SPEAKER_00: Person in this room has done that at least once.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes our minds will wander during a lesson, or while we're singing, we'll turn on autopilot, and suddenly it just becomes noise essentially.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't want that.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to show up every day and praise him with everything.
SPEAKER_00: So to truly understand how to stop this kind of service, we need to understand the why.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give us to our first point, forgetting about him throughout the day.
SPEAKER_00: In Jeremiah 2 verse 32, it says, Does a virgin forget her jewelry or bribe her attire?
SPEAKER_00: Yet my people have forgotten me for days without number.
SPEAKER_00: Can anyone here even think about forgetting about God for that long?
SPEAKER_00: The problem is that maybe some of us can.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder, if we didn't go to church on Sunday, would we become like the Israelites?
SPEAKER_00: Would we forget about him for days without number?
SPEAKER_00: At church, of course we're gonna think about God.
SPEAKER_00: But what about Monday morning to Saturday night?
SPEAKER_00: Do we remember that Jesus died for our sins?
SPEAKER_00: Do we remember all the blessings God has given us?
SPEAKER_00: Or do we forget and suddenly remember Sunday morning and then just act like we've been with God in communication the entire week?
SPEAKER_00: What I think is funny, well not not funny, is that we're gonna stand before God in judgment one day.
SPEAKER_00: If we say, oh yeah, I remember Jesus and God every day, I read my Bible, I prayed, I checked all the boxes, and then Jesus turns and says, Depart from me, I never knew you.
SPEAKER_00: Firstly, you just lied to God, and that you can't lie to God.
SPEAKER_00: And secondly, you can never know Jesus if you don't spend time with him.
SPEAKER_00: We probably have a routine we stick to throughout the day.
SPEAKER_00: We get up, check our phones, get coffee, get ready for the day, go to work.
SPEAKER_00: Something like that, I would assume.
SPEAKER_00: But that routine doesn't include God, does it?
SPEAKER_00: Then once we get home, we're so tired, we forget.
SPEAKER_00: And begin another routine.
SPEAKER_00: Though routines in themselves are not bad, without even trying to include God in them, they can slow it can slowly lock God outside of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Except for the Sunday service or Wednesday night.
SPEAKER_00: Some routines that you could include to stop this is praying when you get up, reading a scripture in the morning, or when you check your phone, have a notification set up from a Bible app so that like you can read your Bible first thing in the morning.
SPEAKER_00: My second point is ignore him because we're scared of what he's trying to tell us.
SPEAKER_00: The passage for this is Jonah 1, verses 1 through 3.
SPEAKER_00: Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, son of Imma Immadi, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, it for their evil has come up before me.
SPEAKER_00: But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish.
SPEAKER_00: So he paid a fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: After this passage, Jonah gets caught up in a storm, swallowed by a fish for three days, and then vomited onto a shore, where he preached the Ninevehites.
SPEAKER_00: Now naturally you can't physically run away from God.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work like that, but you can definitely do what Jonah did without physically running away.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps there's been a message you've heard over and over again, but you just don't want you don't want to fix it.
SPEAKER_00: You don't know how to fix it, you're scared to do it.
SPEAKER_00: The problem is this running away from your problems or God is trying to tell you never works.
SPEAKER_00: Like with Jonah, there'll always be some kind of big fish that will swallow you if you do.
SPEAKER_00: Now I want y'all to look at your personal life for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen God speak to you in some way at some time in your life and you ignored him?
SPEAKER_00: Is there something in particular you know you should do or that God is telling you to do, but you just don't want to do it?
SPEAKER_00: That's where faith comes in.
SPEAKER_00: In Acts 17, verse 28 it says, For in him we live and move, and have our beings, as some of your poets have said, for indeed we are his offspring.
SPEAKER_00: Everything we do should be and is for him and in him.
SPEAKER_00: You must have faith that God will protect you through it, and that you will always have him no matter what.
SPEAKER_00: Jonah had no faith in God that he would protect him from the Ninevites and ran away.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham lacked faith when he said that Sarah was his sister.
SPEAKER_00: I actually would have loved to see that conversation when they left Egypt between him and his wife.
SPEAKER_00: There are countless others in the Bible who have wavered in their trust of the Lord, but they are there for a reason.
SPEAKER_00: You've probably learned or heard about them, but now you need to apply it, what you've learned from them.
SPEAKER_00: And that is where I reach my final point.
SPEAKER_00: How do we proceed?
SPEAKER_00: About a year ago, I went to visit some family in a rather foreign state of California, and I was talking to one of my cousins, and I said, I don't really know how to take away time for my day to spend with God.
SPEAKER_00: And she said, You make time for him.
SPEAKER_00: An example of this is found in Mark 1, verse 35.
SPEAKER_00: It says, And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus departed and went to a desolate place, and there he prayed.
SPEAKER_00: We are called to follow Jesus' example, and I cannot remember a single time Jesus said, Eh, I don't have time to pray today, I can do it tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, he made a very conscious decision to get up very early in the morning for the purpose of prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Never say you don't have time for prayer.
SPEAKER_00: You always have time for prayer.
SPEAKER_00: You just need to make it.
SPEAKER_00: All of this is really small life changes overall that you already have time for.
SPEAKER_00: You just haven't set aside that time yet.
SPEAKER_00: For instance, doing what Jesus did in Mark and setting time aside to pray, or taking time in the morning to study your Bible, every minor, seemingly minor thing counts.
SPEAKER_00: Anatomic Habits by James Clear, he says, if you can get 1% better each day for one year, you're you will end up 37 times better by the time you're done.
SPEAKER_00: Even if it feels like you're growing very slowly and adding God to your life, remember that 1% every day is all it takes.
SPEAKER_00: When you look back, you realize how far you've come.
SPEAKER_00: Our elders and preachers, they did not get as far in their studying without spending a lot of time with God, not ignoring what he told them or what was revealed to them in their studies of the scripture.
SPEAKER_00: If you simply make it a priority in your busy day to spend time with God or listening to what he says, I can assure you, you will grow.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to take a lot of time, but it is worth it.
SPEAKER_00: At the very least, it is better than scrolling on your phone.
SPEAKER_00: As we go throughout this week, I want y'all to spend at the very least five to fifteen minutes a day with him.
SPEAKER_00: Whether that's in prayer, reading the scriptures, or singing praises to him, a Bible study, even, whatever you can think of to get closer to him.
SPEAKER_00: Then look back and see how much it's changed your week.
SPEAKER_00: The scripture that sums this up is James 4, verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this lesson's been beneficial to you all.