If You Love Me...

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

My name is Daniel. I'm a pastor here and it's an honor to be with you guys this year and we're taking a break from that. So, to you a little bit. Something that I've struggled with in the past and sometimes even forget now. And it begins with us sometimes as believers when we talk about God the Father, the Creator, the big man upstairs. When we talk about Jesus, visualize who he was, Savior. When we get to the Holy Spirit, when we get to, and maybe your grandparents even called it like the Holy Ghost, it gets weird, okay? It's when Candace and I would dance, which doesn't happen very often. As long as I'm connected to her in some way, I'm okay. But if any time we break away and I'm supposed to do my own dance, it's awkward. I don't know what to do with my hands, like it's weird, right? I feel like that's how we are with the Trinity. I feel like it's how we are with the Father and the Son.

We're comfortable with the Father and the Son, but when we get to the Holy Spirit, it's like with the Holy Spirit. And so what happens is that can lead to a lot of, or in an apartment you have two door mates. So you're gonna interview a few potential roommates, okay? So there's a knock at the door and it's either the first one you're interviewing and literally flowers out of the middle of his sleeve and hands him to you and you're like, okay, this is kind of weird, Ivan. And he comes in and he shows you how he can make the picture frame disappear, right? And then he starts to levitate your table and you're like, this is weird. And he's like, do you have a dog or a cat? And you're like, okay, it's time for you to leave. Okay, you get out. Ivan the illusionist, okay? Next up, the doorbell rings, it's Sam, okay? Sam, you open the door, large, overly tan, in a tank top, bleached hair, and he says to you,

are you ready to have the best roommate of your life? And it's followed by a woo, like that, okay? And you're like, this is much, he comes in and he shows you how you can open up like, that are hard and he's changing bulbs and every morning at five a.m. we're gonna get up and we're gonna work out and it's gonna be great. And you say, you can leave now, I'll call you, don't call me, all right? And that's Sam the strong man. Now we have Fred and you open the door and Fred immediately says, did you have a grandmother that once loved you? And you're like, yeah, he's like nailed it. And then he comes in and you're kind of confused and you're trying to talk to him and he starts reading things like the large hand to kind of tell you about your future. And at one point he puts his two fingers up to his temple and says, tomorrow you're gonna see a stranger. And you're like, okay.

And you're like, Fred the fortune teller, you can leave and since you're so gifted, you'll know whether or not I call you back, okay? The last one is Dave, you open the door and he's kind of sitting there with a smile and he's kind of swaying and as he talks, you understand nothing he's saying. It's just a bunch of gibberish. And you bring him in and it's weird and all of a sudden he'll just get up and start dancing and there's no music, you're like, this is weird. Runs around the room and yelling and you're like, you open the door and you just usher him out, okay? These characteristics are how we can picture the Holy Spirit in that like Ivan the most, these mystics and unexplained things, we don't know what, maybe we think of the Holy Spirit that way. Maybe we think the Holy Spirit of just being future teller or force that we can maybe wield

just associated with speaking in weird languages and people who dance in church and run around yelling. Maybe that's just the Holy Spirit. And so what happens is, and we know it's in the Bible because in Acts two when we see the Holy Spirit in the disciples, I mean some crazy things were happening and even they were accused of being drunk. And so what we do then is we say, okay, I'm comfortable with my Jesus and God but I'm gonna kinda keep the Holy Spirit at home because I don't understand it, it's unpredictable. You know, what am I gonna do there? And what's interesting is Jesus, the night before he's arrested, when he's spending his last moments in the upper room with the disciples and just imagine the urgency, he knows he's about to leave them. And so he is pouring out just everything he can before he leaves and he talks a lot about the Holy Spirit. He says in verse 16, before I read there,

talking about the Holy Spirit so much, why is it like, hey, this is the theology you really need to have nailed down when I'm gone. Or this is how you're gonna share the gospel well with people after I leave. Or this is how you're to run a church. And here's what the steps, that's what he does. He doesn't, he says in chapter 16 to John verse seven, he says, never do your advantage that I go for if I don't, help will not come. But if I go, I will send him to you. So we can miss this pretty easily because what Jesus is saying is, I leave earth, it's better that I go so that the Holy Spirit can come. Better that we have the Holy Spirit than Jesus physically walking the earth today. And that's pretty big. So I think it's important for us to understand why this is the case. And so look, it's a preaching on the Holy Spirit. It could easily be a 10 part sermon. What we're gonna do today is we're just gonna

kinda settle down in some verses in John. And those verses have enough for us to just kinda take it through. So this is not some systematic of good stuff happening. So let's begin reading. We're gonna be in John 14 today. John 14, you can, your phone, there's maybe some Bibles 14. And we're gonna be in verses 15 through 17 to start. All right, so let's read those. It says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments and I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither knows him for he dwells and will be with you. And so I originally wanted to kinda talk about who the Spirit is and what he does. And in these verses they overlap so much. We're really just gonna talk about who the Holy Spirit is just collectively. And we're gonna use these verses to do it.

And so we're gonna do it point, there's six points here. And so let's kinda hit them kinda quick. The first one is when we read these verses and we see that it says, in verse 16, it says, and I will give you another, okay? Talking about another helper. That one is really important. And because it can mean, the word that they use there in Greek can mean one or two things. One, it can be another like, which is different and not the same. So another one, nothing like what it's referencing. Or it can be something that's mean, another of the same kind. And that's what the word is here. So when Jesus says I'm gonna send you another, it's another of the same kind. Full of John in the very first verse when it starts, it says that in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. And throughout the Bible, the emphasis is that Jesus is God. And if you remember, any time Jesus referenced that,

Pharisees would be picking up stones ready to kill Jesus on the spot. Now we have Jesus saying that who he's gonna send, the Holy Spirit, the helper, who he's gonna send is going to be the same as he who is like God. And so we see here, we see here three. And so this kinda steps us into the dizziness of the Trinity, and we're not gonna unpack that today. But it's enough to say that the Trinity, it's not that they're not three gods but one, and it's not that the one God in three forms but three persons. So that's confusing, and it's okay that it's confusing. So we're not gonna try to unpack that, but we're gonna talk about who the Holy Spirit is. So to think about the Holy Spirit as another, it means that he exists, he's co-equal, he's a co-etern, separate from Jesus but equally divine. And the reason that this is important is that we have tendencies to minimize the Holy Spirit

sometimes as a lesser God, and in fact, a lot of other religions that almost kind of align with ours do the same. And so it's important to know as we kinda move forward that the Holy Spirit is divine God, okay, he's one. All right, so right after that word, another, we get the word helper. Does anybody have anything different in their Bible other than helper, okay? Okay, there's advocate, there's comforter, there's counselor,

and so used in different translations, and typically when you see a word, different translations have different words, it just means the English language doesn't have a really good singular word to describe it. Okay, and so when you break down the actual word, or paracletus, para means someone who's always with you and someone who's always for you. So that's the first part of the word. And the second part of the word is to declare or argue. So someone who's always with you for you, declaring an, first part of that, it says that the Holy Spirit is with us to aid us. It's to, so the thing would be like if you tell a baby, hey, get up and walk, okay, that's not really helping and aiding. If you're helping a toddler by holding their hands and walking, that's what this kind of word means, it's helping, aiding, okay? The second part of,

before we, the reason that this is important, remember that this is in the midst of Jesus saying he's leaving. So he's saying I'm gonna send someone with you that's gonna be with you for all of these days. And then we get to the second part of the word, which means to argue or declare. And the Holy Spirit argues for us, and argues for us, if you look at Romans 8-16, it says the Spirit himself testified with our spirit.

Okay, so the Holy Spirit is a constant witness to who Jesus is in our life. Against us in John 16, come into the world and convict the world in regard to sin. And so at the same time it's pointless to Jesus, he's convicting us of sin. And so another way to think about this is the opposite, do you remember how the Satan is sometimes referred to? He's referred to as the accuser, okay? So we have the Holy Spirit as our advocate, our counselor, and the opposite of that is Satan's accuser. And so the way we counter that is with the Holy Spirit. Okay, you see now at the end of verse 16, the word forever. And for us, I don't think this may be, we recognize this as much, but remember in the Old Testament, the Spirit was referenced as leaving multiple times, okay? In 1 Samuel 16, when he demonstrated disobedience, it says the Spirit left him, okay? When we see the Spirit leaves Samson in Judges,

it leaves him. And then I remember David's kind of great prayer and saying, take your spirit away from me. So you have, we have the referencing the Spirit being with us forever, so that was different. And you have Jesus saying, I'm leaving. And when I was in youth group, there was a time that I had a youth leader, probably for about a year and a half, that just impacted me greatly. And when he left, I just,

like everything just like, I couldn't, like I felt like you're gonna leave, like how am I supposed to keep going? And I wasn't gonna put much trust in the next youth leader and I was just thinking, that's just gonna happen again. People could easily think the same thing. They spent three years with Jesus doing some wild things and he's saying, now I'm going to leave. And so this is just kind of, I'm sure very hard for them to hear, but Jesus is gonna go, because I'm gonna send him, he's gonna be with you forever. And accept Christ and we're given the Holy Spirit. We don't have to worry about the Holy Spirit leaving us because we send too much or we don't live up to our end of the bargain that he's gonna be with us forever. We should have confidence in that, that fosters a life of obedience, worship and service. Okay, the next one, verse 17, it's where truth becomes blurry, right?

And when I, anybody reigns ignite with this phrase, balloon boy, okay, okay. This was a story you're gonna see, you're gonna remember. This was a story 16 years ago, so some of y'all may not have been born, of a family who had a helium, and it grabbed all the news attention. This happened in Colorado, it's a picture, yeah, that's what it looked like. Not because it looks like a spaceship, okay, that's what you think. It was because they said that their six year old boy Falcon was inside of this, and it's flying across the Colorado skies. So all the news, does anybody remember this? Okay, I remember this, okay, it's kinda crazy. I didn't remember this, and so, so all the news focuses in and everybody's watching that this boy Falcon, six year old's in this balloon, it finally lands safely in like some desert looking place, all these cars ascend on it, and there's no Falcon,

there's no boy, and they're like he must have fell out. So they did, two and a half hours later, the parents call and say, we found Falcon, he was hiding in the rafters of the garage. Turns out, it was a publicity stunt. They were prosecuted and fined, and Falcon is in a rock band today, just in case you're wondering, okay. So, this emotional interest, people were really worried about it, and it was a complete lie. And what happens to us too, is we get emotionally involved in things, we have trouble discerning what, have the spirit of truth that lives in us. Now, this spirit of truth is not trying to help us decide, does aliens exist, was there voter fraud? Truth that impacts, two chapters over in verse, chapter 16 verse 13, it says, but, there do you things that are 330, entire body, we crave, we want, it's important. And what's happening around us, we listen to what the spirit of truth is telling us.

Number five, verse 17 refers to the spirit as him. Okay, when Jesus talks about, this is the pronoun him. And there are pronouns that could have been used that are neutral, under or really life, and so this was done intentionally, and it's done throughout the gospel, that Jesus didn't refer to the Holy Spirit as an it, okay, referred to the Holy Spirit as a him. And so this, it gives, personality gives him a person. I think what becomes hard about the Holy Spirit for us to grasp is that we don't see him, and he's invisible, and so, we feel like the Star Wars force, like somehow, if we like chance, and that's not what, the fact that the Holy Spirit is not visible adds the idea that he's not, that he's impersonable, but that's not the case, okay? And this is why, we see the spirit described as like wind, fire, water, dove, we see those descriptions, but these aren't descriptions about his personal status,

but rather, his personal actions. And so the same can be said about the Father and the Son. When God is described of like the rock, or it doesn't mean he's impersonal, it's referring to him as a solid foundation for believers, or a holy God who strongly opposed him about the lion of the land, or the lamb of the kingliness, and his official lamb. And so when we talk about the Holy Spirit, powerful, energetic, I'm not talking about being warm, life-giving,

the people, they are both, identity means the reason that the Holy Spirit means we can always be with the Holy Spirit, with always with the person, and just like God, the Father, and Jesus, the Son. And so, and again, this is kind of where we break away from a lot of other religions that get, we can have a personal relationship with our God. Okay, that's impactful. Okay, last thing that's, and it's, I'll with, about that a little bit more in just a minute. But if we'd, and of the six kind of, the six point we just touched on briefly, all these points, and we've had some to try to describe the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, and divine advocate who lives with us, that sentence encompasses everything. And so, as a church, each morning, right there in front of those doors, we pray before the clock, and you're more than welcome by the way, and that the Spirit has to be at work, okay?

Are not gonna be more than what the Spirit can do. When leaders, we talk about things like, vacation Bible school, grade school, youth camp impact next week. Church, how we use our money, home groups, life groups, Sunday mornings, we can prepare a lot, we can do a lot of effort, but these things would crumble and feel incredibly empty if it didn't involve the Holy Spirit. And so the only way that we, the only way that our church, the only way that I, kingdom is in step with the Holy Spirit.

This is the good news, is when we read verses 17 and 18, what it says, it says, and will be with you. And verse 23, when we commit our lives to Christ, the gift of the Holy Spirit comes and dwells in us. And then, so that really, Holy Spirit in us, go about your day, just, you know, you've got the Holy Spirit now, everything should go great. And the questions arise like, if I have the Holy Spirit living in me, why do I still struggle with things? Why do I find something, keep going back to it? Why do I not get all this clarity that I need in my life? Go back to the illustration of roommates, okay? And now we're gonna, it's the room of your heart, spiritually, it just kinda means your being, okay? And in that room is the Holy Spirit, and you're like, okay, great. Well, if the Holy Spirit's here, then who is messing things up? Who gives me these bad ideas? I mean, I've got the Holy Spirit living here,

and then you hear the toilet flush. There's a bathroom and room of your heart, okay, just go with me, okay? And you hear air freshener being sprayed, and you're like, who is this? And the door opens, and you're staring face to face with yourself, yourself. And I'll give you my version of myself. First of all, probably don't go in there for like 10 minutes, and he walks in the room, and he's like, who's this guy? I'm like, this is the Holy Spirit. Look, we can't make it by ourselves, okay? I've committed my life to Christ, I get the Holy Spirit, he's living here now, I need you to leave. And the me pulls out of the end table, there's an end table in the room of your heart too, and pulls a paper out and says, look, this lease says that I am here, and either Jesus comes back or I die. So you're stuck with me, and throws the feet up on the table, okay? So you got yourself and the Holy Spirit in the same room.

Okay, and the truth is, we have two people fighting, we have two fighting for our compassion of our heart. And the Spirit is there, because we understand we need him, and we're new because of him, but then so is our old self. The Bible refers to it as our old self, the Bible also refers to it as the flesh, okay? I think Paul does a really good job of describing it in Galatians. Listen in chapter five, verses 16 through 17, he says, so I will say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, and this is funny, it says, so that you are not to do whatever you want. Not to do whatever I want, okay? So what are we supposed to do? How do we listen to the Holy Spirit? There's three verses, there's three parts of these verses

that continues here in 14 that I wanna point out. It says, if you love me, in verse 15, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Whoever has my commandments and keeps, in verse 23 it says, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word, okay? So before the Holy Spirit comes in, who do we love? We love me some me, okay? That's my favorite, T.O. Terrell Owen saying, you love me some me, and in the version of my illustration, I'm guaranteeing the guy that I'm wearing that shirt in the room beside the Holy Spirit. We love me some me. And when the Holy Spirit comes in, he is changing that, and in the reading verse 26 it says, but the helper, the Holy Spirit, who the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and bring to remembrance all that I have said to you. So the question is, how can we make room for the Holy Spirit? And I don't mean like a portion of the room.

I mean, how can we clear out the room so that the Holy Spirit is the main occupant of our life? Okay? I read an article about a 14th century Puritan theologian. That sounds really smart. First of all, it was an article. Second of all, I'm sure it had pictures, okay? So I'm not that smart. But his name was Richard Sibbes, and he wrote a lot about the Holy Spirit, and one thing that he would talk about a lot was how to entertain the Holy Spirit. And when he says entertain, he means like, if you were to host somebody at your house. How do you entertain in our context of where we are?

Start with H, so they're easy to remember, okay? There's four of them. So this is how we make room for the Holy Spirit. This is how we clear out the room for the Holy Spirit. One is we hear his voice. Two, we heed his motions. Three, we hate the Holy Spirit. Four, we have his grace. So we're gonna talk about each one of those, and then we'll be done. Okay. The primary way, when we're talking about hearing the voice, okay, of the Holy Spirit, the primary way we hear from the Spirit is through God's word. And so the easy application is you need to read. But the question kind of becomes, well, how do we hear the Spirit? What does that even look like?

I'll give you an example. A couple weeks ago, I'm reading through the New Testament. It's great to do, by the way. I'm reading just kind of chronologically through it, and I was in 2 Peter 1 and 2, and I'm reading 2 Peter 1. And the verse, like a verse kind of jumped off of the page of me, and I'll just tell you what it is. It says, but whoever does not, this is verse nine of chapter one of 2 Peter, says, but whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins. I feel like forgetting I've been cleansed from past sins. I feel like the Lord was applying that to my life. Okay. And as I keep on reading, it's just finishing, but at the very end, it says this proverb is true, and it gives two proverbs. And I'm gonna tell you the second, I look like a pig that's been wallowing. My grandparents would say waller.

Everything was eel. I'm rolling around in it. I'm enjoying it. And that's what you look like you forget. Okay. That's an example of how like the Holy Spirit illuminates, kind of makes scripture. And so the only way we're gonna do that is if we're in it. For just very clear context, the next day I read the rest of the 2nd Peter, horrible. I was distracted. I was not feeling well. And I'm like, why in the world? Yesterday was so great. Like I came in just like expecting these two days different. Yesterday, great. Stuck with me all day. Next day, I can't focus on a thing. I'm thinking about work. I'm thinking about all these different things. Can't even focus.

Mark 4:19 says, but the worries of life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires of other things come in and choke the word. Okay. And may ask yourself, when you come to church, when you go to the Lord in prayer, when you open your body of the Spirit, and if not, what is drowning it out? Okay, what's in that room drowning it out? Start by beginning, start beginning your prayer time and your church time, all these times with saying, Lord, I need to hear from you. Like I can't figure this out. I need to hear from you.

So hear his voice, clear the room of distractions that choke out the word, and so that we can tune into the Holy Spirit. So hear his voice. The second one, he, not a word we use a lot, he means to like be made aware, take notice. And when he says motions, he motions, motions, so pay attention to what the Holy Spirit's wanting you to do. And the Holy Spirit can tell you to do something, and the Holy Spirit can tell you to do that. Like maybe you hear a sermon that's telling you you should, man, I'm convicted, I really, I need to do something like that at church. The question then becomes, what do you do about that? Do you go home and kind of think something may figure out, or do you go to the Lord, do you pray about that?

Maybe you overhear a conversation in line, okay? Grocery store gets used a lot in sermon and illustrations, and you hear that this lady is telling her friend that she's having a really tough time, okay? And you get prompting from the Holy Spirit that you need to do something. Maybe it's paying for their groceries, maybe it's asking if you could pray for that lady, okay? But you feel like this urge. Now, this happened to me a few months ago. I was, sometimes in Sunday mornings, I walk around my neighborhood, I'm like, I should be 70 years old, by the way. Like high socks, shorts, I'm walking early,

or running by me, you know? I'm praying and it's just, I love being, and I see a guy sitting in the front of the school bar, and he's sitting at our house on the curb, and so I kind of pass him a couple times, and I'm like, the Holy Spirit's prompting me to go talk to him. Like, I'm about to lead this guy to the Lord, it's gonna be great, okay? And so as I'm walking over there, I'm like, good morning, and he's like, leave me alone. I'm like, oh, geez, so did I hear the Holy Spirit incorrectly? I don't know, I don't know. I think we're gonna kind of maybe, who knows? But I feel like for us to kind of go, and so ways to kind of just double check when you feel like you're praying, is to be in the Word, to be praying, and to talk to people about it. Hey, I feel like the Lord is asking me to do this. What do you think? Will you start praying about it?

Sometimes you have to not do something, and I think the easy part for us to get on this is like, if the Holy Spirit's saying, don't murder, we're like, yeah, that's for everybody, or don't lie, like, we get it, okay? But if the Holy Spirit is telling us something personally not to do, that's maybe not universal, that becomes a little bit more tough. And so an example, or you're just kind of questioning it.

Lead youth group in my 20s, I felt like the Lord was calling me not to drink any alcohol during that time. Now, that wasn't something that I was going out and declaring that everybody should do, but I felt like personally for me, and where I was, and I was leading youth, and if they saw me, and just all that, personal conviction, okay? That's what the personal conviction looks like. Now, it didn't apply to everybody, so it made it kind of confusing to me. And the Bible doesn't address it specifically, so what do I do with this?

I encourage you to take, I feel like the Holy Spirit can prompt you individually, and it could be things like, hey, you should remove social media from your phone. Hey, you should be so good, or that promotion looks so good, you're not gonna need to do that, okay? That's just for you, that's a personal prompting. And so, just to go to the Lord and to say, are you telling me this, and to talk to it about people is kind of the ways that you check what the Lord is telling you not to do, okay?

So we have, remember, we're making room for the Holy Spirit, and now we have things, okay? Depose God. And so when we open the door to the Holy Spirit in our life, that means we're closing the door to sin. And take your house, think about your house, think about how you protect people from coming in your house. Okay, we have doors, I hope not. And we have locks on them, right? We have alarms, cameras, and if anybody comes in, we're doing whatever we can to keep those people out. And Levi's not here, but I guarantee, if you try to break in Levi's house, you'll be staring down the barrel of a gun, right?

So now take your heart and think about how you protect it from enemies and perpetrators. What we do, because what happens, open the door to things like anxiety, pride, envy, lying, all these things that you cannot hear from the Holy Spirit. Why? Because all these other things are drowning the Spirit out. I mean, obviously not to like recently, I don't know if I fully understand Spirit. I was in the systematics class in seminary.

Do we get to go? Like, do we have to go to like the Holy Spirit gas station? What makes us not filled with the Holy Spirit? What makes us a tank on half? You know, like I didn't really understand it. But I think in this, it means giving the Holy Spirit the entire room. And when you're not filled with the Holy Spirit, it means that you've allowed these things to come in and crowd and distract from what you're needing from the Holy Spirit. And so our objective daily is when we approach our time in the Word, when we come to try to do our work, and we're ready to do our work, and we're ready to do our work. And so our goal today is to really kind of do a check, a roll call in our room to say, who is here that shouldn't be here? Who's here that opposes God? Romans 8:1, therefore there's no condemnation. And those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Jesus Christ,

and it says the law of the Spirit who gives life and sets you free from the law of sin and death. Ridiculed, beaten, mocked, nailed to a cross, where he suffers and dies. And then why, for you, for me, can kind of go back to those truths daily, selves of that grace, and live with the matters, what more, whom, and then from that, we should allow it to flow out to others and be graceful to others. Listen to what Jesus says in 16, but when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you, will not speak on his own, speak only what he has to do of what is to come. In 14 he says, he will verify me, it is from me that you will receive what he will make known to you. So the Holy Spirit is constantly pointing us to Jesus, and that's where we were reminded of his grace, that we experience daily, and that we should then allow it to flow out of our lives to others. So as we close this morning,

I want you to think about how you might need to make room for the Holy Spirit in your life. And I don't mean a portion of the room, I mean the entire room. Maybe you heard from the Holy Spirit this morning, maybe you felt some sort of prompting that's requiring you to ignore it, to talk to the Lord about it, it means that are, of the Holy Spirit that are taken up, that maybe you are in the middle of wallowing in sin, and you need help getting out of it. And our fear is a lot of times we, because we kind of like it, or we just know that we'll be right back there. My encouragement is to use,

to ask the Holy Spirit to help you, to see that what it is, that it's just mud and gross, that you don't need to be rolling around in it, and just ask for, and then when we, that we need to have towards others, I think it's encouraging to know that when Jesus, 2000 years ago, was in the upper room, telling his disciples this, Jesus knew that the Holy Spirit would inspire John to write it down, and he knew that years later, that it would be preserved and passed down, and eventually translated into English, and then he knew that this morning, we would all be reading it. It's a little mind blowing. I'm saying, 2000 years ago, Jesus in that room knew that. That's how important this is.

From that, we need to take pause, and ask the Spirit, what is it that we could be doing for the Lord? And then lastly, it's possible that you just haven't committed your life to Christ. And you're just kind of searching for something, and things have kind of failed you, and incomplete, maybe asking yourself, what is life even about? And I would just consider committing time to just investigating,

read the book of John, and just go, King James Version, like, Lord of how do you want me to walk? Not everything has to end in TH, all right? He just takes us how we are. It's like, I don't understand this, I doubt you. Like, I think this is a hoax. Just take that vulnerability to the Lord, and anybody here would help walk you through that. But today, and so let's commit to clear out the room for Him, and to seek guidance in our life, and we thank you for the Spirit in us. Gotta pray that we, that we focus just on the things that we allow to occupy our lives that are enemies, that oppose that, that distract us, that drown you out, and Lord, that you think that you want to even use us,

be used or distracted by other things, Lord. Help us take that first step of commitment, and to just, just to seek you, Lord. And as we go to this time, and sing praises to you, Lord, just that we're open to what you have to say to us. And it's your name we pray, amen.