Prepared, Alone, Expectant

Good evening.

Thank you for being here.

I'm honored to have another opportunity.

My mic's right there.

All right.

I'm making a mess up here.

All right.

Well, I want to thank you for just your faithfulness.

Your faithfulness is an encouragement to more people than

you realize.

And God uses people in our lives to.

To help us along the way.

And just want to let you know, you have helped me and you're helping

others.

So thank you.

And then I just want to mention, too, I got a text from my

son Daniel this week on Monday, and he does this to me constantly.

And he'll say, hey, dad, you have everything that I have.

If I die, I said, I'm going to jump through this phone.

What are you talking about?

Well, he's having to fill out some paperwork, and it got real this

week.

And pray for him.

He has an opportunity to influence people around him by having

faith.

It's noticeable.

People see you.

People see how you handle things in difficult situations.

And you can encourage or discourage.

You can bring people along, or you can shoo people away.

And we have so many opportunities that I think we take

for granted.

But I've been praying for him in that way.

If you would pray for Daniel in his way of his testimony.

And I know the Lord will protect him.

The Lord has him.

Lord knows what he's doing.

And pray for Mama, too, so she's worried about him.

But open your Bibles.

Exodus, chapter number 34.

Exodus 34.

We're going to be back in the Old Testament again.

We are going to look at a man of his, a man named Moses, of how

he heard from God.

Have you been in a position in your life where nothing else mattered

but to hear from God?

Has life drawn you to the place where absolutely nothing else

matters but that I hear from God into a particular way where I

don't care about food or drink.

I don't care about anything else.

I have got to hear from God.

Well, if you haven't, it's coming.

Your day's coming.

I'm sure you're going to have multiple days where it is vitally

important for you to hear from God.

And Moses is preparing now.

Moses is.

We're going to pick up the reading here in verse number one,

and we'll read through the first few verses, and then we'll

make some comments and I'll give some context here after we pray.

So let's read verse one.

And it says, and the Lord said unto Moses, hew thee two tables of

stone like unto the first.

And I will write upon these tables the words that were on the

first tables which thou breakest.

And be ready in the morning.

And come up in the morning unto Mount Sinai and present thyself

there to me in the top of the mount.

And no man shall come with thee, neither let any man be seen

throughout all the mount.

Neither let the flocks nor herds feed before the mount.

And he hewed two tables of stone likened to the first.

And Moses rose up early in the morning and went into Mount Sinai

as the Lord has commanded him.

And took his hand the two tablets of stone.

Let's pray.

Lord, I pray that you speak to us tonight.

We do desire to hear from you.

I pray that we can learn something from your word.

That you would speak directly to us, Lord.

That it would make a difference in our life.

A tangible, real difference.

I ask this in Jesus name.

Amen.

So Moses is here.

He is having a conversation with God.

This picks up after the children of Israel were in bondage

of Israel or in Egypt.

They were there captives for 400 years.

Remember the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?

Well, there went.

There was about 75 members who went to Egypt after the famine.

They.

They grew up there.

And that family, Joseph at the time was the prime minister, if you

will, of Egypt.

And his family came and he rescued his family, forgave his brothers.

You remember that story?

Well, 400 and some years later, these 70 some people have

grown into 2 to 3 million.

This is a nation.

This is the promise of God.

That God had said, hey, I'm going to bless you and I'm going

to multiply and.

And I'm going to give you a descendants as numerous as the sun.

And this is the nation.

This is the nation of Israel.

Well, the nation is in bondage in Egypt.

God sends the 10 plagues, raises up Moses, sends him to Pharaoh.

Let my people go.

They come out, they cross through the Red Sea.

They get all the way here to Mount Sinai.

And God calls Moses up into the mountain to give him the ten

Commandments.

And.

And when he comes down, he finds the children of Israel worshiping

the golden calf in a wicked, vile way.

They were giving praise to something that they fashioned by

their own hand.

By that imagination, they imagined what they wanted to do.

They crafted it.

And then they began to give praise and worship to it.

And they blamed Moses.

And then Moses, you know, it was not a good situation.

Moses sees this.

God knows what's going on.

He comes down, he hears this music that is being played in the

camp.

The children of Israel are dancing to this music.

And it sounds like war.

The first time they go up, they are.

They hear this, and they come down.

Moses breaks the tablets, and then.

Now this is where we're at.

God is speaking to Moses in a way, and he's telling him, hey, listen.

Actually, let me back up.

So in verse, or in chapter 33, God tells Moses, listen, I've promised

you this land.

I'm going to give it to you, but I'm not going with you.

You go.

You don't want to worship, you go by yourself.

Moses says, I will not go.

I will not go by myself.

He says, if you don't come with, we don't want to go.

And so Moses had a time where God got his attention fully.

Have you had that time where God has gotten your attention?

Are you listening?

Have you been there?

Have you been there to the place?

Has God orchestrated your life where there's nothing else that matters

but what God says?

Well, this is where Moses was.

He was right here, and he was to the point.

Look back in chapter 33, you need to look at a couple of these

where it says, look at 33, verse 13.

And it says, now, therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace

in thy sight, show me now thy ways that I may know thee that I

might find grace in thy sight.

And consider that this nation is thy people.

Moses said, God, I want you to come with us.

And we're not going if you don't go.

I need you.

I want you.

I need to know more of you.

Moses wanted more of God.

And so God says, verse 34, he says, I'm sorry.

Chapter 34, verse 1 says, and the Lord said unto Moses, hew thee

two tables of stone like unto the first.

And I will write upon these tables the words that were written

on the first tablets which thou breakest.

So he's getting him ready.

God is speaking, and he is getting Moses ready to prepare for

this meeting.

Okay?

And this meeting, in verse two, God is telling Moses, look what

he says in verse two, and be ready in the morning.

So the first point is preparation.

You've got to be ready if you want to hear from God.

You and I have to prepare.

We have to be ready for it.

Okay?

There's so many times that we can come to church.

Not picking on anyone here.

We.

I'm.

If anyone.

I'm picking on myself.

I can come to church just like a.

It's just part of what I have to do.

It's my weekly schedule.

I'm supposed to be there.

I just need to go.

And I kind of deal with God carelessly.

I was never ready.

I never prepared myself to hear from God.

Now, I don't know about you, but Moses had to get things ready.

Did he need.

Well, he needed two stones.

Well, how are you going to get two stones, Moses?

Well, I need some tools.

I need a hammer, I need a chisel.

I need a way to get these out.

So he had to go and physically prepare something that God wanted

him to before God was going to deal with him.

So God lays out these parameters, says, hey, I'll just

say this, God does business with, with those who mean business.

And so I've been in a service business.

In 2008, I started a small business in Ohio.

2018, I started business, small business here in Texas.

And I've hired guys and I fired guys.

And there are certain.

I've hired way more guys than who have worked for me because there

are certain guys who show up, they are not ready, they have not

prepared, said, hey, I want you to be here at 7am and you're

going to need this.

And you're going to need this, and you're going to need this.

Well, they didn't show up on time.

They didn't have what I asked them to or something.

They weren't serious.

I said, hey, you're probably better off to find something else.

They said, why?

I said, it's just, I just think, I think we're just not going

to be a good fit.

Okay?

Just, I'm sorry, but I need somebody to take these serious.

This is work now.

We're talking about God.

He needs us to take him seriously.

We need to be able to approach God with the right mind, not with

a flippant attitude or a careless hazard haphazardness.

When we seek the presence of God, we should prepare our hearts.

We need to go out and prepare our hearts.

If there's anything in our hearts that would hinder my relationship

with God or would hinder my relationship with someone else, that's

part of preparation.

God says, if I regard the psalmist says, if I guard iniquity

in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.

So if you want to hear from God, we've got to get serious about

it.

We've got to prepare.

God told Moses, be ready.

Are you prepared for what I have for you?

And Genesis, or in Exodus teaches us that we need to prepare

our hearts to seek God.

If you can, turn with me to 2nd Chronicles 12, 2nd Chronicles

12 14.

Look at this verse.

This is an interesting verse.

The Bible says This is Rehoboam.

And the Bible says, and he did evil because he prepared not his

heart to seek the Lord.

It doesn't say that he did evil because.

It doesn't say that he did evil because he didn't seek the Lord.

He still sought the Lord, but he didn't prepare himself for it.

Do you see that?

That's a strange verse, in my opinion.

It says, because he prepared not his heart to seek the Lord.

How are you and I supposed to prepare our heart?

We are supposed to prepare our heart by making sure there is nothing

in between thee and me.

Nothing between God.

Am I holding any type of anything against anyone, any grudge

or unforgiveness?

It is going to hinder.

It's going to put a blockade in the flow of hearing from God.

We are going to put.

We're going to plug our ears when God starts speaking if we are

not doing the things that God is requiring us so that we can hear

him clearly.

Because what will happen is we, even if we seek God in the condition,

we are not going to properly receive what he has for us.

And so you can stay there, or if you can turn with me, either way,

it's second Chronicles 19:3.

2 Chronicles 19:3

Look how.

Look at this wording.

Interesting passage as well.

2Nd Chronicles 19, verse 3.

It says, nevertheless, there is a good thing found in thee in

that thou hast taken away the groves out of the land and has prepared

thine heart to seek God.

Do you see the pattern here?

You see, God is working, but he wants to make sure that you and

I are serious.

Are we taking God serious when we approach him, when we open our

Bible?

Have we prepared?

Okay, in your morning devotion, my pastor in Ohio, Pastor

Jerry Seiler, he used to say, hey, you're not going to do anything

that you don't plan to.

Which sometimes we, you know, we accidentally.

You're probably not going to accidentally start reading your Bible.

Whoops.

Okay.

You're probably not accidentally going to start serving

God in any form or any capacity without planning for it.

So are you planning for what you're going to do?

God told Moses to do what he said, be ready in the morning.

So basically, get to work now.

And Genesis teaches us that we prepare for our day the night before.

In the evening and the morning were the first day.

So we need to be ready for tomorrow.

Tonight.

We need to start planning the things that we need to do.

Do I need to make a phone call?

Do I need to make something right between a brother or a sister?

Do I need to Plan out my daily reading.

Do I need to set an alarm early so that I get up on time?

Do I need to make sure that my schedule allows for my daily reading?

That's.

That's being ready.

That's being ready to hear from God.

And he.

He.

That's what Moses did.

Moses said, or we'll keep reading.

It says, and be ready in the morning.

Verse 2.

And come up in the morning unto Mount Sinai, and prepare thyself

there to me.

Present thyself there to me in the top of the mountain.

So he says, hey, I want you to come, but I want you to be ready.

Then look at verse three.

It says, and no man shall come up with thee, neither let any man

be seen throughout all the mount.

Neither let the flocks nor herds feed before the mountain.

So we have.

So first we got to be ready.

And then secondly, God says, you need to be alone.

No one's coming with you.

Joshua's not coming with you.

Last time Joshua went halfway up, waited.

Joshua heard the sound of war him and Moses were talking about.

They were amazed with what they saw when they got down at the

bottom of the mount of Mount Sinai.

He says, hey, you got to be ready.

And then I want you to come alone.

I want no distractions.

He says, moses, this is just me and you.

If you want to hear from me, it's just going to be me and you

there.

Do you have a quiet time with God?

We live in a society that wants everything now.

We want next day shipping.

We want them to get our order right.

First time in the drive through, I don't want to pull up.

I'm sorry, I. I do not want to pull forward.

I went through the drive through, so I didn't have to go in.

Okay, I don't mind waiting here, but we want everything now.

See, I mean, that's what I want.

I want everything now.

Well, I want to hear from God.

I want a relationship with God now.

This can't be manufactured.

This can't be manipulated.

In a way, this is alone time with God.

In Psalm 46, verse 10, I believe it is, it says, be still

Psalms 46:10

and know that I am God.

Have you.

When's the last time that you have been able to shut everything

off and go to the closet and shut the door?

This cannot be overstated.

We have got to have a type of relationship that is with God, that

is intimate, that is personal.

That is.

That is where you say, there is nothing else that matters to me

right now than to go in and hear from God.

And there Are times in our life where I get it, I do it too.

We're busy.

The world is ran by busy, tired people.

We are all busy and we're all tired.

And there's times that we have to prioritize this.

That's why we have to be ready.

We have to set side.

We have to set time aside to make sure that we, we are doing,

we are being who we need to be.

And you and I. I cannot be the father I need to be.

I cannot be the husband I need to be if I don't have that time alone

with God.

When I feel those, those relationships slipping a little bit

or maybe, maybe I'm a little short tempered or whatever the case

may be.

That doesn't happen, does it?

No, that I know that.

Oh, there's something wrong here.

I've got to get back.

I got to get back to God.

I need him to guide me and I don't want anything else right now

but to hear from God.

And Moses was in this place where he was taking notes.

I would assume he's taking notes.

I mean, if he.

Well, do you take notes?

Do you take notes when God speaks to you?

Are you interested in remembering what God says?

I'm jumping ahead of myself.

But I just want you to know that this alone time with God is

a special, special, special time.

And you cannot manufacture it.

You can't rush this.

This is a repeated time where you get alone with God.

You say, what does it look like?

It can look differently for other people.

But I can tell you that there's times where I just need to

sit in my truck.

Yes, I can pray driving down the road.

I can do some thinking and some contemplating while I'm driving.

But I'm still distracted.

I still have to stop.

I still have to obey the road.

Right?

And I still have to pay attention.

That is not giving God all of my attention.

I need to set aside a time where it's just me and God.

And when God speaks, I let him know, Lord, I just want to hear from

you.

Do you ever pray silently and.

Or whenever you pray, Is it always you talking?

Do you know that prayer is a dialogue?

It's not a monologue?

We tend to come to God like this.

Okay, this is what I would like.

This is our problem.

This is what we need.

Those are fine.

But there's a time where you stop and you listen and you allow

the spirit of God to work in your heart like nothing else in this

world can.

And that's where God speaks.

That's where great Things happen.

That's where spiritual things start to flow out and you bump into

somebody.

You might spill a little bit of God's goodness of your life on

them instead of backhanding them.

You don't do that.

You don't do.

No.

In Matthew, chapter six, the Bible talks about going in.

I'm going to go there.

I want you to listen to this.

If you'd like to turn with me, feel free.

It's Matthew 6, 6.

It says, but thou, when thou prayest, entered into thy closet,

and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father, which is

in secret, and the Father which is in secret, shall reward

thee openly.

Let me just hit these high points here.

I want to show the significance of your alone time with

God.

Just listen to these men.

Abraham was alone with God when God spoke to him and gave him

the ten Commandments.

Well, both times he was alone with God.

Great things happen when you and I get alone with God.

Daniel was alone with God when God spoke to him and gave him the

prophecy of the end times.

When Paul was alone with God, when God gave him the Book of Romans

and the Epistles.

Peter was alone with God on a rooftop when he had a vision and

God spoke to him about Cornelius and opening the door to

the Gentiles and John.

John.

He was alone on the Isle of Patmos where God gave him the Book

of the Revelation.

Because he was alone with God, good things happened.

Moses and even the Lord Jesus Christ was alone with God.

Even in the busyness of his ministry and the fruitfulness of

his ministry, he was performing things constantly.

And he withdrew himself to pray.

And even Christ himself got alone with God.

There is something special about being alone with God.

So first is, you got to be ready.

Then you must come alone.

And thirdly, you must come expecting.

Do you really expect to get something from God?

When you pray, do you expect God to answer your prayers?

Do you expect God to teach you, to guide you, to lead you?

Are you expecting that?

Do I really want that?

If I do, if I pray for rain, I better show up with an umbrella.

That's expecting.

I need to approach God with the amount of faith that not only

can he do it, but he will.

It's not God can do anything that he wants to, other than anything

contrary to his nature.

God cannot lie.

God cannot sin.

God is.

He can do anything he wants to within the means of His.

Of his.

Of his person, of his nature.

And he is sinless by nature.

So God can come.

And we need to be expecting to hear from God, we need that.

We need to come and to expect to receive something.

So when you and I go into our quiet time, when we have our time

alone with God, what are you bringing with you?

How are we going to be ready?

How are we going to be alone?

How are we going to come expecting without anything to write?

You should bring a pad of paper, bring a pen, bring a highlighter.

When you read through a passage, you should be able to read

through it.

And then we're going to start to think it out and then I'm going

to start to pray in it and say, lord, I need understanding of

this.

I'm not 100% sure what I'm reading or how does this apply.

So Lord, give me some understanding.

And we can read truth, but only the Holy Spirit of God can impart

it to you.

You can come to church and you can hear it, but only the Holy Spirit

of God is actually going to imprint it into your heart where

it becomes yours.

So we need prayer when we read, and then we should write it

down.

After we read it, we think it, we pray it, we write it down, then

we start to live it out.

These promises, these truths and precepts of the Bible of God

are not meant to be museum pieces where we hang up and just

walk by them.

They're not Facebook posts where we say, look at me, I love

this.

This is spiritual me.

No, it's meant to come in and to affect you and to change you to

where you live it out.

And if we really are serious, if we take God serious, we're going

to come to him ready, alone and expecting him to do something,

expecting him to answer my request, expecting him to give me

what I need.

Christ shall supply all of your needs according to the riches

of his glory.

He's going to give you what you and I need.

But he desires this relationship, this closeness that

cannot be manufactured.

I was on staff in Ohio and one of my good friends, he was the maintenance

man there and his name's Brother Craig.

Brother Craig has a ministry of maintenance.

And I just want you to know that maintenance is so vitally important

to a church.

The church building, is it 75?

It's 75 years old.

Really cool story.

I won't get all into it, but Gerald Fleming graduated with Raymond

Barber and at J. Frank Norris and went to Dayton, Ohio and planted

a church.

And that's a church that we were privileged to attend.

And we had great roots and memories there.

But there, Brother Craig, they have a four story building with a

basement, a three story elementary With a basement and a

two story high school building.

And it's old.

They're old buildings, things running on, boilers and all kinds

of things.

And brother Craig had that building down.

He knew what needed to be done.

And he had so many things.

And I say, how do you remember all this?

He pulls out this sheet of paper, all these.

And he says, because of this.

He said, this is my brain.

And I said, huh?

He told me, he said, the faintest ink is better than the strongest

memory.

You think when you hear from God that you're going to remember

everything?

I forget things.

We need to write it down.

When you write something down, I have my kids, when they have memory

verses to learn.

When I have memory verses to learn in Bible school, we'd have

to memorize a whole chapter.

I would have to write it down.

I can hear it, I can see it, I can.

I'm physically doing it.

It becomes more real when I take it serious.

And we're talking about the Creator God here.

He's talking to you.

Do you not want to remember what he says?

No, we do.

We want to.

And just as a reminder, this is the ounce of prevention is better

than a pound of cure here.

We all just need to be reminded that when we approach God,

we need to come to him with the, with the utmost seriousness

that we are desiring, that we need him, that we want him, that

there's nothing else that matters.

And then we need to say, God, when you speak, I'm going to listen,

I'm going to do it and I'm going to remember it.

I just want to show you what he says here.

It says, and hew the two tables of stone like unto the first.

So he came prepared, Moses came prepared like.

And it says, and Moses rode up early in the morning and went up

to Mount Sinai as the Lord commanded him and took his hand,

the two tablets of stone.

In his hand, the two tablets of stone.

Moses said, hey, I did what you said.

I showed up when you said, I came by myself.

I'm prepared, I'm ready.

And here are the tablets.

I'm expecting you to give me something.

And God did.

God wrote them again and spent more time with them.

And for the sake of time.

There is so much packed into this chapter, we don't have time

to go through all of it.

But I. I'm going to finish with these last two points quickly.

Let's look at verse five.

And it says, and the Lord descended in the cloud and stood

with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord.

Now Moses is getting a personal revelation, a manifestation

of God personally, intimately.

This is real as anyone could possibly imagine.

God standing next to a man named Moses and he starts speaking

about himself.

Listen to what God has to say about himself.

And the Lord passed by before him.

And the Lord proclaimed the Lord.

The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abundant

in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity

and transgression and sin.

And that will by no means clear the guilty.

Visiting the iniquity of the fathers, upon the children and upon

the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

And Moses made haste and bowed his head towards the earth and worshiped.

Do you see what happens when we hear from God?

Do you see what happens when we take God as serious as he takes

us?

One, I am just pleased and thankful that God even cares, that

he even wants to meet with me personally.

Don't you have other things going on, God?

And you want to talk to me?

Well, I'm going to be ready and I'm going to come alone.

It's just going to be you and me, God.

And I want you to give me something that I can take back with

me.

That's what Moses got.

Moses got a glimpse of glory.

There's certain times in scriptures where God describes himself.

Most of the time men are describing God based off of their

circumstance, based off of their experience of dealing with

God.

But God is speaking, and he is speaking very clearly about himself.

He is revealing to Moses something that you and I, who weren't

prepared, who didn't take this serious, who wasn't alone, who never

took time to make preparation, you would have missed it.

You wouldn't have got this.

But this is where worship comes from.

Hearing from God produces worship.

And this is ultimately what it comes down to, is that we need the

more and I the more time that we spend with God.

We can truly worship him in spirit and in truth.

Worship, real worship, is based upon the revealed word of God.

When we come to God and we think that we know it all, when we

come to a passage and we're like, yep, I got that one figured

out.

I know what happens there.

God can't teach someone who already knows.

God is wanting you.

You can be sir, ma', am, you can be too big for God, but you can

never be too small for Him.

And if you and I have an open heart and we truly want what he has,

we will have that.

We'll prepare ourselves.

Knowing who God is is the basis of our worship.

And God gave Moses this incredible, concise revelation of

his character and his nature.

And then I want to show you, flip over and we're done.

Flip all the way to the back.

It is verse 34, chapter 34.

34, it says, but when Moses went in before the Lord to speak

with him, he took the veil off until he came out.

And he came out and spake unto the children of Israel that which

he commanded.

Moses prepared.

Moses got things ready.

He came alone.

He came expecting, it produced worship, and now he's sharing it.

That's the full circle.

When you and I desire to hear from God to the point where there's

nothing else that matters.

When we take God seriously, God speaks to us in ways that we

would not know if we didn't do it.

You and I are missing out.

If we don't have this type of devotional time or we're not taking

God as serious as we should.

We're missing out on his goodness.

We're missing out on him revealing himself to us after he

reveals himself, after he shows forth who and what he is to

us.

And we begin to apply that.

Moses is saying, just for a second, God is saying, the Lord God,

merciful and gracious, longsuffering, abundant in goodness

and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and

transgressions.

Do you know what that means for Moses?

That is not just a verse that we just casually pass by, you and

I.

When we hear the truths about God, we are to consume them, we are

to take them, and it is now to be a part of us to where when we

start to worry, when we start to wonder, we can remind ourselves

of the goodness of God, of the character where he says, the Lord

is merciful and gracious and long suffering and abundant in goodness.

And in truth, we can tell ourselves, even though our circumstances

tell us that we're in a bad spot, tell us that we're struggling,

tell us that the trials are real and that life is hard and all

this stuff and.

But God is gracious.

He's full of mercy, he's full of grace.

And that is what brings us through.

That's how we get through.

If you want faith that'll go through the fire, you've got to go

through the fire with your faith.

You've got to go through it, because that will prove to you.

You will have the proof on the inside.

And someone can come around to you and say, I don't believe in apple

pie.

You can say, I don't care if you believe in apple pie.

I'VE got the evidence on the inside.

Had apple pie.

It's real.

It's good.

No, see, people try to tell us, no, that's not how God is.

No, I'm sorry.

I've got the evidence on the inside.

God has spoken to me.

So then after worship, now you come and you share it.

And I can tell you having opportunities to teach and to preach

and to be able to share the truths of God's word.

I think I get more out of this than you do.

Because when you actually sit down and you want to be able to deliver

something to God, I can't deliver anything that hasn't affected

me.

It's not real.

So I'm thankful for these times.

I'm thankful for the truths and the time together with God.

This last verse, it talks about that he was shining, that he

took the veil off.

You know, God, or Moses spent so much time with God that he began

to glow, physically shine.

His face shined.

God reveals himself as light and so bright, brighter than the

noondayne sun, to the point where now Moses is physically altered

by being around God.

He's got to wear a veil to calm it down a little bit.

In Ohio, we have cold, we have winters.

You all know what winters are?

No.

It's cold.

And we would.

We would have a fireplace.

We would burn wood.

And on the fireplace we had a little spot to sit and.

And we got a little stand with a little shovel, little broom, little

tweezer things.

Or, you know, you grab the.

I call them tweezers.

But what I. I ply.

I don't know, they're grabbers.

You grab a hot log and then you got a poker.

And sometimes I would just sit there and I'd take that poker and

I'm just playing.

I'm just messing around the fire.

My wife's like, quit.

You're a bad influence.

No, she's like, the boys are going to do that.

And I'm like, no, I'm going to tell them not to.

But I just playing around.

But sometimes I would leave that poker in the fire and I'd pull

it out in that sucker's rock, red hot.

And then I would, no, I'm just joking.

So that poker spent time in the fire to the point so long that

that poker was in the fire.

Now the fire's in the poker, it's glowing.

The fire is now in the poker.

That's what God wants to do with you.

He wants you and I to spend enough time with him that you spend

time with him.

And then he becomes inside of you.

Come prepared, be ready, come alone, be expecting.

It produces worship.

And then we need to share it.

When Moses went around, he people say, hey, what.

What happened to you?

Oh, I just spent time with God.

It's going to spill out when you bump into him.

That's what we need.

Would you stand with me for a time of invitation?

Lord, thank you so much for this passage in scripture, Lord,

of the truth of your word and the real impact it can have in our

lives.

Lord, thank you for loving us enough to tell us about these things,

to show us forth who you are.

Lord, thank you for helping us in our time of need.

And thank you for being who we need you to be.

Lord, I pray that something was said tonight would stir our hearts

to put a deep hunger for your word and for your presence, Lord,

that there would be nothing that matters outside of hearing from

you.

That we would not worry about work, about relationships, about

family, about our spouses, Lord, but we would be fixated on

you, hearing from you, guided and led.

Lord, I ask this in a way that would be tangible tonight, Lord,

that you would see fruit as a result.

Lord, I pray this in Jesus name, Amen.