The Lord gave me a picture in my mind today for tonight. And the picture, just think about the people you care about the most, the people you have influence over. Think about your grandchildren or your children. Think about your relatives and your friends.
Think about your coworkers. And what the enemy wants to do is he wants to encapsulate them. He wants to build a wall around them. And he uses the culture and he uses our flesh to build this wall all around them so that they are not open to the gospel.
They are hardened to the gospel. They are cold to the gospel. And like the walls of Jericho, we're supposed to march around that wall. We're supposed to march around.
How do we do that? We march around it by praying. We march around it by fasting. And we march around it by listening, hearing what God would have us to do.
He had to hear what God told him to do. We have to hear what God tells us to do. If we do that, instead of our weapons bouncing off of those walls, God will collapse those walls. If you want to be powerful, spiritually powerful, you've got to learn how to march around the walls in a spiritual way, believing for them to collapse.
They're not going to collapse the first time around the wall. You have to be faithful. You're going to have to trust God. You're going to have to listen to what God would have you to say.
But, Mom, that's here's a word for you today. Grandmas and grandmas. Our kids being good kids isn't good enough. It's not good enough that they're good kids.
We don't want to raise good kids. We want to raise godly kids. We want to raise kids that long for the Spirit of God, who want to please God, who have a hard after God, that doesn't happen just because we have a nice family. That takes more than a nice family.
It takes more than together living for them to become great spiritual men and women. We have to let the Spirit of God move through us to crush what the enemy's trying to do. Some of you, your children, are already grown. They've made decisions.
Their hearts may be a little hard to not do what you know they should do. They certainly aren't the spiritual, powerful people you want them to be or that you believe they should be. The first step is for you to be the spiritually powerful person. You're supposed to be.
And that means you've got to march around those walls. You've got to pray for them continually, continually, pray for them. We have a wall in our house that's a picture of our kids on it. And most mornings I'll go down there and stand in front of that wall and I'll just begin to pray for every one of them up on that wall.
I'll be going to pray for them. I'll be going to pray for the grandkids. I'll be going to pray for their families because I believe prayer makes a difference. We pray changes things.
I believe we silence the enemy when we pray and we lose the Spirit of God when we pray. And so I want to challenge you. Are you praying for these things? Are you fasting for them?
And are you listening to God and hearing what God would say to you in a moment like this in your own prayer times? See, there's times in a moment like that, sign praying God will give you a word. I'll tell you something you should do. And I want to encourage you.
It's in those simple little places that we begin down the road to the big changes we want. So remember that. It's in the little incremental voice of God saying, do this, do this. That leads us to the big breakthrough.
We want to sit and say, oh, we want a massive breakthrough right now. So does God. But it begins with marching around the wall today and then marching around again tomorrow. And then marching around again the next day.
And praying and fasting and believing and listening. Now if you have your Bibles, open them with me to Psalm 46. And here's a passage. It's a famous passage.
It's a well-known passage. It is a passage that is supported by other scripture throughout the Bible. And yet it's one that many times doesn't get incorporated into our devotional life. And again, I want to challenge you.
Do you have a devotional life? Do you have a time when you read the Bible? Do you have a time that you set aside to pray? Do you really believe that God is a great thing?
Do you really believe that prayer changes things? And if you do, why wouldn't you be praying? I'll tell you why we're not. It's because spiritually the enemy discourages us from it.
He entices our flesh to other things. That's not just for you. That's for me. That's for all of us.
The enemy wants to push us away from prayer. He wants to push us away from the Word. For the Word will feed you and encourage you. Prayer will go out into the heavenlies and bind up the enemy and loose the will of God.
But I also have to listen to this scripture. Be still, verse 10, be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth.
Be still and know that I am God. This is a hard one for us to be still, to just stop, pray about something, read your Bible, and then listen. To read your Bible and then to say, stop at a certain point and say, okay, God, what are you saying to me? And just be still and listen.
Let God speak to you. Let him surface issues in your life. To pray about, say, pray for a child, pray for our church and then just be still and let God speak to you. Let's pray for our city and pray for your coworkers.
But here's the question. Do you want to hear from God? Do you really want to hear from Him? I want to hear God.
It's in the hearing that life gets really exciting. It's in the hearing from God when all of a sudden God begins to push you out of some of your comfort zones into places where you know He's real because as He moves you and as you listen and obey, He begins to use you as a tool in His hand to bring about His will. So do you want to hear from God? Do you understand that He is ready to speak to you?
He is speaking to you and He's ready to speak to you now. That's all through scripture. This isn't an unusual thing. This is God saying this in the world has tried to make it seem like we're some sort of a, you know, some sort of mental illness that if you hear God, because that's what the enemy wants to shut that voice down.
He wants to use everything he can to shut that voice down. So you're not to pay attention to that voice. But we need to listen to it. We need to understand the voice of God is available for us if we will listen and He will lead us in His will.
So why should I be still? I should be still so I can hear. This doesn't have to be an hour. This has to be a few moments.
Set aside three or four or five minutes. Ten minutes. Set aside. God, I'm just here with you now.
I'm just here with you. Our lives are filled with noise, especially in this generation. You can't hardly see somebody walk down the street without their earphones in. The world is just full of noise.
Getting our cars and immediately the radios come on. The CDs go in. Just fill our life and you can't hardly get dressed without having the TV on to listen to it. Our lives get filled with noise if we're not here.
There needs to be some downtime where we can listen. It's just like with you, friend. You don't want to, if you come in to talk to your husband, your wife, and they're watching TV, and you're talking to them, they're going, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. You know they're not listening. They've got to press the mute button and listen.
They're more important than what's on. And that's the same with us with God. We've got to press the mute button sometimes. And train ourselves to listen to what God is having.
I believe this is why many young people are wondering around. They don't know what to do with their life. They don't know what's coming next. They don't know where to go.
They don't know what decision to make. Because for the first 15, 20 years of their life, it's been filled up with noise. They've got noise going all the time and there's no natural point anymore where there's silence. I mean, when I was at Kaitley's, if you got on your bike and rode a car over your front house, that was you and the bike.
Now they've got their headphones on and everything's plugged in. There's noise all the time. And I was just telling you, there's nothing evil about that other than we need to set time to set time aside to be still. To be still.
To listen to what God, what He would say to us and how He would speak to us. So we need to take this time to be still and to listen to God. So are you doing that? Are you taking that time?
Are you listening to Him? Do you know the voices that are going on in your life? So you have that time carved out in your life to listen. If you don't, even if you hear something, you're never going to learn if it's God or not.
You've got to practice it. You've got to sit in His presence and listen. We have to discern the difference between the flesh and the flesh and the blood. We have to discern the difference between the flesh, the enemy and the voice of God.
We have to learn how to separate those three voices. Now listen, look with me in Philippians 4. Philippians 4 verse 4. Rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again.
Rejoice. Rejoice in the Lord, when? Always. Rejoice in the Lord always.
When things are going good, when things are going bad. When you understand how things are working, when you don't understand what's just happened. Rejoice in the Lord always. I'll say it again.
Rejoice. We have a good evidence all. The Lord is near. Do you not be anxious about anything but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
The peace of God with transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. We start by being a people who learn to rejoice in the Lord. Over what? Anyone?
What should we rejoice in the Lord? Anybody? Shout it out. This wasn't a good idea.
He gave us another day. He's led us into a personal relationship with him. Heaven is coming. No matter how bad today is, I'm a day closer to heaven.
His spirit's with me to guide me. He declares that he loves me. He says it clearly over and over. He promises to sustain me.
We have a lot to rejoice in. We live in America. That's something to rejoice in. Even with all the bad things going on, it's better here than any place else.
Listen, friends, the poor in America are rich in the eyes of the world. We need to rejoice in what we have. So we rejoice. You take time.
What happens to Moses? We think about our problems so much that we get down. We just get beat up. And Paul says, there's a solution.
Rejoice in the Lord always. I'll say it again. Rejoice. Take some time, even when it's going bad, to think about all the things that are good.
All the things that are good. Let your gentleness be evident to all. Gentleness. It's not a compliment to a Christian to be considered harsh or cruel or insensitive.
That's not a compliment to a Christian. We've got to be careful. We can't judge other people's hearts as much as we may want to. But we want to work at this idea of being gentle.
Because we remember the Lord is there. What does he think? So do I speak as he would speak? And I need to remind my spirit that God loves me.
Because the enemy is going to be telling you anything less than that. Then by prayer, petition, and thanksgiving. How might that look? How might that look?
Might look like this. God, I need your wisdom and my job. It's not going so well. God, I'm thankful I have a job.
I'm grateful for the job you've given me. Grateful for God. God, it's hard sometimes. I'm grateful for what you've done for me.
That you provided for me. You get fired. God, I got fired today. I'm grateful you're my provider.
Grateful you're Jehovah Jireh. I'm grateful that I don't have to do my part. But God, I don't have to worry about this. You're in charge.
My job is never my substance. You are. You'll keep me. You'll guide me.
You'll direct me. God, I just got some bad news about my health. I'm thankful that no matter what I'm in the face tomorrow, you're with me. Thankful that you're with me, God.
I'm thankful that you're going to help me. God, I don't want to face this. I know I don't have to face it alone. Let your spirit give me the strength as we walk through this.
Lord, I would ask for you to heal me. I'm grateful that you're a healer. What does this look like? I've got this issue with a son and that he's making a bad choice and my daughter's making a bad choice.
I'm grateful that you love them. I'm thankful that you know their name. I'm thankful that you've done this. I slipped past you.
I'm thankful that you want them to go to heaven. God, I'm thankful for that. And I'm just coming before you just believing that you're going to move in their lives. There's a thankfulness that comes when we understand who God is and we trust who God is and we believe who God is.
And there may be some weeping and praying, but in the middle of the weeping and praying there should be a rejoicing and a thankfulness. So I present my prayers. I present my petitions, but I do them with thankfulness. God, I know you got this.
It's isn't too big for you. You're the God who parts the seas. You're the God who shakes the mountains. You're the God who tells the storms to be still.
You are the God who opens blind eyes and raises the dead. I got nothing to worry about here. And we pray through that until the anxiousness of the day is gone. But listen, we've got to be praying.
We've got to be praying. We've got to be seeking God. And I just want to keep emphasizing this. Whatever you leave uncovered in prayer is uncovered, especially those areas where you are the spiritual, scriptural authority over those situations.
Are you hearing me? You have spiritual, scriptural authority in your children's lives. And none of us would do anything to put our children at risk except not pray for them. Not be faithful in prayer for them.
We need to pray for them. We look at our country, we see where our country. The problem in America today, friends, let's say the problem in America isn't who's president. It's not who's in Congress.
The problem in America is the church has left it uncovered. We've left it uncovered. And so things have happened that shouldn't happen. People are making decisions they shouldn't make.
People are free to make decisions they shouldn't feel free to make because the church hasn't kept it covered. The power is always in the hands of the church. The world doesn't believe that, but it's the truth. Then the peace of God.
So I would say, be still and wait on Him. Waiting needs to be carved out in our life. Now we talked about these filters of hearing God. When you're waiting and listening to God, we have to ask the question, God, is this prompting truly from you?
We talked about that a couple of weeks ago. Is the voice scriptural? Because if it's not scriptural, it's not God. Is it wise?
Is it in tune with my own character or wiring? And what do people, I most trust, think about it. These are the first filters we begin to run these things through to say, is this really God? So I want to talk a little bit today about, is it wise?
Now the first thing that we have to do to, for us to be able to ask that question, is we have to be wise. And this is one of those things where we all think we are and we may not be. We've got to soak in a little bit. James 1 5 says, if any among you lack wisdom, let him ask God to give it to all men liberally and not, and the shall be given him.
There's got to be a recognition. I don't know what to do here. I'm not sure I know the right thing here. God, I'm asking you to give me wisdom.
I'm asking you to reveal it to me. I'm asking you to show me what to do. And many, many times, friends, what happens in Christian lives is we charge forward in something based in our own experiential wisdom instead of God's wisdom, in our own cultural wisdom instead of God's wisdom. This is really beginning to impact the church because we're in such a secular society today.
So we need to pray and ask for wisdom. Now look in Proverbs chapter 1 with me. The Proverbs, verse 1, the Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel. Now, he's going to tell us what Proverbs are for, for attaining wisdom and discipline.
The Proverbs are there for us to gain wisdom, for understanding words of insight, for acquiring a disciplined and prudent life, doing what is right and just and fair, for giving prudence to the simple knowledge and discretion to the young. Let the wise listen and add to their learning and let the discerning get guidance, for understanding Proverbs and parables, the saints and the riddles of the wise, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge but fools despise wisdom and discipline. This is why we encourage you and we have it around here for years, read a proverb every day. Read a chapter of Proverbs every day.
Every day of the month it is. Read that day. Read the tenth, read the tenth, read the tenth, read the eleventh, read the eleventh. If it's the twenty-second, read the twenty-second, read the twenty-second, read the twenty-second.
No, no, it doesn't look the first. Okay, if it's the first, read the first. And just do it over and over and over and over again. Just keep reading it over and over again.
Just keep reading God to reveal to you. There's parts of the Proverbs, the first couple chapters. You may not get it at first. You may be wrong.
What's this all about? What's all this stuff about running around with this person or doing that? What's it all about? Bloodthirsty people.
What's it all? It's going to come. When you need it, it's going to come. The Holy Spirit is going to reveal it to you when you need it.
Then you're going to get some of those later chapters and it's just going to be verse after verse after verse of God saying, do this. Think this way. Think this way. Think this way.
Look at it this way. See it this way. Do this. And the more that gets sunk into your heart, the more you'll begin to act in wisdom.
You'll begin to know how to act in godly wisdom. Here's one of the key scriptures about godly wisdom. Proverbs 11, 14. Where there is no guidance of people, falls, but in an abundance of counselors, there is safety.
In an abundance of counselors. Do I want one counselor? What do I want? I want an abundance counselor.
See, here's what happens is we grow up and our parents are telling us what to do and guidance and give us direction. And then we reach the stage where we go, I don't want anybody to tell me anything anymore. And what that proves is how dumb we are. What we really need is right at that moment we need a bunch of counselors around us.
A bunch of people say, time out, wait a second, let's think about this thing through. Maybe not all, but many of us have been guilty of that. The wise thing is you want a bunch of people around you that have freedom to talk to you. Now there's one great error that we make.
You can read about this error and I'm not going to take time to read all through this passage today, but you can read about this error in 1 Chronicles 12. Here's what's happened. When Solomon's died, Raya Bowen is now supposed to be the king of all of Israel. Jeroboam, it's all the bones, it's kind of confusing here.
Jeroboam shows up, he rises a bunch of people. And Solomon's been pretty tough on him. He's been pretty demanding. He's built the temple, he's built the palace, he's built all of these things, he's expanded things, he's done all kinds of stuff, and he's put them to work.
And they come to Raya Bowen, Jeroboam does, and he says to him, look, your dad's been tough. It's been hard. He's kept us and under bondage and he's made us do things and he's been hard. What are you going to be like?
And Raya Bowen goes to his dad's counselors, the old men, they've been around for a long time. And they look at him and they say, listen, if you'll go back to them and you'll tell them I'm here to serve you. I'm here to make your life better. I'm going to protect you, I'm going to take care of you, I'm going to listen.
It's going to get better. We're going to place now where good things can happen. They say, listen, if you do that, these people will be yours for a long time. Travel.
And then Raya Bowen does what most people do. This is especially true with young people. He ran off to all of his buddies. All the people, they're just as little life experiences as he has.
And he says, what do you think we should do? He said, and you should tell them that you're pinky is bigger than your dad's thigh. What he did to them is nothing compared to what you're going to do to them. It's going to be tough and hard, you're going to be the man, you're going to lead this thing, and they've just got to suck it up and live with it.
And then Raya Bowen, for some strange reason, liked the sound of that. Have you ever been there? Were you like the sound of something and six months later? Wasn't so good?
Maybe all your buddies. All this is great. They're having fun with you. They're running with you.
They're doing all this stuff you're doing. It's great in the moment. And the kingdom divided. Listen, abundance of counselors doesn't mean I just pick a bunch of my friends who know nothing more than I.
This is where we have to learn to honor those who are more experienced than us. Honor those who are more spiritually advanced than us. Honor those who've been down the road a little bit and get opinions. Getting guidance doesn't mean you're under their thumb.
Getting guidance means they're giving you advice. And when you have three or four people who've been very successful with their life and overcome some things in life and they're all telling you the same thing, probably ought to listen to them. Listen, I'm just telling you, I have people I call, I have people I go see, I have people I go listen to, I read every book they write and I try to build relationships because they're farther down the road than I am. I try to find that in my life.
If I want to hear from God, one of the places you hear from God, one of the ways you can confirm that what you're hearing is from God is from people speaking into your life. Then telling you or then confirming to you. And so I want to tell you, if we want wisdom, if we want to be able to test whether what we're hearing is wise, then we need to pray for wisdom. We need to read the book so we get wisdom and we need to fill our life up with an abundance of counselors so that the wisdom of God can be upon us.
Listen, come up and say, I met this guy three months ago, we're getting married. Anybody with any experience is going to look at you and go, don't do that. Well, God's told me it's okay, no he hasn't. He has not told you that.
Oh, it's going to be fine. He has not said that. Here's what I always tell people. You can fix waiting too long, really easy.
You can't fix going too fast. You got to mess on your hand there. You got to look. You got to think about this.
I remember there was this, when Tina was a teenager, this boy wanted to date her. We weren't really big on the dating scene in the first place, but we'd let her go out with all groups of people and he just wanted to take her out. The rule was, they have to talk to me first. I'd sit down with these boys and say to them, why should I let you borrow my car?
They'd look at me like, really, why would I let you borrow my car? You probably wouldn't let me borrow your car. If I wouldn't let you borrow my car, well, I'd let you borrow my daughter. You wreck my car, I got insurance on that.
You wreck my daughter. I got a problem. So let's talk about your spiritual life. Talk about where you are.
Well, this kid, he had no clue. No clue. So listen, here's the deal. You got to take my daughter.
You got to have a relationship with Jesus. That's just the way it is. If you don't have a relationship with Jesus, I'm just not into this at all. This doesn't happen.
If you don't know how to serve him, you're not worried about what he's thinking. You're sure I'm like, I'm worried about what I'm thinking. You're not worried about what he's the one of us, you're thinking, you're doing stuff I don't want you doing. So he comes to church next Sunday.
You have the altar call and here he comes. Tina knows this story. Right down the altar. The altar call comes.
And so I say to him later, he comes to me and says, so we sit down and says, have you really given your heart to get the answer? You're really sincere about serving Jesus. Yes, I am. I say, well, here's what we need to do.
You need to take the next six months and not date anybody. You need to come see me every week. I need to disciple you and let you grow in Christ. And you need to lay some of these old habits down.
He was out of there. He was gone. He wasn't into that at all. See, I'm just telling you, there's wisdom in some things that keep us out of trouble.
You quit your job before you have a new one. Okay, so you're upset and you're mad and you don't like the way it's going. Get a new job. Get a new job.
Go find a new job. Then quit. Then walk away. Hey, I got to do this one too.
God bless you all. But be wise. We'll get around some people. You get ready to buy something and it's taking you six months to get the down payment and the monthly payments are the same price as the down payment and you're not going to have one month to do what you did six months to get the down payment for.
Be wise. No, all those are things that are really out there. But there are other things in our life that's surrounding ourselves with people of experience and life that we can look at and say, listen, I think I'm going to do this. Let the look at you and go.
Listen. Unless God has really shown up in this. You better not do that. You better make sure God's in it because it doesn't look good.
Just a sniff test tells me it sticks. I understand. If my life experience, I wouldn't do that. Now, when I have people who are more advanced than me, farther down the road to me, more experienced than me saying, man, I wouldn't.
I wouldn't. I'm going to be sorry you did that. Then I'm backing up and re looking at everything. Is this really the voice of God?
Is this really God speaking to me? But see, this is the course of saying is it wise? Is it wise? Do I have enough experience to know if it's wise?
Those foolish decisions for Christians are because of the desires of the flesh that we try to satisfy our way instead of God's way. We try to satisfy them, aren't we? And we think, oh, God knows how much I want this. So God's going to bless it.
God's going to bless it. Not many teenagers in here tonight, but this guy, this gal, I know it's not God's way, but God's going to bless it. I really want a boyfriend. I really want a girlfriend.
No. The answer, listen, you don't have to pray about things you already know the answer to. You don't have to pray about things God's already said something about. I mean, I knew as a boy growing up, there were certain things.
I didn't have to go ask my dad. He had already told me what the answer was. The ask him was fruitless. It was fruitless because he had already said no.
He had already said no. There was no need for me to go and ask about certain things. And there's certain things that we just try to talk God into because our flesh wants them. And we don't see the answer coming the way that's quickly as we want, the way that we want.
And so we begin to try to manipulate it instead of just saying, you know what, God, you know the desires of my heart. I know you love me. I know you care for me. I'm waiting on you.
This has been okay tonight. I just want you to take a minute. We're going to go in four minutes. We're going to dismiss.
But I just want you to take a minute and just bow your heart, bow your clothes your eyes. And just ask the Lord this question. Lord, is there anything you want to talk to me about? Anything going on in my life, God, you want to speak to me about?
And let the Lord speak to you tonight. It was about a little six or seven months ago. And Renee and I and Kaylee, we had a busy day that day. It was probably eight or nine o'clock in the evening.
We were headed for home. We hadn't had dinner and we decided to stop at a restaurant and grab something. And we were sitting in this restaurant. I wasn't a lot of people.
I was doing the week. I wasn't a lot of people there. And there was a couple sitting over. A few rows away from us.
And I sensed the spirit of the Lord say to me, go talk to me. Now I'll tell you, that's a little easier for me now because I'm used to it. If I sense that now, my next question is why wouldn't I? And what's the worst that's going to happen here?
And so I walked over and started talking to him. Hey, how are you folks doing tonight? He's going okay. I introduced myself.
And I said, oh, you're a pastor at Calvert. He said, yeah. This should be on the new building down here. Yeah.
That's really close to where we live. He said, really? I said, you go to church in a place? I said, you know what?
We haven't for a long time. We need to. So when you get in that building, we'll come. I said, great.
We've been here the last four weeks. Now listen, I could have missed that. I could have missed that. Completely missed it.
I just want to tell you, God wants to use you in strange and wonderful ways. If I've got to learn to listen to that tonight, you said, and he may talk to you about it. He needs to go read the Bible more. He needs to set a time.
He may talk to you about, hey, you need to call your son or your daughter. Hey, you need to lighten up on this. He may have talked to you about a lot of different things. Maybe you said, I didn't hear anything.
That's okay. Don't freak out about that. You may not hear something because you're not used to listening. You may not hear something because you haven't done the last thing you told you.
God has a tendency. If we don't do the last thing he tells us, we have to repent of that and fix it. We'll start to do it the next thing. If I just want to create, there's an exciting life out there.
There's a powerful life out there. There's a protective life out there where everything begins to change when you begin to listen to God. When you can hear his intimate voice in your life and say, that giant out there, I'll go take him on. Because it's not me.
It's the power God in me. Listen to his voice. Your family will change. Your life will change.
A lot of things change when you begin to listen for God's voice. Listen, I've never gone out and told somebody, you know, got some deep spiritual voice and tried to act, you know, super, just be natural. Hey, how you doing? What's going on?
What's happening? Hey, just want to come over and encourage you today. Hope you've had things going well. And see what God takes.
There's been times I've gone talk to people. It didn't seem to take it anyplace. I always introduce them. I always invite them to church.
I always try to, you know, do my part in it. And there's times when it doesn't feel like it goes anywhere. But we never know what God's doing. We never know what in that moment God's doing.
So just be open. And when you walk away with you, feel like it happened or it didn't happen. Just be grateful to God speaking to you. Amen.
Lord, I pray for us today that our ears will be open to your voice. That we would be wise in what we do. Not foolish, but wise. Let us hear your voice and be guided by you in Jesus name.
Amen. Hey, hey, God bless you going to the name of the Lord today and may it be in your heart.