The heat outside is causing problems, just like any other person. All those things were the same, but we tend to think of David and Elijah.
Read your Bible. If you read your Bible, you find constantly that that's really not the way that you had assumed it would be. However true it might be that pain lasts just for a moment—have you ever heard that? Your pain lasts just for a moment. However true it is, it seems to last for eternity.
You know, I studied Job, and I found that in Job, with all the indications we have, the whole trauma of Job was eight months long. Job lived a long, long life, an incredibly blessed life. If you put that in the context of his whole life, but when trouble comes, it seems like a ride on horseback, and it leaves you crawling, right? I mean, it just runs right up on you, and then you know, as a dissipation, it goes really, really deep.
I think I need to include this idea: be transparent with God. When things are going bad, that's when you really need to be transparent. Get out of yourself, get out of your head, amen. Get out of your thinking. Talk to God. Talk to Him about it; He wants to hear it. Prayer is talking to God. It is not sitting down figuring out the right words. It's not trying to figure out how everything formulates.
There are principles to prayer that maybe knowing them makes it better or more efficient for other people than just sitting and praying for ourselves. But at the same time, just pray. You can be transparent with God completely because He already knows everything. The Bible says He knew some people before they were born. I'm sure that's true of all of us.
What about people? I don't tell you to be transparent with people. Don't, because unless you need some more banks, here's your great way to get it, amen. This is just a marvelous way to get it—just share it with everybody. Hallelujah!
Now, you may have a friend or two, a few friends that you could share just about anything with, but they probably don't need the load, and they can't do much about it. If you need something to eat, maybe they can help you. But if you feel a spiritual growth problem, there are a few people that are going to be able to help you or even willing to. But God's always there; He's always willing, amen.
Always welcome to making plans without including God is a horrible, horrible thing to start with. And add one more thought: be transparent with God, but watch your mouth. Don't get too bold and too brash, you know. David got it. I love it. A wise man loves for somebody to correct him. He doesn't mind being corrected because it helps him to be better. He becomes more wise. The fool does exactly the opposite, right?
And God wants to speak to you, but He doesn't want to speak to a fool. Never, never, never, ever just let your mouth go with God. Measure what you say. That doesn't mean sit down and figure out, "He won't understand this word," or "This is too backwoods for Him." No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying your attitude, your atmosphere that you come into God.
Man, when Moses stood before God, what did God say? "Take the shoes off your feet; the ground you stand on is holy ground." Amen, amen. How close do you want to get to God? You may get to God by 752,000 light-years away from Him, and you don't need to do anything special, but you can get right up in His presence.
So you better read something special. You have a right to go there before somebody special. Water park, amen. Romans chapter 5 said we could go directly into the throne of God to obtain mercy, into the Holy of Holies to obtain mercy in times of need, amen. Exactly what Jesus did.
Just always keep in your mind, it's because of Jesus acting here. That's because of Jesus I can talk to the Father. It's because of Jesus I can tell Him how I really feel, and I know He understands. But I don't want to have to backtrack words that I say to God. Be careful—not so careful that you don't talk to Him. Feel more careful than to trifle with Him, amen.
And the second thing to do is what David always does. You see it over and over again: pray anyway. Bring a new one. You believe God's there. It's like naming it. You haven't seen Him; I haven't seen Him yet, but I have every confidence that I will. And I have every confidence that one day, train departure, believe it, amen.
Complete did not exist, and you believe that He's done marvelous things for you in Christ. Praying—if you're a man of prayer, you're not spending time in prayer. If you're not spending any time in prayer, you are missing so much in your relationship to God. You may know about it, but knowing about it is almost like looking at a picture of something and saying, "Oh yeah, I've seen the Grand Canyon before," being there and walking the Grand Canyon.
You know more about the Grand Canyon by a long shot in one minute than anybody will ever learn by looking at pictures. And to get into the presence of God, I think this is probably the most missed dynamic of prayer, and that's waiting until you sense God.
Now, I'm not talking about building something or, you know, I mean, somebody can put their hands on you or whatever. I'm just talking about slowing yourself down to the place that you can recognize that God is here. I'm talking to Him.
When we do corporate prayer in church, we're just praying. I would never have gotten a prayer like that then. All you have to do is close your eyes, just let everything else go, and then recognize you've got an audience with God.
You ever had that sensation that somebody's around, somebody's looking at you? You ever had that? Yeah, everybody does. There's some sensing, but it's the same with God. When God's presence comes near you, do you? And all the fog is out of the way, you will sense that presence.
I'm not going to tell you how it is; you're going to sense it. It might be chill bumps; it might be—I don't know what it's going to be. Whatever it is, it's good, amen. And you'll know it's good.
Okay, God is the only thing that makes sense of this world. I've been watching—I told you I wouldn't watch a lot of atheists debate Christians with atheists, and most of them were almost always all they did was really new options about how we're here.
Okay, science can't tell you how we're here. All science can do is observe something that is here. That can never take us to keep on arguing that you have to have science to know. Science cannot know the weekend, prove a date or a time or, you know. But if they were correct, then you should begin to doubt your own mind if you think there's some evolutionary way that human beings came to be.
The news by a system, like they explained, of accidents. And so how do you address your own brain? And see, the Christian doesn't, right? He curses the man who has confidence in the arm of flesh. I need guidance that I can't know; I can't do it.
Excuse me, you got some music? Hallelujah, hallelujah. Okay, so, and I really want to posit this as well, and David does. God doesn't hear your words. Jesus said it when He said that the Father already knows what you need before you ask Him. He hears your heart.
And here's your arm: if your heart's not right, if your heart is right, all your works can be wrong. They won't fool God. He won't be fooled by the context of your words. Keep them pulling you up in a contract and saying, "Well, you asked for this and this, but you did not decide, and you didn't cross this team right," amen.
So what does God hear? God is hearing our heart. He's hearing what we're trying to say, what we need to say. The Spirit of God prays for us, intercedes for us. Jesus intercedes for us. So what's happening? They're praying for the way I ought to pray, that I'm not—I’m a little too solid to get it, you know.
And what I can do is control my response to God. I can control the atmosphere. Let us all think. God asks you for humility, love, tenderness, kindness. Yeah, what are they? They're hard things.
Behold, love—these are the greatest things that exist, and love is more important than all of them. What are these? These are hard things. You wonder why we can't get along in our nation, why we can't get along in our world? Why? Because it's a heart problem. We need heart surgery, and the heart surgery that we need, only God can do.
Yes, we take a set of guidelines. There are not a lot of laws in the New Testament; there are principles, guidelines. If we look at those guidelines, if we live by those guidelines, how different our world would be, amen.
So we have to reverse our thinking. We have to have no doubt, confidence in God based on His word. If not, blind faith—blind faith is very dangerous. Confidence in God based on His word.
So how are you going to have confidence in God if you don't read His word? You can't pull it down here and say, "God, you know, I want you to tell me right now, honestly, the answer to this question of how to live life, or how I should be a husband, or how to pastor," or you know what I'm saying. You can't do that. Nobody else can do that.
Okay, but He has given you His word, and the Bible says in Psalms He has elevated this by His own name. So God's own name is no more holy than the word that He has given us.
So we take that word, and we learn from it, apply it to our lives, and if we change to meet it, we become harmless. You become harmless. It's impossible to be a racist; it's impossible to be somebody that oppresses people. It's impossible if we live by what the scripture teaches, amen, amen.
All right, let's get this thing. David says that if God doesn't hear him, that he is like the sleep of death. He says it's like it's death to be separated from you, but it's like the sleep of death, which is the sin sleep. If I'm separated from you, it is sin that separates me from you.
His arms of the Lord—I just had the armor of reward. World short—does He not have any power? Can He not do what He used to do? But your sin has separated between you and your God, amen.
And if we accept the fact, then we have the way to deal with it because God did.
He says, "Oh Lord, my God." He talked about his relationship—the absolute. This is the absolute. I don't have to see my wife to know that she loves me. I could have been with my mother in my length of time; I know she'd love me, right?
But the temptation in your mind, if you don't pray, if you don't open it up to a conversation—and that's what prayer is. It's not one way; it's a conversation. And you know, He's a little bit bigger than me, so He ought to get the lion's share of the time. Does that make sense to you? I mean, you know, so I need to be bouncing it.
But the Holy Spirit is so faithful to help us and remind us. Has He ever done that for you? Give you scriptures while you're talking to somebody or in your prayer life? Direction, guidance? He even warned you about not doing something. He's right there, a present help right now. He's a present help, amen.
So pray. Pray anyway, no matter how you feel. As a matter of fact, that is a sacrifice. When you come to church and you don't feel like it—this morning I got up; my back is absolutely murdering me. I got a broken toe on my foot; something happened to my thumb. I don't know what it is, but it's going five alarm on me. I've got tendonitis that's absolutely as loud as I'm speaking.
Thank you. I thought this morning, I wonder how many people would actually go to church in this condition. I wonder how many people would. You call Him Master; you call Him Lord. It's not insignificant. You have the right to interrupt your life anytime He wants to, at any stage, for any reason.
And I trust Him with every bit of it. That's why I look forward to death when it comes. And whatever happens, I live with it, no fear. I'm not afraid because of that relationship.
Here's the greatest weapon you have against your flesh, the world around you, and the devil: the absolute greatest. Wednesday night, we've been doing some study of prayer in Ephesians chapter 6 when it talks about the armor of God, and it talks about prayer. We've been doing some good, good study on that, and I'm telling you, study prayer. Look at the promises of prayer.
Okay, third, I said I would share three things that David used to navigate silence. The third one is always reassuring your confidence in God, reasserting your confidence in God. David, as he starts off, you know, "Where are you at, God? How long are you going to leave me like this? You know my enemies are going to come around."
They're going to start. I'm good at that, wherever I'm at. Thank you, bro. Hallelujah. But David always—you get the simplex. We're just praying, and he's just talking about it. Then he reassures his faith by reasserting faith.
No matter how mad it looked, you know, I remember how dark it got or how he couldn't understand. He always resources faith. So David's faith confession: he said, "I have trusted in your mercy," amen, past tense.
Before now—before now, we are so important. We've learned to want to get a result right now. We're so impulsive. We don't remember even friends, you know. They've been faithful; they've been faithful. You've known them for years and years and years, and the first thing that happens that maybe makes you question it, history is gone.
Laughter. I don't think that's the way it's supposed to be, you know. But mercy is different than goodness, and the things that God does in goodness. Mercy presupposes something, and David's saying it here. Mercy presupposes that I'm wrong. I've done something. I don't need mercy if I've done anything right.
I don't need any mercy unless I've done something. If I've done something and I want you to forgive me, I need mercy. I need you not to give me what I deserve, amen.
I feel bad; it's part of David's reaffirmation. "God, I am not who I could be. I am not—you know, I'm in the right by being king of Israel." But God called him out, and you know what? Whatever. But he never did. He never did.
He's reminded that he is serving God's mercy before now. Don't—when you get in a time of darkness, I get a time when you just don't see it, you just don't understand. Don't assume that God has changed anything because He's promised the answer, amen.
He's absolutely promised you that He asked. There is no variable of turning or shadow from the barrels of God, and no shadows, amen. And Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So He loved you just as much.
on Nov 05, 2023
