When You're Not Getting Anywhere | The Power of Pausing

😮‍💨 Busy doesn't always mean healthy.

Many of us spend so much time doing things for God that we forget to spend time with Him.

After taking an extended sabbatical—what he called "Camp Time"—Mark Carter shares what God taught him about slowing down, listening well, and making space for His presence.

Looking at the Israelites' journey through the wilderness, we see a powerful picture of God's leadership. They didn't move until God moved. The pillar of cloud and pillar of fire guided them, and the tabernacle became a place of worship, prayer, and dependence.

In this message, you'll discover:

⛺ Why intentional downtime with God renews your soul
🔥 How God's presence brings guidance and peace
🛡️ Why slowing down helps you recognize God's protection
🙏 Practical ways to hear God before life forces you to stop

If you've been feeling burned out, distracted, or spiritually exhausted, this message will encourage you to pause—and let God lead the next step.

At Fierce Church, we're Helping You Walk with Jesus Step-by-Step because The Best U is in Community.

💬 What helps you slow down and reconnect with God? We'd love to hear in the comments.

#RestInGod #Psalm23 #ChristianEncouragement #Burnout #Jesus #FierceChurch

Transcript

Camp Time And A Strange Detour

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today, guys, I want to talk to you about what we could just call camp time. That's where I've been on sabbatical, camp time. Not literally camping, but it's where we get away, whether it's for an hour, for a day, for an afternoon, or maybe even a vacation, or even a sabbatical for those that could somehow do it. And we devote some of that downtime to the Lord, to developing our relationship with the Lord so we can grow in understanding the nearness of his presence, his protection, and his guidance. So in order to start that conversation, I've got to start with something that happened this summer. And I'm not trying to offend your sensibilities, but my dog got butt worms. Yeah, yeah. It was, it was, it was very disconcerting to me. Okay. So here I am. Look, my dog watches, I don't know if he watches TV, but we're on the couch watching TV, all right? And he's laying on the other side, and I'm alerted. Uh oh, Chesterton's got butt worms. And so I'm thinking, I ain't having this. Now, you I do love my dog, but my my dog's health was not my first concern. My first concern was that there were gonna be butt worms that crawl down the sofa and get on me. Yeah, I don't know how they work. You know what I'm saying? I don't know. I'm afraid, you know, we're gonna be in bed and he's gonna climb up in there, and then suddenly I'm swimming in these buttworms when I wake up in the morning. I don't know. So that's where my mind goes. But, you know, we love our dogs too, so we want to take care of them. This is a little bit inconvenient to have butt worms, but we take him to the vet. And at the vet, it's found out that he has the dog version of Lyme disease. Now, for dogs, that's curable. If you find it early, it's curable. And so he got on his antibiotics, he's all better now, no butt worms. So, congratulations to the Carter family. You don't have to worry about that. Yeah, hey, thanks. Yeah, I was a little worried about that. But isn't it something how sometimes a detour brings us to a better thing? Sometimes getting off the path we're on can expose us to something we didn't know that we needed. I didn't know that him getting buttworms would actually maybe save him from Lyme disease, but that's how we found out about it.

unknown 2:19

That's good.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Sometimes, my friends, every one of us has got to pause. And I know that not all of us are down with that because we're very driven, we're very focused, but I'm like you are. We're gonna have to talk about

Israel’s Camp And God’s Presence

SPEAKER_00 2:32

that today. Dustin, let's see that camp of the Israelites in the tabernacle again. So if you weren't with us when we started, this is what the Bible describes. This is how the Israelites were camped as they made their way to the promised land over a period of 40 years. The tribes are surrounded by them, or surrounded, the tribes are surrounding the tenth tabernacle, which is like a portable church temple. And coming down on the temple is the very presence of God. Now you've got to know it's a pillar of cloud and fire, and it's what it's doing, it's actually protecting them from God. Like God is so powerful and so pure and so holy. It would kill them if he let them see all of his radiance and glory and awesomeity. And so he veils it and puts it behind a pillar of cloud and fire. And you gotta just imagine that probably felt pretty good, you know? I mean, here they are. They've come out of Egypt. What do they got? They got, they don't have any territory, they don't have any land. They certainly don't have at this moment the most spectacular military. Okay, so if someone's looking to pick a fight, it's a good thing to have that pillar of fire right there. It's already saved them from the Egyptians at least once. They don't really have any infrastructure, you know, officially to how they're running all this all this stuff. What they have, though, is they have the presence of God. And as they're gonna make their way for 40 years, they're primarily gonna do three things. They're gonna march, which means they're gonna pack up all their stuff and they're gonna start going. They're start making their way to the next place. And we do that. We march. Marching is just what you're doing, it's your every day-to-day. It's going to work. It's being intentional with your kid. It's being intentional with the friend that you feel like is going through a tough time. It's paying the bills. It's just marching through life. Now, they also occasionally have to fight. They have to fight real enemies. And we, thankfully, most of us don't have to fight real enemies, but we have just enemy fight stuff that goes on in our lives. There's just, there's uniquely hard trials. And it's not always, but you're in it, man, and you got to get through it and you got to believe God through it. And it's your faith is tested and your flesh is tested, and maybe you're in a fight with someone that you're really close to, or you're kind of like looked down upon at work, or the doors don't seem to open for you, or man, you just can't catch a break and all your money got stolen. Whatever it is, it's a fight. It's not forever, but it's a fight you gotta keep on believing through. But then there's also what we might not do enough, and that's camp time. Camp time, the cloud settles, and everybody gets to okay, I'm gonna do what I need to do in camp time. Maybe if we're here long enough, I might rest, might polish any tools or weapons that I need going forward to make sure they're in, they're in good working order. But I want to read us a little bit about the camp time or how the process is described in the Bible.

Why We Resist Rest

SPEAKER_00 5:25

But before we jump in, I need you to alert to I need to alert you that all of us resist rest sometimes. Well probably almost all of us. There's some real lazy bones around, but for most of us, we just got a lot to do. We got a lot to get done. And it really is the root of it. What's going on behind that is it's just pride. Often, it's not that you don't have responsibilities, it's not that things, you know, won't maybe go a little bit different if you're not there, but there's this undercurrent of, but I'm essential and I'm needed. I don't have time to rest. And for those of you like me, who that is, we're missing out on all the power that is in pausing. It took me 14 years to have my first sabbatical. And the Lord had been warning me for years, you need to do this. And so then in 2021, I kind of blew up. Some of you know the story. I had a panic attack. I ran into the woods, just not even like, I just got to get out of here, just run into the woods. I find this log and I sit down, and I don't even know what a panic attack feels like. So I'm like, God, what is going on with me? I feel like I'm having a breakdown. I cannot go back to that church building. And what had happened? Well, we just got through the first year of COVID. I had I was full of decision fatigue. Everything was back and forth, back and forth. Everyone's hurting and worried and having all these new policies. And I just been, that was like year 14, and I just crumble and I come back. Some of you remember this. And I asked the elders, hey guys, I don't want to do this to you. I gotta get out of here. And so they gave me three months, get out of here, Carter. We'll figure out a way. Super generous. But part of that, as I look back, was it was just this belief, well, you know, it's just not a good time. I can't go now because it's not a good time. You know, what do they do if if if this is going on and I'm not here? What that was though, really was it was pride. So just open yourself to the idea: is it possible that some of what resists rests for you is just pride? That's not who you want to be. You don't want you, you want to be after it. You want to be fast, you want to be going. Same, but let's take the warning from God's word.

Following The Cloud In Numbers 9

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Here's Numbers 9, 15. On the day the tabernacle was set up, the cloud covered it. But from evening until morning, the cloud over the tabernacle looked like a pillar of fire. This was the regular pattern. At night, the cloud that covered the tabernacle had the appearance of fire. Verse 17 When the cloud lifted from over the sacred tent, the people of Israel break camp and follow it. And wherever the cloud settled, the people of Israel would set up camp. In this way, they traveled and camped at the Lord's command. Wherever he told them to go, they remained in the camp as long as the cloud stayed over the tabernacle. If the cloud remained over the tabernacle for a long time, the Israelites stayed and performed their duty to the Lord. They went about and did their business unto God. Sometimes the cloud would stay over the tabernacle for only a few days. So the people would stay only a few days, as the Lord commanded. Then at the Lord's command, they would break camp and move on. Sometimes the cloud stayed only overnight and lifted the next morning. It goes on to just describe, yeah, however long the cloud was there, they would be there. But if it leaves, you know, in 14 hours, okay, well, we got to pack up and we've got to go. What's happening there? Clearly, the Lord isn't concerned about the time it takes to get to the promised land. He's trying to teach them something else. He's trying to teach them, no, you stay with me. I had a dog that was so sweet named Jedi back in the day, but he would not stay with me. He's on all those long zip, you know, leashes, and we're trying to walk this guy, and he's just pulling me down the road. I found that God is not down with that. He'll just let us go. He'll be like, come back to me when you want to be in alignment with me. God wants to teach us sometimes with the starts and the stops. No, stay with me though. Stay close to me. Make sure that I'm in the center of the camp. The cloud doesn't follow you, you follow the cloud. That's how that works.

Camp Time Means Being With God

SPEAKER_00 9:23

So investing in downtime with God, or camp time as we're calling it, renews and amplifies his presence. It renews and amplifies his presence. Whether that's the hour version, whether it's the time you got 20 minutes before you go to work and you jump into God's word and be like, God, help me feel your presence today. Maybe you've got only 10 minutes at lunchtime. You're like, I'm gonna get away from these psychopaths and I'm gonna just get to get in with God's word. God, I'm not gonna make it through the day without you. Or maybe it's you're gonna take one afternoon a month and you're gonna go wherever you need to go to quiet. But God, I need to just have a little bit of camp time with you right now. Maybe even when you're on vacation, instead of like, well, I hope I get some extra time with God. Maybe you're just gonna plan. No, we're not gonna do this something every day. This day I'm already picking. This is gonna have three hours devoted to God wherever in the world I am. That's what I'm going to do. That is the life that has the most flourishing in it. The life closest to God has the most rest in it. It has the most sense of his affection and his love. It has the most sense of confidence that God's behind me and God likes me and God wants to be close to me and close to me. I mean, that's the gospel itself, right? That's what Jesus is for. In each one of us, we've sinned. And it's not just that sin is a concept. We've personally sinned and affronted a holy God, and but he doesn't want to be far away from us. The sin keeps us far away. And so Jesus says, I'm gonna come and pay the penalty for the sin. So why? So you can be close again. So we can be close again. Here's what we gotta understand: camp time is not primarily about learning things about God, it's about reacquiring the skill of doing life with God. It's doing it unto the Lord, it's recovering our sense of it's me and God. That's who it is. And it's just for God. It's not for what I can get for him. I get stuff from God, but it's not about what I get from him. It's just because he wants to be with me for me, and I want to be with him for him. Years ago, probably around 2016, 2017, the staff and I took our first staff advance very far away. Went to visit another church called New Spring, and it was a 14-hour drive. It was the first time we had a few cars, but we're all scrunched up together, man. And we were used to each other, we knew each other's roles and that kind of thing. But you gotta know over 14 hours in the car, you get to know people a little bit different. Sometimes you get to know their sense a little more than you wanted to. But a lot of time you're sharing hearts. A question goes out, and oh, this is how I feel. And you're learning not just about their skill and what they can do, you're learning about, oh, this is what it's like to do this with them personally. Yeah, that's what it's like. Now, you've also experienced you've been on a you've been on a plane or you've been on some other kind of transportation where you're with a lot of people. But it's not like you're doing life with them. You're you're with them for an hour or two or three at most. And then even if you had a conversation, you're not heart to heart. As we need to be more like the road trip in the car with God. God isn't calling us, hey, no, no, no, let's get comfy, let's get cozy. I want us to know each other. I want to remind you that I am your friend. I want to remind you that my arms are wide open and I welcome you with joy. Even when you've made mistakes, I want you to run directly to me and receive my arms around you, knowing that I have taken the fangs out of sin. It's still a big deal because it put the savior on the cross, but it cannot stop you from being close to me if you run to me. Run to me right away, and we'll be close again. Isn't this why? Like Psalm 23 is the most famous psalm. The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul, he guides me along right paths for his name's sake. Does this sound like a taskmaster God? He's disappointed and is giving you chores. No, this is a God that is interested in you being able to rest and calm down and experience him kind of in this in a way, doting on you. That's who our God really is. Now, one of the things we have to keep learning, though, is it's not just that God wants to do stuff for us. He does do stuff for us, but he wants to always bring us back to I'm not just your helper, I'm your source. I'm where you get the life and where you get the stuff that you need to make it through this day. So my dog Chesterton, he's sometimes contrasted in my mind to little Max. Little Max is much older, and little Max is one of those dogs that I feel like he really just he'll come find me just to be with me. Like he'll just lay down next to me. He doesn't really want nothing. You know what I'm saying? He's not gonna say much, he's just gonna like lay down or he'll just sit there and stare at me. I don't know if he's lost his mind, what is he doing, but but he he doesn't want anything. Okay. Chesterton often will come to me when he wants stuff. Okay, he wants food, he wants his butt scratches. And don't worry, I don't scratch near there. But it's pretty like he's pretty insistent. I want stuff from you, Dad. I feel like sometimes the Lord has informed me, you're a lot more like Chesterson sometimes, Carter, than you are like Max. And and and there's a lot, there's a lot that I need God's help for. I need God's help for decisions and and wake up, God, we got this going around at the church, and this person needs help, and I need you to do this. And it's a very kind of directive almost relationship. Well, I don't need you again and again. And that's good, that's fine. That's what Jesus invited us into. But it's also if that's the only thing going on, that is not Him for Him. And that's why we need camp time. Because when there's a little bit more space, sometimes if you can just have a little bit more, the stuff of life begins to settle. And you never know when that water settles, what might bubble up that Lord couldn't really tell us about because we were just too loud.

Let God Name What Still Hurts

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Something else that it's done for me during sabbaticals, even just during the day-to-day. But as we seek God, as we have camp time with him, you might find that he begins to pat you up, he begins to heal things that were hurt, even stuff that somebody did to you or some disappointment you had. The Spirit of Jesus has a way of helping us to bring that story to him, put it in his hands, and at the very least, our tears are safe in his bottle. One of the questions I asked during my sabbatical, you can have this one if you want this. Lord, what am I pretending didn't hurt? You know, because I'm tough. I'm gonna get through it. Like, ooh, just got hit by that. I gotta keep going, gotta keep going through the day. And we need to be tough, we need to have thick skin, but when we get to camp time, it's okay to just try to find what was that? I just kind of like glazed over that thing, man. But I think that still hurts. We just need to talk about it. What am I pretending didn't hurt? Let's talk about it, Jesus, because I know that you care. Jesus cares when things didn't go the way that we wanted it to go. Jesus will give us, if nothing else, his consolation. Because my friends, I know that we all dream big dreams, or we should, but life doesn't always go the way people say it's gonna go or should go.

Sovereignty And The YOLO Myth

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Ecclesiastes 9 talks about it like this. I've seen something else under the sun. The race is not to the swift. They run ran the fast, but they didn't win. Or the battle to the strong. They were the best contender, but for somehow somehow they didn't win. Nor does the food come to the wise, or wealth to the brilliant, or favor to the learned. But time and chance happened to them all. Sometimes it's just luck, sometimes it's just chance. They got way ahead of you because of chance. That's all it was on some level. And God says, I get it. I was with you. You did good. It wasn't my will for you to have that thing, but you did good. And we we reawakened to the idea of God's sovereignty. This is what's healing about it. God is over me. God knows all the things. He was there, he saw how much it hurt, and he allowed it into my life. God is not the all-cause of everything, God doesn't cause everything on the planet to happen. He doesn't cause murder, he doesn't cause rape, but he's in control of everything. And it's hard for us to understand from this point, from earth. But God allows sometimes very deep pain in our lives for reasons we don't understand, but ultimately he plans to. I want you to trust me, I'm gonna work this somehow in you and even in generations beyond you. I'm gonna work it for good, for the good of your soul. And one of the things that shuts us down from being able to receive that is there's a myth in our culture that says, hey man, look, you only live once, so you better do whatever you're gonna do. You better like get it all in. You better win the race. You better be the strongest contender, you better get it, and if you don't, it's because you're a failure and you're never gonna have that chance again. Sorry, you blew it. Because we think there's only one chance at life. But you know that's not true, right? No, dude. It's not you only live once, it's you're going to live forever somewhere. And if you've trusted Jesus Christ as your savior, that means you're going to live in heaven with him, and you're not gonna give a rip about what you missed here. Because, dude, you're gonna have the real stuff. See, the Bible even describes it a little bit like the stuff that we're managing here, even our opportunities and failures. That's kind of like that's kind of like play money. That's not even real money. That's not even the real stuff. And so God is asking, how are you gonna manage that? How are you gonna trust me through that? Because when you get here, you're gonna get the real money. You wanna make sure you can do everything you can to honor me, trust me, so that when you get to the place where the real opportunity is, where, dude, it's always every day awesome. It's according to the Bible, it's better by far. Let's not settle for, well, I gotta, I gotta do it because you only live once. How about let's live unto Jesus? Let's do what he says is wise. Let's just say, I want to do this, but I trust you, if the cloud isn't going that way, I'm not gonna go that way because I believe it's gonna pay off in the end. When times are good, be happy. When times are bad, consider this. God has made the one as well as the other. It's healing to know God isn't necessarily happy about the fact that I got hurt, but he knows about it. And sometimes it just helps me breathe easier, knowing, thank God somebody's in charge of this whole thing instead of me. Because I'm trying to control life and I can't do it. But somebody with all wisdom is doing it.

Simple Challenges For Seeking God

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Can I challenge some of you who maybe you're not even a Christian right now? A good challenge for you in the midst of this camp time talk about like hearing from God or hear feeling his healing. Is it possible? Do you have the faith of a mustard seed to just toss out into the universe? God, if you're really there, would you draw me to yourself? I hear that you can actually change hearts. So would you make me want to get close to you? That'll be a miracle that you can self-testify to. All you have to do is have the humility because if he's not there, it's not gonna happen. But if he is there, you never know. If he might not you might just soften one day and you might start thinking about more and more, I think I just need to get close to God. God does that kind of stuff all the time to those who are willing. Now, what about if you're A younger Christian. It might be that you need to go get in the way of the cloud a little bit more often. It might be that you need to get a little bit more disciplined about I'm going to have consistent time with God. Whatever that looks like, I'm going to find a way. And I'm you're always going to have to fight for it. It's never just going to be easy. But he's worth it. I mean, part of Jesus is the loving God that wants to be loved. And one of the ways we demonstrate we love him is we shut other things down to get to him. And so maybe that's just it's reading a chapter, it's joining a small group, whatever it is that helps you get in the way of the cloud. Maybe that's your camp time for now. Let me give you, you like full throttle Christians, you want you want to challenge? Ask the Lord, Lord, begin to draw me away to you, to come see you, to pray, to look at your word, to talk about my day. Even when I'm doing something else that you think is not really all that important. I'm sitting there watching, watching TV, just watching all this. This is an all right show. There's a flutter in the heart. Come talk to me. Come talk to me. Now, that can be very gentle and tender whispering. You have the power to just say, This is stupid. I ain't doing that. I kind of like that show. You can do that, but I would just, and you probably will sometimes. Like we'll all miss it sometimes. But I would challenge you if that's if if you want to go to the next level, dude, if you think you're strong, try doing that for a while and see if you are not finding yourself in camp time with a whole lot more of God's presence, a whole lot more of the time. Psalm 27, 8. My heart has heard you say, Come talk with me. And my heart responds, Lord, I'm coming. I'm coming. Well, you know, camp time helps us enjoy the presence

Protection Through Early Warnings

SPEAKER_00 23:50

of God. But something else it does is it slows us down enough to be alerted to some places we might need the protection of God. That pillar of cloud and fire, it was protection, right? It had literally protected them, but it was also just kind of a warning to everybody else. Hey, don't mess around. His protection. In other words, when we come have camp time with God, sometimes he alerts us to a danger before it does damage. And what that usually means is he alerts us to a place that sin is growing in our hearts that he wants to talk about right now so that it doesn't keep growing into something you don't want it to be later. God often protects us by whispering to us long before he has to shout. Because you know that's the way sin goes, right? It just pulls us deeper, quicker than we ever thought we would even go. But it gets its claws in us. And so if we get some good camp time, God begins to bring some of those to mind. I don't know anybody that likes the check engine light. I mean, maybe if you're a mechanic and you're like, money, but I don't know anybody that does. I'm not dissing mechanics in general, I'm just saying. I know that not only do I not like it because it means something wrong, but I feel a little bit mocked. I can't just be honest with you guys, I feel a little bit mocked by the check engine light because I know that it knows that I don't know anything about cars. And so it's like not only you got something going wrong, Carter, but you're so dumb you don't know what to do with it. You're gonna have to take it to somebody smarter than you. Now, the check engine light, it alerts us something is going wrong. And if we ignore that, if we don't for two weeks, do I mean you never know? It might cost you 200 bucks. If you ignore it for six months, it might cost you six thousand bucks. I mean, depending on what's wrong, you might have to replace the entire engine. If we don't know. Now imagine that you could know though, and you could know with a lot more accuracy than the the layperson has with the check engine light that doesn't tell us very much. What if you could have an understanding of you have not long left to fix this, but if you do, a whole bunch of stuff in your life is gonna go right. But if you don't, things are gonna keep falling apart. The check engine light comes on, and in camp time we have the opportunity to hear about it. So when you get the subtle reminder, your marriage could use a check-in. Or that anger, man, that's that feels like that's snowballing uphill. Or you might not be paying enough attention to this relationship over here. Your kid is drifting further and further and further, and it's not just that they need fix it, they need you to go after them, they need you to spend more time with them. It might be you get the check engine alarm, you know. God just brings it to mind. Maybe I'm spending money a whole lot more than I need to as a way to relieve stress than actually because that's what's wise stewardship. Nothing has exploded yet, but it's his mercy to alert you when it's small, so that we can go to him and say, Okay, God, I agree with you, it's there. Let me meditate on some scriptures about that thing and then pray for you to remove it and maybe get some accountability about it. So that might look like if I've got real anger issues. I was so proud of a brother recently, he just out of the blue just told me, Hey, here's a place that I get angry, seemingly when I'm inconvenienced by somebody. Like, you know, just shoot off inside of me. And he was telling me for the purpose of one more person to know for accountability's sake. What is that little thing? Find some scriptures about that. Well, you know, in your anger, do not sin, or let your gentleness be known to all men. I'm reflecting on those passages, and that's it's kind of like weed killer, it's killing those weeds. And then I bring them to Jesus. God, I need your help. I'm not gonna build this on my own. Please kill the weed of anger before it becomes something that hurts somebody in a whole lot bigger way. You hear what we're screaming there? That's how we deal with it. And it's going to lead to maybe some other self-knowledge. That's what happens in camp time. You begin to get aware of who you are, and you're more able to see, oh, these are some of my patterns that maybe I'm just going too fast in other moments to hear. I've personally found it's not like visual or anything, but it's almost like God begins to give me a screen time report. You ever get those at the end of the week? Like it's on your phone and it just says, You spent this many hours on this kind of website and this many hours on this. And I'm looking at that sometimes like, what? I don't remember doing any of that. Like, that seems like a lot. Was I really doing and what was I doing? I was doing it unconsciously. I just was just doing it. But then I get the report and I'm like, oh. Well, sometimes we need God's report. He said, you know, you're falling into this pattern. Here's one from me, okay, that he's had to deal with me about. I'm very direct. And especially in younger years, I just my directness is about the fact that I feel truth very deeply and I want to get it out. But as I get it out, I've been careless about how that might harshly hit somebody. And so I get the screen time report from God. You gotta be careful with your mouth, dude. Like you want truth out there, but you don't want it to cut people coming out. You want it to help them. Maybe you've got a, you know, maybe someone has told you, you know, you're kind of deflective when you get feedback. And then you immediately were like, no, I'm not. And then you're in camp time, and the Lord brings that to your mind. You know, you kind of are though. You need to receive feedback. And it might go deeper and deeper as he's highlighting the secret things of our hearts that only come up in camp time. I'm telling you guys, we're not smart enough, we're not good enough, we're not moral enough to see all of the nooks and crannies where sin gets in us. And sometimes we just need downtime. God, show me what I cannot see. Or is the way the psalmist says it? Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you and lead me along the path to everlasting life. Maybe can I just is it possible that some folks watching, some folks listening, some folks here, you sometimes feel guilt. But what that guilt is really about, it's kind of a good guilt. It is God giving you self-knowledge, it's God helping you see you're a sinner and you need a savior. You've got stuff wrong with you that you can barely see and barely touch and barely do anything about, you definitely can't fix it. That's why you need a savior. Let me give you a question that I use in my camp times with God. What am I pretending not to know? What's what's quiet in me about my walk with God? About the way I treat people. What did you just kind of pretend that wasn't a problem, but it really was? Sometimes that just triggers your thoughts, and sometimes God uses those thoughts to bring conviction. Hey, we're almost there. I I just like to keep preaching, is that okay? Yeah, so it starts with God's presence. And that's because God just wants us for us, and he wants us to want him for him. And then it goes to he's gonna start alerting us to the dangers of sin. And that's the right place it should go. First, what's most important, being close to God. If I'm close to God, he's gonna point out my sin. And then it goes to guidance.

Guidance Comes After Obedience

SPEAKER_00 31:53

After, after I'm, in other words, how to say it. God first wants you to be close to him. To be close to him, he's gonna keep bringing up sin. As he keeps bringing up sin and you say, Okay, yes, sir, I will obey, then he's like, Okay, now I will give you more personalized guidance. Now the scripture's guiding you all the time. But the point I'm trying to make is if you don't care about obedience and you don't care about wanting Jesus for Jesus, I wouldn't be too surprised if you don't experience much of the guidance of God. Because it's like, dude, you don't care about most of the stuff I care about. So, what makes you think I'm gonna give you some guidance, knowing that you might treat that like not much also? So his guidance, investing downtime with God renews and amplifies guidance. We follow the cloud, it doesn't follow us. If we ask him and persistently ask him, if we bring him questions, God, what is going on with this? What is going on with that? What are the goals I should have right now? What are the priorities? This is a lot about what my sabbatical is about, and there's lots of time to listen. But I don't just save them for sabbatical. You can use them throughout the week, throughout the months, throughout the year, so that we don't miss the way. Proverbs 19, too. Desire without knowledge is not good. How much more will hasty feet miss the way? Sometimes we're just trying to move so fast. This is me at least. Trying to move so fast, yeah, but you're not checking in about that. You're not thoroughly covering that with prayer. You're not bringing that to Jesus and just giving it a minute or a month. Like, would you say something about that before I just go jack something up with my life? Let me give you some of the literal questions I use. Where's my focus off or different from yours? Jesus, what am I focused on right now? I list all these questions, okay? So, like in my in my electronic journal, I list all these questions. And as I'm praying throughout like the next month, if God brings anything to mind about any of those, I just write the answer right after that. So you just list your questions, and then over time, not like in one sitting, over time, He be if you keep asking, dude, he's He loves you. He will answer a lot of your questions. Not all of them, but some of them. And then you'll be like, My God is awesome. Why didn't this specifically this situation turn out the way I thought? What am I supposed to do with this situation? What should I keep doing no matter what? What important do I need to be aiming at with my family for the next four years? What might I want to think about with regard to my health? Are there any relationships I'm underloving in? Those kinds of questions when we ask God? Guys, if we're earnest and if we've been drawing near to Him for Him, and if we've been as far as we can, we can't defeat sin on our own apart from the Spirit. But as if as we're doing it, as we're repenting and then asking God for His forgiveness and help, yeah, you should ask for guidance because He's got general guidance for all of mankind in the Bible. But as you spend time in the Bible and keep asking these questions, He's gonna lead you sometimes to scripture, sometimes just an impression in your heart, sometimes somebody's gonna say something that day, and you're like, that was my answer to the question. Because He loves you. Have you ever been driving? And whether you're using Apple Maps or Google Maps or I don't know, people still use Waze, is that still a thing? Whatever, whatever you're using, you get an alert that says this is a 27-minute shorter route. Do you want to take this thing? I think most of us are that sounds like a good idea. Now, there might be some in here listening that are just like, I've already committed, I ain't doing that. Look, man, I do it my way, I stick to a way, this is the way we picked. I'm not saving 27 minutes. Yeah, um, that's fine if you want to do that. I don't suggest you do that with God. Instead, I would suggest seeking God's guidance regularly. And if He changes something that you thought you were supposed to do, just let Him change it because wise decisions change with new information. And sometimes we just get new information. And instead of like just being arrogant and saying, no, I'm gonna do it my way, well, let's just be open to, well, I'm mostly I want the wisdom of God and I want the guidance of God. And if I can save myself a trial or two or three, or open up an opportunity that I never would have even thought about because I'm sensing a leading in that direction, I think I might want to go for it. Is that you? There's others of you, let me just comfort some of you who are you're like, Carter, that's not my problem. Like, I'm waiting. I'm wanting God to do something. Come on. And I get you because that's more of my personality, too. What we learn from the Israelites and the cloud is dude, the cloud was on its own pace, and sometimes it would move fast. And when the cloud moves fast, we gotta move fast. Like sometimes we don't, God's not giving us six months to get used to an idea. He's just like, the cloud's moving, let's go. Other times we're like, God, let's go. He's like, Stay, we are not breaking ground, we're not breaking camp yet. Trust me. And I found that that's those two tests are happening throughout all of life. I've been a Christian 30 years now, man. And I ain't Yoda, but I figured I'm figuring out some stuff. Those questions, those things he asks us to do don't go away, really.

Jesus As The True Presence

SPEAKER_00 37:23

We've been looking at the tabernacle, the cloud of fire, all morning. Can I show you a better version? It's Jesus. Jesus Himself. See, the cloud of fire, part of what it was doing was saving the people from the glory/slash wrath of God. That's what it was doing, it was protecting them. Jesus Christ is the cloud, is the temple, but he saves us from the wrath of God. He takes the wrath that should rightfully come on our sin by dying for us and giving us all of his obedience, shedding every drop of blood for us. Why? So he can be close to us because he likes you for you. And what I know about Jesus is as powerful as that would have been, as cool as that would have been to see that cloud of fire in the middle of the camp, I don't get the sense that they could just go up and start talking to it and like get good answers. I didn't, I don't get the sense that they could sit down on a bench nearby and be like, I'm just so happy to be with you today. But Jesus is the real pillar of fire. Jesus is the real temple. And Jesus says, Come to me because I'm friendly. I've already taken the wrath of God, it's already gone, that's already dissipated, baby. Come and sit with me, and I will give you my presence, and I will give you my guidance, and I will give you my warnings when it's time to turn away from something. He'll speak to you, he'll make it personal. So, question Have you been wandering in the desert a little bit? Have you been missing some camp time? Whatever that looks like to you, maybe you just even need to ask Jesus this week, well, let's get some camp time down. Like, show me a place in my schedule that would work, or show me a place I need to take a hammer to it so I can have time with you. If there's a something you need to plan out ahead of time, I'll challenge you to do it now. There's power in pausing. There's power in it, we resist it, but there's power in it. As a guy that just came off a great big pause and it was mind-blowing. Can I encourage you? This is your inheritance. You get Jesus. Make some time. Let's bow our heads.

Prayer Response And Closing

SPEAKER_00 40:06

Love us exactly where we are. We start off with asking forgiveness. We repent for ignoring camp time. For those of us that know about it, we ask for forgiveness for ignoring it, for neglecting our walk with God sometimes. And we pray that we'd know a new level of camp time in our lives. We know how to march and we know how to fight. Train our hearts to love camp time. God, some of us have never really trusted you as this thing. We are out in the desert. We know about you, but we've never actually trusted you with our sin. We're the ones, like we don't feel like we have any covering. But we come to you with nothing. It sounds too simple, it sounds too good to be true. But we're gonna decide today to believe your word that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. So we ask today, for us wanderers, the wanderers listening to my voice, the wanderers in the room, God, would you come and save us by forgiving us for all of our sin, giving us a brand new heart. We're gonna believe you for your salvation, and we're gonna believe you that you're gonna keep on changing us all the way up to heaven. Come in right now, Father. We trust that Jesus Christ really did all of that for us and rose from the dead to prove it was true. If that's a prayer that you prayed, I want to give you a chance with your eyes bowed. Sorry, your eyes closed, your head bowed. There's power in just making that known in some way physically, tangibly. No one's gonna be watching except for me, but I want to challenge you to be very bold right now. If that's you coming out of the desert and running into Jesus' arms, receiving his forgiveness, reestablishing relationship with him. If that's you, I'm gonna count to three, and I want to ask you to raise your hand as a sign of worship and acceptance of the love and forgiveness Jesus offers. It's between you and him, but there's power in doing it here. One, two, three. Raise your hand. Say, Jesus, forgive me. Jesus, I come back to you. Jesus, reestablish that relationship. Thank you. Good job. God, thank you so much for everybody you touch today. Thank you so much for what you're gonna do in all the camp times we have ahead. We're looking forward to it, God. We know it's gonna be dope. In Jesus' name. Amen. All right, folks, that's all the time we have, but thank you so much for listening to this sermon. If you got a lot out of it, feel free to share this with somebody who might need it. Also, there's a ton more content on our website, on our YouTube channel, on our Instagram channel, on our TikTok channel. Feel free to check all that kind of thing out. Also, if you're interested in leadership type stuff, go ahead and check out another podcast or any other blogs or videos or anything over at BibleLeadership.com. And whatever else you do, make sure that you believe that's something big today.