Speaker 1: Sharon's just typical of many ladies here who were leading this church Somerville Baptist through their talents, their gifts or just their heart.
Speaker 1: And Sharon showed up, like almost two years ago, right after the death of her husband.
Speaker 1: So she was in a place of reevaluation and like what's next?
Speaker 1: What will I do next?
Speaker 1: And so God has used her to impact many here of all ages.
Speaker 1: So I'm just grateful for her being willing to do that and wanted to encourage you a little bit with that.
Speaker 1: So good to see you.
Speaker 1: My name is Randy.
Speaker 1: I'm one of the pastors here.
Speaker 1: Our job on Sundays especially, is to serve you while you're here, so that you'll go out and bless the rest of the community.
Speaker 1: As we say, just go out and be Christ to somebody in a significant way or a small way or whatever, and God will always bear fruit.
Speaker 1: God will always multiply that.
Speaker 1: So out there online so glad that you're here and hope that if this is your first time viewing that, you'll view again.
Speaker 1: You might want to grab a Bible or get your app on your phone or whatever.
Speaker 1: You can keep up, because it's always better to see the Scripture, by the way, for all of you in the room and out there, we're in Ezekiel in the Old Testament.
Speaker 1: Ezekiel 37 probably got a note page on your way in A lot of times.
Speaker 1: Give a shout out to people who are watching Today.
Speaker 1: I want to give a shout out to all that are in the room at each hour, because we have a ton of volunteers who make this place work every single day.
Speaker 1: You saw some parking lot greeters.
Speaker 1: You might have rode the cart in here Earlier hour.
Speaker 1: They might have taken the bus in from an assisted living place to get here.
Speaker 1: There's some great teachers some of you are them who are leading groups either morning, sunday morning or other times.
Speaker 1: Preschool workers.
Speaker 1: We're always grateful for our preschool workers because y'all are, some days, hand-to-hand combat in there, isn't it?
Speaker 1: You know, you've really notyou have really not served the Lord until you've been holding this, like six month old or something, and you're burping her and she spits up and it runs down your back, you know.
Speaker 1: And on the 95 degree day that stays with you a while, doesn't it?
Speaker 1: So we're just grateful for all, for all of you.
Speaker 1: Let's pray before we get started.
Speaker 1: Lord, help us to focus not on the noise going on around us in a culture that's increasingly secular and distant from you Help us to not curse the darkness only and lament all the brokenness, but to, today, shine the spotlight on ourselves because, god, if we are not where we need to be with you, we will have no answers to a broken world.
Speaker 1: Guys, we prayed for our nation last week to send revival.
Speaker 1: We know today revival's got to start with me and us.
Speaker 1: If we're not in revival, we have no way to minister and encourage those who just have no clue.
Speaker 1: So, lord, give us a laser focus today to see you and to see, maybe, if need be, between the lines of your Word, to know that you not only speak to us still today, but that you have a plan for us moving forward as individuals, and then let us apply that to where you have us.
Speaker 1: We give this time to you in Jesus' name.
Speaker 1: Amen, we did that last week.
Speaker 1: Today, actually, to be true to the Scripture, ezekiel, the prophet, is going to share a vision that God has for a whole nation.
Speaker 1: It is a nation of people who has turned away from God and turned away from the Word of God, and they're just out there and they're in a bad place.
Speaker 1: They are very vulnerable but, as I talked about mentioned in the prayer.
Speaker 1: If we read a little bit deeper and I hope we can today in each of the verses of Ezekiel 37, we're going to see us, because the one person on this planet I can control is me, and that's the same with you too.
Speaker 1: If I'm not beginning with me, I have no real shot of being helpful to anybody else, whether you're in the room or out there or wherever.
Speaker 1: So that's the approach today.
Speaker 1: Good news God's always on the move, isn't he?
Speaker 1: Let's go back and review the tape from Genesis.
Speaker 1: Even creation, the Spirit of God, which really meant the Trinity, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, are hovering over the waters.
Speaker 1: They commence with what we call today creation, everything we see and know, and trillions of things we cannot even see and know about.
Speaker 1: He did all of that, but then he's not through.
Speaker 1: Then he makes the human, he makes Adam, and he puts him in a garden that he had already prepared.
Speaker 1: He makes the garden before he brings Adam into the world.
Speaker 1: He's still not through, he doesn't have a suitable companion.
Speaker 1: So he makes Eve, he puts them together in the garden.
Speaker 1: He gives them their mission for the rest of their life.
Speaker 1: Sadly, though, there's despair and darkness in the very next chapter.
Speaker 1: They fall, they sin.
Speaker 1: He's still not through.
Speaker 1: He comes back into the picture.
Speaker 1: He brings them out.
Speaker 1: There are consequences, but then he reconciles with them, he restores them and he reannounces His mission for the rest of their life.
Speaker 1: They go on their way to do that.
Speaker 1: Sadly, the very next chapter, the next generation falls into despair and darkness.
Speaker 1: A brother kills a sibling.
Speaker 1: God comes down again, he deals with it.
Speaker 1: There's consequences, but he renews and he restores and he announces to this generation His mission and His.
Speaker 1: That's been going on since the beginning of time, right up until today.
Speaker 1: God is on the move, working with every single generation.
Speaker 1: Every single generation is broken and sick, with the affliction of a simple persona and heart, and so the good news, though, is, in all of the despair that comes from our darkness and the ability to get discouraged and the confusion, and there's some days.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever felt like what's the use I have?
Speaker 1: If you ever felt like man.
Speaker 1: It seems like the more I try to do what's right and impact this myself in this world, the worse it gets.
Speaker 1: I've been there, but the Scripture is very clear God gives life to the lifeless, and that's the hope we've been singing about.
Speaker 1: It's never too far gone.
Speaker 1: It is never too dead.
Speaker 1: For those who are already pronouncing judgment on this nation, they may be right, but even if that is right, we also know that God can restore, and that's His heart, every single time, and no matter how far gone, how dead we appear to be, he'll bring it back.
Speaker 1: Everybody in this room and all of you guys out there, this is for you, because, no matter where you are spiritually in your journey or not, this text actually applies to you, because it is for those who are followers of Christ and those who maybe have been but have moved away, but also those who pretty clearly know I don't have a relationship for all of us.
Speaker 1: So I'm pretty fired up to talk about this.
Speaker 1: So is everybody there?
Speaker 1: Y'all were already there in the balcony, weren't you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I knew, I knew, I knew you were ahead of the game up there.
Speaker 1: So let's, as we typically do, we're going to read a little bit, we're going to talk about what it means to us and, hopefully, praise God because of it.
Speaker 1: So let me start with one group of people, and that is simply the group.
Speaker 1: If you are believers, if you are already Christ followers, this is for you okay, because there's still more for us to do.
Speaker 1: So read verses one and two with me, because the first thing is we got to stay connected to God First order of business.
Speaker 1: Stay connected.
Speaker 1: The hand or the presence of the Lord was upon me and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord.
Speaker 1: Does your translation have a capital S on spirit?
Speaker 1: That's good, it's supposed to, because that means not your spirit but the Holy Spirit, the very spirit of God, and set me in the middle of a valley.
Speaker 1: It was full of bones.
Speaker 1: So he has a vision.
Speaker 1: This is where he's either aware he's awake and he's seeing things in His mind's eye, or he's, like some, gone into a little bit of a trance.
Speaker 1: That's not the real important thing of how the vision happened.
Speaker 1: There are theologians, too, who believe he was walking in an actual valley there that's mentioned in Ezekiel 3, 32, where an actual battle happened years and years earlier, and he's actually seeing some bleached bones that have been there for decade and decade and decade just sticking up out of the sand, and God uses that to remindthat's not the deal either.
Speaker 1: What he's talkingwhat he's using this as is an example of no matter how lifeless, god never gives up.
Speaker 1: Verse 2,.
Speaker 1: He led me back and forth among them and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were what?
Speaker 1: Very dry.
Speaker 1: That's just a time orientation to say they've been there a long time.
Speaker 1: Not only are all these bones dead people from a long time, it's been a long time.
Speaker 1: So what does it mean to stay connected to God, the spiritlet me remind you something.
Speaker 1: This is another good news, brief here.
Speaker 1: The Spirit of God always works out of love.
Speaker 1: The Spirit will tell me and you the truth, whether it hurts or not, but he's never out to condemn us and to reject us.
Speaker 1: The Spirit of God always comes to me and you with knowledge or revelation for our own good.
Speaker 1: He always has no message of His own.
Speaker 1: He's always going to speak to you what God has given Him to.
Speaker 1: So what does that mean?
Speaker 1: That means we can trust it.
Speaker 1: It's always true.
Speaker 1: That's why we're so big on the Scripture.
Speaker 1: The number one way to grow spiritually for all of us is to read this like every day.
Speaker 1: I'm going to spend time reading it, I'm going to think on it, I'm going to pray over it.
Speaker 1: Through it, however, I'm going to ask for the Holy Spirit to reveal to me whatand if you are already a believer, if you're already a Christ follower, you have a little higher understanding level than people who read it without that orientation.
Speaker 1: You know why?
Speaker 1: Because you have the Spirit of the living God in you, and a person who does not trust God yet does not have that you starthere's the advantage you start to see the world in your own life from God's perspective, not yours.
Speaker 1: If we're going to pattern our lives and our philosophies after every scroll on the screen, after every social media post, after every random comment on TikTok, after what the news networks are feeding us and some of that junk out there, we will all be horribly confused and every time it gets a little dark we're going to give up.
Speaker 1: That is not your call to be in this world.
Speaker 1: Your call is to be informed, but to know this and to operate out of God's perspective and not your own.
Speaker 1: Can I be so bold as to say this If you're not connecting with Jesus as a Christ follower, if something's happened and you've just gotten lazy, or adversities kind of made you frustrated with God or whatever that is, and you're not connecting with Him, you're sinning.
Speaker 1: There is no neutral ground.
Speaker 1: There's no gray area.
Speaker 1: I wish there was.
Speaker 1: I used to believe that I'm either here, where I'm supposed to be, or I'm out of fellowship with them, and that's why this meeting regularly is so important.
Speaker 1: Some of you are back for the first time in a long time, and I celebrate that.
Speaker 1: There's no judgment, there's no condemnation here.
Speaker 1: We just want you to be connected.
Speaker 1: Those of you who are doing your studying at home and you're reading it and you're like I don't understand all of this yet.
Speaker 1: I don't even understand half of it yet.
Speaker 1: Keep at it.
Speaker 1: The best way to study the Scriptureyou know how.
Speaker 1: The best way to study Scripture is Study the Scripture.
Speaker 1: You know how the best way to pray is Start praying and leave the rest of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1: He's got people around us too, in this room or out there, that can help us with those interpretations and everything.
Speaker 1: This word spirit, by the way, was a word in the Hebrew pronounced rurach, and rurach meant spirit, but it also meant wind or breath.
Speaker 1: So let's put this together when you speak, it takes breath, right, it takes your wind.
Speaker 1: When God speaks, his Word is what changes our lives when we allow it to.
Speaker 1: That's the breath of God, the spirit of God, and so that's what we need to be deeply in tune with.
Speaker 1: The second thing is we're going to stay connected as best we can as humans, but we also need to trust Him.
Speaker 1: Now, some of you just clicked off on me.
Speaker 1: Please come back into the conversation because I'm going to go a little further with trust.
Speaker 1: You're like, well, duh, of course weyou know if we don't trust Him.
Speaker 1: Let's read verse 3.
Speaker 1: He asked me, son of man, can these bones live?
Speaker 1: What a question.
Speaker 1: I said oh, sovereign or all-knowing God, lord, you alone know that God loves to train us and to grow us with questions, doesn't he?
Speaker 1: He's fired some of you I bet he certainly has me All.
Speaker 1: Through the Bible we get this Mention Adam and Eve.
Speaker 1: Adam and Eve sinned and he comes down.
Speaker 1: And what's he doing?
Speaker 1: Wherewhat have you done?
Speaker 1: Don't you think he knew what they had done?
Speaker 1: He's looking for confession from them to turn around their trust level that had been lost at that point.
Speaker 1: Next generation, cain's done hidden.
Speaker 1: He's killed his brother.
Speaker 1: He's buried him, he's hidden him.
Speaker 1: God comes down.
Speaker 1: Remember what he says Where's your brother?
Speaker 1: And he says my brother's keeper?
Speaker 1: And then he kind of goes to the real meat of the issue, jesus.
Speaker 1: The same way, jesus fires questions at the group.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he fires individual questions.
Speaker 1: One of them was they're sitting there, the 12 of them and him, and he said so what's the word out on the street, who are people saying that I am?
Speaker 1: And they get all the opinions right.
Speaker 1: And then remember what his follow-up question was who do youthat you is plural to the whole group?
Speaker 1: Who do all of youwho do all y'all say that I am?
Speaker 1: And guess who speaks up?
Speaker 1: Peter, peter.
Speaker 1: And Peter nailed it.
Speaker 1: He got it right.
Speaker 1: Later there's another conversation with Peter.
Speaker 1: It's after the resurrection and Peter has denied him and he's blown it and he thinks he's like out of the race forever and he's fishing and Jesus has prepared a breakfast farm on the shore.
Speaker 1: They come in and he asks him three questions.
Speaker 1: Remember those questions, they're all the same.
Speaker 1: He's like hey, peter, do you love me?
Speaker 1: Do you love me?
Speaker 1: But then in all three cases he re-orients his mission.
Speaker 1: You're not lost, you're not lifeless.
Speaker 1: Just start following my spirit now and I'll keep you busy serving me the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: That's what trust is all about.
Speaker 1: When you're trusting God, you are being tested, y'all listening.
Speaker 1: When you trust the Lord, especially when it's a little bit difficult or inconvenient.
Speaker 1: You're being tested as to the degree of your humanity.
Speaker 1: It's not about whether you trust His power.
Speaker 1: We've got to get there later.
Speaker 1: The first order is do I trust that I can move out of my own humanity here?
Speaker 1: Then, once you do, we'll tackle the trusting, the power of God, because that never goes away, that is never diminished.
Speaker 1: The third thing y'all still with me is we're going to obey Him, even when he gives us some strange directions.
Speaker 1: Some of you are grinning I'm seeing a couple in the middle of the room been to Bolivia two or three times and y'all are probably thinking the first time you want us to go where and you did it, and that is what is celebrated today.
Speaker 1: Look at verses 4 through 7.
Speaker 1: Then he said to me prophesy or testify or preach to these bones and say to them dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.
Speaker 1: This is what the sovereign Lord says to these bones I will make breath enter you and you will come to life.
Speaker 1: Verse 6, I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come to you and cover you with skin and I will put breath in you and you will come to life.
Speaker 1: And then you'll know what I am.
Speaker 1: The Lord.
Speaker 1: The pattern of God is, whether it's a strange request or a strange belief, or totally irrational or illogical, or like there's no way in the world that can happen, or there's 10,000 of us and one of me, it's all lost.
Speaker 1: He always starts with let me remind you who I am, and I don't know who needs to hear that today, but whatever the battle you're fighting, or the cause or whatever, he's going to always first announce here's who I am, and that'll cover the potential of whether or not I can restore life or correct the situation or whatever.
Speaker 1: That is great news.
Speaker 1: So I prophesied as I was commanded.
Speaker 1: As I was prophesying, there was a noise.
Speaker 1: While he's still talking or preaching or whatever, there's a noise.
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 1: It says it's a rattling sound because these bones are coming together, bone to bone.
Speaker 1: What a sight that must have been.
Speaker 1: These bones are just coming out of the sand and blump, blump.
Speaker 1: Hence the invention of the skeleton dance in the song.
Speaker 1: Remember that the thigh bones connected to the hip bone.
Speaker 1: I think that's where this came from.
Speaker 1: What a strange request, though.
Speaker 1: Hey, stand over these bones and start talking to them like they're still living.
Speaker 1: Tell them who I am, and as he's doing it, these bones just start to come together.
Speaker 1: The strange request how are we able to do the strange things?
Speaker 1: First of all, review your notes, or what we've been talking about.
Speaker 1: This involves all three of these.
Speaker 1: It involves a trust, it involves obedience Well, you said it, I'm going to try to do it but it really involves how connected we are to the Lord that we've just been talking about this.
Speaker 1: If we are willing to stay in all three of those regions, we will be doing, asked to do some strange things, and God will do it.
Speaker 1: How are you so confident?
Speaker 1: Because we are under a covenant agreement.
Speaker 1: Jesus says I've come to make a new covenant, and after the resurrection, that means the Holy Spirit of God that raised him from the dead is in you.
Speaker 1: I think that's enough power to do anything.
Speaker 1: The covenant in the Old Testament was different, but the same, because in the covenant of the Old Testament that he was under, god says I'll make a deal.
Speaker 1: Me and you are in a relationship.
Speaker 1: That means you're human.
Speaker 1: You're going to blow it.
Speaker 1: You're going to move away from me.
Speaker 1: You're going to really, really grieve my heart.
Speaker 1: My promise to you, though, is I ain't going anywhere.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be here, I'm going to know everything.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be over and when you let me, I will bring life to you.
Speaker 1: And, if need be, I'll bring life to you a second time.
Speaker 1: It's a covenant You're covered if you are a Christ follower.
Speaker 1: So which direction your life is going to?
Speaker 1: You're not too late, you're not too far gone, you're not too old, You're not too young, you're not too uneducated, you're not too sinful.
Speaker 1: He's going to bring life if you let him bring life.
Speaker 1: How you know the word?
Speaker 1: John 6.37.
Speaker 1: Grab your Bible, turn to John 6.37.
Speaker 1: I love this verse.
Speaker 1: John 6.37 is Jesus speaking.
Speaker 1: Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never, never cast out.
Speaker 1: You see that Everyone, everybody that comes to know Jesus, he's going to accept you, become a son or daughter of God and then, from then on, no matter what happens, he, if you move away from Him, that's not Him, that's you.
Speaker 1: He will never disown you.
Speaker 1: God, the Father won't.
Speaker 1: The Son will never throw you out and say you're too far gone.
Speaker 1: So what do we do with this?
Speaker 1: Obeying, even when it's strange or difficult or like I can't figure this out doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 1: Here's a self-analysis.
Speaker 1: You've all done this.
Speaker 1: I do it all the time.
Speaker 1: How many of those times do you tell yourself I should go do this?
Speaker 1: I should stop doing this?
Speaker 1: I should.
Speaker 1: For you it may be.
Speaker 1: I should clean up my language.
Speaker 1: I should quit that social media post there.
Speaker 1: I should watch stop watching that program.
Speaker 1: I should stop saying this to my spouse.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that is.
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 1: When is that going to stop being a should and becomes a will?
Speaker 1: I will do this.
Speaker 1: I will not do this.
Speaker 1: That is the one thing everybody in this room and everybody out there can begin with today start taking care of.
Speaker 1: Stop procrastinating, stop saying I should and start saying I will.
Speaker 1: And then next Sunday, the goal is going to be how much of us could come in here and, before God, say then I am doing that, I am not doing that anymore.
Speaker 1: That is huge.
Speaker 1: That is a huge spiritual development process.
Speaker 1: Somebody I can't give them credit, I can't remember who wrote it Somebody said there's two levels of the Christian life there is impossible and there is already done.
Speaker 1: Isn't that great?
Speaker 1: Because God stands in the gap.
Speaker 1: So that's for all of you who are believers.
Speaker 1: You are already Christ followers, ready to finish out with number two group.
Speaker 1: The number two group is if you are the dry bones.
Speaker 1: Now that means if you don't know Christ, you know you don't know Christ, you know you are at various stages of belief and all like that.
Speaker 1: Or if I like, oh, I have accepted Jesus, I have asked Jesus to come into my life, but right now you couldn't tell it.
Speaker 1: Or I am doing the behavior of a Christian, but there is no joy, there is no heart in it, there is no spirit of motivation in it.
Speaker 1: I am stale, it is dry.
Speaker 1: I used to love to read the Word.
Speaker 1: I used to love, I used to connect with God in prayer.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you the last time I felt anything in my bones.
Speaker 1: That's you that I am talking to now.
Speaker 1: So the first what am I going to do?
Speaker 1: Because God wants to restore everybody in this room and everybody out there.
Speaker 1: First thing is simply this know your status.
Speaker 1: He gives life to the lifeless, so you got to know your status.
Speaker 1: I technically belong to the family, you may say, but it's for every intensive purpose.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 1: I broke my fellowship.
Speaker 1: You've not lost your salvation.
Speaker 1: It just means you are not in fellowship with Him.
Speaker 1: You are that family member that nobody ever hears from.
Speaker 1: You are that family member that only calls your family when you need something.
Speaker 1: You're here by name in the family, but not in your life.
Speaker 1: Purpose 2 Corinthians 13-5,.
Speaker 1: Examine yourselves.
Speaker 1: You know what that does not say.
Speaker 1: It doesn't say examine yourselves and quit criticizing everybody else.
Speaker 1: Examine yourselves and compare yourselves to other people.
Speaker 1: You won't find that, because that only deepens our lack of fellowship with God.
Speaker 1: To see whether you are in the faith, test yourselves.
Speaker 1: Do you realize that Christ Jesus is in you, unless, of course, you failed to test?
Speaker 1: What's this test business?
Speaker 1: There's a couple of ways from the Scripture, not opinion or feeling.
Speaker 1: If you're not sure and a lot of us are not really sure day to day and I want to acknowledge that and honor that this is the greatest thing you can deal with right now.
Speaker 1: This is the most important issue of life Is if there's a level of doubt and you're like I need to find out whether I have the secure relationship or whether I've been playing church or using routines or programs to get me there.
Speaker 1: One is from Galatians, chapter 5.
Speaker 1: There's a list of the fruit of the Spirit.
Speaker 1: Other people, by the fruit of the Spirit, can look at you and say, oh, you know, she's like that's an O'Branner.
Speaker 1: Of course she's a Christfather.
Speaker 1: She wouldn't be like that if she didn't have God in her, and you know it through that too.
Speaker 1: If those are like golly there's no way I'm the opposite of many of those Then the second level, one is more external fruit of the Spirit, the other is internal.
Speaker 1: It's Romans 8.16.
Speaker 1: So write those two down Galatians 5 and Romans 8.16.
Speaker 1: Romans 8.16 says the Spirit testifies to our Spirit, that we are children of God.
Speaker 1: That is only you can know Y'all.
Speaker 1: That could be like the worst day you've had in the last 10 years and you finally go to bed and you're laying down, your head spinning.
Speaker 1: You're tired, the world has fallen apart, but you start to feel this incredible peace and well-being and comfort, and there's no reason for it.
Speaker 1: You know who that is.
Speaker 1: It's the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1: And the Holy Spirit is reminding you one thing has not changed your mind you belong to me, which means you're not going to be alone.
Speaker 1: You are going to struggle, maybe, but you're not going to struggle alone.
Speaker 1: That is knowing your status.
Speaker 1: That is knowing your status, and God speaks to people and directs them like that, all through the Bible.
Speaker 1: Well, can I kind ofsometimes I can sketch something better and I can say it out loud.
Speaker 1: There's three elements of me and you.
Speaker 1: We are pretty complicated beings and you know that Ladies are much more complicated than guys, I believe.
Speaker 1: But I'm not going there.
Speaker 1: We don't have time for that right now.
Speaker 1: Okay, there's three levels of everybody's life in this room.
Speaker 1: We're all composed this way by a magnificent holy God.
Speaker 1: The outer area is the physical.
Speaker 1: We spend the majority of our time working on the physical, don't we?
Speaker 1: And I mean we should.
Speaker 1: We should take care of ourselves, we should eat right, we should sleep, we should get rest and do all that.
Speaker 1: But we settle so many times for just existing in the physical.
Speaker 1: The base needs, the base desires that we have.
Speaker 1: The other thing that we don't realize we do is whether it's rejection, hardships, emotional stuff going on in us, fear what not?
Speaker 1: We'll build this physical to such a hard shell that we are defending ourselves from letting anybody get in on the inside of us.
Speaker 1: I don't want you knowing stuff in here.
Speaker 1: I don't want you hurting me at the level in here.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to be nice to everybody, but you're not going to get to know me.
Speaker 1: Am I speaking to anybody here today like that?
Speaker 1: That hard outer shell does not do any of us any good.
Speaker 1: I spent 33 years just like that.
Speaker 1: The second level is the soul.
Speaker 1: What's the soul?
Speaker 1: That is the mental makeup, your brain, but it's also the emotions that come with that.
Speaker 1: Ladies, for instance, are coming primarily out of a different cortex of your brain, which makes you more intuitively sensitive to other people.
Speaker 1: You can sense whether somebody is struggling or not, and you haven't even talked to them yet.
Speaker 1: I just can't understand that.
Speaker 1: It's just.
Speaker 1: That just makes no sense to me.
Speaker 1: But you have that ability, but what I'm saying is how you feel about things and your brain power is coming out of there.
Speaker 1: If you're living totally in that region without the third level, boy, you're up and down all over the place.
Speaker 1: One more time, ladies and gentlemen, because God gave us these areas to accentuate what's inside of us, at the core of our existence, and separates us from the animal kingdom, and that is the Spirit.
Speaker 1: You have a Spirit, god's Spirit, at the inception of your relationship, where you surrender your life to Him, comes in and lives with your Spirit, and Jesus said this one time.
Speaker 1: He says you know, it's not what comes into a man, what we take in is not what corrupts us, it's what comes out of us that corrupts us.
Speaker 1: Back to the heart, outer shell, if we don't let Him penetrate us to the very core and own our stuff and acknowledge it and take responsibility for it and start living from the inside out.
Speaker 1: If we keep living from the outside in, we will never greatly change.
Speaker 1: Only we'll get a little bit further and further and further away from a holy, loving God the rest of our lives and we will die, maybe doing some great things, but none of it will be acknowledged in heaven from our Creator because we're too busy.
Speaker 1: John 12, jesus even said he told a story about.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like a kernel of wheat that hard outer husk has to fall to the ground and die and split open so the meat on the inside can grow up to the stalk, to the wheat that feeds its bread.
Speaker 1: We're all going to starve unless that hard outer shell pops open.
Speaker 1: You're going to starve spiritually unless you let Him pry open that hard exterior that you have built up over time and let Him come in and minister and heal your insides, where you really live, and then when you start living out of that, it feels weird.
Speaker 1: It feels more vulnerable.
Speaker 1: It's at times very scary.
Speaker 1: But let me tell you this when you speak, people listen and when you minister to them, it changes lives.
Speaker 1: Not because it's you, it's your spirit coming out of you, which came from somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Adam and Eve and us are the same.
Speaker 1: There is no life unless it comes from outside of us into us.
Speaker 1: That's never been disturbed.
Speaker 1: The outside part, he's still there.
Speaker 1: We're the ones that get broken.
Speaker 1: So that's the choice.
Speaker 1: We all have that choice.
Speaker 1: Let me read 8 verse through 10 and finish this off.
Speaker 1: I looked in tendons and flesh appeared and skin covered them and there was no breath in them.
Speaker 1: Here we go.
Speaker 1: Then he said prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to it this is what the sovereign Lord says come from the four winds of breath and breathe into these slain that were in battle that they may live.
Speaker 1: Somebody's got to come from the outside of you and me and restore life Verse 10,.
Speaker 1: So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them and they came to and they stood up and they composed a vast army, one man standing in the plane with a bunch of dead bones around him and the next thing he knows, somebody came from outside in and reanimates flesh and bones onto those, breathes life into them.
Speaker 1: Next thing you know we've got an army of God and that's the invitation for me and you is to be a part of the army of God.
Speaker 1: Can I recreate a little scenario to maybe help Moses Burning Bush?
Speaker 1: Most of you know that story.
Speaker 1: You know he's out there shepherding burning bush.
Speaker 1: He walks over to see what is.
Speaker 1: It's called a theophany.
Speaker 1: It's the presence of God inside something visible.
Speaker 1: The bush speaks to him.
Speaker 1: It's burning, but it's not being burned up.
Speaker 1: He thinks that's kind of peculiar.
Speaker 1: When he goes over there, god says hey, take your sandals off.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because I am who I am, I'm holy and you're not, and so reverence me.
Speaker 1: He does it.
Speaker 1: Then he gives him his marching orders for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: And what does Moses do?
Speaker 1: He gladly accepts it.
Speaker 1: Right, he's back peddling as fast as he can.
Speaker 1: He's given his reasons.
Speaker 1: What was his main reason?
Speaker 1: Remember?
Speaker 1: Not a good public speaker.
Speaker 1: You know you're looking for the wrong guy here.
Speaker 1: I can't speak.
Speaker 1: Why did he not confess the biggest reason he murdered a guy.
Speaker 1: Remember that he chooses.
Speaker 1: Well, I just know I'm good as a public speaker.
Speaker 1: He took a life that was not his to take.
Speaker 1: God knows that and God acknowledges that.
Speaker 1: But he still persists.
Speaker 1: I don't care.
Speaker 1: That's pretty lifeless, but I'm about to bring you back to life.
Speaker 1: So another question why doesn't God touch him and say now you're like the greatest speaker in the whole region.
Speaker 1: Now when you speak, people like the stars come down.
Speaker 1: He didn't.
Speaker 1: He stays as he is for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: Why didn't he heal him of that?
Speaker 1: I'll tell you why.
Speaker 1: He's looking for a man who will own his stuff and confess it and say boy, I'm going to be dependent on you for every syllable that comes out of my mouth, because if I am not and it's me talking and not them they're going to kill me.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm just looking for people that are smart enough just to realize I'm only as good as my dependence level on God.
Speaker 1: That's when we, number two, confess reality.
Speaker 1: If you're not with him, if you emotionally, physically, maybe even separate yourself from God, or you never have yet made the decision to know Jesus, confess it.
Speaker 1: Just be honest.
Speaker 1: Ephesians 2, chapter one.
Speaker 1: As for you, you were dead in your transgressions, sin.
Speaker 1: There is no, I said it, there is no middle ground.
Speaker 1: There's no neutral ground, there's no demilitarized zone.
Speaker 1: You're either the enemy working against him or your own His side.
Speaker 1: You're the army of the Lord working farm.
Speaker 1: It's very clear cut.
Speaker 1: So please don't do what I did for 33 years.
Speaker 1: Decide, you know what.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to manage my sin level.
Speaker 1: That sin level will consume you.
Speaker 1: We're never that good.
Speaker 1: We are not that good.
Speaker 1: The other thing is we've got to measure ourselves, not against other humans, we've got to measure ourselves against the standard of God.
Speaker 1: Well, you know what?
Speaker 1: That is Pretty much perfection.
Speaker 1: Jesus said anything, not faith, is flat out sin.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess I'm busted.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 1: That's the whole point of the gospel.
Speaker 1: The good news says he came from the outside one more time and he came into your life, or once, to come into your life.
Speaker 1: Bring life to the lifeless, put you on your feet.
Speaker 1: I still got issues, that's right.
Speaker 1: We all have issues.
Speaker 1: But if I'll give that to Him and I'm dependent on Him the mission he has for me will be fulfilled.
Speaker 1: The last thing we've got to do is repent and receive.
Speaker 1: Last, too, is that famous message that Peter gives after they've been filled with the Holy Spirit and they spill out into the streets and Peter's the spokesman.
Speaker 1: This time Peter is not talking.
Speaker 1: This time the Holy Spirit of God is talking through Peter and people by the thousands are saying what do we need to do to get what you have?
Speaker 1: And Peter says repent and be baptized.
Speaker 1: Repent is agreeing with God what he already knows.
Speaker 1: Confessing it.
Speaker 1: That means owning it.
Speaker 1: That means turning away from it, first with the mind.
Speaker 1: Remember our chart the body, the soul, the spirit and the soul.
Speaker 1: We're going to turn away from it and let the spirit be healed and changed.
Speaker 1: Second Corinthians, the second Corinthians 710 kind of repentance.
Speaker 1: Paul says that's godly sorrow.
Speaker 1: Another word for sorrow in that is grief.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about.
Speaker 1: You can be sorry all day long and your life never changes.
Speaker 1: That means I got regrets and I wish I hadn't done.
Speaker 1: That.
Speaker 1: Godly sorrow is you come face to face with a holy, loving, righteous God and he's weeping because of your sinfulness.
Speaker 1: He's grieving because one of his children has broken his heart.
Speaker 1: And that acknowledgement, that recognition, is more than you can take and you will do whatever is necessary to not see him crying over disappointment in you anymore.
Speaker 1: We're still sinful, but there is a new level of righteousness at that point that he gives us.
Speaker 1: The past has been erased and we are new people.
Speaker 1: And then you have a purpose and that purpose is to live for him, to glorify him.
Speaker 1: At that point, y'all it ain't.
Speaker 1: It's not about you and it's not about me.
Speaker 1: Everything we do is not for credit, it's for his glory and his acclaim.
Speaker 1: That's when you know it's real and it's also a very powerful thing.
Speaker 1: And one of the best things that happen is you stop being an empty soul.
Speaker 1: Some of you and some at the nine o'clock.
Speaker 1: It's like truth be known.
Speaker 1: If you shine a flashlight, there's a lot of darkness.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of emptiness in my soul right now and he doesn't like that any more than you do.
Speaker 1: And he can correct that and he can fill the emptiness and the darkness with hope and his purpose.
Speaker 1: In some settings today it's we kind of enjoy saying see that guy on that news feed there.
Speaker 1: You know what he is.
Speaker 1: He is an empty suit.
Speaker 1: Have you ever said that?
Speaker 1: And we know what that means.
Speaker 1: That means there's a lot of flash and there's a lot of appearance, but there's no substance.
Speaker 1: In Texas they call it all hat and no cattle.
Speaker 1: You don't want to be that guy.
Speaker 1: You want to be filled with the love and the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: So Brayden and our group is going to come.
Speaker 1: I would suggest that, as friends among friends, if honestly in here you're troubled over your state of relationship with Him, make your way down here.
Speaker 1: We can pray about it together.
Speaker 1: If you're troubled about your state of relationship with somebody else, if you've, like man, I've been apart from a fellowship officially long enough, I need to commit to be a part of a church family, and this is where he's led you.
Speaker 1: This is not a should anymore, this is I will.
Speaker 1: I am making this because that obeys Christ and it pleases Him.
Speaker 1: Christ said Himself if you confess me here, I'm confessing you up there.
Speaker 1: There's never a reason not to take action to glorify God.
Speaker 1: The day of salvation, paul said, is today, it's never tomorrow, won't you stand?
Speaker 1: Let me pray for you, lord.
Speaker 1: We are sheep.
Speaker 1: Sheep are not especially smart, they're not talented, they're not fast, they don't fight well, they run off of cliffs.
Speaker 1: They smell bad.
Speaker 1: God, the only thing that will deliver us is the shepherd.
Speaker 1: We need you.
Speaker 1: We need you to fill us, to breathe life into us, so that we can be who we've been created to be.