeping on that path that God has for me.

So if you're in here today and you've stepped off that path and you found yourself on a hamster wheel, and you've been doing a lot of rowing and not much going, and you found yourself, man, I don't want my life just to slip away.

I want my life to count.

I want my life to mean something.

I want to go for God with all my heart.

If that's you and you want to commit to that today, I want you, um, I don't know how we do this, other than just um step out from where you are and come up here.

I'm not, uh this is not an altar call for sinners, this is an altar call for saints who are ready to go back to the purpose in their life.

If this is you and you're ready.

Now, like I said, it doesn't mean you're a bad person.

It just means I am ready to give my life to the Lord 100% and go after him.

So if that's you, I want you to make that stand in faith.

Amen.

So I have decided to follow Jesus.

Amen.

I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back.

No turning back.

I want to go after him.

Hallelujah.

Amen.

I know as a kid I used to go to the altar every time there was an altar call.

Just because, just because I had a very bad sense of condemnation and guilt in my life.

I'm not asked, this is not what we're talking about.

This is simply I'm ready to go after God's vision for my life.

I want his purpose in my life.

Amen.

Can I have a couple ladies to join with these ladies and pray?

And just allow them the opportunity to consecrate their life to what God has called them to do.

Go ahead and just begin to pray with them.

Thank you, Jesus.

Lord, we go after you with all our heart.

We lean not on our own understanding, but in all our ways we acknowledge you.

We give ourselves away, Lord.

We give ourselves away.

And we run after you, Jesus.

Thank you, Jesus.

Hallelujah.

Thank you, Jesus.

Praise you, Jesus.

Hallelujah.

And while they're praying, if you're in here and you don't know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and you've never made that commitment to the Lord, if you would come up here to the front, I want to pray with you and lead you to Jesus.

If you're in here and that's you, if you've been stirred in your heart and you know that the Lord's speaking to you to go and get born again, if that's you, I want you to come up here.

I want to pray with you and lead you to Jesus.

Hallelujah.

Thank you, Lord.

Thank you, Jesus.

You want to be born again?

Have you ever received Jesus as your Lord and Savior?

Let's pray.

What was your name, buddy?

Corbin.

Corbin, pray this for me.

Say, dear Lord Jesus, I come to you.

And I'm asking you to be my Lord and Savior.

I believe that you rose from the dead.

And that now I can be born again.

That I can come to you.

And you can be my Savior.

Forgive me of all my sins.

I give my life to you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Corbin, let me ask you a question.

Is Jesus your Lord?

Say that.

Jesus is your Lord.

Amen.

Amen.

Buddy.

Praise the Lord.

Thank you, Jesus.

If there's anybody else that would like to give their life to the Lord, man, what an awesome opportunity.

What an awesome opportunity.

That Corbin now for eternity.

Eternity is on his way to heaven and he'll never look back.

I mean, man, God's got a call and purpose for his life.

I want to be a church who encourages others to follow after God's call and purpose.

So if you're in here, man, and you're down or you're discouraged, don't leave here being discouraged.

Let us help you.

Let us pray with you.

Let us just lead you to Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Praise the Lord.

Hey, by the way, uh, we are having a baptismal service soon.

And if you haven't signed up, please, the papers in the back, sign up for that.

If you've never been baptized before, that's just another way to express in your faith in Jesus Christ.

A way to tell everyone, including yourself, that I have died to sin forever, and I now I'm alive to Christ.

If you've never been baptized, you teenagers, if you've never been baptized, this is the time.

Don't wait till you're old.

The statistics are true.

When you're older, it just goes down and down and down.

People don't commit when they're older as much as they do when they're younger.

So we need to be going after these kids early.

Amen.

Amen.

So if you're in here and you've never been baptized, sign up.

We want to baptize you.

I promise you, I will not hold you under that water for more than five minutes.

I promise.

So but uh praise the Lord.

Um we had a great time at the men's camp out.

If you weren't able to come, uh we're gonna try to do it again next year sometime and um make make sure next year that you guys plan it.

We had a good time.

We enjoyed it.

Um I didn't hear that much snoring.

I was expecting more.

It wasn't so bad.

So um, man, it was it was just a good time hanging out with the guys, just just just an incredible bunch of men, and uh we just had a wonderful time together.

So um anything else that you're thinking of?

Huh?

Yeah, I will.

Uh chili cook-off.

Make sure that you set your calendar for that because we are we're putting on a show.

We're gonna have a good time.

We're gonna have face painting, we're gonna have awesome stuff going on.

They're gonna have candied apple, I think, things like that.

We're gonna have all kinds I'm not supposed to say all this stuff.

We're gonna have a lot of fun for the kids, um, and we're a lot of fun for adults.

So, man, come.

And um, I think my parents are coming that Sunday as well, so they're looking forward to all the chili and all the meeting you guys, and uh so it'll be fun.

You guys get to meet my family that day, and um it'll be good.

So once you've met my family, you've seen everybody, so we're good.

We're just family now, amen.

So uh anything else?

Anything I'm forgetting?

Youth tonight, make sure you come.

If you're a teenager and you want to come to youth, be a part of that.

Other than that, God bless you.

We'll see you Wednesday.

Thanks for listening.

We hope that this message helps you draw closer to God as you walk out your faith.

We'll see you next week.