[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to the message podcast of High Ridge Church, Longview, where our vision is to help you know God, find freedom, discover purpose, and ultimately make a difference. We are so glad that you're here, and we pray that this message impacts your life as you apply the spiritual truths from God's word in practical ways.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Let's listen in. This morning, I wake up and I walk out into my kitchen, and my daughter's standing there. And I looked at her, and she's wearing the same outfit as me.
And I was like, I'm not changing. You can change.
So it's funny that that happens. But if you're joining us online, welcome. We are glad you are here.
Happy 250 years.
All right. I'm glad you're in church. Hopefully you're sober. If not, we have free mints up front. It's okay. I've been there.
But no, we're excited. We love that we can share our faith in this country. We love that we can speak about Jesus. And that is our hope for the world, is that they will get to know who Jesus is. Right?
Amen. I want to start by honoring Pastor Tim and Tina. They are amazing leaders. Both of them had a birthday this past week. Everybody say, happy belated birthday.
There we go. So if they're checking us out online or if they come back and watch us, they'll see that everybody here wished them a happy birthday. But we love them. They're great leaders. I am grateful that we have leaders that rest, that take a break, that go seek new vision for this house. And so I'm super grateful for that. And then I want to honor my amazing, beautiful wife who's online. She is watching from Christus right now. She's working in the er. So I'm grateful, Laura Case, for everything you do for our family. For me, that's what I'm talking about. So I am super grateful for her, and she deals with me, my shenanigans, so you never know what's going to happen.
But I want to thank you guys first and thank you online for your generosity. I want to share a generosity win that is very, very important to me. If you look up at the screen, there's going to be a photo of a couple guys up here, and we have a nonprofit called Stillwaters Retreat. And we take first responders, that's veterans, police officers, firefighters, EMS professionals, and pastors out to a property where they get three days, two nights, completely free to them. They get some resources, they get connection, and we pour back into those that serve us. So thank you on this side of me saying it, because you may not meet all the people that have gone out there. So far, we've hosted 54 individuals. And I just want to say thank you for your generosity. Thank you for your support. Thank you for pouring into our community.
So today, I am going to start by telling you something funny about myself.
At least I think it's funny. But you guys may not find it as funny as me. I am terrified of something. How many people are terrified of spiders? Like, I don't love them, but I'm not terrified. All right, we got spiders. All right, how about scorpions? My wife hates scorpions. Hate some. Oh, scorpions. All right, for me, it's snakes.
Where's my snake? People like, I hate snakes. Oh, there's a lot of y' all in here. Thank God we are anointed today. It's people that love Jesus.
The snake came. I mean, it's the devil. That's all I have to say. I may not tread on it, but I will shoot it.
But I hate snakes. And I, like, I do two things when I see a snake. Okay, two things. Number one, I scream like Ned Flanders from the Simpsons. It is high pitched.
It is next level. It'll break glass.
The other thing I do is I like, high step and Heisman pose it to get out of there. Like, the snake's gonna jump up at me. But, like, I literally, I do high knees. I feel like I'm back in football in high school. Like, high knees just to get out of there.
I hate snakes.
And I want to tell you, like, come on, don't act like it's crazy that I hate snakes that bad. Right?
You all have something.
But I want to tell you why I hate snakes.
And yes, I probably need some counseling for it, But I don't know if it's going to heal it. When I was growing up, we had a family next to us, and they had five kids. Let's just call them the T family because their last name started with a T.
And they were great, great people. They had five kids. I remember the mom used to send them outside, lock the door, and tell them, don't come back. And I thought that was really bad. And then I had five kids.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: And I was like, huh, not that bad of an idea. I haven't done it yet. But I do make them go outside.
But they would be outside, and there's four boys and one girl.
And so, you know, the boys were always into stuff. We were doing dumb stuff in the woods. We had a couple acres of woods next to us. So I'd be out there building, like, a tree house that, like, you get a nail through your foot because you didn't even nail it in right? Or, you know, you go to start climbing it, and all of a sudden the wood breaks because you didn't think about, like, how much weight it could hold. He just found this rotted piece of wood that you put on top, thinking it was going to last.
But the neighbor, one of them. Nick, loved looking for snakes.
Like, he'd flip logs over, look for them all the time. And I remember one day, I'm at his house, and his mom's yelling, and I'm like, stop bringing home snakes.
They did wash. And he had, like, six dead snakes in his pocket, just, like, washed it, and they, like, pulled them out. And I'm like, if this was my kid, I'd be, like, laying hands.
But Nick came up one day too many, and he's just like.
And I'm like, what are you doing?
Why aren't you talking?
And all of a sudden, Nick. I'm about seven years old, maybe eight, just in kindergarten or first grade, Nick opens his mouth, and he thought it'd be cool to take a gardener snake and pretend it's like a piece of spaghetti and swallow it halfway down. So when he came up, the snake's trying to get out of his mouth, and he's chasing us around, thinking it's hilarious.
Terrifying, right? Terrifying. I'm like, I hate snakes. And when Nick would come up and not say anything, I'd be like, I'm gonna hit you.
I'm gonna just hit you just in case.
And so I never like snakes. And about three years ago, I get invited to go on a field trip with our youngest son, and he's going to the zoo. And I'm like, I'm in. I get to be dad for the day. I get to go to the zoo. I. I get to have fun. And this is going to be such an awesome time.
Now, if you know anything about me, if you take me to zoo, the first place I want to go is the gorilla enclosure.
Because I like to go up, get down close, and start knocking on the glass.
Then I make faces at the gorilla, just like.
And make faces to see if they react. Am I the only one that does that?
Like a grown man acting like a child at the zoo, just sitting there, hitting on the glass.
And we're sitting there, and Luke looks over at me. He goes, man, that's a big snake. And I'm like, nah, that's like the gorilla enclosure. He's like, no, up on top of it.
And I look up and there's like a 12 to 14 foot python going across the top.
I'm like, oh, no.
So I go find somebody that works at the zoo and I'm like, ma', am, there's a snake on top of the gorilla enclosure. She goes, sir, that is not possible.
I said, I saw it. I have video.
Like, I'm not lying to you.
So I show her the video. She goes, I said, I think one of them got out of the reptile area. I don't go in the reptile area. I'm not going to check.
You can go check or you can go right over and look up and you'll see this huge snake going across.
It might eat one of the gorillas, who knows?
And she said to me that there's no way that happened because we lock our snakes in.
I'm like, okay. She goes, here's what's probably happened. A lot of people when they get a pet snake, they let it grow and grow and grow. And when they don't want to feed it or take care of it anymore, they drive by the zoo and they just throw it over, hoping that we would take it.
New fear unlocked zoos now.
Like, I don't want to go to the zoo.
Like, there's snakes not just in the cages, but now on the outside and climbing all over. Like, cool. You just ruined that.
Can't go the monkey now.
And I think it's funny because like, like we all have these things that we fear.
We have a past, we have trauma, we have, you know, events in our life, thoughts, experiences. But a lot of times, like a snake, you can see. But I think there's things that we fear that you cannot see.
Things like fear, failure.
Like, I don't want to fail. I don't want to be embarrassed.
Fear of change and transition.
I don't like change unless I thought of it. Anyone else with me on that? Like, if I thought of change, I'm in.
If I did not think of change, cut me out.
Fear of the future.
Fear of rejection.
Maybe fear of letting other people down.
And that can be a hard one.
Maybe fear of making wrong decisions.
That's what we can think of a lot of times when we hear the word fear. But that's not the fear I'm going to talk about today. What I'm going to talk about is a different kind of fear.
A different kind of fear. How do we Combat those fears. How do we fight against anxiety, the things that stir us up? How do we actually overcome that rejection, that, that, that hurtful moment that, that those things that just pull us and get us lost in our thoughts.
And I think Proverbs 9, 10 shows us something very, very key in this.
It says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
So what is fear of the Lord?
Before I started going to church, I heard fear of the Lord. I started reading my Bible, my scripture, and I heard fear of the Lord, fear of the Lord, fear of the Lord. I. And I'm like, am I supposed to be terrified?
I didn't understand it because I didn't really have a comprehension of what it was talking about.
Fear of the Lord mentioned. The Bible goes beyond like fright or terror. It's actually deep reverence, ah, a respect for God's holiness, His power and his authority.
And I think when we can see that, when we can see what God is doing in that, then what can happen is we can move past those fears we just discussed.
We can continue to walk in faith. We can continue to move forward.
So let me put it this way. The fear of the Lord is an acknowledgement of God's supremacy and a recognition of our own limitations that require us to depend on Him.
We have to depend on Him.
It's a gift from a loving father.
He has plans for you. He has a purpose for you.
And the fear that we talked about, you know, earlier, the wrong kind of fear, what happens is we can become like paralysis by analysis.
We can get stuck. Anyone else do that, where you get stuck in like in your head and you're like, worst case scenario, man, we just got a $22 bill. I guess we're going to go bankrupt. Like you take it to nth degree.
Am I the only one that does that?
But, but this isn't what he's talking about. The Bible, the scripture is not talking about. The fear of the Lord is not to meant, is not meant to paralyze us with anxiety or distance us from God, but to pull us closer to be in relationship, to hear his plans, to know what he is doing in our life.
It motivates us to live in obedience and righteousness, to align our lives with his will.
So the fear of Lord is actually a concept of a covenant relationship.
God gave his only Son so that we can have relationship with Him.
Jesus died for your sins so that we can have relationship with Him.
So God made a covenant and that's what the fear of the Lord is based on. It's a covenant to pull you closer that God is saying, I'm never going to leave you. I'm here.
But we have to draw near to him too.
So when we fear the Lord, we open ourself up to his guidance, his wisdom, and his blessings.
It's a transformative mindset that allows us to look at our situation differently.
And today we're going to be in Psalm 25, verse 12 through 14. If you'll turn there for me, if you've got your digital Bible, look it up.
It says this.
Before I get into the psalm, I want to talk about what it is. David was writing this in a time of trouble.
He had fear.
He had a situation around him that he could not control. It didn't look good. And what David does in this is he takes all that fear around him and he goes in confidence to the Lord's friendship.
And that's what's believed about this Psalm. Psalm 25, verse 12 says this. Who then are those who fear the Lord?
He will instruct them in the ways they should choose.
They will spend their days in prosperity, and their descendants will inherit the land.
The Lord confides in those who fear him. He makes his covenant known to them.
And I love that. I love that. The scripture says, like the Lord confides in them, that means you. The Lord will confide in you. He has a purpose for your life. We believe that everybody here has a purpose to make a difference, to. To help spread the gospel, to share Jesus with everybody in this world.
So the Lord will confide in you. He'll speak to you. He'll pull you close. But we have to fear the Lord to do that.
And I love that it says, David is a man after God's own heart. And, you know, there was a time we had Beast Feast. It's our May event.
It's a large event with men gathering here. We give away guns. We have some meat, right?
Give away coolers and fishing rods and everything like that. And if you're on staff, you can't win any of it. And you sort of pout for a few weeks. But maybe one day I might win something.
But I love the event. And my brother flew down here from Pennsylvania, and I got to spend some time with him, and I loved it. We get done with the event after most events, after you're done. And I. I think I was emceeing at that event, but it was just like, it was so good to do it. And then we went hog Hunting. And we took a group from Hope City out there, so we had like six people. We go out hog hunting, have a blast. It's about 2 o' clock in the morning. We're up and my brother looks at me, he's like, hey, do you want to really sleep in a twin bed? And I'm like, no, this body doesn't fit.
I'm like, we can drive home. We're only 40 minutes from home. We'll just talk on the way home. So we drive home. We get home and I'm sitting there talking to my brother on the back porch. Next thing I know, it's 5:30 in the morning.
And I go to bed and I'm thinking, man, I'm so grateful that I got that time with him. I gotta talk to him. I gotta have a conversation. I don't get to see him all the time. It's rare for them to get down here with their family.
And about four weeks later, the Lord starts waking me up at night. And this is like almost every hour on the hour.
You guys ever have one of those nights, like, where you just can't sleep? You just keep waking up, waking up, waking up?
I would love to tell you I handled that. Well, I didn't. I was like, lord, what do you want?
Like, God, you're interrupting my sleep. Like, he doesn't know, trying to sleep, come on.
And I remember the Lord talking to me. He said, you know what, Doug? I would like to tell you some things.
I would like to confide in you, some things that I have for you.
But you just don't sit with me when I come to you. You only come to me when you need me.
And I remember the question that I felt like the Lord asked me. It was pretty much, how good of a friend are you to Jesus?
Not how good of a friend is he to me.
He's my best friend.
But how good of a friend am I to him? Do I let him interrupt my day? Do I let him convict me of things? Do I let him change my heart? Do I let him guide me and lead me and just do I trust him?
And so there's four conditions for a heart after God.
And I believe just like our hearts, we have four chambers. I think there's four chambers, four conditions for a heart after God. What it looks like to really, really fear the Lord, to chase after him.
The first one is purity.
Purity. And purity is important. Ezekiel 36, 26 says this.
It says, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I'll remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
I think that's important that we see that God doesn't want you to stay the same.
He has things for you.
And when I started thinking about purity, when I first heard this, what I first went to is honestly, sexual purity.
And Scripture's very clear. Sex is for a husband and wife, and marriage, it's very clear.
But I think this goes beyond that. When God's talking about the whole heart, impurity. And to me, it goes into, what about your motives?
What are you reflecting back on?
And we can make it look good. We can, Jesus, juke it all day where we're like, I'm just doing this for the Lord, but inward, maybe there's something, a deeper desire.
And I think God is checking our motives with, like, things like pride, greed, lust, selfish ambition. But we just call it ambition, bitterness, maybe some unforgiveness.
Just can't let go. Like God, if you only knew. Like, he does know.
And I think our ego can get in a way of purity, pure motives, pure intention. Like God, I only want what you want. I fear you so much. I love you, Lord. I only want what you want.
And that's what sanctification does. When we have a pure heart, we start to get sanctified, which means at the end of our life, when we look in the mirror, we should look more like Jesus.
And when I ask about purity, when I ask about, like, pure water, you see this all the time. Like, pure water. Drink it. Clean, filtered water.
A few years ago, I go to Dubai and I'm there with a buddy, and we meet two guys from India and another one from uae and they're like, hey, we want to take you to a place. And I'm like, where are we going? They said, we're going to Gold Souk.
It's a place that has all the streets lined with gold. And I'm like, this is going to be awesome. Let's go see it. Thinking, maybe I'll get a gift for my wife. She loves jewelry. I'll figure this out. I don't really know what we're in for. I'm like, well, I'll just get an Uber.
They're like, no, brother Doug, too expensive. We take a cab. I'm like, okay. So we get into the smallest, like, Toyota Corolla with, like, five of us built my size. We're just, like, gathered up, balled up, and we're driving. And one of the guys looks over and he goes, do you have any water? And I'm like, no, I don't have water. Like, you've been with me the whole time. We could stop at the corner store and get some. I'm sure they'll stop. It's fine.
And the cab driver, I kid you not, goes, I have some, and hands back a bottle.
This bottle is a huge bottle that's only half, like, full right now.
And the one guy drinks it and he passes it to the other guy and he drinks it. And then they pass it to another guy from the UAE and he drinks it. And they turn towards me and they're like, you need some water? And I'm like, no, Heck no.
I think I was, like, so direct. I might have, like, been off putting to him. Like, no.
I had to look at disgust in my face. Like, they could read it.
I couldn't fix my face. It just was. It was what it was.
And I'm like, do you know how much backwash is in there?
Do you understand that that bottle of water was, like, shared before we got in the.
Like, I don't know who drank out of it, but I don't want any.
But when we talk about purity, it's funny. We ask the Holy Spirit to come in our body. We ask him to come lead us, to guide us, to come into our heart. But it's funny. We are just as dirty as that water bottle sometimes.
But the things we let in, our motives, our ambition, our pride, our unforgiveness.
So let the Holy Spirit ask you something.
Where in your heart is it hard? Where are you not willing to change?
Where is it that you're seeking things for yourself rather than the Lord?
Where are you excusing sin?
The right motive when it comes to pure heart is always to point people to Jesus, to always point them back to Jesus.
Which leads me into the second one, which is generosity.
The second condition, the second chamber, is generosity.
Matthew 6:21 says this. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
And I think it's funny because when we start talking about generosity, when we talk about money in the church, most people tune out. I did for a long time. So please stick with me for about, like, 30 seconds.
I think the problem is we approach it sometimes the wrong way.
Generosity is not tithing. Tithing is 10% of your gross income.
Giving and serving here, serving is not your tithe.
It is literally what I'm giving back to the Lord because I trust that he's going to manage my finances.
And I think tithing's super. Important.
And that's not generosity. That's not what we're talking about. So I'm giving. The fundamentals of tithing is a portion. It's biblical. It's what we believe here. It's what us on staff do, too. We give back. And then above and beyond that is generosity.
And I think it's important to talk about generosity, because I was going to church, and I wasn't being generous.
I just didn't understand it. I mean, I would be generous to the people I wanted to be generous with. Like, where I get to choose who I bless. Not that the Lord could lead me. I'd be like, bless that person. Like, no, they're an idiot.
I like this one. I'm going to help them.
Am I the only one? Please don't make me feel alone up here being very vulnerable. Hey, will you pray for them? Like, no.
That is the dumbest prayer request I've ever heard. No, but I was going to church, and I would tell people, I love the church. I love God. I love people.
And it was weird because I just. I wasn't just, like, tithing was a thing, too, that I was struggling with. But on top of that, the generosity.
And we serve an abundant God that wants to bless you, and you're blessed to bless others.
And I remember this, and I remember going out, and I felt like the Lord convicted me. We went out on a double date, and we're sitting with a couple, and they're talking, and I come back and imagine this. Okay, I want you to put yourself in this scenario.
We go out to dinner. You're with my wife and I. Laura and I are right here. Just pretend she's right up here with me, and we have a great time. We talk. It was really good. I want to be generous. Not only do I bless you, but I buy you appetizers and a meal and. And dessert, and we tip the waiter really good because we want to be generous.
And the next day, you show up and you're like, hey, Doug, we had a great time.
We loved you, but your wife.
We just don't want to really be around.
Do you think I'm going to dinner with you again?
She's the better part of me. I'm an acquired taste.
She's the sweetest.
I'm the sour.
And that's the problem is the Lord sort of convicted me. Yeah, but, Doug, that's what you do with the church.
The church is my bride.
You find the negativity. You find the faults. You find the people that screw Up.
And I felt convicted. That, Lord, I need to just love you. And that means love your church.
I need to plant, I need to serve, I need to give, I need to tithe, I need to be generous. I need to push myself more because I love what you love and I want to love your bride.
So to ask you this, what are you doing with your resources and generosity is more than just financial giving. Please hear me in that all we hear is about financial giving. I want to talk beyond that.
Generosity is more than financial giving. It is how you use your time, your talent, your treasure and testimony to advance the gospel.
Those four things, are you putting your time towards it? Do you serve? Do you plug in? Do you connect with people? Are you using your talents? God gave you certain things that you can do to help serve the body, to spread the gospel.
Treasure. We talked about finances and your resources. What do you have in your hand in your testimony? What did God do in your life? And do you share it as openly as you need to?
So I'd ask you this, what is your generosity going to?
Does it show you love God and love people?
Or does it show I love me and my motives?
Which leads us to the third one, which is the third condition. The third chamber is authority.
We're celebrating America 250 years. Yes, freedom.
We don't really love authority.
Anyone else, like, I just love authority. Just tell me what to do. I am not one of those people.
I am like, you know what? Just don't give me any rules. I'll figure it out.
But I love what Hebrews 13:17 says. It says this, obey your spiritual leaders and do what they say.
And I want to tell you this. If you had a spiritual leader, pastor, a minister, if something hurt you, I say, I just want to say I'm sorry on their behalf.
If they tell you something that is sin or outside of scripture, then that's not great leadership. But if they're giving you scripture and it just disagrees with you, you're going to have to look inward at your.
Their work is to watch over your souls and they are accountable to God.
I think that's important. When I meet with people, when I give them advice, when I give them guidance, it's something I don't take lightly. And none of our staff here do either.
We focus on that like we have another judgment. In the book of James, it says those that teach will be just harsher.
We don't take that lightly. We want to help. We want to love people. We want to point them back to Christ, we want them to walk in their purpose and understand says this, give them reason to do so with joy, not sorrow. I love that point. Like, nothing's worse than when you go to meet with somebody and they're like, I just got a raise.
I'm gonna have to figure out how to pay all these taxes.
Like, dude, celebrate, be happy.
You know, it's just so much work.
Just got the job I wanted, but it's not exactly what I wanted.
Like, serve, go in with a good heart, be open handed. Like, start doing these things. And we're trying to encourage you and move you forward and help you with growth and let you look inward rather than everything else that's on the outside.
It says that certainly would not be for your benefit.
To have a benefit. Come joyfully with authority. Come ask them, what do you see that I'm not seeing?
Can you pray and fast with me? Can you seek the Lord on anything you're hearing with it? Hey, does it sound like I'm on the right track?
Who in your life can tell you no?
And this is what I had to ask myself about authority is this. You're not under authority if your authority can't disagree with you, challenge you, or tell you no.
I found in my life I've actually chased authority. Now I have three people that get to know everything about me.
Everything. The good, the bad, the ugly, where my thoughts are, how my life is. Because not everybody needs to know your stuff, but somebody does.
And they give me different perspectives and points of view and they help me navigate.
They help me avoid the speed bumps in life that are going to cause more fear. Like God, did I make the right decision? It's like, no, I submitted. So, Lord, you deal with them. Now cover me.
Which leads me to the fourth one, the fourth condition, which is obedience.
Obedience.
1st Samuel 15:22 says this. Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice.
And I think that's important to understand and to heed is better than to fat of rams. It's important that we understand that obedience is key. It's not sacrifice. It's not like, oh, I'm just living out here doing the Lord's work. It's like, God, I am obeying. I know you're close. I'm fearing you. I'm in awe of you. I see you working even when it doesn't seem like it's going to.
Acts 13:22 says this. I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after My own heart. He will do everything I want him to do. And I love that comparison. I love the comparison of Saul who was not obedient and David, who was.
And I think it's important when you look at the two. Saul did a burnt offering, wasn't obedient. David was a murderer and adultery, and was a man after God's own heart. And the difference is this. When David got called out, when the Lord pointed out areas in his heart, David repented and ran right back to the Lord.
I wonder to myself sometimes, what would the church do with a modern day David?
Would we write him off because he made a mistake of, like, adultery?
I don't know. It's just something I chew on. Because God says, this is a man after my own heart. It doesn't mean that he didn't have the failures. It means every time he failed, he looked at the consequences. He walked through them and he owned it because he feared the Lord. And he did whatever it would take to get right back to the Lord's presence.
To be a son, to be a daughter, to be up close.
And I think you can come in here and you can talk about loving God, you can worship the Lord, you can share it on your Facebook, but if you're not obedient, you're really not being faithful.
And this is the hard thing to say, but I think it's important is partial obedience is still disobedience.
Like, ah, I did some of it.
That's not what the Lord's asking.
Delayed obedience is still disobedience.
If God is asking you to do something today, the question isn't whether it's easy or not. It's whether it's not. Even do I fully understand it?
It's do you trust the Lord enough to say yes and keep moving and keep going?
Do you trust him enough?
Psalm 25 says something I think most of us walk by. It's three verses that I shared.
It's that the Lord confides in those who fear him.
Like, sit with that for a second, think about that. The Lord of the universe wants to confide in you.
He wants to show you some things that only you're designed to do.
And I think a lot of times what we do is we have these blockages in our heart because we let our flesh lead, or we don't want to do it. We don't take steps. We just sort of stay stuck. And the Lord's saying, like, if you'll lean into these four conditions, watch what I start showing you.
It's not just to save you. It's to confide in you.
The fear of the Lord was never about being scared of God. It was about loving him so much. We only want to be near him.
We want to be in his awe, his presence.
And maybe that's why they called David a man after God's own heart, because he failed. But he responded every time. He didn't say, that's just how I am.
So here's the only question I think that matters right now. It's not, was that a good sermon or Doug, that was a great message. It's this.
It's, lord, which chambers of my heart are you challenging me on?
What chambers do I need to reflect inward?
I'll sit here long enough till it gets awkward.
Because I think so many times we get some kind of motivation or we get a message, but we don't leave here reflecting in saying, God, what are you trying to do with me?
This isn't for everybody else. This is for us.
If I can be vulnerable for a minute, let me tell you the hardest one for me.
Like, for example, I'll say, I'm not a smart man. I had to tattoo it on my arm.
I have obedience on my arm because it's my biggest struggle is I don't understand it. I don't know what God's doing. At times, I have this fear. I don't get it. And I have to have the reminder that I don't need to.
The more that I've submitted my heart, the more that I've leaned into what God's doing, the more that I've leaned into these things, the more that I see God move and I'm in awe.
So I'm going to ask you to close your eyes, bow your head.
I just want you to pray a simple prayer. Holy Spirit, what are you saying to me?
If you're online, do the same thing. Nobody's going to see you. Close your eyes, bow your head and say, holy Spirit, what are you saying to me?
What chamber of my heart needs help and healing.
As I'm sitting here? There's. There's one or two. I just can't hear from the Lord. There's one or two people that hear that you have some kind of business idea and you've just been in fear.
You don't know what it looks like. You don't know what that step forward is going to be. You don't even know if you can do it.
And it's going to be a huge kingdom investment.
It's going to have a huge effect in the kingdom because you're going to build it with generosity.
If that's you, I just, I. I want you to say yes to the Lord. It doesn't matter if I understand it.
I hear the Lord saying, there's. There's some issues within marriage, and it's almost like you're pointing a finger at each other rather than looking inward. And the Lord's saying, look inward, look inward.
Reflect on yourself and watch what I do.
Be open. Let me purify your heart.
Lord, I thank you for each and every person here. Thank you for what you're highlighting. Thank you for speaking to us. Lord, we trust you with every head bowed, every eye closed. If you don't have a relationship with the Lord, if you don't understand that the Lord can actually be near to you, that you don't know what your purpose is, and you feel this tug at your heart, like, lord, I want to come home. I want you in my heart. Maybe you've been away for a long time and you're just coming back to the faith too.
If that's you, I'm going to ask everyone in here to pray and repeat after me. Just repeat after me. Pray with me. Friend Jesus, I believe that you're son of God, that you died for the forgiveness of my sins, past, present and future.
I ask you to come into my heart to be the Lord of my life, to lead me, guide me in Jesus name.
Thank you for saving me.
With every head bowed, every eye closed. If you prayed that prayer, can you just put your hand up? I'm not going to call you out, but if you prayed that prayer, I would like to give. Give you some resources.
If you look up, if you see on the screen, it says text. I prayed to 844- HRC text. That's I prayed to 844- HRC Text. We would love to get you some resources, tell you about the next step, what you did.
Everybody. I'm going to have you stand up, I'm gonna pray for you. I'm gonna ask the elders and their spouses to come up here.
One thing we don't want you to do is leave without prayer. Prayer.
If you've been going through something, if you've been struggling, or if you felt like there was a tug on your heart, come on up and get prayer from these awesome.
They're walking up here. The rest of them, these awesome. We can spread down. We only have two here. We'll hop down, too. Pastor Chris, will you come up here too? Thank you.
Come get prayer from these awesome warriors. They pray for you before the services. They pray for you throughout the week. They are the people that I go to when I need prayer, that I'm submitted to, that I listen to.
They're the ones that fear the Lord and our walkingness. A couple things. We have a night of worship coming up in August.
You have the date August 29th and UNITE is September 17th, I believe. So. Check those out. You can look on highridgelv.com check those events out. Go to them. I just want to say thank you again. Thank you for your generosity again for the first responders at Stillwaters Retreat.
Thank you for what you do to serve them.
Lord, I pray for each and every person here. I pray that they have a blessed day that we don't just take this message and hear it, but we reflect on it. We repent, we move towards you Lord. We fear you. I pray that everyone at the sound of my voice has a blessed week and we pray in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:37:24] Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening in today. Our prayer is that you are encouraged and strengthened by the message. If you haven't done so yet, be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave us a review wherever you're listening. If you want to be a part of our online community, come connect with us through Facebook or Instagram with the handle hyridgelv. Or you can check out our
[email protected] lastly, if this ministry has impacted your life and you'd like to support its work, visit highridgelv.com give we appreciate your support and we're believing with you today for God's best in your life. Have an incredible week and we will see you next time.
